#i’ve never experienced this kind of connection before it was Insane.

[duskholland]

Enemies to lovers!!! You almost lived that!

i am living in a fic rn

[starsthewitch]

Star’s Aphrodite beginners guide to worship 🐚💕

Who is Aphrodite?

Aphrodite is the goddess of love, sex, beauty, seduction, and war. She is most commonly known for her immense beauty and her many associations with sex.

What are some things she is associated with?

Doves

Flowers like roses

The colors pink, red, blue, green, white, and gold

Crystals like rose quartz, clear quartz, pearls, diamonds, sapphires, amethyst, rubies, moonstones, and aquamarines

Incense that smells of rose, cinnamon, myrrh, frankincense, vanilla, and jasmine

Her tarot cards, The Lovers, The Empress, and The Star

What can I give to her as offerings?

Shells or shell imagery

Ocean imagery

Swan and dove imagery

Heart imagery

Valentine's day gifts like chocolates

Imagery/paintings that depict her

Roses or rose imagery

Doing skincare for her

Perfumes or colognes

Hairbrushes

Mirrors

Doing your makeup

Moonwater

Strawberries, apples,and raspberries

Devotional acts or things you can do in her honor

Giving compliments to people

Collecting things you find pretty

Wearing jewelry you've offered or devoted to her

Watch or read romantic material

Self-love

Masturbation (if comfortable in doing so)

Sex (if comfortable in doing so)

Wear perfume dedicated to her

Spend time with loved ones

Create a digital altar (these can be done on Pinterest)

Write poetry about her

Write a letter to her

Create or listen to a playlist dedicated to her

Talk to her (tarot cards, dice, pendulum, and other forms of divination work just fine)

What is it like working with her?

When it comes to Aphrodite, in myth, she was often known as a wrathful and jealous goddess. However, since the myths are just stories and are known to exaggerate some details, this isn’t usually the case.

However, when people mention to others that they are interested in working with Aphrodite, they usually say that you absolutely should not. That she is needy, requires a lot of attention and offerings, that if you don’t do what she says, she will take your beauty away.

This is also not the case.

In my experience as an Aphrodite worshipper, she is very loving, along with being insanely passionate. Also being very vocal about her needs and wants.

Often getting signs from her isn’t at all uncommon. I remember the first few weeks I started working with her, I got an image on my feed that had these two eels intertwined together in a heart shape.

You will often feel connected to sea life, the sea in general, wanting to do things for yourself like dressing nicer and wanting to take care of yourself more.

Here are some things I’ve experienced in my time in working with her.

When I first started praying to her, I stuttered and fumbled over my words. A lot. I was oddly nervous about it? I’m not the type to stutter and fumble often. But beginning to feel nervous and even embarrassed in the presence of the goddess of love? Very normal.

She often enjoys getting milk and dark chocolate, along with roses or any kind of flower, real or not. I gave her chocolates, a fake rose, and a real flower for valentines day and she was insanely happy with it. So much so that her candle rested in a heart shape for a short while.

I often saw butterflies, a symbol of Aphrodite.

I often feel inclined to go to the beach, collect seashells, and do things that make me feel good.

I feel more comfortable expressing love. Before, I was never the type to use pet names for people, especially for friends. But i’ve noticed that I now call people sweet and endearing names. Honeybun, sweet pea, boo, sweetie/sweetness, and babes are things i’ve been saying lately.

She is very honest, often not sugarcoating things. I asked her when my ex first asked me out if we’d last. She said no and gave me explicit reasons as to why. Though I still went out and dated them anyway, and it pretty much ended in the way she said.

She very much enjoys art work of her. I’ve drawn her a few times, asking her to guide my hand in doing so.

Whenever I feel unattractive or hate something about my appearance, she usually makes someone compliment me that day or that week. I was having an off day with my hair, and in that same hour, a girl walked up to me and said that she loved my hair and the style it was in.

That is it for my beginners Aphrodite worship guide! I will be doing these for the other two deities I work with, Apollo and Freyja.

I do hope these were helpful. If you have any questions or need assistance with anything, my ask box and my dms are always open. So be sure to shoot me a message!

Much love to you. <3

[babygorewhore]

Ride Home

Frat! Rafe Cameron x fem reader

While you’re walking your dog, Rafe, who goes to college with you offers you a ride to one of his parties. Due to your shy nature, he decides to finally break you out of your shell.

W.C is a little over 1.5K! Dividers by @xxbimbobunnyxx

Warnings! Brief male masturbation! Oral! Male receiving! Unprotected sex! Choking! Spitting! Degrading! Reader is autistic and shy (from my own experience with it but it’s not explicitly said) daddy kink as always

Your music blared as you walked your dog down down the sidewalk, your baby boy Sammy was happily trotting next to you as your vans slapped against the pavement. Your headphones were secured on your head as you didn’t notice a car horn beeping next to you until you happen to glance to the left.

Rafe Cameron was driving next to you, his eyebrows raised and his speed slowed. “Hey, I’ve been saying your name over and over,” You gave him a side glance and continued walking.

“Don’t ignore me pretty girl, I know I’ve been kind of an asshole before. Let me give you a ride,” He offered and you finally paused your stride.

“What about Sammy?” He panted next to you and Rafe sighed, opening the passenger door.

“Obviously he can come too. I know how much you love animals, baby.” After a few more seconds of contemplating, you walked forward and opened the back door. Allowing your dog to get in and settle in the background.

You climb in the passenger seat, the comfortable material of your shorts and black shirt clinging to your curves. Rafe drove forward but his right hand reached over and settled on the back of your chair.

It wasn’t the first time Rafe drove you home but normally you didn’t offer him more than a few words. You both were in the same university, you studied psychology while he was in business. He was a dick, you had to admit. He was loud and obnoxious too. Something that made you insane. When he drove, he listened to music you couldn’t stand, ranted and raved about topics you had no idea or interest in.

The first and only time you had attended a frat party, Rafe, topper and Kelce took you home while they acted crazy. You sat in the back of the car but if you were being honest with yourself…that’s when you really noticed how hot he was.

But you never acted on it.You weren’t experienced in the romance department, let alone someone of his status and social skills.

“Care to share with the class?” His voice took you out of your thoughts and you looked over at him. You adjusted your headphones off your ears, showing off your piercings and Rafe smirked.

“Come on. You can play your music. You’re always so fuckin quiet. I wanna know what goes on in that pretty head of yours.” Quirking an eyebrow, you finally look him in the eyes.

“I don’t want to break your radio, Rafe.” He chuckles and snatches your phone.

“Shut up.” He begins to scroll and you try to take it back but he shakes his head. “Nope. I’m connecting it and putting my number in, nerdy girl. About time I had it.”

“Why would you want my number?” You cross your arms and Rafe nudges you with his elbow.

“Because obviously you need someone to drive you around. Speaking of which, we’re going to my house.”

“Absolutely not.” You protest and he continues driving. Playing your loud rock music and he sets his SnapBack straight on his head. “Take me home. What about Sammy?”

“Relax, baby. We have enough space for him and I want you at my party. You’re always hiding in your dorm. You need to get out. Be around people.”

“And why is that?” You roll your eyes, mumbling and he snorts.

“Because it’s good for you. You’ll know me, Top and Kelce. And I promise your dog will be fine.” He answers before you can come up with another excuse. Sighing, you lean against the window.

“I’m not dressed for a party.” You whine and Rafe reaches over, putting his hand on your thigh and he squeezes lightly.

“You can borrow something of Sarah’s. I know she doesn’t have the same style but it’ll work.”

“She won’t mind?”

“Nah. If she does, she’ll make an exception for you.” He keeps his hand on your leg and you heart flutters. You don’t ask him to move it as you make the final turn to his house.

When you arrived, your dog wandered around the large space and was the center of attention of the arriving guests. Rafe was late to his own party as you picked out one of Sarah’s’ shirt that was as close to your size and you adjusted it around your body. Your cleavage was exposed as you followed the sound of Rafe’s voice.

“There she is!” He turned when you caught his eye and you slowly approached him. He was talking to Topper and a few other people. He slung an arm around your shoulder, bringing you close to his body.

“Thought I was gonna have to come and find you.” You swallowed as he continues his conversation and you realize he still had your phone. It was in his pocket and you reach to get it but he turns his hips away.

“Rafe, give me my phone.” You huff and he leans down to your ear.

“What will you give me if I do?” Goosebumps rise on your skin and you clear your throat. Rafe’s eyes scan your face and he smirks. “When you’re actually looking me in the eye, it’s a lot easier for me to tell what you’re thinking.”

The crowd seemed to disappear as you had the boldness to ask him, “what do you think is on my mind?”

His mouth moves to a full on smile and he winks at you. Turning you both away from his friend group for a moment. “Try to be a good girl and be patient. You’re gonna be here with me and wait to go back to my room in a little bit.”

He was teasing you on purpose as the hours went on, his arm either looped around your neck or around your waist as he entertained everyone and kept reassuring you that your dog was okay. The noise was overwhelming but his secure hold kept you grounded. His fingers brushed your skin underneath your sleeve, he often leaned down to whisper in your ear and gently pressed his lips against you when telling you someone’s name.

You felt awkward since this wasn’t your scene but the drink from the cup you held in your hand relaxed you and you even managed a few words in response to others.

But your core fluttered the more you looked him and enjoyed his touch. As you walked down the hallway, finally alone, you snatched your phone from his pocket with a giggle. Rafe gasped and wrestled your arms above your head with one hand while his other slid down to your hip.

“Bad girl. Now you gotta pay up.” He whispered before pressing his lips to yours, mouth parted in a deep kiss. You moaned and your leg lifts to wrap around his waist. He lifts you up, your arms go around his neck as he opens his room door and closes it.

Your tongue massages his before he sucks it, laying you down on the bed and he pulls back. Your phone back in his palm and he heatedly stares at you. “Now I’m gonna find out the dirty things you keep in here.”

Rafe opens your phone and groans when he opens your photos. Seeing all your pictures, ones you never thought anyone would see. He down at you, “take off your pants, panties too. And give them to me.”

You listen to him, peeling them both off and you toss your lace material thong to him. The soaked middle crumples in his fingers as he brings them to his mouth. He licks them, his other hand reaching inside his boxers as he tugs himself.

“No, that’s not fair-“ You whine as your legs part, your cunt pulsing as you watch him stroking his dick.

“Uh uh. You stay there. And I’ll decide when you get to touch me. I wanna watch you get all worked up.” You shake your head, lifting your body and you tangle your hands in his shirt. You slam your lips to his and bite down. He makes a noise of surprise before he gives in and returns the kiss.

You use your momentum to sink to your knees and he mumbles, “Fuck. You wanna suck my dick? Eager little slut huh?” You take off his underwear, wasting no time before wrapping your hand around his cock and licking the side.

His hand steadily sets on your head and he pulls your hair. “That’s my fuckin girl.” He rolls his head back as you take his tip in your mouth, sucking him softly but he thrusts his hips.

You take him further down your mouth, stroking him at the same time with your hands on his soft skin before you focus attention on his balls, licking them before sucking between your lips.

“God damn, pretty girl. Fuckin choking on daddy’s dick like a whore?” He cums in your mouth and it leaks from the corners as he tugs your head back. Slapping his cock against your tongue before he pushes you on the bed.

Rafe shoves your legs apart, giving your pussy a slap and you whine. “Covered in my cum and making sweet sounds from me slapping your pussy?”

He slams into you, balls slapping against your ass as he wraps a hand around your throat. “Shittt, princess. So tight around me-the fuck were you bein so selfish for? Keeping this pussy from me?”

You whimper and your hands reach up to dig in his shoulders.

“I want you to fuckin talk, baby. You gotta make me hear how good I’m making you feel.” Rafe’s rhythm is hard and rough as the headboard moves against the wall.

“Mmm-I-“ You try and he shakes his head.

“Use. Your. Words.” He growls.

“Fuck, I want you to spit in my mouth. Please!” You squeak from his grip and he breathes heavier.

“Earn it then. Beg me. Earn me treating you like the pathetic, greedy slut you are.” He taunts and you whimper.

“You’re-the slut-you fucking perv.” You fire back, ripping off his hat and you wrap your legs around his hips. Bringing him impossibly closer. “You fucked yourself thinking about me-more than once. I know it. How’s that for earning it?”

Rafe spits in your mouth before sucking your lip and you cry against his kiss. Creaming on his cock as it gives him more control, you swallow it and your eyes roll back as he cums in you. His seed fills you up, dripping down his dick as he fucks you through it. Making you jolt from aftershock, but he shows no sign of slowing down.

“Open your eyes, baby girl. I want you to ride my fuckin face. I wanna taste that perfect pussy.”

Tagging @marchsfreakshow @drewstarkeyslut @redhead1180 @rafescurtainbangz @starkeysprincess @oceandriveab @voyeurmunson @rafeinterlude @slvt4jamesmarch @gri959 @rafesthroatbaby

[daylighteclipsed]

Your KH Enchanted posts are driving me INSANE! I've never thought about the connection before but like, Enchanted is literally about a cartoon character going to the real world and finding out that her designated "perfect" love interest wasn't actually the one for her despite the fact that he should be. And then cut to SORA WAKING UP IN QUADRATUM AND RIKU THERE LOOKING FOR HIM like... it's all coming together.

YES!!!! There are so many parallels. In Sora’s dreams, the way he and Riku wake up in this huge city at night with so many lights and signs and skyscrapers… it’s so much like Giselle pulling herself up into the center of Times Square. The area Sora’s in especially, Scramble Crossing, brings to mind Times Square.

Enchanted is about a fictional character becoming real. Giselle’s from a simple, “perfect,” fairytale world. She’s designed to be a stereotypical Disney princess, and she’s a trope more than a person until she ends up in the real world, where she’s quickly challenged by the real world’s imperfections and complexities, embodied especially in Robert and through her relationship with him.

I’ve talked before about how Kingdom Hearts features fictional characters waking up and coming to life, deviating from the script when they’re not really “supposed” to and becoming real. Like Giselle, Sora starts out as a pretty stereotypical trope — the hero — but over the course of his journey grows further away from that. He’s challenged and he changes, and a lot of that is embodied through his relationship with Riku, as Riku represents change and complexity, especially in the context of growing up.

There’s a lot of parallels in the dynamics between Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku. They’re complementary opposites, and they learn from each other. Giselle inspires Robert to believe in the messages fairytales champion about kindness, the power of love, dreams coming true, and happy endings. Sora inspires Riku to follow his heart and open his heart to others. Robert helps Giselle understand that real life is not as simple as a fairytale. Riku helps Sora see and understand the nuances in their world and in each other.

Real people are complicated, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giselle’s thrilled, for example, the first time she feels really, truly angry. Robert makes her feel things she’s never felt before, messy things that make her feel alive, that make it easier for her to understand him and grow closer to him. KH emphasizes that experiencing grief, sadness, anger, etc. allows us to connect with others deeper, whether we’re leaning on loved ones for support or trying to understand a stranger. Pain is a necessary part of having a heart, of being alive.

Also, these scenes are literally the same. Giselle and Sora even both smile in their sleep.

Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku’s relationships develop significantly over the course of their stories. In comparison to Giselle/Edward and Sora/Kairi, which rely on trope expectations instead of character development/actual relationship building. Giselle hardly interacts with Edward. But he’s a prince, he resembles the man of her dreams, he saves her from falling, and she can finish his duet. Surely it’s true love! I’ve already compared sharing the paopu fruit with singing the duet. Kairi is also a princess. She saves Sora from falling to darkness in KH1. And it’s pretty and perfect and Disney, with him reappearing in her arms, gently pulling away, quietly thanking her with sparkles all around them. Just like how Edward catches Giselle right in his lap, perfectly in his arms, with the tree branches forming a heart behind them.

Compare that to later in DDD after Riku saves Sora from falling to darkness and Sora thanks him… and when Robert catches Giselle from falling off a billboard. It’s the same thing, but the moments are not pretty and perfect.

Giselle takes Robert to the hard ground, with a chorus of yelps and ouches as she nearly breaks his wrists. Riku is almost bowled over by Sora’s hug, and Sora holds him tightly, loudly exclaiming his relief, reluctant to let Riku go. But the lack of “Disney fairytale perfection,” I guess, in these scenes kind of makes them better, right? Robert is willing to get really hurt trying to catch Giselle. Sora is so happy to see Riku he can’t contain his emotions. Near the end of Enchanted, we see this again, except Giselle is the one catching Robert. And it’s still very clumsy and rough — he takes her down with him. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.

That’s the biggest difference between Giselle’s relationships with Edward and Robert, and Sora’s relationships with Kairi and Riku. In both surface dynamics and appearance, one is a pretty idea. A perfect, soft, simple fantasy that doesn’t exist, that can’t exist in reality beyond little boys and girls playing Prince and Princess. And the other is grounded in reality, with all the good and bad, the joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, that entails. Being human is hard. But there is something magical about finding someone you can be human with.

Giselle mistakes Edward for the true love she’s been dreaming of. He’s got the blue eyes and the dark hair, and he catches her from falling. And it reminds me a lot of Sora mistaking Kairi for his light in the darkness in KH3.

It’s reasonable why Giselle and Sora would assume this… But Robert also catches Giselle from falling. He also has blue eyes and dark hair. Later, he dresses exactly like Giselle’s dream prince at the ball, and he even dances with her like in her dreams. In KH3, Riku sacrifices himself in an act of true love for Sora, and we see the light in the tunnel respond when Sora calls out Riku’s name. There’s a number of visual parallels from Sora’s dream and Dive to the Heart that indicate Riku is Sora’s light. While Giselle realizes the truth, it only seems to click for Sora a moment before he forgets. Giselle also gets a follow up parallel. Sora hasn’t yet.

Another little thing I want to point out — Giselle and Edward have a duet (that she stops singing), but Giselle and Robert have a waltz. They have the love song, and they dance to it. Sora and Riku don’t dance, but we see their hearts dancing to the song they create — a waltz version of Dearly Beloved.

Also Robert/Giselle still get the Disney singing element. It’s just not big and flashy like Giselle and Edward’s duet. Robert quietly sings a few words to her as they dance together… Sora and Riku still get the paopu fruit — it’s the keychain of Dearly Beloved (the Combined Keyblade) — but it’s not obvious like the cave drawing between Sora and Kairi is.

TLDR: I completely agree with you and I think, like Enchanted, KH intentionally plays with Disney tropes and audience expectations in order to subvert them. Like Giselle, Sora discovering his designated “perfect” love interest is not the one for him is part of his journey of awakening. It’s part of him becoming real, and growing up.

[jimlingss]

Three years!

Hello, everyone and happy Jimlingss anniversary! Woohoo! It has been three years since my official retirement and eight years since I’ve began this blog. That’s absolutely crazy since it all feels like yesterday. Time flies when you’re having fun.

First and foremost, thank you to all who still send me messages and give me feedback on my stories! I do check back once in a while and read everything, so nothing goes unnoticed. Your kind words always make me miss the simpler days of writing. :’) It really gets me nostalgic.

Second, here is my yearly update!

I’ve finished my second year of law school! I finished off this year with a bang and did quite well, if I do say so myself. There’s one more year left to go and that’s insane since I remember the first day so vividly. I’m a bit sad for it to be all over — I never thought I’d ever feel this way. But I’ve made so many friends and created so many memories. When it’s all over, everyone will be going their own path. Luckily, I’m sure we’ll remain connected and be close friends no matter what.

I don’t think I’ve had such a positive experience quite like this in all my years of schooling. I’ve always been the type to just scurry on home, never liked what I was studying, and never had too many friends. So this change has been unexpected yet very welcome.

In terms of career, I’ve been working this summer and I have something lined up for when I’m finished school! So soon I’ll be racking in the dough, wooooooo!! Let’s get it!

My family is also doing well — and I feel very fortunate for that. 

Third, and most important, I am happy to announce that I have a boy I absolutely adore! We’ve officially been dating for four months? That seems so short on paper, but we’ve known each other for close to two years! I’m living out one of my friends to lovers fics, I swear (lol).

He’s been a close friend since the start of law school and somewhere along the line I gradually caught feelings (of course I did lmao). I was sure rejection was on the horizon and I wanted to preserve our dear friendship, so I was trying to get over it for months by myself. This included online dating and going on a string of dates (hahaha). I ended up cracking and calling him on the phone one night, but then aborted mission. Thanks to the advice of a friend, I stopped avoiding him and being an embarrassment, and I finally confronted him. He said we should give it a shot, and here we are!

He has brown, curly hair that reminds me of a poodle. And he made me realize why love is so loved — why it’s so revered — talked about — imprinted in each other’s minds. Everywhere. I’ve written countless love stories but never truly experienced the feeling before, and yet, he’s made the heart of my stories come to life. He’s let me live them in real time. 

I really hope it works out! LOL

Anyway, I’m always happy to do these updates and for all those who may be just a bit curious enough about me to check in. Although this is a very positive update (and I hope it continues to be), my life isn’t without its ups and downs either. It just seems to be in a general upwards trajectory. 

Thank you to everyone who still remembers me, and who may still read my stories! I definitely haven’t forgotten about you all, so I hope you haven’t forgotten me either.

Here’s to another year! See you again!

[stomach-bugg09]

summary: fali gets to meet the sully family, and he has never been more terrified.

a/n: now how can i possibly start this? thank you so much. seriously. this is actually insane !! the support received on the last [y/n] sully x fali fic has provided me with enough motivation to pull this little thing together in two days ( i also decided, if you haven't seen my last post, that the general public would prefer small short imagines rather than a story-like series !! ) it’s much shorter than the last one (1.5k), but it’s very sweet. i hope you all enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it. NOTE: to those who have sent requests in, thank you so much !! i am working through them slowly but surely, and i’ve already planned out the majority of them. thank you all again, hope you enjoy !! feedback, reblogs, and reqs are always appreciated !!

tags: @pinkhotdogsfr @eywas-heir @historygeekqueen @325575 @inutheangel @bonnibuckets @silkenthusiasts @inarihl @marvelwweprinxessesworld @perseny @wxnderingthoughts @mashiromochi ( quick note: a majority of these are based on comments from part one, but if you have interest in being added to the official taglist, please check out and comment on my tag guide !! )

warnings: none except for major fluff, maybe some happy lil tears, the cutest little relationship ever, jake and neytiri being scary, relationship goals ( could possibly make you feel extremely lonely—that is how i am currently feeling !! )

part i

meet the family

fali liked to consider himself to be brave. he was born as the only child to his parents, vi’ieo and fpai, two extremely well respected warriors of the metkayina. thanks to his mother’s childhood connection with ronal, he was raised alongside tsireya and ao’nung, almost like he was their older brother.

to say that he’d encountered a scary parent before would be an understatement. not only did he have fpai and vi’ieo’s wrath underneath his belt, but he also had experienced that of ronal and tonowari.

so, why was fali so freaked out when he saw jake sully stomping towards him, lo’ak and neteyam trailing right behind him. a few steps later walked [y/n], her arms crossed in front of her chest and shoulders hunched sheepishly.

before he could even see [y/n]’s face, he knew exactly what was happening, flashbacks to the day before coming to mind. he should’ve known that their facade would be up as soon as tuk walked in on the two of them, immediately questioning “what the heck they were doing.” the two, desperate and dumb, answered by claiming they were playing shark. that’s why fali was biting her neck!

fali froze as he saw the sully males walk closer and closer, nearly letting the net full of fish that he’d grabbed from the reef trap slip out of his grip. he was lucky that his reflexes were more than equipped, immediately adjusting his grip so he could continue pulling the net onto the dock.

as he heaved the net upwards, flipping it over his shoulder to land on the wooden boards beside his feet, jake sully and his sons took their first steps onto the dock, tracking bits of sand off of the shore into the cracks and crannies of the worn down grain.

fali swallowed, stepping overtop the net so it didn’t awkwardly sit between him and the sully boys, inhaling sharply as he could finally read the expression of [y/n].

“lo’ak, neteyam,” he greeted with a smile, not letting his nerves get to the surface. he then nodded at jake, “sir.” fali brought his hand up, gesturing oel ngati kameie to the omaticayans.

“fali,” jake sully returned, his expression flat and grim. the man sure knows how to intimidate, fali thought, swallowing a nervous wad of spit.

“how can i help you?” fali asked, smile bright and voice kind.

jake chuckled at that, although he didn’t seem all that amused. “skip the formalities, fali,” he commanded, leading fali to nod immediately. at that, jake hid an impressed expression. he’s clearly grown up alongside warrior parents.

“so,” jake continued slowly, allowing [y/n] to finally catch up, stopping next to the youngest brother. the father’s eyes drifted from his daughter back to fali. “you’re the one she chose?”

“i suppose if that’s how you want to put it,” fali chuckled nervously, his hands growing clammy as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

jake nodded slowly at that. fali cursed himself. “how would you put it?”

“dad!” [y/n] hissed, but her words went ignored.

“uh,” he trailed, head ducking as he scratched the back of his neck, not missing the amused expressions that rested on both neteyam and lo’ak’s faces.

“look,” jake saved him from answering, knowing that fali was far too clueless. “all that we’re here to say is the simple rundown.”

fali felt himself straightening his shoulders, forcing himself to hold eye contact. he did not need his girlfriend’s father disliking him.

“in the most basic form, if you hurt her,” jake trailed, his eyes flickering to his oldest who held her head in her hands, indigo washing out her face due to the embarrassment. “we—” his hand raised, gesturing to the three males—”hurt you.”

“dad!” [y/n] scolded again, voice much louder as she clasped a hand overtop her mouth, jaw dropped in the slightest bit.

fali swallowed, the two younger boys stifling laughs from behind their father.

“understood?”

immediately, the metkayina boy nodded. “yes, sir.”

and then, it was almost as if the tension from seconds earlier dissipated. “good,” jake affirmed, a smile gracing his lips. he offered his forearm to the boy. “it is good to finally meet you.”

fali returned his grin, grasping jake’s arm. “and me, you.”

fali thought that he was safe. he finally got the talk done with his girlfriend’s ( extremely scary ) father! what else was there to worry about?

well, fali was in for a pleasant surprise!

later that afternoon, after debriefing with [y/n]—a conversation that’d been full of laughter, mainly because [y/n] was poking fun at him—the pair decided that, since the word was out and had spread very quickly ( news didn’t take long in the metkayina villages ), they would spend the day together.

at one point, after they managed to finish all of their duties for the day, they seemed to wander back to the sully’s marui.

“you should meet my mother,” [y/n] begged, her eyes bright.

he laughed at her desperation. “i have already met your mother through ronal.”

“officially meet her. and you know what i mean!”

fali hummed, using to hand that he wasn’t using to hold [y/n]’s to tap against his chin, miming a deep state of thinking. “well, i suppose.”

and that’s how the two found themselves bounding across the sand, [y/n]’s face bright with joy as she held his hand. the exuberant girl practically dragged him, willing him to walk faster.

it was so weird to [y/n]. having something—someone—of her own. someone that she could bring home to show off to her family, someone that she could finally claim as someone that she loved. she’d never been able to do that before.

fali couldn’t help but feel immense joy every time he looked at her. every time she wore that brilliant smile, that gorgeous way that the skin around her eyes wrinkled. fali’d experienced… a lot. he was an impressive and very attractive warrior, after all, but despite whatever experimenting had been done all those years ago, nothing compared to this.

as the two finally found themselves in a close proximity to the sully’s marui, it was as if fali finally remembered that, while jake was scary, neytiri was terrifying.

once they entered, they immediately saw neytiri who sat behind tuk. the mother was busy threading beads into the youngest child’s hair, a desire that the baby of the family had been requesting for months.

at the sight, [y/n] laughed, causing neytiri to look up with her eyebrow muscles raised. “you finally did it?” she questioned, quickly leaping over top the junk that was scattered in the entrance and crossing her legs besides her baby sister.

“yes!” tuk cried triumphantly. “i even got to pick the beads.”

“this one’s pretty,” [y/n] mused, analyzing a clay bead that’d been stained a deep blue color.

neytiri cleared her throat before she shoved the bowl of beads into her eldest’s hands. “take these,” she demanded, pushing herself onto her feet.

at the action, fali swallowed. the sully family sure was protective.

he fixed his posture as the mother walked over, carefully avoiding the messy obstacles thanks to her childrens’ inability to clean up after themselves. she stopped directly in front of the boy.

“ma’am,” he greeted, gesturing for the second time that day.

“fali.” neytiri’s smile was warm, comforting. and yet, he still felt a bit nervous. with neytiri, she did not vocalize her threats or warnings, but they didn’t need to be vocalized. oh no, with neytiri, you just knew.

“i’m sorry that we could not have a formal introduction to you and my daughter’s relationship,” neytiri offered, her eyes staring straight into his soul.

at that, fali chuckled. “me too, but i’m afraid the only people at fault for how it played out was, well, us.” he caught the gaze of [y/n], her stare soft and smile gentle.

neytiri’s amused grin only grew at those words. “next time you decide to do that, i suggest making sure you’re not in the same proximity as my youngest child.”

fali blushed at that, a deep indigo spreading throughout his entire face. “whoops.” he scratched the back of his neck sheepishly.

luckily for him, the small voice of tuk had both him an neytiri looking back at the sully girls. “fali!” she cried. “come help! it is taking too long.”

at that, [y/n] gasped in mock offense. “i’m trying, tuk.”

“try harder.”

fali laughed, and once he got a soft nod from the mother, he made his way over to the pair of siblings sitting on the floor. “i’m not sure i’ll be of much use. i’ve never done this before!”

“come here.” [y/n] patted the ground beside her. “i will teach you.”

“please do not ruin my hair, fali. if you make me look ugly, you aren’t allowed to date my big sister.”

“noted,” fali trailed, sitting down behind the baby sully. his eyes tracked over to [y/n]’s hands, watching how her fingers moved in order to get the beads on successfully.

“like this—do you see?”

“mhm…”

“and then you take this.”

“yes i see that.”

“no, dumbie, like this.”

“oh!”

from the entrance of the marui, two pairs of eyes watched the young couple, their gazes soft.

“he is good,” neytiri whispered to jake, leaning her head on his shoulder.

jake hummed in agreement. “they are good.”

[redrose10]

Part 1

Here is part 1 of this new story that I’m working on. I was going to post it as one big chapter, but I’ve received feedback that multiple chapters are preferred so that’s the route I went. I really hope that everyone likes it! This first part is very very angsty.

Inn Keeper Yoongi x Female Author Reader

Summary: You have never experienced true love which is hilarious considering you write romance novels for a living. When you end up staying at The Interlude Inn located in Holly Falls you start to wonder if maybe the answer to your newest love story is sitting behind the welcome desk. Quickly, you find out that Min Yoongi hides a lot of pain and sorrow behind his shy smiles and quick glances.

Warnings: (may get updated) Swearing, character death, very very angsty for a while, mentions of physical and verbal abuse, bullying, a really mean letter, panic attacks, eventual light smut, eventual fluff

Word Count: 9,602

Tag List: @viankiss

You slunk down in your office chair hanging your head low. Your boss had just chewed you out after you presented her with a draft of your newest novel that you had thought you were just about finished with, but it appears you were going to have to start from the beginning.

“I’m guessing it didn’t go as well as you thought it would?”, your best friend and coworker, Nari responded.

“She said that it’s not believable and that I need to use my own personal experiences as inspiration. I can’t keep writing the same story over and over just changing the names and location. The reader will be able to connect with it more if it’s from experience. I have two months to send her the new story or I’m on unpaid leave until I submit something worth publishing. It’s such bullshit.”, you huffed.

“I mean she kind of has a point. Anyone can put a bunch of words down on a piece of paper, but unless there is real feeling behind it then those words won’t get far.”

You rolled your eyes, “Seriously? You too? And what personal experience should I use?”

“Y/N you’ve been in relationships before. Just use one of them or a combination of all of them.”

“Oh yeah, should I go with the one who cheated on me or the one who ghosted me after he got me in his bed, or the one that would loose his temper at the smallest thing I did to upset him? I’ve never had a good relationship experience.”, you chuckle self deprecatingly.

“Hey Y/N, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rub it in like that. Maybe try writing something else. Not every story has to be about a relationship, good or bad.”

Running your hands over your face you sighed, “I just don’t know what to do any more. I feel so burnt out and unmotivated. I don’t think I could come up with another story if I wanted to.”

“Why don’t you take a break? You know, get out of town for a while. I’m sure our boss won’t mind, especially if it gets you to clear your head and write something decent.”

Pondering this theory for a minute you began to think she might be on to something.

“Where would I go though? I can’t really afford to travel far and I don’t want to be too distracted that I can’t get anything done.”

After some silence Nari jumped up, “Oh I’ve got the perfect place. It’s just a four hour flight out to the countryside. A little town called, Holly Falls. My sister and her fiancé stayed there several months ago.”

Thinking it over a little it sounded like a good idea. After some begging and promising your boss that you were going to get work done while on the trip she agreed.

Once you arrived at the airport you really wished you’d done a little more research about Holly Falls. After some digging and a conversation with a very outgoing Uber Driver you found out that eleven months out of the year the town is very low key and relaxed, but for one month it is a tourist hotspot thanks to the insane amount of blooming cherry blossom trees. According to your new Uber friend, people come to Holly Falls during this month to see the fields of trees blooming in all their glory. The normally quiet town embraces the crowds providing various festivals and parades and gimmicks to draw in the guests as well as their wallets. And of course you just happen to travel over there smack dab in the middle of it all.

The driver dropped you off in the middle of the fun so with your bag slung over your shoulder you started heading into different hotels trying to book a room. In the city you could walk into pretty much any hotel at any time and book a room. You had assumed it would be same in this small town so you had decided to wait to book a room until you could see them in person wanting to get the feel and make sure you chose the right fit. You imagine in any other month it would be much easier to obtain a place to stay here, but due to the large tourist presence every single hotel was completely booked for the entire month.

You were just about ready to give up and head to the airport to see about booking a flight home when an older gentleman came up to you carrying various handmade trinkets for sale.

“See anything you like miss? All of these are under $10.”, he asked.

Politely you smiled, “No thank you. Not right now.”

You thought he had left until you saw him dangling a hand painted sun catcher in front of you. The design a beautiful beautiful cherry blossom. Trying to bite your tongue and not snap at the elderly man you again shook your head. “Here have it for free. You seem to need a little cheering up.”, he smiled.

Reaching up you grabbed the delicate glass from him, “Thank you. I really appreciate it. I’m sorry if I came off rude. I’m just really stressed out right now.”

“Didn’t know about the cherry blossom season and now you can’t find a place to stay?”, he asked. “How did you know?”, you replied wide eyed. The elderly man chuckled while taking a seat next to you, “There’s always at least one person that gets stuck here with nowhere to stay because they didn’t know how crazy things can get around here this time of the year.”

“Mmh yeah that would be me this year. I need somewhere to stay for a couple weeks or I’m going to have to head back home.” “You know there might be somewhere that still has a room available. It’s just outside all of the hubbub. About ten miles just over that hill. If you get to Taehyung’s Strawberry Farm then you’ve gone too far.”, he said pointing in the opposite direction of the festivities. “Really? You think they’d have a room? I wonder why they wouldn’t be booked like every other place.”

The gentleman stood up from the bench you were both on, “Its worth a shot. It’s a little farther away from all the action than people like to be. Plus the owners are a little on the unique side.”

You were concerned at this statement. The last thing you wanted to do was end up being the story line of a true crime documentary.

He continued, “They are very nice people. A young man and his grandmother. They just tend to be very secluded and to themselves. It’s called Interlude Inn. You can’t miss it.”

You thanked him for the information and watched as he walked into a large group of people trying to sell the rest of his merchandise. Placing the delicate sun catcher in your bag you ordered another Uber to take you over to the inn. A familiar vehicle quickly pulled up in front of you with the same talkative man from earlier. You wondered how there weren’t any other drivers available, but you smiled as you slid in the back seat anyways.

“Leaving so soon?”, he asked.

You chuckled, “No I just need to find somewhere else to stay. Can you please take me to The Interlude Inn?” Suddenly the man stopped, turning to look back at you.

“Miss you don’t want to stay there. Surely there’s somewhere else around here you can stay.”

“Every hotel is completely booked. If this inn doesn’t have a room then I’ll have to just go home.”

He sighed, “Alright miss. If you insist.”

He began the drive to your location. His words about finding somewhere else stuck in your mind.

“Sir?”

“Yes Miss”

“What you said earlier. What is so bad about this inn?”

“Well, the grandma, I think her name is Mae, is very sweet. She’s done the best she can with what she had. But that Min boy, he’s a little odd.”

“Ohhh…Like serial killer odd?”

The man chuckled, “No not that kind of odd. He’s just very quiet and keeps to himself, but he is polite. He’s never seemed to have any friends and I doubt he’s ever had any kind of relationship. He comes into town only a few times a year, mostly when his grandmother needs something. He doesn’t acknowledge anyone, even when they speak to him directly. People usually only stay at the inn as a last resort during this busy season.”

From what you’re hearing he seemed like just a quiet introverted person who loves his grandma. You weren’t sure why everyone seemed so leery of him.

The car pulled up infront of the inn. The large wooden sign out front verified you were indeed at The Interlude Inn. Thanking your driver you grabbed your bag and made your way up to the entrance.

The Inn looked cozy and welcoming. It was smaller than you had imagined. There couldn’t be more than three or four rooms. Off to the side you noticed a little garden with various plants starting to bloom.

On the door hung a welcome sign adorned with hand painted lady bugs and butterflies. Turning the handle you gently pushed in the door being greeted by a heavenly aroma making your stomach grumble. The entrance room which also doubled as a living room had two couches, one on either side of a coffee table. A television hung on the wall above a fireplace. In the corner was a small desk which you assume would be where you could request a room.

Walking over you noticed a younger man crouching down so he was eye level with one of the drawers. He appeared to be about your age, mid to late twenties. Black hair with a slight curl to it hung over his forehead. Beautiful cat like eyes and his soft lips formed into a deep pout. You wanted so badly to reach over and squeeze his chubby cheeks, but you knew that was a weirdness you didn’t want to invoke. He was fidgeting with a drawer that seemed to be stuck and you could here the argument he was having in soft whispers,

“Come on you stupid thing.”

“It shouldn’t be this difficult.”

“Please, I just need a pen and then I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day.”

You chuckled hearing him begging the drawer to cooperate. Reaching into your bag you grabbed one of your spare pens and set it on the desk, “Here I have a pen you could use.”

The young man let out a sudden squeal after you startled him. He jumped backwards and landed on his behind with a loud thud.

“Oh no I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you had heard me come in.”, you apologized feeling terrible.

The poor guy sat on the ground trying to collect himself before bringing himself back to a standing position. That’s when you noticed his cheeks were a bright shade of red, making you want to squeeze them even more. The man didn’t say a word. His eyes were barely able to focus on you, instead they would move around the room before returning to you for just a second before he’d quickly look elsewhere.

“Ahh this must be the Min boy the driver was talking about?”, you thought to yourself. They weren’t kidding when they said he was quiet and reserved.

“Hi, I’m sorry again for scaring you. I was just wondering if you had a room I could rent for a couple weeks.”

The man just continued looking around the room.

“It’s okay if you don’t have any available. It was just recommended for me to come up here for a room since all the others are booked.”

Again silence. You were about to ask if he was okay when a door off to the left swung open and a very sweet looking elderly woman came walking out. She must be the grandmother that was mentioned. She was covered in flour so you assumed that’s where the heavenly smell was coming from.

“Yoongi dear did you get that pen yet? I need to label the jars of blueberry jam.”, she spoke. When she noticed you she jumped slightly, but not in a scared kind of way. More like an oh no how long have you been standing there while my grandson stares at you kind of way.

“Oh hi sweety, how can we help you?”, she asked. Her grandson, that you now knew was named Yoongi, was still standing off to the side. You had to intently stare at his chest to make sure he was still breathing because you were honestly getting very concerned for him.

“Yes ma’am, I was wondering if you had any available rooms that I could rent for the next couple of weeks?”

She smiled while pulling out an old and beat up note book to take down your info. You liked the old school feel. It was much different than the digital kingdom of the city where you lived.

“Of course dear. Did you need one bed or two?”

“Just one will be fine.”

“Okay and you said two weeks?”

“Yes please.”

“No problem. Just fill out your name and address here. Payment will be due at the end of your stay when you check out.”

Quickly you wrote down all the requested information before handing the book back over. You couldn’t help but notice that Yoongi still hadn’t moved, but his cheeks were still a bright shade of pink so you knew he was at least breathing.

The grandma spoke again, “Thank you so much dear. My name is Mae, but you can call me grandma, granny, halmeoni, MaeMae, just don’t call me late for dinner.”

Even though you’ve heard that joke countless times you still laughed. Something about this sweet woman warmed your heart.

She continued, “This is my grandson Yoongi. He can help you with your bags and show you to your room. You’re more than welcome to join us for dinner. It should be ready in about twenty minutes or so.”

You thanked her profusely and watched as she walked back into the kitchen. Yoongi walked around the desk without making eye contact. He reached for your bag that was currently sitting on the ground and you noticed a shake to his hand due to his nerves.

“Uh uh um y-you c-can follow me.”, he spoke before walking down the long hallway. He opened the door to small cozy room. A window sat overlooking the garden. A bed adorned with a lilac colored quilt sat against the wall. There was a dresser available for storage and a desk off to the side. It was perfect.

Yoongi laid your bag down at the foot of the bed. You wanted to ask him if he needed to lie down based on how terrified he looked. Instead you opted to try and get him to speak to you at all.

“Hi Yoongi, I’m Y/N. It’s really nice to meet you.”

You stuck your hand out offering a hand shake. It was getting awkward waiting for him to return the gesture, but just before you were going to dejectedly pull your hand back he reached up and took your hand in his.

With his cheeks back to bright red he quickly bowed and walked out of the room closing the door behind him.

Since dinner was going to be ready soon you opted to just lay in bed enjoying the comfort after a long day of travel. When Mae called you for dinner you entered the dining room surprised to only see her and Yoongi sat at the table.

“Am I the only guest?”, you asked suddenly feeling out of place.

“Yes dear, but don’t worry. We are so happy to have you here.”, she smiled pulling out a chair for you.

You nodded taking the offered seat while she filled up your bowl with some beef soup.

“So Y/N, what brings you to Holly Falls? I’m assuming it’s the cherry blossoms.”, she asked.

“Oh no I just needed to take a little vacation and clear my head. Having some work problems. My friend recommended this town to me. I didn’t even know about the cherry blossoms until I got here.”

“Well you’re going to love it here. There’s no more of a relaxing place.”

You smiled and accepted the second helping of soup. The two of you kept the conversation going talking about this and that. Yoongi never said a word. Out of the corner of your eye you noticed him sneaking little glances in your direction before quickly turning his head but you chose to ignore it, not wanting to embarrass him.

After dinner you offered to help clean up the kitchen which was greatly appreciated. Mae sent Yoongi out to the garden to collect some chamomile to make tea. As she rinsed off the dishes you would take them and dry them before putting them in their respective spots.

“Thank you for being gentle with Yoongi.”, she spoke breaking the silence.

You weren’t quite sure what she meant by that and apparently your face showed it because she continued,

“He really is such a caring and sweet young man. He’s just been hurt so many times and he’s so afraid of letting someone in for fear of it happening again. I worry what will happen to him when I’m no longer here. I don’t want him to be alone. He deserves the world and I hope that one day he finds someone that will give it to him.”

You wanted to ask questions, but felt it wasn’t a good idea to pry when you’ve only known this family for a few hours.

“He seems very sweet. I’d love to get to know him more.”, you responded.

“Oh please do. Go slow, but I think if you keep at it he just might open up to you. As soon as you went to your room he came to me and said you seemed like a very genuine person.”

You felt your cheeks heat up at the thought.

“Do you know if he has any interests or anything? Maybe something I could ask him about.”

She lightly chuckled, “Well he loves music. He has these notebooks that he’s always writing lyrics in, but he has never let anyone look at them. He likes basketball. He was really good when he was younger, but he doesn’t play it much any more. Oh! And you’d never guess it but he likes to knit. He’d be furious if he ever found out I told you that so you didn’t hear that one from me.”

You nodded in agreement before putting the final plate away just as Yoongi returned with the requested chamomile. He shyly smiled at you before nervously running out of the room. After enjoying a cup of tea you said goodnight and made your way back to your room for the evening.

The following morning you cranklily padded to the dining area. Mornings were not your thing. Thankfully you were greeted with the smell of coffee and fresh baked bread. Mae was nowhere to be seen, but Yoongi was standing at the counter chopping some vegetables for what you presumed was an omelet based on all the ingredients in front of him. You stood in the doorway thankful that he hadn’t noticed you yet as it gave you a chance again to admired his features. You smiled at how the tip of his tongue poked out in concentration as he focused on chopping an onion.

Silently you walked up next to him and smiled, “Anything I can help with?” The poor thing nearly jumped two feet in the air also letting the knife slip which sliced the tip of his thumb. When you saw the small amount of blood coming to the surface you panicked.

“Oh my goodness I am so sorry Yoongi. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. What was I thinking?”, you said grabbing his hand and pulling him over to the sink. He hadn’t said a word.

After thoroughly washing the cut and using a paper towel to dry it you asked if there were any bandaids. Shyly he pointed underneath the sink and you found a first aid kit.

“Okay this might sting a little.”, you said applying the disinfectant. You felt awful when you saw his body flinch. After the cut was securely wrapped in a bandaid you began apologizing again, “I’m so sorry Yoongi. This is not how I intended for this to go. Are you going to be okay? Does it hurt still? Is there anything I can do?”

For the first time since you arrived you saw a full blown smile on his face. He shook his head, “N-No thank you. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Well let me help you prepare breakfast. It’s the least I can do.”

After some hesitation he agreed so you cleaned up the work station and got a new cutting board before you got to work chopping the rest of the vegetables. When breakfast was over and you had helped clean up you decided to go back to your room for a while and try to get some work done. Unfortunately things weren’t going that great. You were still struggling to put together a decent storyline and after two hours of staring at your laptop you decided to give up and take a break.

Peaking out the window you noticed Yoongi working in the garden. He looked adorable in his overalls and dark green sweater. A matching green beanie on to give a little more warmth. You wondered if he had knit it himself. You grabbed your jacket and decided to head outside for some fresh air.

Not wanting a repeat from the morning you loudly made your presence known as to not startle him again. Only when you were sure that he had noticed you did you decided to say something.

“What are you working on?”, you asked crouching down next to him.

He whispered something that you couldn’t quite catch. You noticed the redness intensifying in his cheeks too. He was just so incredibly cute.

“What kind of seeds are these?”

“Oh they are um cabbage and um radish seeds.”, he said without looking up from the dirt.

“Hmmm I know nothing about gardening, but isn’t it still too cold to plant these? I always thought it needed to be hot for seeds to grow.”

“S-Some s-seeds can grow when it’s colder out. Then we’ll h-harvest them and p-plant the rest.”

“Ahhh I see. I never even knew that was possible. What else are you planting?”

Did you care about gardening or seeds or soil quality? No absolutely not. But this was the most Yoongi has spoken to you so you rattled off question after question and made odd comments here and there just to get him to keep talking. By the time you were done his face was beet red and his hands were shaking quite a bit more than earlier. You were starting to feel bad and like you were pushing him past his breaking point so you wanted to give him some space.

Standing up and brushing the dirt off your knees you said, “Well it’s gotten quite chilly out. I’m gonna head inside. Thank you for teaching me so much. Maybe one day I’ll have a garden and you could come see it for yourself.”

He nodded without looking up at you and you took that as his way of saying goodbye. Once inside you found a smiling Mae standing in the kitchen.

She handed you hot bowl of leftover soup for lunch and sat at the table next to you.

“You know, that’s the longest I’ve ever seen him converse with someone other than me in a long long time. Normally he’d just get up and walk away without saying a word.”

The thought of asking about Yoongi’s past crossed your mind again, but you pushed it aside still not feeling that it was the right time.

The next couple days followed a similar path. You’d wake up, help Yoongi make breakfast, try to work for a little, and then you’d go find Yoongi and try to talk to him and get him to open up to you. He never said much but he’d nod or say a word here or there to let you know he was listening. Mae would always be amazed at how well Yoongi responded to you. After a while you’d give him some space and then join the two of dinner followed by tea and then you’d head off to bed.

On the fifth day you decided to go out and explore a little. You ended up at Taehyung’s Strawberry farm which was just up the road from the Inn. Taehyung or Tae as he told you to call him was a very kind and outgoing guy. The farm had been passed down in his family for six generations. He gave you a tour of the entire farm and introduced you to his farmhands/friends Jin, Hoseok, Namjoon, and Jungkook. Jin was in charge of harvesting the strawberries and also coming up with new items to sell at the onsite bakery. Hoseok or Hobi as he was called was in charge of maintenance of the crops, things like making sure they got enough water but not too much water and pruning the plants where necessary. Namjoon was the bookkeeper. He kept track of orders and anything numbers related. Jungkook was the youngest of the four. According to Tae, he was the muscle of the group and would do various things around the farm that involved a lot of physical strength.

They all seemed like very sweet gentleman and made you feel very welcome from the start.

“So what brings you all the way out here? Most people try to stay closer to the main town this time of year.”, Jin asked setting a strawberry cream puff in front of you.

“I wasn’t able to get a room in town so I’m staying at The Interlude Inn.”

“I see. With Mae and Yoongi? How are they doing? I’ve been meaning to stop by and drop off a strawberry pie for them.”

“They seem to being doing well. They’ve been so hospitable.”

“Even Yoongi?”, Jungkook said taking a seat next to you. You noticed a hint of a chuckle in his question.

“Yes even Yoongi. He’s on the quiet side, but I think he’s starting to warm up to me a little bit.”

“Wow he must really like you then. I’ve been trying to get him to open up for years.”, Taehyung said walking over.

“What do you mean?”, you asked confused as to why everyone always seems to think he’s some cold jerk.

He continued, “We’ve just been trying to get him to hang out with us for the last few years. I’ve offered him multiple jobs around here. We’ve invited him over for dinner or to go get drinks in town. Namjoon tried to set him up on a date with his sister. He just always turns and walks away without saying a word. We’ve kind of just given up.”

“Oh yeah I guess maybe I’m just special then.”, you said before taking another bite of the cream puff.

It was pretty late by the time you had gotten back to the inn. Jin had given you a ride back as it looked like there was an early spring thunderstorm about to hit. When you walked inside you set the strawberry pie on the counter. Mae had already gone to sleep, but Yoongi was sitting in the common area watching a basketball game. He looked so cozy wrapped up in a hoodie that was a little too big for him and a fluffy fleece blanket on his lap. Now that you thought about it he was always dressed very warmly. Sweatshirts, sweaters, or multiple layers all with long sleeves. You’ve never seen any skin other than his hands and neck and face. It was on the chilly side being that it was barely the beginning of the spring, but nothing that you thought warranted that kind of clothing constantly. It was odd to you, but nothing you wanted to question him about right now because maybe it was just a comfort thing for him you thought. Instead you walked over to the couch making your presence known so that you didn’t startle him.

“Mind if I join you?”, you asked. Silently he scooted over to make room and you took that as a yes. You watched the game for a few minutes trying to come up with something to say, but you really didn’t know much about basketball or sports in general.

“Is that Michael Jordan?”, you asked after the camera followed a player who had just scored a basket.

Yoongi’s eyebrows furrowed as he shook his head.

“Lebron James?”

He shakes his head.

“Steph Curry?”

Again another head shake.

You chuckled, “Well those are the only basketball players I know so I give up.”

Out of the corner of your eye you saw the slightest smile from on his lips which you took as encouragement to continue.

“Oh so did he just score a touchdown?”, you asked. In reality you knew that was a completely different sport, but you were hoping that somehow this would get a little engagement on his part.

You looked at him expectantly noticing his cheeks heat up under your stare.

“Umm n-no that was a free throw, not a touchdown.”

“Hmm and a free throw is worth one or two points?”

“It’s w-worth one point.”

You didn’t want to over stress him out so you decided to give him some quiet and stop with the questions for a while.

The referee in the game blew his whistle and started making a bunch of hand gestures. You were about to lean over and ask about it when a bright flash of light shown through the windows followed by a loud clap of thunder. The floor beneath your feet seemed to shake from the force. Another flash of light lit up the room and some more thunder hit making even you jump a little.

“Wow that’s some storm.”, you said looking over at Yoongi only to be met with nothing.

“Yoongi?”, you question looking around the room wondering how he was able to get up and run so fast.

After standing up from the couch and walking towards the kitchen to see if maybe he had went in there you saw the fleece blanket he was holding earlier leaning up against the back of the couch and thanks to the added light from another lightning strike you noticed that the blanket was also covering a lump. Getting closer you saw little tufts of black hair poking out. Gently you reached and pulled the blanket down slightly. You could feel your heart breaking seeing him like this. Curled up in a ball with his hands over his ears and tears on his cheeks.

“Yoongi it’s okay. It’s just a thunderstorm.”, you said trying to soothe him. When your words didn’t seem to help you went to reach for his hand feeling him tense at your touch.

“No please don’t hurt me. Please.”, he cried out making you recoil. “Yoongi it’s Y/N. I’m not going to hurt you. Just let me get you to be-.” You felt a hand on your should and found Mae looking down at you with a sad expression on her face. She bent down the best she could in her old age to get his attention and when he finally recognized her the tension seemed to leave his body, at least momentarily until another crack of thunder rang through the air.

Mae helped him up off the ground and you’d stayed m back watching as she helped him down the hall, his legs shaking ever so slightly. Just before they entered his room Mae turned to you and pointed towards the kitchen. You took the hint and went to get a couple cups of tea ready.

After about fifteen minutes she returned and took a seat next to you thanking you for the tea.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”, she sighed.

“No I just, I don’t, I…”, you couldn’t find the words. You knew it was slightly odd for a grown adult to be that petrified of a thunderstorm, but you knew there must be a reason. Judging by Mae’s reaction this seemed to be a common occurrence. You just didn’t know how to move forward without sounding rude.

“Mae, please forgive me if this comes off to forward or harsh, but has some thing happened to Yoongi in his past?”

She took a sip of tea before getting more comfortable in the chair and nodding her head.

“Yes dear. Yoongi, my sweet sweet Yoongi, has been through a lot. More than any person should have to especially at his young age. You see Yoongi’s father left a few weeks after he was born. Yoongi was born too early and was very small and sickly. His father didn’t want any part of his life. My daughter did the best she could with Yoongi. I helped whenever I could as well. She was such a loving mother. When Yoongi was about two years old she married a man who I didn’t necessarily approve of, but there was nothing I could do. She was an adult and she seemed happy. He quickly moved my daughter and Yoongi to the other side of the country. I only got to see them a couple times year. I started to have suspicions that something was wrong when Yoongi was four years old. I went to visit and noticed that my daughter and Yoongi both had old bruises. When I questioned it my daughter claimed that she tripped while carrying him and fell down some stairs. Then when Yoongi was six he told me how he had heard his mom and stepdad in their bedroom making lots of noise. His mom was yelling and there were loud bangs, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. I questioned her once again and she said that her and her husband must’ve just gotten too loud while in bed together and that she’d remind him in the future that they needed to be quieter. I wasn’t completely convinced, but I had no other proof.”

Mae took a long breath clear that this was hard for her to recall and you were starting to feel guilty for even asking.

She continued on, “When Yoongi was about seven his mom got very sick and unfortunately passed away. I tried to visit him more, but as time went on his step dad cut me off more and more. I tried getting a court involved, but he was considered his legal guardian and without any significant proof there was nothing they could do. So I tried to do what I could. Over time I noticed a change in Yoongi. He was sadder, seemed more down on himself. I rarely ever saw that smile that used to melt my heart. He was having a hard time at school. The friends he had stopped hanging out with him. Then one day when he was around thirteen he said something back to his stepdad and his stepdad beat him so badly the neighbors ended up calling the police because of the noise.”

She stopped to take a shaky breath. Tears forming in her eyes. You hadn’t even noticed that you had started biting your bottom lip trying to stop your own tears from falling until the subtle taste of blood hit your tongue.

Once again she continued, “Thankfully his stepfather was arrested that night and eventually sentenced to forty five years in prison, but it was already too late and the damage was done. When I got to the hospital that night they started showing me different x-rays and scans and going over Yoongi’s injuries. It was worse than I had ever thought. There were old fractures that hadn’t healed correctly. Scars both fresh and old covered his body from where his stepfather would beat him with a tree branch or use his skin to put out his cigarettes. He had torn his shoulder at one point and because it was never properly taken care of he’s always in pain, even to this day. He had surgery to correct it, but it only helped a little. I cried in the hospital. He was released after a week and came to live here with me. I was taking him to therapy a couple times a week and he seemed to be getting on the right track. He was smiling more and getting a little more talkative. I had enrolled him in the high school here and he made a couple friends. I knew there’d always be a part of him that struggled, but I thought that maybe he was going to be able to move past all of this for the most part and go on to have a happy healthy life. When he was in his second to last year of high school there was going to be a big dance and after some convincing he asked a girl to go with him as a date and she said yes. So I got him a brand new suit and the day of the dance we went and picked out a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I offered to drive him, but he didn’t want to be embarrassed by his grandma driving him around, you know how teenagers are. So I watched him walk out the door.”

Mae took a moment to composer herself by staring out the kitchen window. You in no way wanted to rush her.

She took another sip and then went on, “I was in the kitchen a little while later when I heard the front door swing open and slam back shut. I thought it was much too early for Yoongi to be home already and assumed it must be some guests so I cleaned myself up real quick and walked out to greet them, but instead…instead I found Yoongi with tears streaming down his cheeks and then I noticed his suit was covered in brightly colored paint. He still had the bouquet of flowers in his hand except they were now all damaged and dirty. He refused to tell me what happened and ran off to his room. Monday morning I went to the school and apparently the girl and some of her friends, including her actual date, were all waiting for Yoongi to show up at the school. When he got there they all poured cans of paint onto him and called him a freak and a monster. I was told that one of the other boys saw Yoongi’s scars when they were changing for gym class and started making fun of him for it. This girl had no intention of actually going to the dance with him and told him he was ugly and would never be loved because of the way he looked. I tried to have all of those kids reprimanded, but Yoongi refused to cooperate so the school said their hands were tied. He begged me to take him out of school and homeschool him instead which I did, but he’s been pretty much to himself ever since.”

By this point you were full on balling your eyes out. You hadn’t known him for very long, but you could just tell that he was such a sweet gentle person. You didn’t think there could possibly be any thing else that Mae could tell you, but she cleared her throat and went on,

“Honestly, I think the worst thing that ever happened to him was the letter he received from his biological father on his twenty first birthday. I actually still have the letter. I’ve been holding onto it because I think it would be beneficial for Yoongi to be the one to destroy it, but I don’t know how to bring it up to him.”

She slid the letter across the table to you. Shakily you opened it up and immediately noticed the tear smudged ink and you took a deep breath trying to compose yourself before diving in,

“To Yoongi,

You most likely have no idea who I am, but I am your biological father. I left not long after you were born and if my calculations are correct you should be twenty one years old today. You were born early, somehow I’m certain that was your mothers fault even though the doctors said it was not. Anyways, you were born very small and sick. The doctors did not know if you would make it and to be honest I spent most of the time hoping that you wouldn’t. I did not want the burden of having a son, especially a first born, that was weak and useless. I gave your mother an ultimatum, either abandon you and we will move on and have a child that will prosper and do well in life or she can keep you and I will leave. Obviously you see what she chose. I heard that your mother has passed away since then. She was an ignorant woman anyways, wasting her time with a child like you. I told her that you weren’t worth the time which has been proven by the fact that you still live with your grandmother working at that stupid inn. You’ll never be anything more than that. I don’t really know the point of this letter any more. I guess I’m just a little drunk and wanted to get this off my chest after all of these years. Yoongi, I do wish you well. Truly I do because I know deep down that you’ll never achieve it. With regret, Your Father.”

You don’t know at what point you went from crying to blood boiling anger, but it happened.

“What the actual fuck!”, you shouted slamming the letter down on the table. “Sorry, excuse my language.”, you said towards Mae suddenly feeling bad about your outburst. She chuckled, “Don’t worry dear. I said much much worse when I read that letter.”

You continued, “Seriously? Who does something like that? And to their own child on top of it? You walked out of his life let him be. That letter was completely unnecessary. I swear I’m gonna hunt him down and kill him myself.”

Mae shook her head, “No need Y/N. After he dropped the letter off at the post office he drunkingly crashed his car into a tree. Killed him instantly. Unfortunately though, Yoongi never really recovered from this letter. He’s been very reserved and depressed ever since. He’s refused therapy or any help that I offer. I’ve tried for many years to get him to make friends or find a partner or just get out of the house and experience life. I won’t be here forever and I want him to find someone and just be happy for the rest of his time.”

While you would normally never wish harm on anyone it did bring you some joy knowing that his father was no longer around and could never hurt Yoongi again.

“Y/N, I’m sorry to drop all of this on you, but I thought you should get an explanation for what you saw earlier and why he is the way that he is. Yoongi can be kind of jumpy around loud noises and sudden movements and things like that. Please don’t run away from him. I’ve seen him smile more in the week you’ve been here than he has in months. He just sees something in you. I can tell. Call it grandmas intuition if you will. I know you’ll soon have to go back home, but I’m really hoping that maybe you’ll keep in touch with him. No pressure of course. I wouldn’t blame you for not doing it, but I just really think you could be a big positive in his life.”, she said before walking her mug over to the sink.

“Thank you for telling me all of this. I’m sure it was difficult to recount everything.”, you said almost in a whisper. She smiled before laying a hand on your shoulder, “Get some rest Y/N. I’m gonna head off to bed myself. These old bones are tired.”

As you laid in bed you could still hear the faint rumblings of thunder from miles away. You wondered what Yoongi was doing. You hoped he was peacefully sleeping in his bed, but you knew most like that wasn’t the case. It pained your heart to think about what he’d been through. No one deserved to ever have those things happen to them and you decided in that moment that you were going to try and help him. You yourself felt the connection that Mae keeps talking about and you were starting think that maybe things do happen for a reason.

The following morning when you woke up your body felt sore from the stress you experienced. Your first reaction was to go and find Yoongi, but you also knew that he was most likely going to feel embarrassed about what had happened the night before so you opted to take a seat at the desk and try to get some work done. After about an hour and only a couple paragraphs written the smell of bacon started to fill the air and the sound of your stomach grumbling in hunger followed not long after. In the kitchen you found Mae at the stove tending to the bacon. “Would you like some coffee Y/N?”, she smiled. You nodded happily taking the cup from her. Yoongi was already sitting at the table peeling some carrots and potatoes for what you assumed would become part of dinner later. You tried your best to act causally as you took a seat a chair away from him to give him some space.

Mae walked over and set a plate of eggs down in the middle of the table along with the bacon. After Yoongi cleared the vegetables that he was working on the three of you began eating your breakfast.

Mae peaked over at you and with a sly grin she began, “Y/N, thank you for bringing that strawberry pie from Taehyung’s last night. I already snuck a piece as I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Oh you’re very welcome. It did look delicious.”, you replied waiting to see where she was going with this.

“I’m going to make them a big pot of pork stew. It’ll be a good hearty meal for them while they work on the farm. I was thinking that maybe you and Yoongi could take it over to them when it’s finished.”

Now you get it. It was an easy yes for you. You really did like all of the boys from the farm and it would be a chance to spend a little time with Yoongi, but you couldn’t help but notice how red his cheeks had gotten once again and his shoulders visibly tensed. You weren’t going to force him by any means.

“Uh yeah sure that’s no problem for me. I can go alone though if Yoongi doesn’t want to go.”

“Yoongi would you be okay taking some stuff over to the farm with Y/N? For me please.”, Mae asked placing her hand on top of his.

“Okay.”, he whispered with his eyes focused on his lap.

A few hours later your little cart was packed up with a large pot of the stew and some fresh bread and jam. You and Yoongi headed off towards the farm. The first half of the walk was silent other than a few birds or rustle of leaves here or there.

“I’m sorry about last night. If I had known it was going to storm I would’ve stayed in my room to not disturb you.”, he spoke startling you out of your thoughts.

“Yoongi you don’t have to be sorry. And please don’t ever hide who you are from anyone. If they can’t handle who you are then they don’t deserve you in their life.”

He nodded in understanding pulling on his ear. A nervous habit of his. Feeling a little brave you reached for his hand to give it a light squeeze. He jumped slightly, but for a few seconds he let you hold him before removing his touch from yours. You were going to take that as a win.

Entering the strawberry farm you were quickly greeted by Jin and Namjoon. “Hi Y/N, didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”, Jin smiled.

“Mae wanted us to bring over some stew and bread as a thank you for the pie.”, you responded handing over the items from the cart. Jungkook appears out of nowhere excitedly grabbing the bread and jam from you.

“Jeeze I haven’t seen this kid all day, but as soon as food is involved he magically appears.”, Jin rolled his eyes. Taehyung came walking over after noticing your arrival. He wrapped you in a big hug and began making small talk. You could feel Yoongi’s presence behind you. He was almost using your body to shield himself away from everyone.

Taehyung gestured for you to follow him, “Y/N and Yoongi come on into the bakery. We’ve got a new strawberry milk latte we just put on the menu and I want your opinion. Personally I think it’s wayyyy too sweet, but Jin thinks it could be award winning.”

Jin scoffed, “You don’t even like coffee so your opinion means nothing.”

“I think it’s amazing.”, Jungkook added.

“You’d drink lake water and say it was good if we put a flavored milk in it.”, Namjoon quipped.

Chuckling at the argument going on infront of you it took about twelve steps before you realized your shadow was not behind you. When you turned you saw Yoongi was already walking back towards the path to the inn. Namjoon came up behind you and gave you a nudge in Yoongi’s direction and you knew what he meant. Jogging up next to him you reached for his arm, but opted not to as you’d quickly learned touch is not his first choice.

“Hey where are you going? Come hang out with us at the bakery.”, you said once you caught up to him.

He simply shook his head and kept walking.

“They’re really nice guys. They were asking about you yesterday. I think you’d really like them if you gave them a chance.”

Still he continued walking in silence. Without thinking you reached out to grab his arm just in an attempt to stop him, but he flinched.

“No. I just want to be left alone. Please.”, he whimpered near tears.

Instantly you backed off with your hands in the air to give him space and show that you weren’t going to touch him.

“I’m sorry Yoongi. I won’t force you to hang out with them. I just wanted you to get to know them a little. I think it would be good for you.”

He ignored you and began walking back home again. You sent Taehyung a quick text apologizing for your sudden departure and letting him know you’d stop by on a different day to try the latte before you left. Yoongi walked surprisingly fast so you had to go back into a light jog to catch up. You decided to hang back a little and not walk right next to him so you weren’t suffocating him. You pretended not to notice him peeking back to look at you every once in a while.

As you walked you noticed a few cherry blossom trees just over a hill. You’d completely forgot about the trees and made yourself a mental note to go see them before you left Holly Falls. When you finally made it back to the inn Yoongi was waiting for you at the front door.

“You didn’t have to walk back with me. I’m an adult and I could walk back myself.”, he said with a pout.

“I know. I just wanted to come back with you.”

“But what about hanging out with them?”

You shrugged your shoulders, “I’ll go back another time. I’d rather hang out with you anyways.” His face instantly turned a deep shade of red.

“So tell me, what does Yoongi like to do in his spare time?”, you questioned.

“I’d rather just be alone to be honest.”

You wanted to push him harder, but you were concerned with what the outcome might be so instead you gave him a smile and watched as be walked inside letting the door close behind him. Dropping down to take a seat on the steps you let out a long sigh. This was going to be more difficult than you had imagined and to make matters worse you were only supposed to stay for another week.

“Excuse me miss, are there any rooms available?”, someone spoke making you to jump. Since your head was hanging you hadn’t noticed the young man walk up to the front door of the inn. You took in his appearance and noticed how exceptionally handsome he was.

“I just came from the main part of the town and there are no rooms available so it was suggested that I come over here.”, he continued.

“Oh um well I think there might be a couple rooms left, but I’m just a guest as well. If you head inside the check in desk is in the corner and they can help you out.”

The handsome man held out his hand for you, “Sorry I didn’t mean to assume anything. My name is Jimin by the way.”

You smiled graciously accepting his hand, “Y/N and no worries. Hopefully you can get a room. It would be nice to have another person around here to talk to and stuff.”

He chuckled, “Well I guess I better get in there then and see about a room.”

You gently leaned to the side to give home more space to get by before you returned back to wondering how you could get Yoongi to open up to you a little more without making him too uncomfortable.

After he had walked inside Yoongi took a deep breath and after a quick heated discussion with himself going over all the pros and cons he decided that giving you twenty minutes of his time to talk would be good for him and maybe over time he could work up the courage to actually spend time with you, maybe even like a date before you left. The thought of that made his head spin. Just as he was about to open the door to find you he heard your conversation with Jimin and how you said you were glad there was going to be someone else at the inn. He felt his heart crack at that. In Yoongi’s brain you were already done with him just like everyone else in his life, except his grandmother of course. He always managed to chase everyone away. He quickly accepted that he was a lost cause so he scurried off to be alone in his room before you or the new guest could see him. Once in his room he heard you introduce Jimin to Mae. Your voice sounded excited as you showed Jimin to his room just down the hall from yours.

Yoongi sat on his bed squeezing his favorite stuffed animal, a blue koala bear named Koya, a gift from his mother just before she had passed.

He heard you let out a loud laugh at something funny Jimin had said and he curled up on his bed feeling the tears start to fall.

He hated that he was like this. He wanted to be what he would consider normal, but there was this little part of his brain that always reminds him of what he’s been through and how many times he been told how unwanted and unloved he is. Even if he did manage to speak to you he’d never want to burden you with having someone like him in your life. He needs a lot of mental care and you don’t deserve to have someone that week. So he chose to lie in his bed squeezing his Koya a little closer every time he heard you laugh in the hallway wishing it was him that was making react like that instead. Your laugh was just as pretty as you are he thought. With each passing minute he could feel the panic setting in more and more and he eventually used the koala bear to muffle the sobs leaving his body not wanting to disturb you any further.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

We’ve Got A File On You: Evanescence’s Amy Lee

I’m curious about the “Bring Me To Life” demo on this new anniversary edition of Fallen. Is this the exact version that you played for the label before they pushed for the rap part?

AMY LEE: Actually, no.

What’s the timeline on it? Where does it come from?

LEE: We did, like, at least nine demos of “Bring Me To Life.” Because they had decided this was the song that’s gonna be the first single, and we’re gonna put a whole bunch of focus on this breaking-in point. So, they just kept being like, “How about do the whole thing again, but add this?” And they were paying us. It was back in the day when people got artist development, which was actually really cool. So we kind of had to do what they said. [laughs] “OK! Whatever it takes!” We just did that demo a million times, and that one, as far as I can tell, is the last one or one of the last ones before the rap happened. They were already giving us notes at that point, but it didn’t go there. The Daredevil thing hadn’t come up, and we hadn’t had that whole new wave of, “OK, now let’s talk about this whole new idea.” So I felt like that was a good representation of us getting it all the way to another version that you’re not already pretty much hearing on the album.

You’ve been open about your fight with the label about adding a male co-vocalist, and how the guest spot that ended up on that song was the compromise. Is this version that we’re hearing now, this demo, kind of how you still think of the song in your head?

LEE: You know, actually, after all this time, playing the song a million times live, they’re never done growing. Especially when it’s a song like that. We’re always gonna play “Bring Me To Life” at a show. We want it to get better and better. We want it to be interesting. And also, you realize you have moments when the crowd does something. Make space for that. Let’s make extra space. We have a whole new part of it that’s a little bit longer, where we get everybody with their hands in the air. So when I think of the song, actually, I hear it the live way, because that’s the way I’ve heard it the most in my life. And the rap is in there, just, I do the rap, which is pretty fun. It’s not really a rap. It’s such a weird way to call it. Anyway.

A ton of people feel a very strong connection to Fallen. It’s also a snapshot of who you were at 21. Is that kind of strange, to have people feel so intimately connected to this very young version of you?

LEE: Yeah. You know, that was hard for a minute, because it was always really a stress of mine in the beginning to bring them along to the next thing. Because I love making music, and my personal quest as an artist is always about sharing more and more and more, and showing the whole picture of my heart and things that I’ve experienced, and drawing from real life. And there’s just so many colors to a human being, and to the things we experience. It would be impossible at any age to sum up your whole self in one song, or even in one album.

So that was actually my biggest reservation about the idea of having a guest vocalist on the first song, was that if this is our only chance – because that happens all the time, this is the thing that people are gonna hear and it’s all they ever hear of us, which is totally possible – I want our first thing to be the best possible representation. That’s why there’s so much pressure on a first entrance single. It’s like, I have to show you who I am as completely as possible, for a million reasons. One of them being, if you like it, you get the rest of the album and you’re not disappointed. Or if you hate it, it’s like, “Wait, that’s not fair! That’s not it! Please listen, I have more to say!” A lot of that fear was quelled very quickly, because “Going Under” did great, and of course “My Immortal” did great, and we have brought so many fans along. At this point, 20 years later, it’s insane. I am so grateful.

So yeah, that bothered me at first, and I’ve gone through a couple of little moments like that. But I don’t feel like that anymore. We have millions of amazing fans who love our latest album. And I feel really proud of everything that’s out there. And in context, I love Fallen. It’s not that I love it less…actually, I do! I love it less out of context. In context of the whole picture of us, and all of our growth, after all this time, I love it. But if that was our only thing that we had done, it would really bug me. So maybe that’s the reason I can’t stop coming back.

The Early Days Of Evanescence (1994-2000)

You started the band as a teenager. What was the music scene in Arkansas like in the mid-’90s? Did people know what to make of you guys?

LEE: It was different. We were different, even for that. I always saw that as a positive. The time period is part of that. [We were] super influenced by grunge and alternative. Heavier stuff, too. But what was the music scene like in Arkansas? It was what you would expect. Country was big. Hip-hop, pop, whatever was on the radio. Whatever you’re being fed by the top 40. So there’s that world, and then there was this total counterculture death metal scene. So, we obviously didn’t fit into either of those groups. But the death metal scene was a little bit closer. Those were the concerts I went to, in tiny, sweaty, back-of-the-pizza-restaurant clubs and stuff. I definitely learned to have an appreciation for this really heavy, rhythm-driven music, and cool riffs, and double bass pedals.

That’s not where I came from. That’s not my origins in music. I was really into classical. Dramatic classical, and then Soundgarden and Björk and cool, interesting alternative music. So when we did our thing, what was different about us was, first, that we weren’t a live band. It was just me and Ben [Moody]. Kids making music, in my parents’ garage and his parents’ garage and basement. Any basement or garage, or studio we could borrow after hours at my dad’s radio station, or anything like that. And we were recording artists. We were just finding what we could and making sounds. It was more like an electronic duo, and then pulling in band elements was always like, “Who will do a show with us?” And we’d gather up a drummer, and a bass player, and another guitar player, and promise them pizza and play a show. And we got signed [by the BMG-distributed Wind-Up Records] pretty quickly. We’d only played a few shows. It was like, “OK, we’ve got to put a band together, and make this real.” So we really grew up and became a band in front of the world.

It’s a very old-school, major label A&R story, I feel like. You get discovered, you get plucked, and you get brought out to LA. That kind of thing doesn’t really happen anymore in the way it did then. What was that moment like for the band, to kind of be thrown from playing the pizza place, to now, you’re in show business?

LEE: It was tumultuous. It was fighting. It was so much push and pull. It was gratitude, as well, but I felt from a pretty early point that I was constantly having to fight everyone around me to not sell out all of our vision.

So, we got signed, and it was awesome because we didn’t have to do a showcase. Everyone else wanted us to play a live show, and it was like, we’re not really like that. We still have to put this together. And this one label from New York was obsessed with it, and they’d had big success before, and we were like, “OK, we’re doing this.” Just a really rash decision at 19. And then instead of it being like what it sounds like when you say it, which is they flew us to LA, they put us in a cool place, and it’s cool and we’re making this album now. That is what we expected. We thought the album was done. But I have to be grateful now, because what we thought the album was is nowhere near as good as what Fallen ended up being, because they made us do crap that we didn’t want to do and write more music.

We had the freedom of not having to have jobs that would suck all of our energy. We could make our job impressing the label with something great. So, we just worked on writing new songs and demoing songs for a year and a half. And there were rocky moments in there, where we had to fight for our rights, and go home, and there were insults flying around everywhere when we didn’t do everything that they wanted. But all those fights were completely worth it, too. It was just the right combination of saying we’re gonna write more and do more, and also fighting back on the things that would’ve absolutely bastardized this whole thing and made us something that wouldn’t have existed this long.

Joining Korn For “Freak On A Leash” On MTV Unplugged (2006)

How well did you know Korn before they asked you to do that?

LEE: Oh, quite well. I loved Korn. Korn was one of the heavy bands that I loved, and I was so excited as a fan when they wanted to do something with me. We toured, I think, right after that. I think that was one of the last MTV Unpluggeds they did.

I think you’re right. I miss it!

LEE: I do too! It was beautiful. I made up my part the day before, I came in, we ran through it one time, and that’s it. I loved doing it, and then we went on tour together after that, which was cool. And then we did it again 15 years later.

Yeah, you stayed close.

LEE: Yeah. And then we finally did that song live! Because we never did it back in 2007 or whatever, when we first toured together. And this time, I was like, “Are you gonna have me up on that song, or what? Come on!”

The Cure were also a part of that show. Did you get to hang out with Robert Smith?

LEE: Yeah, we were all on the couch together, hanging out backstage. It was pretty amazing.

Singing “Sally’s Song” For Nightmare Revisited (2008)

I saw the Nightmare live show in LA a couple of years ago, and Billie Eilish sang that part.

LEE: Oh, amazing!

It’s cool how that song is kind of becoming a standard for alt-leaning pop singers.

LEE: Yeah! It’s funny you say the word “standard,” because there’s so few [new] Christmas standards. These songs that we’re always going to listen to, they’re all from the exact same era. And I do it too. But The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of those really rare things, where there are holiday songs on that – countercultural, of course – that are gonna live forever.

Yeah, and that belong to a younger generation. Was Nightmare big for you growing up?

LEE: Yes. It came out when I was 11 or 12, which was perfect. I mean, it was perfect. I think Edward Scissorhands was right before that, and I was obsessed with that. That’s one of my favorite scores. And then [Nightmare] came out, and I was really blown away, because I have a big love for stop-motion animation. My first record that I ever bought with my own money was the California Raisins. [laughs]

Wow!

LEE: I have always really loved what we used to call Claymation, but stop-motion animation stuff. And seeing my favorite director [Tim Burton] and my favorite score composer [Danny Elfman] do something that was that, I was a fan for life. Immediately obsessed with it.

How did you end up getting to do “Sally’s Song” for that record? Did you know Danny at that point?

LEE: No, but he was really nice to me. He invited me over to his house. It was a really surreal, cool experience. But [Disney] just asked me. I also did a random song that I don’t know a lot of people know from The Muppets [“Halfway Down The Stairs”] on their Muppets tribute album, but I think that was after that, because they were like, “Hey, that went well, let’s do another one.” But they asked me. I got the call, and I said, “Hell yeah! Please, can I do ‘Sally’s Song?'”

Nightmare – thanks in large part to Hot Topic, I think – is synonymous with a certain strain of alternative fashion. And for a while there, I think Evanescence was as well. I was in high school in the mid 2000s and there was definitely a lot of “the Amy Lee look” in the hallways. Did you ever see yourself as a style icon? Was that something you cared about?

LEE: I really have always been into fashion design. As a kid, it was hard for me to choose a definite career path, because I loved music. I felt like music was my passion, and I had to do music. But I also had a lot of passion about visual art and fashion design. And I have journals full of all of it. And making things, I’ve always made most of the art in our homes. I buy art, too, but I get an idea, and I’m like, “I want that on my wall. Here’s what needs to be here.”

I am so lucky, because what I’ve been able to do is combine all of those things into this job. I get to make my music, which is the center and the focus and the king. That’s the point, but then all around that, from production design ideas to album art ideas. I usually sketch them out before we do an album cover. I have a sketch of every one, where I had an idea, and I was like, “This is what we need to make. This is the title, this is the vibe, these are the colors.” And then with clothes, too, I’ve been making my stage wardrobe forever. Not all by myself, but I design it and I have somebody with a lot more patience than me do the math and help me take it all the way.

Her Children’s Album, Dream Too Much (2016)

Dream Too Much came out in 2016. Your son was born in 2014. I imagine there’s a correlation there.

LEE: Mm-hm, definitely! Making music isn’t always serious. You just sing your way through the day sometimes, and I realized that extra after having a baby, because you just end up filling the space with happy sounds. My husband and I both do it. You’re just singing through the activity, and then it’s like, “That’s kind of funny.” The song “Dream Too Much,” I was goofing around on the guitar, and Jack as, like, a two-year-old was saying those first couple of lines while he was playing. “There’s a monkey in the band!“ He was talking about Curious George, I think. And then, “The muffins are sleeping!“ I was like, “The muffins are sleeping? Awesome, we’re putting that in there.” [laughs]

It was fun to just have an opportunity to let things be goofy and fun, and when you have that subject there, you know exactly how to entertain them. There’s a person to focus on. It’s like, “I’m going to make this the thing that you love.” Including the stop-motion animation, and the instruments that are click-y. He used to love this Nesquik commercial with a STOMP vibe. Everything was pencils on glasses and chicka-chicka-choo-kah stuff. My producer and co-writer friend, Will Hunt – not Will Hunt the drummer [of Evanescence], very confusing – we did that album together, and he’s this super, like, science-y, fun, experimental music guy. We became friends over our love of Björk. He’s like, “Oh, this is great. I have all these weird tubular sticks and junk we can make sounds out of.” And it was just this really fun experience where I got to work with my whole family.

It sounds so naturalistic, or something. It doesn’t sound like the discipline of songwriting. You almost make it sound like you were just goofing around.

LEE: We were having so much fun! That’s what it always should be. I think that’s where good music comes from, is that you’re enjoying what you’re doing and that translates. But there are different paths and ways. It felt like we didn’t have to think so hard and make it complicated for an adult audience. It’s funny, because you make choices that are just natural, and you realize that maybe that’s not such a bad idea in general. There was definitely learning through that experience.

Metalocalypse: Army Of The Doomstar (2023)

I recognized your voice right away, even though you have like two lines.

LEE: I keep meaning to capture the clip and put it on social media somewhere! I want them to hear my voice screaming.

I was looking at your IMDb, and I was somewhat surprised that you haven’t done much voice acting or acting. Was that ever something you were interested in pursuing?

LEE: Always. I’m always asking for the right opportunities to do that stuff. I haven’t always had the best representation, and I think that maybe held me back in the past, when I would have really liked it. I just didn’t have the access that you’d think that I would. But I’m not in that situation now, so I’m always looking for something fun like that, whether it’s voice acting or making music of any kind for a film. It’s interesting the way the film industry and TV industry work. It’s so depressing how often things go so far and then get canned. There are so many things that get half-made and then dumped, and I’ve written music for a lot of those. [laughs] It’s not my fault! Or maybe it is. Maybe I should stay away.

Well, it’s odd, because movies have been woven into the Evanescence story. You mentioned the Daredevil thing, which ended up being so huge for you guys. Did you feel like you were interacting with Hollywood at that time, or did that feel like it was in a separate sphere?

LEE: There were moments. Hollywood doesn’t feel that separate from the music industry in LA. It’s all one big thing to me, in my mind. So going to those awards shows – or, we played the screening party for Daredevil, and all the actors and everybody were there – I definitely felt like we were intermingled in that world in a way that was very surreal. It’s weird. It’s like, “Whoa. Why are we here?”

That’s a great era, the early 2000s, for action movies randomly having a metal song over the end credits.

LEE: Right? [laughs] You’re welcome.

“Goofy Sings Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life” (2014)

I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t ask you about the Goofy version of “Bring Me To Life.” I’m told that you’ve heard it.

LEE: I’ve heard it. I’ve heard a lot of things over the years.

When you heard it, what was your reaction to it?

LEE: Not to insult the artist…

Bring it.

LEE: Honestly, I was like “What the fuck is this? This is stupid.” It’s funny. I don’t have a huge response. So many people sent me that. Even more people sent me this recent, the music note thing. There’s this toy that’s a music note, and it’s floating and singing the song. It’s not singing, it’s like [imitates warbling noise]. It’s so bad. My favorite one of those, I will tell you because it haunts me to this day. Somebody worked at Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz Pizza, and you know the animatronic characters of the band?

Yeah.

LEE: So, after hours, when nobody was there, I don’t know if they work this way or if this person programmed the show. I don’t know if they’re sensitive to sound, so they move their mouths and move around, or if the person programmed it, but they made a light show, and it was dark, and they’re playing the instruments, and they did like three of our songs. In the right state of mind, that’ll give you nightmares. It was horrifying and awesome. And I salute you, sir or ma’am, whoever you are. [laughs]

You’ve got music that’s kind of been absorbed into the broader pop cultural consciousness, and I guess that’s why these things happen. There’s also the Ariana Grande thing on Fallon, where she’s doing a vocal impression of you. Is that kind of stuff surreal? How do you even process that?

LEE: It’s not surreal anymore. When we were starting out, it was. But at this point, living with it for this long, the music kind of just takes on its own life, and you start to see it as separate from yourself. It’s hard to explain. It started out very surreal and strange, and impostor syndrome is very real, but I feel like at this point, I’m where I’m meant to be. It’s amazing and I’m proud. I am ready to accept my fate as goth superstar Amy Lee of the fuckin’ dark-ass band Evanescence.

[lovebvni]

Hi! This is Ani again. Just wanted to let you know that your reading was literally SO accurate. Istg you’re living my life

I’m gonna admit, I was expecting something much more negative. I usually expect negative things, which isn’t good, but that make the good things all the more exciting. This whole thing was also kind of new since this was my first intuition reading. My previous ask was also my first ask ever on tumblr so I was kind of nervous as well. It felt like I was writing an email lolol

But I’m so happy that I did do it because, you were right, I did kinda feel like I’ve been grazing rock bottom. I had this weird mixed feeling of being close to the void but also never getting in and holding both those feelings kind of drained me, on top of being burned out from school. This is the first time in a while where I’ve been truly excited for something.

Something that I recommend people do is something I did earlier this month, where I basically manifested seeing angel numbers and using their meanings as guidance on my void journey. I kept getting a lot of 444’s and 777’s which apparently both are related to seeking guidance from angels or something. I didn’t really know how to do that so I assumed that maybe I had to reach out to someone on tumblr, but even then I didn’t know who to ask. I didn’t even know what I should be asking. But this was really helpful and honestly, is making me so excited for my REAL new life instead of a daydream.

Also another thing is, I am a shifter! Or I’m planning to be one, anyway. The life I’m going to shift to from this one will be similar to my current one but better. But all my other realities after that, are pretty much going to be a totally different life with different people, like you said.

Also, can we talk about how in literally the beginning of the post I was called out in so many ways, like “Repressed emotions + feeling left out” 😭✋ Chill out man I can’t afford therapy rn ok?? Lolll all jokes aside though you are right, and I don’t really talk about what I’m feeling. I do think I am also very disconnected from people. I have a wide variety of interests so I can be part of multiple friend groups at the same time, which is why I feel so lonely, because I am never in one deeply enough to find true connections. I have a feeling I know who my new group of people are though!

Over all though, I am so excited to enter void. I have always known that I will, but it was just up to me to decide when. I’ve been putting in extra effort and I’m glad to see it’s paying off. And most of all, I’m excited to shift and be whatever I want to be! I don’t think anyone would be really, truly free until they experienced shifting, but then again, this is coming from someone who has never consciously shifted before (but I’m sure that’s still true).

Anyways, sorry this was so long, I think I kind of just went on a tangent with this one haha 😅 But fr tho, I can’t thank you enough for this, this has really helped me and re-inspired me a lot. I think everyone should give your intuition readings a try because it’s never bad to ask for help and advice, regardless of where you are in your void journey. This is also a great source of positivity for people who may feel stuck in their journey.

(Btw, I love how you complimented everyone in your response to the reading asks, it’s literally so sweet 🥹)

Thank you again for the reading! ♥️

OMG AAHHHH IM SO HAPPY WAIT

i literally read this whole thing during my lunch period and it made me so happy n smily (my friends probs think i have a new bf or something but no 😭😭 it’s this insane!!)

during my time in this earth, both before and after I shift i strive to be a guide. i want to help others reach their goals and get better in this life. every time i feel as if i help others, it brings new light and energy to my spirit. <3

im so glad i have you some hope and motivation, and i REALLY hope u get the help u need sometime!! i know financial issues r a real hinderance w mental health n to genuinely drives me insane 💀💀💀

i love u sm!!! i’m glad it helped!!

[ziracona]

Hihi! I am a super big fan of your works, especially ILM! I just have a couple questions for you (so sorry if you've been asked these before; I tried to look but I couldn't see anything on these, but I'm kinda blind lmao): how long does it take you to write those super long chapters (e.g. vs in ILM)? How many words do you typically write per day? How do you deal with writer's block and have you ever dealt with perfectionism with your writing and, if so, how did you overcome that?

Generally, the shorter chapters took a week, the long ones later in fic often took two weeks, but some of the really really long ones (IE Vs and Rainbow Connection) took 3-4 weeks. Which is still a insane turnaround, given those were book length. 😅

The rest of these questions are harder to answer, because the answer isn’t consistent. For most of my life? I have been able naturally to churn out staggering amounts of content virtually overnight. I went through some intense trauma at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 though, on through the next year as well, and it kind of broke me, honestly. I dealt with writer’s block many times before then in my life, and my answer would have been “Make yourself start, and after the first twenty minutes, it’s easier. Even if you have to rewrite a lot, some of it will be good,” and “make sure the reason isn’t you genuinely need a break and if it is, take one,” and “Watch/read/play stories that inspire you—that brings passion often faster than anything.”

That’s what’s worked most of my life.

But there are tiers to difficult circumstances. And I still haven’t fully recovered. I write, but I’m a lot slower right now. Sometimes I can’t at all. And there’s very little I can do about it, which is new and frustrating. I had commissions in 2020 (requested, not paid) I just never did, because I just physically could not, which had never happened in my life before, so I didn’t realize that fast enough to handle it well, and I think maybe I’ll feel guilt over that forever. — still, some advice holds steady I suppose. For any kind of writing block, the most common success I’ve experienced, even in extreme duress, is genuine inspiration. Seek out something new and impressive—movies often work especially, but whatever thrills you. Rp like d&d can help too. It can give you motivation that helps override the rest.

If it’s something more serious, like I have now, you need to find the root cause instead, and heal it. That’s a long process sometimes, but there’s really no other way, and it’s worth it.

Anyway, the Ziracona who wrote ILM had a word count per day I’m not sure of, but something disgusting probably like 7,000-16,000. Now I don’t really have one, because it’s not that I write slow per day, it’s that there’s a lot fewer days I can write. So maybe it’s steady. I dunno. Haven’t thought about it in a while.

For perfectionism, I’m sure I have, but that’s easier to handle. The best things for that are start out by writing things you especially like anyway (you’ll be less critical of your favorite tropes), get at least one friend who hyped you and is a good source of positive enforcement who doesn’t mind doing beta for you and you’ll be alright, and take a break after writing and editing before editing more, because the more you read a passage, the worse it will seem to you as it loses freshness and you lose energy. You’ll become unduly critical, but fresh eyes will see it more as it is.

Thank you very much for the kind words, and I’m so happy you enjoy my works. I hope some of that helps. : )

[petite-ursus]

I’m trying birth control for the first time. My pmdd has reached a really dangerous point as I can’t get my footing as every month any kind of stability before my progesterone freaks out and I’m right back to sobbing.

I shared a lot of fun things from over the weekend, but the truth is that I was only out doing fun things because it literally was not safe for me to be in the house by myself. I was in a major, dangerous depressive episode. I went home early from work Thursday because I could not function. I was under my desk sleeping. I cried the entire weekend. I cried through a dentist appointment, and then the gyno appointment, and then I came home and my girlfriend wanted to go to a concert and she had no intention of staying home, so I went with her to cry at the concert. It took literally all of my will power not to break no-contact. I had a message drafted and I deleted it, because I promised myself that if I ever did break no-contact I would break it to share something good. But, it was hard.

And I am so tired. I’ve screamed about this in some tags previously... but it makes me... so angry... taking care of this at 30 years old when my doctor thought I had it at 13, and didn’t explain properly what it really meant, either because he didn’t know, or he assumed I would just guess.

My doctor told me at 13, when I came in complaining that I had excruciating period pains that caused me to puke, that the pain was likely from pmdd. The pain could be treated with an extra pain pill. Job done, we never mentioned it again. That same year I have a formative memory of being so... sad... I was at my 13th birthday and the wish I made to myself (when I blew out the candles and everyone clapped) was to die.

Certainly, there is an aspect of that which was probably normal preteen drama. But. I spent SEVENTEEN YEARS studying and researching all kinds of memoirs/symptoms/coping skills, for bpd, bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression... And it... was probably this, all along. And I never connected those feelings of paranoia level anxiety and subsequent depression (as being that anxious is exhausting) because he said pmdd was the pain I was experiencing. He said that was all I needed to know about it. There had to be another explanation for the fucking insanity.

And he could have just. Told me. He fucked. My. Life.

I’m not being dramatic. My therapist was literally horrified that he diagnosed me with that and did not recommend a psychiatric followup along with it.

I think of the relationships that could have gone differently. I think of years of trying to mindfulness and trying to positive think my way out of a literal hormone imbalance. I want. To scream.

And I’m legitimately frightened of what birth control will do to me and my body, because I’ve heard such horror stories... but it legitimately can’t be worse at this point. I haven’t even been able to crossfit consistently in two months because I literally can’t take the stress of it. I’ve been doing daily yoga and a max of one crossfit a week. It just. Fucking blows. It blows. I’m angry. And I’m tired.

[coccyodynia]

things:

four years and a few days ago, i entered treatment for dual diagnosis care to treat my mental health and drug use

for about 4 straight years before that, i’m not sure i was sober for more than an hour at a time

i was really heavily using benzos and always mixing them with an extreme amount of alcohol

frequently confused as to who i was then, how people perceived me, and how i’m still alive

i’m extremely grateful i went to treatment, because if i hadn’t had some kind of intervention, i dont think i would have survived another year like that

i still really really struggle with relapses

and in the last two years i’m not sure i’ve managed to have a clean streak longer than 3 months

but i am trying

my drug abuse ended up being the last straw for some important people in my life, who would eventually leave my life bc of it

anyway moving on to other topics

i finally saw justin this week, for the first time in three months

it’s been a pretty weird 3 month period of not really knowing where we stood bc i couldn’t keep my feelings to myself, and he needed a break from that i guess

i understand it will never again be like it was when we first started talking

and tbh that really kills me, but i’m very grateful he’s a part of my life still, in some way

the connection was immediately really strong from the start and i really credit him with helping me a lot

he was probably the first person to verbalize “i’m here for you”, and actually follow through with that sentiment

meeting him almost exactly one year after reid left my life is probably worth mentioning here but whatever

ive finally been able to start seeing my therapist again, and i meet with her monday

right now she can only schedule me every other week, which is a really hard adjustment for me to make tbh

since october of 2019 i probably have had therapy at least once a week

im really struggling with staying sane bc my job has become an incredibly stressful place for me, which didn’t used to be the case

like work has always had some level of stress, sure, but this last month or so, i have been getting physically sick from the stress, crying at my desk every day, etc

but on the other hand, i’m also having these really meaningful yet overwhelming moments of gratitude for being where i’m at

like yeah nothing is perfect or even close, but i have created a life for myself that works most of the time

im finally experiencing a level of safety and security that i have honest to god never felt before, and i did not even know that it could improve this much

growing up i didnt have any sense of safety or security at all, which i didn’t realize until very recently

in the last year or so working with nicole (my therapist), i have finally learned that the things i was subjected to as a child were not normal, and that it was traumatic

about 6 months or so ago (possibly less), i learned i have complex post traumatic stress disorder

i had pretty much known for over a decade that i was borderline, before i was officially diagnosed

but i didn’t even have an inkling of an idea that i could be experiencing CPTSD, so when my therapist gently told me i was, my world view realllyyyyy started to shatter and shift

it has been very very difficult to come to terms with tbh

anyways i really miss writing and photographing and making art so i hope to return to that soon

i’m at work rn and i should probably start doing my job before the bosses get here so ta-ta for now thanks for reading this insane post

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

That’s what I’ve been saying! This level of interconnectivity has never been achieved in all of human history, and our historical and psychological knowledge, as well as the evolutionary growth of our minds, were not ever meant to experience this kind of constant instant connection and information! It is literally something we could not comprehend before, and could not predict the disastrous psychological social and political outcomes of! It’s really insane when you think about it, being tapped in to so many minds and opinions and thoughts, and yet, you’re never really face to face with these people, and can theoretically leave whenever you want, much easier than if you were sat down in a room with hundreds of others all intently talking to each other. It’s the stream of human consciousness wrapped together, distilled, and redirected towards your location for you to endlessly explore. It’s no wonder everyone connected to the web is insane nowadays, we’ve been shown more of the true nature of human thought and comprehension than ever before, even if it is only a crumb of truth, it’s more than anyone before has ever truly experienced.

It used to be you had to go out of your way to delve into the insanity of humanity, you had to spend days reading books, years journeying across the world and talking to all kinds of people, because for the longest time, you had no way to know other than to see and hear it for yourself. But now, it comes to you. People will bring it up to you. You have to go out of your way to avoid the stream. It’s a total paradigm shift! A reversal of the roles humanity had grown so accustomed to, and it’s slowly been leading to total re-realization of everything we thought we knew, picking up steam faster and faster at a blinding rate since the 1800’s. And we’ve taken it so much for granted, the constant unending experience of truth has blinded us of the facts of truth, we’ve grown sick and tired of it, but deep down we all now know, what we can’t really put into words.

And yet, there are generations of people so accustomed to this kind of life, since it had been made so accessible and has been flourishing ever since, we cannot really appreciate the insanity and pure overwhelming presence of chaos and thought that we bring around with us everywhere. It’s absolutely insane! In an awful good way. This is a turning point in all of human history. The next 100,000 possible years will all be thanks to the 200 years of developing ways to pass information and conversation across our planet, slowly building a universe of pure thought, a virtually real world. Totally and utterly different than anything that has come before. A true paradigm shift in human development, and development of the human psyche and intellect. The death and rebirth of the human mind.

And you know what, I’m here for it. I think it’s quite wondrous and beautiful, and I feel vindicated seeing everyone realize how insane the world really is. I’m not just crazy, everything is crazy, and it’s going to get crazier. And in these crazy times, it seems like the only sane thing to do is to get naked and climb a tree, because really crazy and sane, are the same.

Courtesy of the great virtual insanity, terror of the human, life, and time, and fun fermented grape juice body-mind poison, I shout this observation and opinion into the void realm of radio waves and broken consciousness, without needing to utter a word. Silently we scream. All together, so far apart.

r.crumb, 1967

[nach0]

Tugging Strings

Summary:

[Grian] Statement of… actually, you never gave me your name.

[???] Prove you’re not the fae first.

[Grian] How do I do that?

[???] You know what, I never actually figured that out. This is the point where I’m usually running away from angry fae. Lucas Clawthorne.

[Grian] …I see. Statement of Lucas Clawthorne, regarding a strange pulling to this building. Statement begins.

AO3 Link

Word count: 1242

This is inspired by @sixteenth-days' From The Archives series! I figured Lucas would be pretty fun to write a statement for with how absolutely insane their life is and I was right lol

(Looks better on AO3)

[Click]

[Grian] Another old statement, I’m not sure how much of this I’ll be able to read. There’s burnt sections all over this page, I can barely read the name.

Well, this is my job. Statement of-

(A door creaks open.)

Hey, who are you?

[???] Oh sorry, is this a bad time? I know I was told to wait, but the tugging got too strong to resist.

[Grian] Tugging? I suppose you’re here to give a statement then, sit down. What kind of tugging are you talking about?

[???] Maybe tugging wasn’t the best word. Nudging might be better. Shoving when I don’t follow it.

How does this whole thing work?

[Grian] You mean to tell me you came into the VOID Institute without knowing what we do?

(Sighing.)

You give a statement about your supernatural experience, and we archive it, investigate it, and try to solve it. Speaking of, I should really start- oh, it’s already on.

Statement of… actually, you never gave me your name.

[???] Prove you’re not the fae first.

[Grian] How do I do that?

[???] You know what, I never actually figured that out. This is the point where I’m usually running away from angry fae. Lucas Clawthorne.

[Grian] …I see. Statement of Lucas Clawthorne, regarding a strange pulling to this building. Statement begins.

[Lucas] I’ll be honest, I don’t exactly expect you to be able to help me. Those much more experienced with magic have tried and failed. But I’m apparently meant to come here, and I clearly don’t have control over my life anymore. If I vanish suddenly, know that means I’ve said too much.

(There’s bitterness in their tone. They cough awkwardly before continuing.)

It all started about... a year and a half ago? Not relatively of course, it’s been far longer from my perspective. I wonder how long this trip will be?

All things considered; it had been a pretty normal day. I went to bed wishing my life didn’t suck quite so much, and then I woke up in Paris.

You guys do have Paris here, right?

[Grian] Yes, we have the city of Paris.

[Lucas] Yeah ok, I know that sounded weird. Just wanted to check.

So I woke up in Paris, and I had wings. Thought it was just a dream at first, especially when I saw the giant monster and superheroes chasing it.

But after a couple of weeks, I couldn’t pass it off as a dream anymore.

And it wasn’t just your regular old magical Paris. It was from a show, one I won’t name just in case, so I decided to insert myself into the plot.

A win-win scenario, you know? Figured if I saved the day I might get to go home, and if I didn’t, well at least the day would be saved.

...I still wonder what would have happened if I’d made a different choice. I’d probably get shoved into it anyway, but...

Going home is never a win.

Beat the bad guy, made some friends, forged a connection that echoes through every time I’m sucked into another one of these, and abruptly woke up.

Even after everything, I was willing to pass it off as a dream. For my sanity’s sake, you know?

But then I saw the notebook.

I’d bought one while I was there, to make note of everything that was true to the show compared to what had changed.

It was sitting on my dresser.

I left it well enough alone, at least at first, but I eventually opened it. Everything was the same, from my scribbled notes to that one page Trixx tried to eat.

It’s in my pocket, if you want to see it. Never runs out of space, and it comes with me every time.

So by that point I knew it wasn’t a dream, but I still had no idea what had happened.

And then it happened again.

A different world, not even on earth to start. And once again, it was a cartoon I’d watched. No wings this time- which as a side note was very distressing. It was so hard to go back to normal life without them, I caught myself more times than I could count about to try and take off from my balcony.

...You have feathers. Do you still have whatever did that to you? Do you think it can do whole wings?

[Grian] I wouldn’t recommend going to Cleo. And I doubt she’d do the same thing twice.

[Lucas] Aww, a shame. But you are the expert.

Cleo was actually pretty nice when we last met. A little bloodthirsty, but we all were. Just part of the game. You especially caused a lot of death. It was fun though, minus all the trauma.

I’m getting off track.

This has been going on ever since then, and I’ve just been dragged around like a puppet on strings fixing issues. It’s not all bad though! I was a dragon in one, which was neat. It was me and my sister against the world, except our hole world was our father.

He died long before I was sucked away, and I call that karma. Just wish the scar he left wasn’t so damn prominent...

I chose to believe that Moon is safe. Killed the bad guy, did my job, made the world safe for her.

And that’s how it goes every time. No matter what I do, friends I make, family I find. I’m always sucked away into another one. Another fictional universe, with anything from one detail to the entire plot changed.

I call it ‘Dimension-Jumping.’ Never figured out how to control it, whether to stop it or stay in one place. I don’t know if I ever will.

(There’s a short silence.)

[Grian] Now when you say it’s always a fictional universe...

[Lucas] Ah, yeah. Sorry, didn’t meant to give anyone existential crises this early. That’s usually saved for when I have to explain why I’m about to vanish forever. If it makes you feel any better, you’re most definitely real. Even if not in my world, your experiences here prove that.

[Grian] Oddly enough, it somewhat does.

[Lucas] I’ve got experience. I’m not being tugged away, so I suppose I have more work to do here. Though from the looks of things, the problem I have to solve may just be your messy as high hell office.

Three moons, does no one clean around here?

[Grian] There’s only one moon.

[Lucas] Only one moon here. Need an assistant?

[Click]

[Click]

[Grian]

There’s no record for anyone named Lucas Clawthorne to be found anywhere. They say it corroborates their story. They’re a good kid if a bit... strange. I took a quick look through their journal, and it wasn’t by Joe Hills, which rules out some of my theories. They didn’t want to get too far from it, and from the amount of notes inside, I can tell why.

Any pushing about family or the puppeteers they mentioned is met with either a changing of the subject or an outright refusal to answer.

It’s a bit worrying.

But they seem happy enough here, and they know their way around the supernatural well enough. Even better than some of our staff if I’m being honest.

Part of me doesn’t want them to be sucked back to whatever home they had before all this started.

From what I’ve seen, they don’t want to either.

[Click]

Definitely didn't forget I had a taglist oop:

@a-chilly-pepper @over-emotional-huffelpuff

[bratz-kitten]

Hello there love, a fellow 11th house mercury here! just saw a post where you talked a little about that placement and it was the most accurate thing I’ve ever read hahaha so my question is if you could elaborate a little bc i find it a little hard to understand that placement. my mercury is sadly also in retrograde in my chart so that doesn’t make things easier…

thank you so much!! much love xxx

okay so, for reference, i touched a bit on mercury in the 11th house here and here (which was mostly about mercury in the 12th house anyway), but the biggest point i made there was that this mercury makes you someone who needs constant intellectual stimulation, we have very restless thoughts and it can be maddening sometimes because our brains just don't shut up... ever. which is why we need to be engaging in conversation so much or at least letting our thoughts out some other way, in a blog, for example (take it from me lmfao). it's interesting that the 11th house rules technology as well as social circles, because it sure feels like we have a non-stop podcast in our minds. like, the only time where i feel like my brain is experiencing a moment of peace is afterward a really intense conversation, when i get to debate my ideas with someone who's just as passionate (and slightly insane) as me.

that being said, we prefer to keep conversation light-hearted and fun. this house for mercury shows an ease when it comes to talking with whoever, so you might have a lot of acquaintances. you might even feel like wherever you go, everyone knows your name and it can be a very unsettling feeling at times. as in, you get introduced to a group of people you've never met before but somehow they all know who you are, so you might experience people gossiping a lot about you, making up rumors that get widely spread; people make all kinds of assumptions about you. that's because even though you know a lot of people, you keep the conversation purposely superficial and only open up to like three people, if that much.

now, keep in mind that this is a double-edged sword: not only do people gossip a lot about people, but you tend to gossip as well. even if you tell yourself it's light-hearted and you only do it with your closest friends, it can be too much at times, and it's very easy to cross the line of "i'm just curious" to being downright shitty, and you need to watch out for what comes out of your mouth because you do stress a lot about having good morals.

you possess a lot of social intelligence and you might be very aware of that, using it in everyday matters – when you enter a group, you start observing the dynamics that play between everyone: who talks the most with who, who feels the most or less comfortable with who, who's still only acquaintances and who's falling in love but doesn't know it yet; you observe all of that and start taking mental notes about people's behaviors: the way they talk, their humor (especially if they laugh at the expense of others or not), if they overshare, what they leave unsaid; you take in all of that and that's your way of getting to know people so that you can start predicting their behavior. like i said, you find it very hard to trust others enough to open up so you make others prove themselves before you do so. in friendships, this is less biting, as in you don't just walk up to someone and go like hey prove me of your worth lmfao, you simply start observing their actions and if they pass the vibe check, they're in.

the problem starts in your romantic relationships – this is where you make someone prove themselves again and again that they're deserving of your trust and loyalty as you continuously doubt them. and suddenly, this isn't the dating stage; it's like your potential partner is harry potter going through the triwizard tournament just to get the prize of 10% of your trust. and it's, like, no. stop it. you can't expect people to drop everything to offer you the world while you're hesitant about even holding their hand in public. that's self-sabotaging and it's just a way for you to ensure that you don't get too intimate with people, that you don't reveal too much of yourself. relationships are about the equality between giving and taking, and you can sometimes be caught up in wanting to receive before even considering giving.

the best way i can put this is through an example: kim kardashian has her mercury in the 11th house. so, it's no wonder that this mercury makes someone really fucking ambitious, sometimes even without you realizing. the 11th house rules dreams and humanity as a whole, so you might be constantly in tune with your dreams and finding a way to get yourself further to them. like i said, this can be unconscious at times; perhaps you take on a small project that's meant to be fun and insignificant but suddenly it blows up out of proportion, suddenly your whole life revolves around it and you're getting recognized for it. you can be very calculating and borderline manipulative at times since you're so focused on trying to control the circumstances around you. not even just in real life, perhaps when you're playing video games you find yourself focusing a lot of your attention on understanding the characters and their motivations; and then, when you meet someone who feels shady as fuck and who looks like they could betray you, your thinking process isn't how can i stop this person from betraying me, it's how can i use this person's betrayal to my advantage. it's like, jesus christ on steroids lmfao. you have a talent for turning difficult situations into the diamond in the rough, for thriving when facing obstacles.

you're very cynical about your friendships, you understand that most people don't have good intentions and you're likely to make a clear distinction between party friends and actual friends. the first group are the people who you have casual fun with, who you do stupid shit with and who perhaps you engage with to keep up appearances or further your connections, while the second group are the actual people who you'd ride or die for, and those are scarce.

here, there's a yearning for actual friendships present even through your fear of doing so, and you might find yourself getting occupied with issues of the 11th house: philosophy, metaphysics, individuality vs. humanity as a whole, freedom, moral issues – for you, nothing is taboo enough, just like nothing is progressive or out-of-the-box enough. my advice for people with this placement is to read the greeks. seriously, hearing plato spend a whole book discussing what is morality is like our wet dream. you love debating especially with your friends, and if you can't talk with someone for hours and hours on end with the conversation never once stalling, then they're not fit to be your friends at all. besides this, you might be very drawn to politics, power, any knowledge that helps you achieve your dreams.

you have big dreams and you might feel a strong calling to help as many people as possible, to save the world, to have your voice be heard. your goals might be downright inconceivable to some people, so you can feel ostracized by the members of the community where you live: perhaps your parents and other family members don't believe in you and would rather you just stick to the plan they forged for you; perhaps you were forced into choosing between their path or yours; no matter what, the choice lies in your hands and so does the power to achieve whatever you desire.

[impostoradult]

Media Market Research (and why its undermining all the things you love)

Trying to understand what is dysfunctional about Hollywood is an epic task, and the answers are like the stars – arguably infinite. Hollywood is dysfunctional for literally more reasons than I could count.

But market research plays a fairly heavy role in its dysfunction (IMO) and the time has finally come for me to add my professional two cents about this issue. (This rant of mine has been building for a while, FYI. Hence why it is so...comprehensive. There is a tl;dr section towards the bottom, if you want the high level summary)

*** For the last 4+ years I’ve worked in the field of market research, almost exclusively with major media makers like Warner Bros., NBCU, AMC/BBCA, Viacom, FOX (before Disney acquired them), A+E, etc. (this past year I quit the job where I was doing this work for a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear as you keep reading, but I am still listed as a consultant on the company website):   https://www.kresnickaresearch.com/who/ (Rachel)

And just for comparison, here is a Halloween selfie I took 4 years ago and posted on my blog, so you can see I am who I say I am. 

I know a fair amount about how market research on major media franchises is conducted and how it influences production, and a lot of these choices can also be at least somewhat tied back to the massive flaws in the market research industry and its impact. *** First, at the highest level, you need to understand market research in general is not well-conducted much of the time. Even the people doing a reasonably good job at it are VERY limited in doing it well because of financial constraints (clients don’t want to spend more than they have to), time constraints (clients want everything done as fast as humanely possible) and just the inherent problems within the industry that are decades old and difficult to fix. For example, all market research ‘screens’ participants to make sure they qualify to participate (whether it is a mass survey, a focus group, a one-on-one interview, etc.). So, we screen people based on demographics like race, gender, age, household income, to get representative samples. But people are also screened based on their consumption habits. You don’t want to bring someone into a focus group about reality TV if they don’t watch reality TV. They aren’t going to have anything useful to say. 

However, a lot of the people who participate in market research have made a ‘side-gig’ out of it and they know how to finesse the process. Basically, they’ve learned how to lie to get into studies that they aren’t a good match for because most market research is paid, and they want the money. So, a lot of TV and film market research is being done on people who don’t actually (or at least don’t regularly) watch those shows or movies or whatever but have learned how to lie well enough in these screening processes to make it through. And because of the aforementioned time and money issue, clients don’t want to spend the time or money to actually find GOOD participants. They just accept that as an inevitable part of the market research process and decide not to let it bother them too much. So, a fair number of the people representing YOU as a media consumer are people who may not be watching Supernatural (for example) at all or who watch a rerun occasionally on TNT but haven’t been watching consistently or with ANY amount of investment whatsoever. You can see why that creates very skewed data. But that’s just the tip of the skewed iceberg. *** Second, media market research is conducted in line with the norms of market research more broadly, and this is a huge problem because media is a very atypical product. How people engage with media is far more complex and in depth than how they engage with a pair of jeans, a car, or a coffee maker. There are only so many things that matter to people when it comes to liking or not liking a coffee maker, for example. Is it easy/intuitive to use? How much space does it take it on my counter? How expensive is it? Does it brew the coffee well? Maybe does it match my décor/kitchen aesthetic? Can I make my preferred brand of coffee in it? The things you as a consumer are going to care about when it comes to a coffee maker are limited, fairly easy to anticipate in advance, and also easy to interpret (usually). How people mentally and emotionally approach MEDIA? Whole other universe of thing. Infinitely more complex. And yet it is studied (more or less) as if it is also a coffee maker. This is one of the many reasons I decided to leave the media market research field despite my desire to have some ability to positively influence the process. As so often seems to be the case, I fought the law and the law won. I could never make the other people I worked with in the industry understand that the questions they were asking were not all that useful a lot of the time and they weren’t getting to the heart of the matter. They were just following industry standards because they didn’t know any better and none of them want to admit they don’t REALLY know what they’re doing. Which leads me to point 3. *** Most of the people doing this research don’t have any expertise in media or storytelling specifically. They are typically trained as social scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, or math/statistics. And many of them do not have any kind of specialization or education in media/storytelling beyond the English classes they took in high school and the one Media Studies course they took as an elective in college. Most of them have a very unsophisticated understanding of narrative structure, thematics, tropes, subtext, etc. They mainly think in terms of genres at the VERY broadest level. Also, not infrequently, they don’t watch or have much knowledge of the shows they are supposed to be doing research on, beyond what they’ve read on IMDb or Wikipedia or what is generally common knowledge. Unless they by chance happen to watch the shows themselves (which often they don’t) they often know very little about the shows they are crafting these questions about. Again, partly because they think it is like the coffee maker, and you don’t need to understand it in any depth to research it. (I know this must sound insane to you as avid media consumers, but that is the general attitude among those who do market research) There is such a lack of sophistication in how people in the business side of the industry understand media and storytelling. Most of them are either MBAs or social scientists and their training has not prepared them to examine fictional works with the kind of depth that people in the Humanities (who are specifically trained to study texts) have. Somehow, despite the fact that the Humanities is all about understanding texts, that is the one discipline they make almost no use of in the business side of Hollywood. And boy howdy does it show. *** Point 4 – average consumers CANNOT ARTICULATE WHY THEY LIKE THINGS. Particularly media things. I know this sounds condescending, but it is my honest observation. It is unbelievably hard to get people to have enough self-awareness to explain why they actually like things, especially things as mentally and emotionally complex as media. What typically happens when you ask people why they like a TV show or movie, for example? They will tell you what they most NOTICE about the TV show or movie, or what is distinctive to them about it (which may or may not have anything to do with what they actually LIKE about it). They will say things like “I like the genre”, “I think it’s funny”, “The car chases are exciting”, “I want to see the detective solve the puzzle.” Sometimes you can get them to talk about what they find relatable about it, if you push them a little. But often they leave it at either the level of literal identity (young black woman), basic personality traits (she’s a social butterfly and so am I) or situations they’ve personally experienced (I relate to this story of a man losing his father to cancer because I lost a close family member to cancer). But the vast, vast, vast majority of them can’t go to the deeper level of: a) Why X representation of a young black woman feels accurate/authentic/relatable and Y representation doesn’t b) Why it matters to me that X,Y,Z aspects of my personality, identity, experience get reflected in media whereas I don’t really care about seeing A,B,C aspects of my personality, identity, or experience reflected in media c) How and why they are relating to characters when they can’t see the literal connection between their identity/experience and the character’s identity/experience. (For example, many people have argued that women often relate to Dean Winchester because a lot of his struggles and past negative experiences are more stereotypical of women – being forced to raise a younger sibling on behalf of an actual parent, being seen and treated as beautiful/sexually desirable but vacuous/unintelligent, his body being treated as an instrument for a more powerful group to quite literally possess, etc. Part of the reason Supernatural has always been such a mystery/problem for the CW and Warner Bros is they could never crack the code at this level. Never.) Part of the reason they can’t crack these codes is average people CANNOT give you that kind of feedback in a survey or a focus group, or even an in-depth interview (much of the time). They just don’t have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to get it at that level. Let alone asking them to articulate why Game of Thrones is compelling to them in an era where wealth disparity is creating a ruling class that is fundamentally incompetent at maintaining a just/functional society, which is especially concerning at this particular moment, given the existential threat we face due to climate change. And the truth is, that IS part of what people – even average people – are responding to in Game of Thrones. But what they’ll tell you when you do market research on it is: they like the dragons, they like the violence, they relate to Tyrion Lannister being a smart mouth, maybe they’ll say they like the moral ambiguity of many of the conflicts (if they are more sophisticated than average). But the ‘Dean Winchester is heavily female coded despite his veneer of ultra-masculinity’ or the ‘Game of Thrones is a prescient metaphor for the current political dynamics and fissures of modern western society’ is the level you ACTUALLY need to get to. And most market research can’t get you that because the people ASKING the questions don’t know what to ask to get to this level, and most of the respondents couldn’t give you the answers even IF you were asking them the right questions (which usually you are not) And I’m not saying average people are dumb because they can’t do this. But it requires practice, it requires giving the matter a great deal of in-depth thought, and most people just don’t care enough about it to do that while taking a market research survey. (I know this is going to feel counter-intuitive to people on Tumblr. But you have to remember, you are NOT average media consumers. You are highly atypical media consumers who have far more self-awareness and a much more sophisticated engagement with media than the average person watching TV. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here talking about it in the first place) Point 4.1 – People also lie/misrepresent their own experiences to market researchers because they want to maintain certain self-narratives. You have no idea how many people would get disqualified from our surveys for saying they watched less than 5 hours of TV a week. And sure, that might actually be true for a few of them. But if you watch TV with any regularity at all (which most people in modern America do) you probably watch more than 5 hours a week. The problem is, people think it makes them sound lazy to say they watch 15-20 hours a week, even though that’s about 2-3 hours a day (which actually isn’t THAT high). People lie and misrepresent their behaviors, thoughts and feelings because it can be socially uncomfortable to admit you do what you actually do or feel how you actually feel, even in the context of an anonymous survey, let alone a focus group or a one-on-one interview. People want to make themselves look good to THEMSELVES and to the researchers asking them questions. But that makes the market research data on media (and lots of other things) very questionable. For example, one finding we saw more than once in the surveys I was involved in conducting was people would radically downplay how much the romance elements of a story mattered to them, even large portions of female respondents. When we would ask people in surveys what parts of the story they were most invested in, romances ALWAYS came out among the lowest ranked elements. And yet, any passing familiarity with fandom would tell you that finding is just WRONG. It’s wrong. People are just flat out lying about how much that matters to them because of the negative connotations we have around being invested in romance. And never mind the issue of erotic/sexual content. (I don’t mean sexual identity here, I mean sexy content). The only people who will occasionally cop to wanting the erotic fan service is young men (and even they are hesitant to do so in market research) and women frequently REFUSE to admit that stuff in market research, or they radically downplay how much it matters to them and in what ways. There is still so much stigma towards women expressing sexuality in that way. Not to mention, you have to fight tooth and nail to even include question about erotic/sexual content because oftentimes the clients don’t even want to go there at all, partly because it is awkward for everyone involved to sit around crafting market research questions to interrogate what makes people hot and bothered. That’s socially awkward for the researchers doing the research and the businesspeople who have to sit in rooms and listen to presentations about why more women find Spock sexier than Kirk. (Which was a real thing that happened with the original Star Trek, and the network couldn’t figure out why) Aside from people not have enough deeper level self-awareness to get at what they really like about media content, they also will lie or misrepresent certain things to you because they are trying to maintain certain self-narratives and are socially performing that version of themselves to researchers. *** Point 5 – Qualitative data is way more useful for understanding people’s relationships to media. However, quantitative data is way more valued and relied upon both due to larger market research industry standards and because quantitative data is just seen as harder/more factual than qualitative data. A lot of media market research involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data and reporting jointly on both. (Sometimes you only do one or the other, depending on your objectives, but doing both is considered ‘standard’ and higher quality). However, quantitative data is heavily prioritized in reporting and when there is a conflict between what they see in qualitative versus quantitative data, the quant data is usually relied upon to be the more accurate of the two. This is understandable to an extent, because quantitative surveys usually involve responses from a couple thousand participants, whereas qualitative data involves typically a few dozen participants at most, depending on whether you did focus groups, individual interviews, or ‘diaries’/ethnography. The larger sample is considered more reliable and more reflective of ‘the audience’ as a whole. However, quantitative surveys usually have the flattest, least nuanced data, and they can only ever reflect what questions and choices people in the survey were given. In something like focus groups or individual interviews or ethnographies, you still structure what you ask people, but they can go “off script.” They can say things you never anticipated (as a researcher) and can explain themselves and their answers with more depth. In a survey, participants can only “say” what they survey lets them say based on the questions and question responses that are pre-baked for them. And as I’ve already explained, a lot of times these quantitative surveys are written by people with no expertise in media, fiction, or textual analysis, and so they often are asking very basic, not very useful questions. In sum, the data that is the most relied upon is the least informative, least nuanced data. It is also the MOST likely to reflect the responses of people who don’t actually qualify for the research but have become good at scamming the system to make extra money. With qualitative research, they are usually a little more careful screening people (poorly qualified participants still make it through, but not as often as with mass surveys, where I suspect a good 35% of participants, at least, probably do not actually qualify for the research and are just working the system). 

Most commonly, when market research gets reported to business decision-makers, it highlights the quantitative data, and uses the qualitative data to simply ‘color in’ the quantitative data. Give it a face, so to speak. Qualitative data is usually supplemental to quant data and used more to make the reports ‘fun’ and ‘warm’ because graphs and charts and stats by themselves are boring to look at in a meeting. (I’m not making this up, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make adjustments on how things were reported on because they didn’t want to bore people in the meeting). (Sub-point – it is also worth noting that you can’t report on anything that doesn’t fit easily on a power point slide and isn’t easily digestible to any random person who might pick it up and read it. The amount of times I was told to simplify points and dumb things down so it could be made ‘digestible’ for a business audience, I can’t even tell you. It was soul crushing and another reason I stopped doing this job full time. I had to make things VERY dumb for these business audiences, which often meant losing a lot of the point I was actually trying to make) Point 5.1 – Because of the way that representative sampling works, quantitative data can be very misleading, particularly in understanding audience/fandom sentiments about media. As I’m sure most of you know, sampling is typically designed to be representative of the population, broadly speaking. So, unless a media company is specifically out to understand LGBTQ consumers or Hispanic/Latinx consumers, it will typically sample using census data as a template and represent populations that way. Roughly 50/50 male/female. Roughly even numbers in different age brackets, roughly representative samplings of the racial make-up of the country, etc. (FYI, they do often include a non-binary option in the gender category these days, but it usually ends up being like 5 people out of 2000, which is not enough of a sample to get statistical significance for them as a distinct group)   There is a good reason to do this, even when a show or movie has a disproportionately female audience, or young audience. Because they need enough sample in all of the “breaks” (gender, race, age, household income, etc.) to be able to make statistically sound statements about each subgroup. If you only have 35 African American people in your sample of 1000, you can’t make any statistically sound statements about that African American cohort. The sample is just too small. So, they force minimums/quotas in a lot of the samples, to ensure they can make statistically sound statements about all the subgroups they care about. They use ratings data to understand what their audience make up actually is. (Which also has major failings, but I’ll leave that alone for the minute) With market research, they are not usually looking to proportionately represent their audience, or their fandom; they are looking to have data they can break in the ways they want to break it and still have statistically significant subgroups represented. But that means that when you report on the data as a whole sample – which you often do – it can be very skewed towards groups who don’t make up as large a portion of the show’s actual audience, or even if they do, they don’t tend to be the most invested, loyal, active fans. Men get weighted equally to women, even when women make up 65% of the audience, and 80% of the active fandom. Granted, they DO break the data by gender, and race, and age, etc. and if there are major differences in how women versus men respond, or younger people versus older people, they want to know that...sometimes. But here’s where things get complex. So, if you are doing a sample of Supernatural viewers. And you do the standard (US census-based) sampling on a group of 2000 respondents (a pretty normal sample size in market research). ~1000 are going to be female. But with something they call “interlocking quotas” the female sample is going to be representative of the other groupings to a degree. So, the female sample will have roughly equal numbers of all the age brackets (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, etc.). And it will have roughly 10% non-heterosexual respondents, and so on. They do this to ensure that these breaks aren’t too conflated with each other. (For example, if your female sample is mostly younger and your male sample is mostly older, how do you know whether it is the gender or the age that is creating differences in their responses? You don’t. So, you have to make sure that all the individual breaks (gender, race, age) have a good mix of the other breaks within them, so groups aren’t getting conflated) But what that means is, Supernatural, whose core fandom is (at a conservative guess) 65% younger, queer, women, gets represented in a lot of statistical market research sampling as maybe 50-100 people, in a 2000-person survey. 50-100 people can barely move the needle on anything in a 2000-person survey. Furthermore, usually in the analysis of data like this, you don’t go beyond looking at 2 breaks simultaneously. So you may look at young female respondents as a group, or high income male respondents, or older white respondents, but you rarely do more than 2 breaks combined. And the reason for that is, by the time you get down to 3 breaks or more (young, Hispanic, women) you usually don’t have enough sample to make statistically significant claims. (It also just takes longer to do those analyses and as I explained in the beginning, they are always rushing this stuff). To do several breaks at a time you’d have to get MUCH larger samples, and that’s too expensive for them. And again, I want to stress, this type of sampling isn’t intended to sinisterly erase anyone. Kind of the opposite. It is intended to make sure most groups have enough representation in the data that you can make sound claims about them on the subgroup level. The problem is that it can create a very skewed sense of their overall audience sentiment when they take the data at ‘face value’ so to speak, and don’t weight segments based on viewership proportion, or fandom engagement, etc. Point 5.2 – Which leads me to my next point, which is that fandom activity that doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it doesn’t make you a ‘valuable’ segment in their minds. One of the breaks they ALWAYS ask for in data like this is high income people, and people who spend a lot of MONEY on their media consumption. And they do prioritize those people’s responses and data quite a bit.   And guess what – young women aren’t usually high-income earners, and although some of them are high spenders on media, high spending on media and media related merch skews toward higher income people just because they HAVE more disposable income. Older white men are usually the highest income earners (absolutely no surprise) and they are more likely in a lot of cases to report spending a lot on the media they care about. Having expendable income makes you more important in the eyes of people doing market research than if you’ve spent every day for the last 10 years blogging excessively about Supernatural. They don’t (really) care about how much you care. They care about how much money you can generate for them. And given that young audiences don’t watch TV live anymore, and they give all their (minimal) expendable income to Netflix and Hulu, you with your Supernatural blog and your 101 essays about Destiel is all but meaningless to many of them (from a business standpoint) Now, some of them kind of understand that online fandom matters to the degree that fandom spreads. Fandom creates fandom. But if the fandom you are helping to create is other young, queer women with minimal income who only watch Supernatural via Netflix, well, that’s of very limited value to them as well. I don’t want to suggest they don’t care about you at ALL. Nor do I want to suggest that the “they” we are talking about is even a cohesive “they.” Different people in the industry have different approaches to thinking about fandom, consumer engagement and strategy, market research and how it ought to be understood/used, and so on. They aren’t a monolith. BUT, they are, at the end of the day, a business trying to make money. And they are never going to place the value of your blogging ahead of the concrete income you can generate for them. (Also, highly related to my point about people lying, men are more likely to SAY they have higher incomes than they do, because it’s an ego thing for them. And women are more likely to downplay how much money they spend on ‘frivolous’ things like fandom because of the social judgement involved. Some of the money gender disparity you see in media market research is real, but some of it is being generated by the gender norms people are falsely enacting in market research– men being breadwinners, women wanting to avoid the stereotype of being frivolous with money) *** In sum/tl;dr: Point 1 – Market research in general is not well conducted because of a variety of constraints including time, money, and the historical norms of how the industry operates (e.g., there being a large subsection of almost professionalized respondents who know how to game the system for the financial incentives) Point 2 – Media is a highly atypical kind of product being studied more or less as if it were equivalent to a coffeemaker or a pair of jeans. Point 3 – Most of the people studying media consumption in the market research field have no expertise or background in media, film, narrative, storytelling, etc. They are primarily people who were trained as social scientists and statisticians, and they aren’t well equipped to research media properties and people’s deeper emotional attachment and meaning-making processes related to media properties. Point 4(etc.) – Average consumers typically don’t have enough self-awareness or the vocabulary to explain the deep, underlying reasons they like pieces of media. Furthermore, when participating in market research, people lie and misrepresent their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses for a variety of reasons including social awkwardness and preserving certain self-narratives like “I’m above caring about dumb, low-brow things like romance.” Point 5 (etc.) – Quantitative data is treated as way more meaningful, valuable, and ‘accurate’ than qualitative data, and this is a particular problem with media market research because of how varied and complex people’s reactions to media can be. Also, the nature of statistical sampling, and how it is done, can massively misrepresent audience sentiments toward media and fail to apprehend deeper fandom sentiments and dynamics. There is also a strong bias towards the responses of high income/high spending segments, which tend to be older and male and white. Side but important point – Research reports are written to be as entertaining and digestible as possible, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice it often means you lose much of the substance you are trying to communicate for the sake of not boring people or making them feel stupid/out of their depth. (Because god forbid you make some high-level corporate suit feel stupid) *** What can be done about this? Well, the most primary thing I would recommend is for you to participate in market research, particularly if you are American (there’s a lot of American bias in researching these properties, even when they have large international fanbases). However, some international market research is done and I recommend looking into local resources for participation, where ever you are. If you are American, there are now several market research apps you can download to your smart phone and participate in paid market research through (typically paid via PayPal). Things like dscout and Surveys On the Go. And I know there are more. You should also look into becoming panelists for focus groups, particularly if you live near a large metropolitan area (another bias in market research). Just Google it and you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. Again, it is PAID, and your perspective will carry a lot more weight when it is communicated via a focus group or a dscout project, versus when it is shouted on Twitter. However, that’s merely a Band-Aid on the bigger issue, which I consider to be the fact that businesspeople think the Humanities is garbage, even when they make their living off it. There is virtually no respect for the expertise of fictional textual analysis, or how it could help Hollywood make better content. And I don’t know what the fix is for that. I spent 4 years of my life trying to get these people to understand what the Humanities has to offer them, and I got shouted down and dismissed so many times I stopped banging my head against that wall. I gave up. They don’t listen, mostly because conceding to the value of deep-reading textual analysis as a way to make better content would threaten the whole system of how they do business. And I mean that literally. So many people’s jobs, from the market researchers to the corporate strategists to the marketing departments to the writers/creatives to the C-level executives, would have to radically shift both their thinking and their modes of business operation and the inertia of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ is JUST SO POWERFUL. I have no earthly idea how to stop that train, let alone shift it to an entirely different track. BTW, if you want the deeper level of analysis of why I can’t stop rewatching Moneyball now that it’s been added to Netflix, the above paragraph should give you a good hint