#if this one gets lots of responses ill make one about things ive eaten out of the trash

[chaotic-succulents]

Re-blog please, I'm curious!

[tigerdrop]

Cringe is dead, talk to me about the funny half-life men and their relationship

okay here is my essay. it is titled These Guys Actually Like Each Other, and Gordon Freeman Is Just Kind Of A Dick*

(disclaimer: these are just my 2 cents. dont take me too seriously! im just some guy online who has watched this shit too many times.)

first things first. these guys actually like each other. this is a key aspect of their relationship. benrey, obviously and textually, digs gordon freeman - you dont flirt that heavily with guys you arent into, and so much of what he says and does is geared around making gordon crack up. thats pretty gay.

but the counterpart to this is that gordon freemans pretty fucking gay for benrey, too. you may say, “oh, but word of god says its not requited!” and to you i will say: bull shit. gordon is uniquely obsessed with benrey compared to all the other characters. if gordon didnt like the fucking guy, he wouldnt giggle with him and share in-jokes with him and bring him up every 5 seconds when benreys not around. thats concern, bro. thats worry. thats real shit

but i cant blame people for thinking that gordon freeman genuinely doesnt like benrey. benreys partially responsible for some of the worst things that have happened to him, the Arm Thing among them. and gordons very insistent afterward that he doesnt like benrey. he even goes so far as to try to kill benrey a couple times. to this, i must argue that gordon freeman is just kind of a dick.

lets talk facts here. canon. Lore. from the moment we hop into gordons shoes, we can see that he is a jerk to every npc on his way into black mesa. this is his default: a dude who just runs his mouth and says rude shit. he calls tommy a freak within 5 minutes of meeting him. he infantilizes the guy and barely considers him a real scientist. he doubts that bubby is a real name for like no fuckin reason. in “real life”, this is because its funny, and wayne is trying to make a funny half-life stream. in a textual sense, this is because gordon “hlvrai” freeman is a dick. this is the way he acts, consistently, throughout the series.

(brief aside: this is why the whole “gordon is a nice guy and a great dad” characterization baffles me. the way he actually acts in canon is, in short, bitchy and lacking in self-awareness. and i love that for him, i really do. it makes the moments where he just tries to be a nice guy stand out. but thats the thing: his intermittent moments of decency and kindness are not the whole of his personality! this dude kind of sucks most of the time!)

the way that gordons general asshole attitude extends to benrey is complicated. in fairness, benrey makes it his job to annoy the shit out of gordon as much as possible, and that warrants a negative attitude, but gordons pretty paranoid and ends up blaming benrey for nearly everything that happens to him, regardless of if its warranted. this is a pattern he exhibits both before and after the Arm Thing. its a little bit of a dick move! especially considering that, prior to the whole “betrayal” subplot (which was not exactly planned very far in advance), benrey is no more malicious or annoying than anybody else gordons having to travel with.

(okay, this is kind of a subjective evaluation, but still. my point stands that benrey is not any more of a hindrance to his progress than anybody else in the science crew, and neither is he particularly more violent or murderous. hell, gordon freeman has probably killed more guys than benrey. benrey just tends to get.......special treatment.)

all that said, i am still convinced that gordon really fucking likes benrey. please consider with me the following: it would be remarkably easy for gordon to just ignore him and do what he has to do, but he doesnt. he could stop engaging. he could stop thinking about benrey. he could stop bringing benrey up to the rest of the crew every time benrey leaves to do his own thing for awhile. but he doesnt. and, again, yeah, the extra-textual reason for this is “two guys are doing an improv comedy thing and bouncing off of scorpy is kind of the point”, but within the text it reads to me as gordon not being about to get the dude off his mind.

and this is in addition to all the times we see gordon being genuinely nice and receptive toward benrey! its in the little things: laughing the hardest and longest at benreys jokes. only ever reciprocating that stupid underwater “BBBBB” thing with benrey. trying to catch benrey when he falls, despite his insistence moments earlier that benrey should hop in the wack ass crystal generator and get hypermurdered. fondly remarking that benreys sweet voice sounds beautiful. his sort of flustered responses to most of benreys overt flirting. none of this is the way normal people react to a guy they hate. this is all fuckin gay to me, man.

its this combination of the outward insistence that gordon hates benrey with his inner eagerness to be around him and think about him and engage with him that gives off strong “repression” vibes, to me. for whatever reason - pride, embarrassment, resentment - gordon maintains a front of hating the guy and wanting to kill him for a lot of the series, but it doesnt gel with the way he fucking giggles and plays along half the time that benrey starts fucking with him. its a game, and that game is one of the only ways gordon knows to manifest affection for him.

(remember “oh my god, hes got a knife!”? that was the gayest shit i ever seen in my life. tittering like a schoolgirl while benrey chases him around like “im gonna get you haha”. insanity.)

the cool thing about repression is that you can have it manifest in a lot of ways! and this is where things like “headcanons” and “my own personal affection for repressed bisexual men” come in. a lot of how i characterize their relationship is an extrapolation of a lot of things like gordons canonical insecurity issues/anxiety, gordons whole anti-bootboy thing screaming “internet wokeboy who means well but probably has a lot of repressed baggage” to me, etc.

how do you get massive amounts of sexual repression out of what you see in canon, you might ask? well. if wayne would stop having gordon talking about being jerked off by the suit, or talking about chugging a 40-gal drum of potion and having to hold his piss, or worrying about being eaten by benrey the moment he sees benrey at setscale 10, maybe i would have a higher opinion of gordon “hlvrai” freeman and whatever latent psychosexual issues hes got going on. but here we are

i havent even touched yet upon how benrey feels about gordon. this one is helpfully made a little more plain by the fact that benrey very much wants to suck his dick in canon. (i dont even have to go into details. we all know.) but IMO the best part about this ship isnt just that they dig each other, but how. benrey gets overtly flirtatious in the second half of the series, but IMO his preferred method of flirting is just fucking with gordon: chasing him with knives, shoving him around in a bathroom, trying to get scans of his feet. but all in like a slapstick, giggly, fun-and-games sense, you know? at least when it works.

a lot of the time, though, it doesnt work out that way. he clearly just likes doing it whether or not gordon responds positively. which is, you know, Weird. not very nice. but also in line with the way everybody else treats gordon freeman. gordons kind of the universes chew toy in any given universe, and the same holds true here. hes kind of helpless......subjected to 4 demons attempting to make his life as difficult as possible. in a way its cathartic.

sorry. i got sidetracked. anyway, benrey very much likes to mess with him and unnerve him and demean him and i will be perfectly frank with you: that is hot. i have problems and illnesses and one of them is that i am a masochist who goes crazy for that kind of thing. calling gordon a “dirty lil boy” and telling him to “look at the mess [he] made” is some straight up kink scene shit.

i like to imagine that a lot of this behavior isnt caused just by the guy who played him wanting to be funny and antagonistic, but by benrey as a character not really understanding what constitutes “pushing a joke too far”. hes not human, and whatever he is doesnt have a very normative way of understanding the world around him, full of people who actually get hurt for real and die for real. benrey expresses what seems to be genuine surprise and distress after the Arm Thing, as if he didnt know that his actions would have serious consequences. and it doesnt seem to fully sink in afterward, either.

it reads a lot to me like hes used to video game rules and treating people around him like NPCs. if they get hurt, its no big deal, because its not real. he likes jamming random buttons on gordons interface and seeing what comes out. its probably a lot of fun for him, the same way that seeing a streamer or a youtuber suffer for our amusement is fun. its like, you know, in my opinion, gordons very cute when hes frazzled. hes also cute when hes laughing. pushing gordons buttons has a 50/50 chance of either of these things. and this is how he ultimately flirts with gordon: by pulling his pigtails.

but at the same time, benrey does legit care about gordon and knows some boundaries. benreys the one most often shooting at enemies to protect gordon, and he spent most of the last act trying to convince gordon to turn around and not fight him because they were friends (best friends, to be specific). he just lacks a lot of the emotional intelligence it would take to express the feeling of “he digs gordon and likes seeing his face get all red and sweaty regardless of the cause”. and gordon lacks the emotional intelligence it would take to express the fact that he doesnt know if he likes or hates benrey and hes scared as hell that its the former

because, lets be real. unironic benrey-liking is a sign of problems disorder. just look at all these words ive written about it.

can you imagine? this bizarrely powerful, non-human entity that can shrug off gunfire and grow to the size of a building has decided that youre his new plaything. benreys the bored guy booting up skyrim and fucking around in the console, and gordons the hapless favorite follower that hes taken a liking to. its a really fun dynamic IMO

after all this, its safe to say my title is a little misleading. the asterisk stands for * and So Is Benrey, Actually. they are both kind of awful dudes who thrive off of teasing each other and they deserve each other. and i am crazy about it. thank u for coming to my TED talk

[angst-king]

Misery love Company pt 5

(mention of vomit, and ablelist behavior

It  had been a week and a half since Katsuki had eaten a proper meal, or felt normal. His entire body had felt like it was burning but that wasn’t because he had a fever, oh no he was cold to the bone but his bones were hurting so bad. Moving hurt so much, moving also made him incredibly dizzy to the point where he collapsed once or twice. These dizzy spells were accompanied by nausea, chest pain, his heart feeling like it would explode from his chest, feeling very hot and then suddenly he’d drop. 

Today had been the last straw or well tonight was the last straw. Katsuki was miserable, laying in his bed unable to be comfortable at all with how sick he was. A trash can next to the side of his bed in case he got sick but. Even just moving to get sick into the trash can made Katsuki feel very faint. Like now, Massaru was helping Katsuki who was busy getting sick into the trash can for what felt like the millionth time this week which made Massaru wanna take Katsuki to the ER but. Katsuki had been brainwashed by Mitsuki into the idea that he just needed to sleep it off but. This time Mitsuki wasn’t home and Massaru was too anxious to care especially when he heard Katsuki gasping for breath, clutching his chest, and whimpering to the point of tears running down his flushed red, and pale pink face. Massaru had to hold Katsuki up when the other’s eyes went back and he went limp, he knew the other had fainted again but this time he listened to his gut. He quickly grabbed everything he needed, and pulled Katsuki out of bed and into his car, and left for the emergency room.

When he got there he carried Katsuki in and allowed them to whisk his son away. Of course they had to ask the usual questions as well as some other ones but other than that Massaru was left in the waiting room. That lonely sickeningly white walled waiting room. Massaru knew he needed to call Mitsuki even if he didn’t want to know how his wife would most likely react though a piece of him hoped she would have a shred of selflessness to get off of work to come and see him.  

Ever since Katsuki’s condition began to make an appearance Mitsuki hadn’t been reacting to this well. She’d been rather dismissive about Katsuki’s complaints of pain, and rather passive aggressive with her replies. Then when Katsuki started getting sicker and sicker she wouldn’t even be bothered to help him. It was as if that was a job completely beneath her. Telling Katsuki to stop being weak or lazy and that he could do it himself.. The frequent fainting spells weren’t helping, making it even more difficult for Katsuki to try and help himself. It finally got to the point where Katsuki could hardly sit up without needing to immediately lay back down because he was gonna pass out.  Mitsuki ignored everything and passed it off as puberty, being a wimp, growing, needing to take care of himself. All her words were laced with a coldness that made Katsuki feel so weak.

Making the decision, Massaru called his wife and told her what had happened and, to put it frankly, her response wasn’t very empathetic or motherly. “Ugh what the hell! I told you not to Massaru!” “i-I know dear but come on, the kid fainted again and he hasn’t been keeping down almost anything but gatorade, and he’s in pain.” “Katsuki is just weak Massaru, he just wants attention and is playing it up to get it!” Massaru was getting fed up with his wife’s protests and replied in an annoyed tone.“Mitsuki, our son couldn’t even sit up on his own without blacking out. I don’t care if you think he’s faking, if you truly loved and cared then you’d come over here.” He hung up before she could reply as he didn’t want to hear another word from her at the moment. Still alone in this waiting room, waiting for any information on his son’s condition was making the man anxious. It felt like hours, upon hours, but it had only been one hour but. Time in here seemed to feel like forever, it went by so slowly yet too quick at the same time.

Finally, a doctor walked over to him smiling. “Mr Bakugou?” Looking up he sees the woman coming over to him and he gives a sigh. “Yes?” He says as he stands up, the woman approaches him and starts. “We’ve got your son Katsuki, stabilized the best we could here. We did some testing after learning his symptoms and well, the results aren’t great…” The way the woman spoke, Massaru had a bad feeling from the start, but said nothing allowing the woman to go on. “Mr Massaru, let's sit.” She says, now he’s feeling more and more anxious about the possible news. Nodding he sits down in the chair he started in while she sat beside him turning to face him. “Your son could’ve died tonight if you didn’t bring him. He was that sick.” That made Massaru want to be sick himself, the feeling that if he waited a day or two longer, Katsuki could’ve died. Still Massaru didn’t know how the boy could’ve gotten so bad or what was wrong with him, so he asked. “Wh-what’s wrong with Katsuki?” His voice wasn’t very strong, it was strained with concern and fear. “Well your son is sick, and I don’t mean that he has the flu, he’s chronically ill.” It hadn’t hit him completely but hearing that his son was chronically hit him but. How could his son just suddenly fall ill like this though? Even with a chronic illness, shouldn’t this have appeared when he was younger? So he asked what he was thinking “shouldn’t this appear when he was younger?”  “Well some things probably did but they never manifested like this or he did and the doctors just dismissed it as something else.” Massaru couldn’t help but feel guilty, his son could’ve been suffering for years and this is how he finds out. Twiddling his thumbs unconsciously and asking “So what does he have?”

“Katsuki has H.E.D.S which is called Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos syndrome. This is a connective tissue disorder that allows your son to be very flexible and have very elastic yet very thin skin. Due to him being very flexible and having lots of collagen his joints are very loose which means he can easily dislocate things and have horrible body pain from it.” Taking this information Massaru had more questions. “How could this condition almost kill Katsuki? Or is there more to this than just horrible body pain?” “Well I’m glad you’re asking these questions because, yes there is more to this disorder. How I explain this is I call this the H.E.D.S expansion back because this disorder has the possibility to contain multiple other disorders and problems and. For Katsuki those other disorders seem to be POTS and Gastroparesis. Though gastroparesis is a theory I’m not totally solid on that one but it's a good possibility that he has it.” This was so much information coming at him at once but he wanted to know how these conditions would have ended Katsuki’s life. So Massaru asked for the doctor to explain the second ailment. “POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Which is a heart condition in which standing or sitting up can cause the blood flow to pool away from Katsuki’s head and make him faint. It can also cause lightheaded-ness, chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, fast heart rate, tremors, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms can become very exaggerated during a flare up, which explains why his heart rate was so high but his blood pressure was low.” Massaru silently let everything sink in until he asked1

“so your theory about Gastroparesis? What is that exactly and why do you have a theory for this?” “Well Gastroparesis is a fancy word for stomach paralysis. It's when the nerve that controls the stomach’s contractions that move food from your stomach to your small intestine has stopped functioning or maybe the sphincter of his stomach to his small intestine won't open properly. So his body is digesting things way too slow which can cause lots of pain, bloating, nausea, the feeling of being constantly full or not hungry. SInce his body isn’t digesting his food correctly that means that he’s not absorbing any nutrients through what he eats by mouth….so if he does have gastroparesis they may have to find another way to provide him nutrition.” All of this was a lot for Massaru to grasp but he could also do his research but. Then he had another question. “So how are you guys going to treat my son, what are the plans?” “Well Mr Bakugou, I suggest that your son be transferred to a long stay facility because his condition is not good and we can’t do what a pediatric long stay hospital can do.”

That’s when he knew Katsuki’s world had officially turned upside down. Massaru couldn’t help but feel terrible. If he had waited any longer, if he’d listened to his wife, they may not have woken up the next morning to see Katsuki with a pulse. If he hadn’t listened to his own instincts Massaru would have never forgiven himself. Now his son was gonna have to be transferred to a long stay hospital and he knew Katsuki wasn’t gonna take this well at all. Still he wanted to see Katsuki and knew this information would be accepted better than it would coming from him than the doctor. “We can admit him, but can I see my son please?” “Sure, he should be waking up. He did faint on us when we had to get blood drawn and hooked him up to some IVs. Your son definitely has anxiety around needles, I can tell you that for sure.” She chuckles a little while standing up from her seat, Massaru follows suit and is led down the hallways to find Katsuki.

[today-we-will-survive]

meet me in the tree house

Moodboard made by @snowflakeu25

BTS au-imagine

Yoongi x Reader Y/N

fluff, romance

Word Count: 3.5K

A/N: This was a request from @snowflakeu25 💜

Three knocks on his studio door.

A gruff voice, muffled by the walls enters your ears and you twist the knob and push into the room with your hip since your other hand is preoccupied carrying a shallow box of takeout containers. A boy sits in a computer chair facing a mountain of recording equipment. Speakers jut from the two corners of the ceiling. Three large monitors sit atop the mountain, an expanse of panels, keyboards, knobs and sliders filling the valley below. At the sound of you entering the room, he turns around, his mouth twitching into a quick smirk before his eyes fall to the food in your hands.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” Yoongi replies spinning around fully to face the coffee table as you set the box down on its surface.

“Working hard?” you ask and take a seat on the leather couch that sits adjacent to him.

Yoongi stretches, arching his back and raising his arms in the air with a groan. “Always,” he says. “Chinese?”

“You know it.”

The two of you are quiet for a while as you work at getting all of the take out containers open and onto the coffee table. Then you pass him a pair of chopsticks before taking your own pair and grabbing the closest container. You’ve watched Yoongi become a big time producer, his songs winning award after award. You’ve seen him on tv, standing on stages, making speeches, wearing designer clothes and being adored by people that don’t know him.

Yet every Wednesday, you come to Bighit, the security guard giving you a smile and a nod of recognition and you take the elevator up to the fourth floor, carrying take out, walk down that hallway lined with albums that have gone gold and platinum before reaching the studio. And there you find him, in his baggy sweats and baggy shirt, sometimes a beanie to keep his hair out of his eyes and he’d turn and greet you with that same tired smile. He’s never treated you different. He’s never let the fame get to him. Probably because he knows how far of a fall it would be back to the bottom where he started if he were to let it all go to his head.

You moved to the city not long after Yoongi got the job at Bighit. The two of you have been best friends since you were in fourth grade, when he moved into the house next door to yours. He had a tree house in his backyard that you had been eying for a while and when his mom had forced him to come over and ask you to play, you’d been ecstatic to finally be able to see the inside of it. It was as cool as you’d thought it would be, and that was where you’d spend a lot of late nights during the summer.

As you got older, the tree house transformed from a playhouse to a safe house. If your parents were fighting or lashing out at you, you’d send a quick text to him asking him to meet you there. And by the time you climbed up the rope ladder, the hatch would already be open and Yoongi would be waiting for you, his ears open to listen or his arms open to hold you, whichever you needed. Usually, it was both.

Once he moved away after college, there wasn’t much left for you in your small town, so you followed him, getting a job in the city and hanging out whenever he was free. Which wasn’t as often lately.

“So what have you been working on?” you ask before shoving a piece of orange chicken into your mouth.

Yoongi perks up, swallowing his mouthful of food before spinning to face his desk again. “Tell me what you think of this. Then with a couple clicks of his mouse and a press of a button on one of his keyboards, the room fills with music.

You close your eyes so you’re not distracted by anything and listen to the steady rhythm as it builds. After a few measures, Yoongi’s familiar voice starts in, delivering the deep lyrics he’s become so well-known for. You can feel the smile spreading your mouth as you listen, your head automatically bobbing to the beat. You’re really enjoying the song when suddenly it cuts off and you open your eyes to find Yoongi looking at you, his hand poised on his keyboard. You frown.

“What did you stop it for?”

“I just wanted to give you a sneak peek. You can’t hear the whole song until the mixtape is done.”

“Mixtape?” you ask as your smile returns.

Yoongi smiles back and looks down at his hands shyly. “By the way, I’m making a mixtape.

You let out an excited squeal, reaching out to hit his arm over and over, his smile growing bigger with every hit. “Are you serious?” you finally ask when he’s rolled out of your reach. “You’ve been wanting to do a mixtape forever!”

“Yeah,” he chuckles and scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’ve finally gotten some time to work on it so I’ve been kind of messing around, writing some stuff.”

You pick up the container of pork fried rice, poking at it as you shake your head. “I’m really excited for you, Yoongi. It’s going to be amazing.”

“I hope.”

“It will be,” you say. “You’re crazy talented.”

Just then you feel your phone vibrate in your back pocket and when you reach for it and look at the screen, you can’t help but smile. The room is silent as you type a response to the message you received.

“Who has the audacity to interrupt our Wednesday night dinner?” Yoongi asks jokingly as he wheels back over and swipes a container off of the coffee table.

You send the message and set your phone onto the table before taking another bite of rice. “Just a guy I’ve been talking to,” you say. “Sorry.”

Yoongi blinks, obviously caught off guard by your response. “Oh, no, it’s okay. I didn’t know you were talking to someone.”

“Yeah,” you say with a shy smile. “I met him at a party last weekend and, I don’t know. We got to talking and now we’ve been texting each other a bit.”

Yoonig lets out a grunt, suddenly very interested in the container he’s holding.

“I don’t know,” you say again. “I think I’m finally in a place to start wanting to date again…you know, after everything that happened with—”

“Y/N,” Yoongi says cutting you off. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about him. I’m glad you’re able to move on now. I’m happy for you.”

You tilt your head as you study your best friend. His words sound genuine but the sentiment doesn’t seem to reach his eyes. “Thanks,” you utter. You hear your phone vibrate against the coffee table and you watch as Yoongi’s gaze falls to it for a split second before focusing back on poking his chopstick into his food.

*

*

Y/N: So Chinese again tonight or something different?

Yoongi: Ive got a lot of work to do tonight. I dont think I can hang out.

Y/N: Oh ok. See u next week then?

Yoongi: Sure.

*

*

Y/N: Hey, did u want to go out tonight instead of me bringing something? Theres a new ramen place I wanted to try.

Yoongi: cant hang out tonight. Busy.

Y/N: …ok. Next week then? I miss u.

Yoongi: Sure.

*

*

Y/N: ok. Im kidnapping u tmrrw night. I kno u dont rlly like going anywhere on Wednesday nights since u hav to work but we havnt hung out in like 3 weeks and I want to take u to see this new horror movie with me. And I kno that telling u Im kidnapping u kind of negates the whole “kidnapping” thing but I kno u dont like surprises.

Yoongi: cant.

Y/N:…really?

Yoongi: Sorry. I have to work.

Y/N: man…ur working a lot lately, arnt u?

Yoongi: its my job, Y/N. Maybe next week.

Y/N: Next week Im going to be back home to visit some family.

Yoongi: oh ok.

Y/N: Whatever, Yoongi. If u dont want to hang out anymor, just say it.

Y/N: Or dont. Whatever.

*

*

Yoongi: hey

Yoongi: Y/N

Yoongi: I know ur mad at me but please respond.

Yoongi: Y/N I was just being an idiot.

Yoongi: Y/N

Yoongi: Please talk to me.

Yoongi: look, I kno ur reading my texts and I kno u probably wont respond but if u end up seeing this, please meet me in the tree house in like twenty minutes. Alright? Thats where Ill be. I need to talk to u.

*

“The tree house?” you utter as you re-read his last text. As in the one at his parent’s house? The one that’s over an hour away from the city the two of you live in now?

You’re at a family dinner at the moment but you’ve all already eaten and now your parents are just talking to your aunt and uncle and though you’re a bit reluctant to actually meet up with Yoongi (since you’re still pretty pissed at him for ditching you for the past three weeks) he’s the perfect excuse for you to duck out early. And you do just that, saying goodnight to your extended family before telling your parents that you have to run but you’ll see them back at home later. Then you head out before anyone can argue.

It’s about a thirty minute drive from the restaurant back to your house. You can’t even bring yourself to pretend to feel bad for making him wait those ten extra minutes wondering if you’re even going to show up. It serves him right. The two of you have been best friends for as long as you can remember and have been doing Wednesday night dinner together ever since he got the job at Bighit. After all this, he decides he’s too busy to hang out? He’s never been too busy. Has the fame finally gotten to his head?

A terrible thought occurs to you as you pull into the driveway at your childhood home. What if he wants to meet you to break things off? To tell you that he doesn’t have time for friends anymore. That you shouldn’t come around anymore because it’s interfering with his work. That he’s outgrown you.

With an angry jerk of the stick shift, you jam your car into park and turn off the engine, yanking the key out. You can already feel yourself getting worked up as you slam the door and stomp across the yard to Yoongi’s house. When you get through the gate and enter the backyard, your eyes trail up to the tree house where it resides in the tall maple in the middle of the lawn. The sun is almost all the way set and the sky is already turning a medium shade of blue. It’s getting dark fast and you can see golden light filtering out of the windows in the tree house. He’s there. Good.

You take a deep breath then make your way up the rope ladder. This was a lot easier when you were younger, and smaller, and you can’t help but wonder how much longer this rope will even hold. With that thought, you scurry up the last few rungs, hoping the whole time that it won’t snap on you. Then, when you poke your head up through the hole, your eyes fall on Yoongi.

He’s laying on his back, hands on his stomach and his eyes fixed on the ceiling. At the sound of your arrival, he turns his head, his gaze locking with yours.

He sits up quickly. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”

You back away from the hole in the floor until your spine rests against the wall. “I wasn’t going to but it was an excuse to duck out of dinner early.” You cross your arms. “What are you even doing here, Yoongi?”

Your best friend gets to his feet. “I wanted to talk to you about…everything.”

“Well?”

Yoongi sighs, bringing up a hand to scratch behind his ear. A nervous tick you’ve always thought was a bit endearing. “I guess I just got kind of…jealous.”

Um…

You stand there against the wall blinking for several seconds, not really sure if you heard him right. “Jealous,” you finally say. Yoongi nods. Your brow furrows and you let out a humorless laugh. “I’m sorry, Mr. Big-shot producer, what the heck would you be jealous of?”

As if on cue, your phone chimes in your pocket and Yoongi’s eyes fall to the outline of it against your thigh. You’ve still been talking to that other guy from several weeks ago and now it kind of dawns on you, just what Yoongi is jealous of. The two of you lock eyes again.

“Yoongi…”

The apples of his cheeks dust a light pink, contrasting against his pale mint hair and he shifts on his feet. “No, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have been like that. Not when I’ve never even told you how I feel. I just wanted you to meet me here so I could tell you that I’m sorry and I want to keep doing our Wednesday night thing and you can text that guy all you want. And I know you don’t need my permission but I’m just letting you know that I won’t be a jerk about this. And I won’t start acting all weird. Date him. Marry him. I’ll still be your best friend as long as you want me to be. And if you don’t, I understand that too because what kind of person freezes their best friend out over another guy? You’re more important to me than that and…Y/N?”

His words finally trail off when he looks up and realizes you’ve been standing there gaping at him the whole time. Your heart is in your stomach and your breaths have become shallow. Are you having a panic attack? Here? In Yoongi’s tree house? In front of Yoongi?

“Y/N?” he asks again.

“What did you say?” you utter.

“What?”

“What did you say?” you ask louder. “Just now. What did you say?”

Yoongi fumbles with his hands for a second, running his fingers through his hair and switching his weight to his other foot again. “Uh…that you’re my best friend?”

“Before that.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Before that.”

“I was being stupid?”

“After that.”

Yoongi bites his bottom lip, the pink in his cheeks becoming darker. “…that I haven’t told you how I feel?”

“Yeah,” you say. “How do you feel, Yoongi?”

“I feel like…” he takes a tentative step toward you, keeping his eyes locked on yours even as the blush spreads down to his neck. “…like I’ve been in love with my best friend for the past five years.” He takes another step toward you. The tree house isn’t very big so even after just these two steps, there’s only about a foot of space between you now. “How do you feel, Y/N?” he asks, his voice much lower than it was before. You peer up at him, heat creeping up your own neck to settle on your cheeks.

“I…uh…I—” your phone chimes in your pocket again and Yoongi sucks in a sharp breath. “Give me two seconds,” you whisper then pull your phone out of your pocket with trembling fingers and check the screen. Yoongi leans in a bit to peek too. “It’s my mom,” you say and you hear him chuckle under his breath. “She wants to know if I want them to pick up ice cream on their way back.”

“Do you?” he asks leaning in more, his dark eyes now drilling into yours. You’d back up if you could but you’re already pressed against the wall.

“Do I what?” you ask him.

He hesitates for just a moment, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “Want ice cream?”

You both know that’s not the question he’s really asking and for a split second, your eyes dart down to his lips. You pull your own into your mouth as you try to conjure up the words. You’re already a flustered mess with this boy so close to you, looking at you the way he is, his body heat radiating across the small space between you.

“Of course I want ice cream. I frikin’ love ice cream.”

The tension in the small space seems to burst as Yoongi falls forward, his head landing on your shoulder and laughter bubbling up out of him. You can’t help but laugh too as you feel his shoulders shake against yours and then he’s wrapping his arms around your waist to keep either of you from tumbling to the floor. The room is filled with your giggling and tears have sprung to your eyes and finally, once the muscles in both of your stomachs are good and sore, he lifts his head back up.

The laughter dies down as the two of you lock eyes again. You watch with bated breath as he reaches up to brush the hair back from your forehead, his fingers sliding down the side of your face and lingering on your jaw. “Can I kiss you, Y/N?” he utters.

You don’t even hesitate to nod before he closes the small gap, his lips moulding to yours along with the rest of his body. His one hand tightens on your waist and the other slides to the back of your neck and then he’s tilting his head to kiss you deeper. Of course, then your phone chimes AGAIN causing him to jump back with a small gasp.

“Sorry,” you mumble, your head swimming as you look down at your phone still in your hand. You look back up at Yoongi again. “Flavor?”

Yoongi stands there breathing hard for a second, staring at you as he processes your question. His tongue flicks out of his mouth for just a second. “Chocolate,” he finally says breathlessly.

You type the word as fast as you can, getting frustrated when you keep screwing up, before hitting send and dropping your phone onto the rug. Then you reach out to grasp Yoongi by the shoulders, pulling him to you once again.

*

*

“Just listen to this one,” Yoongi says as he pulls you back down into his lap.

The computer chair creaks under the weight of the two of you and you grip the arms to keep from toppling over. “Yoongi, I have to go. I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

“Just this last one,” he says and slides the headphones back onto your ears. You’ve tried taking them off for the last five songs but every time you do, he wants you to listen to just one more. This is the last one, I promise.

“Yoongi, you’re really making me seem like a jerk of a girlfriend that doesn’t want to listen to your music.”

“But you do want to listen to my music, right?”

You smile and reach up to touch your palm to his cheek. “Of course, I do,” you say. Yoongi’s mouth lifts into a gummy smile as he nuzzles your hand. “You know I’m your biggest fan.”

“I know,” he says with a contented sigh.

He’s too perfect for his own good. So talented and so soft lately. Yoongi has always been more on the reserved side. Never cold but a bit closed off, even to you. But ever since the two of you talked—if you can even call it that—in the tree house, everything has changed. He’s revealed a different side of himself to you. A softer side. A happier side. You can hear it in his music, too. How happy he’s become.

“Alright,” you say. “Just one more.”

Yoongi claps excitedly before pressing a button on his keyboard and then settling back in under you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his cheek against your arm. He loves watching your expression as you listen to his music. Loves seeing how it affects you, loves seeing the uncensored reaction. He knows you’ll always be honest with him, because you want him to give his best. Besides his colleagues, you’re the only one who’s opinion he trusts.

As you listen, Yoongi starts playing with your fingers, pressing the pads of his own against yours so you mirror his movements, and then when he glances at the screen and sees that the song is almost over, he slides his fingers through the gaps between yours and locks your hand in his. You knew he wouldn’t let you go after this song.

You shake your head until the headphones slip from your ears. “Yoongi,” you say.

“Just one more,” he says quickly and releases one of your hands to pull the headphones back up.

[saxxxology]

BITTEN - Ch.4

After getting bitten by a werewolf, Sam finds himself trying to adapt to a brand new lifestyle that brings him closer to the girl he loves, but threatens to tear him apart from his family for good.

PAIRING: Alpha!Sam x Omega!Reader

WORD COUNT: ~2200

WARNINGS: non-consensual werewolf bite (not sexual), a/b/o dynamics: heat/rut, knotting, claiming, breeding kink, angst, time hop (season 9 to 12), and more.

NOTE: Edited by @kayteonline and @kittenofdoomage - please heed all warnings and enjoy! This is NOT intended to be a dark fic, but if you read something that bothers you, it is your responsibility to stop reading, keep scrolling past it, or contact me for content clarification.

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THIS WORK IS 18+ ONLY. DO NOT REPOST MY WORK ON ANY OTHER SITES.

Dean was in the kitchen when you walked up. He was cradling a large cup of coffee in one hand, and when he saw you emerge from the basement, his gaze fixed on you.

“How is he?” he asked urgently, “is he okay?”

You nodded. “It’s over. He’s fine, just hungry. Where’s Garth?”

“He went out with Bess. She’s in shock over what happened, so he took her to a safehouse out of state.” Dean watched as you pulled a pan from the rack on the wall and set it on the stove. “What do you mean by ‘fine?’”

“He’s not in pain anymore, his fever went down.” You cracked eggs into a bowl and whisked them around. “He just needs to recuperate for a few days, maybe a week.”

“Can I see him?” Dean asked.

You nodded and pulled a couple bagged chicken hearts from the fridge. “After he’s eaten. He’s gonna be stronger than normal for a while, so we gotta keep his human contact minimal.” You heard Dean exhale heavily as you started chopping the hearts into chunks. “Dean, I know you wanted to find a cure, but there’s nothing you could have done. I’ve seen people get bit and go through a lot worse. At least he’s alive. He’s a little different than he was yesterday, but he’s alive.”

Dean nodded and leaned against the counter. “You’re really intent on taking care of him, huh?”

“It’s my job to take care of my pack.” You replied, pulling four sausages from the fridge and tossing them in the pan, along with an entire pack of bacon. “Russ and Joba are gone. The Reverend’s… well, let’s just say I’m in charge of the pack, now. I care for Sam, deeply. If it were up to me I would have killed Joy myself so that didn’t happen.”

You heard Dean scoff, but when you looked at him you could see he was grinning.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Dean finished his beer and set the empty bottle on the counter. “Just… I never thought you’d actually spook over a guy getting turned.”

You shrugged. “I know when to care about someone getting bit. I wanted Sam to leave, I wanted him to forget about me, about the pack. I never wanted him to get bit.”

Dean nodded shortly. “The way I look at it now is, he could have been bitten and left to die. At least this way he’s got you and Garth and Bess to look after him, make sure he won’t get into trouble.”

You finished cooking in silence. Piling most of what you’d cooked onto a large plate, you slid one of the sausage links, a small pile of eggs, and several strips of bacon on a separate one, which you offered Dean. He accepted it gratefully, noting that you’d cooked the chicken hearts in  a separate pan. When you re-entered the basement, you found Sam sitting up and stretching his arms above his head.

“I could smell that from down here,” he muttered, turning his head to look at you, “is that normal?”

You handed him the plate and watched him begin to devour the food, shoveling a mixture of everything into his mouth with a fork that seemed comically small in his large hands. “Yeah, it’s pretty normal. And don’t worry about eating everything there, your appetite’s going to be pretty out there for the next couple days.”

Within minutes, Sam had completely annihilated the food on the plate. He tilted his head back against the wall, his lips parted as he sighed in satisfaction. “There was a heart in there, wasn’t there?”

“Two. Small ones, just chicken, nothin’ special.” You took the plate from him and set it down on the floor before snuggling into him. “How do you feel?”

Sam exhaled heavily and slipped an arm around your shoulders. “Not hungry anymore, definitely not tired… I feel strong. Stronger than before.” He flexed his arms, examining the muscles that bulged under the gray sleepshirt. He seemed bigger. “Actually, I feel like I need to run, get out…”

“There’s the punching bag.” You gestured to the slightly misshapen tool in the corner. “I can’t let you out yet, gotta know you can control yourself around humans.”

“Humans…” Sam looked down at his lap and swallowed. “That’s right, I’m not human anymore.”

You shook your head. “That’s not entirely true. You’re still human here,” you put a hand over his heart. “You’ll still be able to function like a human, your instincts are just rewired a bit, that’s all.”

Sam scoffed. “Yeah, what happens when I wolf out and go nuts?”

“That won’t happen.” You nuzzled his shoulder and stood with him as he shuffled over to the punching bag. He gave it an experimental nudge with his fist. “Want to see Dean?”

He nodded apprehensively. “Yeah, but I don’t wanna try to hurt him.”

“Sam, you won’t—”

“You don’t know that. Make sure I don’t try to hurt him.”

You bowed your head and trotted back up the stairs, closing and locking the cage door behind you. Dean was still waiting in the kitchen, and he stood upon seeing you emerge from the basement.

“You can see him, but we have to be careful,” you said quietly. “If he smells you he could try to get at you, that’s gonna be his first instinct. The cage door down there has silver on it, so if he tries anything it’ll hurt, bad, but I need you to stay on the stairs, keep your distance.”

Dean held his hands up as if in surrender. “Trust me, I’ll be keepin’ my distance.”

You led him down the basement, slowly, his boots clunking heavily on the thick wooden planks. You could hear the dull, repetitive THWACK of Sam’s fists against the punching bag, but after the basement door closed, they ceased, and the space fell silent as you and Dean came down the steps. A little more than halfway down, you motion for him to stop.

“Dean, stay here.”

He nodded quietly and waited for you to slip past the cage, locking it behind you.

Sam was standing in the corner by the punching bag, his arms folded across his middle. You motioned for him to walk over, but he shook his head. “Y/N, I can’t… I don’t want him to see me like this. I can smell him, I can hear his heartbeat.”

“You won’t hurt him.” You walked closer to him, reaching for one of his hands. “Sam, come on, I’ll be there. The door’s got silver on it, you won’t be able to get out.”

Sam lowered his voice. “What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t. Now come on.” You led him slowly over to the wire door. His heartbeat increased with every step, and you heard his breathing grow more and shakier.

When Dean came into view, you didn’t know if Sam was going to recoil or lunge at the gate. He could hear Dean’s heartbeat, steady and slow, the rush of blood pumping through his veins, traces of whiskey and cedar covering up the thick, coppery scent…

...No, stop it! That’s your brother! You wouldn’t bite your own brother!

“Sammy?” Dean’s voice was quiet as he took another step down the stairs. “Hey, it’s me.”

Sam paused, took a deep breath. “I know.” He looked down at the ground and closed his eyes, trying as hard as he could to stop from hurling himself at the wall of the cage. “How’ve you been?”

“Uh, worried, for one,” Dean chuckled in an attempt to lighten the mood, “I went out for a little during the night, tried looking for a cure or something…”

“Yeah.” Sam swallowed and clenched his fist. He didn’t know what the fuck was happening, but all he wanted to do was break out of the cage and rip his brother’s chest apart, get at the thick, pulsing muscle that was hidden behind bone and sinew, devour the warm, blood-drenched organ that kept his brother alive…

No! Goddamn it! Stop!

“I thought you’d be gone.” Sam cleared his throat as a fresh wave of hunger washed over him.

“Had to make sure you’re okay, didn’t I?” Dean caught your warning glance to stay where he was and decided not to take the last two steps down. Hell, he might be too close already. “How do you feel?”

Sam swallowed thickly as you increased the pressure on his hand. “Honestly, I feel good. I’m strong, I’m not hurting, just wanna get the hell out of here.”

“And why can’t you?” Dean shifted his gaze back and forth between you and Sam.

“Because if I get out of here I’m not gonna be able to stop myself from trying to hurt you or someone else,” Sam stated bluntly.

Dean seemed taken aback by Sam’s words. Apparently, he hadn’t considered just how dangerous Sam really was until he’d said it. “Sam, you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know what I’d do, Dean, hell, I don’t know what I’d do.” Sam’s body trembled as he spoke, but he stood his ground. “The only reason I’m not going after you right now is that I know I shouldn’t, but if Y/N wasn’t here with me, if this happened somewhere else… I don’t know if either of us would be alive right now.”

You saw Dean swallow, saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, and heard Sam growl, low and deep in his chest.

“Sam, don’t say that.”

“You’re not in the place to tell me what to do, Dean.” Sam retorted. “I’m a monster, both of us know that. You don’t know how… how hungry I feel right now. I don’t have a friggin’ clue what’s making me feel this way, but if you weren’t my brother… I’d kill you, without thinking.”

Looking up, you noticed Sam’s upper lip beginning to twitch. He was starting to lose control. “Dean, I think you should go, this isn’t—”

Dean, obviously, didn’t listen. Instead, he did the worst thing he could. He took another step, closing the distance between him and his brother by another two feet.

Overcome by hunger, Sam snapped. You saw his eyes flash yellow as his instinct to attack sprang free. He snarled, his lips curling back over his teeth as his muscles bunch. He lunged forward, slamming all two-hundred pounds of his body against the cage. His long fingers were pointed in two-inch claws, which curled in the wire before he stumbled back with a yelp of pain; the silver on the wire had seared his skin.

Dean fell back when Sam crashed against the cage, bringing an arm up instinctively to protect his face.

“Dean!” You shouted, pulling Sam back against the far wall and holding him there. “Get out! Now!”

You saw Dean stagger to his feet his eyes fixed on the snarling beast of a man now ten feet away from him. He was staring at Sam with a mixture of fear, anger, and sorrow on his face. Sam took several half-gasping, half-growling breaths before reeling himself back in. He collapsed to the floor, his fingers pressing hard into the smooth concrete. He bowed his head as his body shook even harder.

“D-Dean, I’m sorry!” He gasped out. “I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t help—”

The door at the top of the stairs slammed before Sam could finish, and seconds later you heard the rumble of the Impala’s engine and the grind of her tires scraping on the dirt road as she tore out of the drive and down the road.

Sam’s shoulders heaved with a sob as he collapsed back, breathing hard as he fought to still his shaking hands. The claws had vanished and his eyes were back to hazel, but he still shook with panic. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he choked, “I didn’t—I didn’t—”

“Sam, it’s okay, he’s just gone to cool off.” You soothed him. “He’ll be back, I promise.”

Sam shook his head and reached to grip your hand as you rubbed his shoulder soothingly. “No way in hell. He saw me snap and that was it. He thinks I’m a monster.” He turned his head, and you saw tears streaming from his now hazel eyes. “I am a monster.”

You sat next to him and wrapped your arms around him as tight as you could. “Oh, Sam, it’s all right. You’re not a monster, you’re not. You’re adapting to a new lifestyle, and yeah, you have some different urges, but you’re just starting out. It’s barely been an hour since you woke up, I didn’t expect you to stay under control.” You hugged him tighter and let him bury his face in the curve of your neck. “Dean got spooked, that’s all. He’ll come back.”

“Will he?” Sam straightened his back and practically glared down at you. “How can you know that? Hm? Tell me how you know my brother’s gonna come back thinking I’m still the guy he grew up with.”

TAGS FOR THIS SERIES ARE OPEN

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“Bitten” tags: @linki-locks11 @lez-boatz-writez @wotinspntarnation

[finn-nelson-for-the-win]

The Good Life: Chapter 5

Hello, my lovelies! Another week, another chapter of this story. I don’t really have too much to say before this chapter, so I suppose I’ll just get right to it.

Need to get caught up? The Good Life: Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4

If you want to be added (or removed) from the tags list for this story, just feel free to let me know!

@pink-royaute @believethaticanandiwill @milllott @likeashootingstarfades @i-dream-of-emus

The Good Life: Chapter 5

The bell to the lift chimed as the metal doors slowly slid open, signaling that they had reached their desired floor, and Finn stepped aside to allow Rae to walk out first.

“I still can’t believe that we’re on the fifth floor of the building!” Rae mused as she looked over the railing outside of the lift that overlooked one of the busy city streets.

“It’s a good thing neither of us are scared of heights, huh?” Finn joked as he adjusted his grip on the large box he was carrying in his arms.

Finn and Rae turned left after exiting the hallway with the lift, already becoming familiar with navigating the building after following the same path numerous times.

When Finn stopped in front of one of the doors, he turned to look at Rae, who was lagging behind slightly as she walked leisurely to take in the view from the top floor of the building.

“Do you have the keys, Finn, or do I?”

“I do, but I can’t get to them with this box,” Finn replied.

“Do ya want me to take the box from you?”

“No, it’s pretty heavy,” Finn replied with a slight grunt as he adjusted his grip on the box to prove his point, “but can you get the keys out of my pocket?”

“Er, sure...which pocket?”

“Back left pocket of my jeans,” Finn said as he angled his body towards her so she could easily reach his pocket.

“Alright,” Rae replied as she hesitantly reached her hand into the pocket of Finn’s jeans to grab the set of keys.

“Uh, sorry,” Finn replied sheepishly when Rae pulled the keys out of his pocket and it elicited an unexpected giggle from him, “that tickled more than I expected.”

Rae laughed and shook her head, but stepped in front of Finn to unlock the door and allow him to walk inside first.

Once inside the door, Finn walked into the large open space that would eventually resemble a living room and placed the box he was carrying beside the other tall stacks of boxes.

“Was that the last box?” Finn asked over his shoulder as he restacked some of the boxes to reduce some of the clutter.

“Indeed! Who knew that between the two of us, we’d have so much stuff?” Rae asked with a laugh as she looked around the room at dozens of cardboard boxes that had been piled haphazardly around the room.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m very proud of how efficient we were today. We got all your stuff and my stuff packed into the moving truck and got it all brought up to the apartment all in a matter of hours!”

“That’s pretty impressive! We make a good team, huh?” Rae asked as she walked to stand beside Finn and bumped his hip with hers playfully.

“We absolutely do,” Finn replied as he wrapped an arm around Rae’s shoulders and pulled her slightly closer, “I think we deserve to reward our hard work. We should order some takeaway since we have no food here yet and then after we’ve eaten if we feel up to it, we can start unpacking boxes. What do you think about that?”

“I think it’s a great idea. I’ll order and you can go pick it up, if that’s alright with you? What do you want to eat?”

“Of course! I don’t have a preference, I’m just starving and would like a lot of food,” Finn added with a smile as he walked away.

Rae called in their takeaway order while Finn reorganized the boxes against the perimeter of the room to ensure that they had a clear path to walk around without tripping.

“Alright, our order should be ready in less than half an hour. I ordered from the Chinese restaurant just down the street because their online reviews looked really good. I hope that’s alright with you.”

“It’s great, thank you. I’ll leave to go pick it up as soon as I find my keys again,” Finn replied with a nervous chuckle.

“Your keys are on the kitchen counter,” Rae replied with a fond smile at Finn’s forgetfulness, “Do you want me to try to find some plates and utensils in one of these boxes while you’re gone?”

“Yeah, that’d be great!”

Once Finn grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone off of the counter where he had left them, he left to go pick up their takeaway order.

Rae searched through the stacks of boxes trying to find whatever she thought Finn and she would need to eat their takeaway and before long she heard the door unlock and Finn walking through the door.

“Sorry if I took longer than you expected. I, uh, wanted to--what is this?”

Rae beamed with pride at the look of surprise on Finn’s face when he walked into the living room to see a small lamp on top of a short stack of boxes to subtly light the room as well as a pile of pillows and blankets strategically arranged to make the floor more comfortable to sit on, since the couch they had bought online wouldn’t be delivered until next weekend.

“I was looking for the boxes with dishes in them and I got a little carried away,” Rae replied with a shrug as she walked up to take the bags of food from Finn.

“Well it looks great! I thought it seemed appropriate that we mark the occasion today with a drink,” Finn replied as he pulled a pack of beer from one of the bags Rae had placed on the kitchen counter, “so I picked this up too. I know it’s not champagne or anything fancy, but...”

“Don’t worry about it. Champagne is disgusting anyways,” Rae replied with a chuckle as she continued unpacking the bags of takeaway containers onto the counter.

“We can go ahead and serve ourselves food and then I also have my laptop here if you wanted to watch something or listen to music while we eat.”

“I don’t feel like paying close attention to anything, so maybe we can just put on some music?” Rae suggested.

After they had served themselves plates full of various entrees, noodles, and sautéed vegetables, Rae sat down on the pile of pillows and blankets as Finn grabbed his laptop to put on one of his many playlists to listen to in the background.

“It’s crazy to think how quickly everything has moved. I mean, less than a month ago I was panicking about how I was going to find a roommate and a little over a week ago we were barely starting to tour potential apartment!” Rae mused as she ate.

“No kidding! If you’d told me over a month ago that I would have moved out of my Da’s house and be living with you, I wouldn’t ever believe it,”

“Oh wow! Thanks, Finn!” Rae scoffed.

“That’s not what I meant! I just meant that I wasn’t serious about moving out until I found out how badly you needed to find a roommate. Even when I first suggested it, it was just a spur of the moment kind of thing. I couldn’t even fathom why you had agreed to be my roommate, if I’m being honest.”

“Well I’m glad that this whole thing worked out as well as it has so far!”

“Me too, Rae!” Finn replied as he lifted his can of beer into the air in cheers.

The pair continued eating and talking until both were completely stuffed and pleasantly buzzed on cheap beer.

“Wow,” Rae began after a long yawn, “I’m so exhausted!”

“I know what you mean! After lifting all those boxes, I’m sure both our arms are gonna be sore tomorrow.”

Rae leaned over to place both of their now-empty plates on top of one of the nearby boxes. When she sat back, Rae angled her body so she was leaning into Finn’s side.

She looked over at him, silently asking if that was okay, and while he looked a bit surprised, he didn’t hesitate to wrap his arm around her in a loose embrace.

“I don’t want to unpack boxes tonight. I have the day off of work tomorrow as well, so I’ll unpack tomorrow while you’re at work.”

“I can’t let you unpack everything alone! I’ll play hooky from work and stay here to unpack with you,” Finn replied.

“You don’t have to!”

“No, but I want to.”

“Alright,” Rae replied with a small smile as she allowed her eyes to slowly drift shut as they continued talking and listening to music.

When Finn stood from the ground and grabbed the dirty dishes to wash, he looked back to see Rae curled up on the pile of blankets, scrolling through her phone.

“Did you want another beer before I put them in the fridge?” Finn asked from the kitchen after he had finished washing their dishes and setting them aside to dry.

When he did not get a response, Finn walked out into the living room and was surprised to see Rae asleep on the pile of blankets, snoring lightly.

Finn chuckled quietly, walking back into the kitchen only long enough to turn off the light and returned to the living room.

Finn grabbed Rae’s phone from beside her face where she was laying down and set it on the box closest to her so she could easily find it in the morning.

With all of their larger furniture being delivered over the next week, Finn and Rae had already determined that they would be sleeping on the floor for the foreseeable future, so Finn simply unfolded one of the blankets that Rae was not laying on top of and covered her up with it. Finn considered his options for just a moment before shrugging and laying down on the pile of blankets and pillows in the space beside Rae and allowed the dizzying combination of exertion and excitement to lull him into a state of much needed sleep.

A/N: Yay! Move-in day is over and Finn and Rae are OFFICIALLY roommates! I know this point took a while to build up to, so I made a point to make this chapter extra cute and show how quickly Rae and Finn are getting used to the idea of living together and how adorably domestic these two idiots are even though they’ve only lived together less than a day.

The cuteness has only just begun and even just based on the chapters that I’ve already written or mapped out, there is a lot of fun shenanigans in the upcoming chapters. I know the last couple chapters have been super dialogue-heavy between Rae and Finn (idk how y’all feel about this...I LOVE to read/write dialogue-heavy stuff, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea), but in the future chapters I’m bringing the gang back and we’ll get to see how the gang feels about the Rae/Finn living situation now that more time has passed.

Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter and as always: Stay awesome, my friends! :)

[solidburnreturned]

by popular demand, here is my oc chatter regarding stuff like relationships n random character traits. its rly long oops but i divided it by character at least lmao,, these are all things that i think id also wanna use if i ever use these characters as humans (which i def will at some point honestly)

- i thinkkkk i want toad and pike to date. toad would come across pike in their lagoon one day while hes wandering around on another wonked exploration and pike is like hey lol :B with their pointy teeth and long ass hair and toad is like :0 he just sits and talks with pike for hours and comes by a few times a week to hang out with them. they fall in LOVE

- fred and lani are def gonna date too. two butches who use he/him pronouns fuck yeah? they have a powerful relationship. mega BDE. power couple. not a lot of pda but alone together theyre both very loving and tender, its a vulnerability thing for both of them. like lani is very cool and can be either stoic or borderline obnoxious while fred is punkish. fred is very head over heels for lani tho 

- mardi n berg.....complicated....i gotta figure out how they actually end up together. berg is a jogger and mardi is a piercer/tattoo artist so that doesnt....make them line up very much in that department. ill think about it more and figure something out. itll probably have something to do with berg’s nose stripes and eye rings

- also side note on mardi......i want his backstory to include a grey period set off by his brother being eaten when they were both young at the troll tree. like he becomes angry and depressed, sorta like branch, his tattoos that he gives himself the only color on his body, until he learns to let go and his colors come back (high key this was inspired by 21 savage, mardi’s voice claim, and the line in his new song A Lot “my brother lost his life and it turned me to a beast”). ill develop this idea further but i just wanted to get it written down

- bismuth.......unsure. they had a crush on pepper and kept trying to ask her out until she came out to them as a lesbian, then they were like :’) but theyre ride or die theyre not gonna be an ass to her because they cant date her. they just care a lot about her. its like icarly

- gazpacho and jupiter CUTE two small trans trolls in That Love. i need to develop them more but. theyre just cute 

- talia is still a little too new for me to develop her......but im thinkin about it...

- kinda same with ernie and olive. they kinda mostly just exist as cute babby characters right now? if anything olive is a trouble maker and ernie is a chatterbox

- clem and thursday also fuckin cute as hell......clem was a nervous wreck asking thursday out but theyve been together like ever since, which is more than a few years. they have a rly cute gentle lovey dovey relationship. thursday is usually hanging around up on her gf’s shoulder giving her kisses on the cheek

- bea and crystal.......adorabl relationship......crystal is another character thats kinda nervous but bea is so chill n confident is helps calm her down. theyre both trans and love the hell out of each other. rly slow n steady relationship, bea is very patient

- pj and marcus!!!! dumb mlm rep relationship. pj is so so gay for marcus he can barely comprehend it. its a dumb ego boost for marcus but hes also very in love with pj, he just expresses it in a weird cocky way idk marcus is a nerd. i need to make more content for them i think about these two way more than it seems

- dwight!! he has a boat. he lives on the boat.....ive thought about maybe pairing him with toad and pike. deciding on his voice claim has been the most difficult thing ever

- kass and current HELL yeah buff gf and tol gf......they spar with swords and wrestle for fun and hang out at the beach a lot. kass fuckin loves the gem on current’s back. i gotta make more content for them 

- celia......i wanna do more with celia. friends with berg probs theyre both sporty. shes just a sweet giant troll who loves mushrooms. i gotta pair her with someone whose palette goes nicely with her pastels 

- carrot and harriet are literally cricket and tilly from big city greens just older. yeehaw siblings. havent thought about relationship stuff with harriet yet.....i think she also needs ANOTHER redesign her colors are just too heavy still. maybe if i can make her colors compliment celia’s that could work as a pairing? hm hm.....carrot tho is dating ford’s oc rye theyre gentle country gays

- rainer. hm. i dont think theyre rly the dating type......theyre just chill with being them. they just wanna swim and be funny

- hammond and andromeda are probs two of my least developed characters.....hammond still needs a redesign. he might be cute to pair with walter, theyre around the same age. andromeda tho i have no idea. she might be a nice pairing with eve? if i ever feel like pairing her with someone...who knows. eve is very carefree and might find andromeda’s energy too intense

- radish i wanna make more content for!! i rly like her a lot....i think shes another troll who isnt interested in dating. shes very focused on being a chef instead. loves her friends a lot!

- mack and pepper 2gether 4ever obvs......they have a relationship that gets richer with age for sure

- im just gonna ramble about mack. i thinkkkkkkk i wanna make her half latina? columbian specifically. she doesnt quite read as white and i didnt make her with the intention of making her white. anyway i love mack a whole lot and should really develop her backstory more. its not rly as like...””tragic”” or whatever as pepper’s i know that but she def has layers. i wanna give her whole family more depth. she has a very complicated relationship with her own feelings and motivations that i need to think about more fully. my powerful femme tho i lov her

- mack’s parents, robin and champagne, i need to like....think about them more. they have kinda a comedic relationship thats sorta inspired by roger rabbit and jessica rabbit. robin is a very caring, gentle troll who’s very smart and cares a lot about his nursing responsibilities in the village. champagne is very relaxed and the “voice of reason” character of the family. she loves a good party and has her party planning down to a science. both are very successful power parents. kickass family

- i already talked about topaz and marney in a separate post but i still love them both so much. big wesbiabs

- pepper....pebber. im gonna talk about her the most obviously gfhjdkrs i wanna talk about her mental health i feel like i think about it a lot but i never write about it explicitly? this is gonna be long oops hgjfksd she has depression and ptsd stemming from the trauma of her crash...im thinking she also has adhd and thats just something shes always had. her depression rly got heavy during her recovery and right after like...she hated being bed/housebound and felt rly powerless to her situation and just let it eat at her until her personality had actually changed considerably. like extroverted wild child rebel to introverted, soft-spoken sulker. this got better with time but she still is pretty introverted, just turned her moodiness into chill energy. 

- she has bad depression habits like letting dishes, old food, laundry, or just stuff pile up in her room until it gets overwhelming and she spends like two days just manically cleaning; or staying in bed for way longer than she should and messing with her hygiene; or eating way more or way less than she should eat in a day. just stuff thats hard to completely break out of when youre recovering. her color is pretty consistently the dark red but if shes having a particularly rough day she might look a little paler, or like a muddy brick color at her worst. thats kinda rare tho

- her ptsd is the thing she hates the most. for a while it made her feel very weak and she’d beat herself up over being traumatized by the crash which was obviously not helpful to her mental state but she was really all over the place during her bodily recovery. its part of the reason why she started working out, she wanted to reclaim some sort of feeling of strength and power that she felt she’d lost completely. she still gets really frustrated with this feeling of loss but she gets a lot of support from loved ones which has helped her not self-blame so much. her ptsd manifests mostly as nightmares/insomnia, chronic headaches/stomachaches, intrusive thoughts and sometimes flashbacks. the nightmares are what rly get to her, she really doesnt get a lot of good sleep and it can get to the point where she just doesnt want to sleep sometimes and she’ll stay awake until she crashes hard

- her scars used to be a big trigger for her ptsd, which is why she has her bangs covering the one on her face and wears long pants (her knee braces are too bulky for pants and would force her to wear shorts which would force her to expose her scars). she just. really really hates them. this is something she struggles with for a majority of her life

- once she and mack start going steady with their dating and start consistently sleeping in the same bed, pepper starts to sleep better. she still has nightmares that wake her up at least weekly, but having mack there to comfort her (whether she wakes mack up accidentally or if mack is already awake) helps a TON with getting her back to sleep soundly. it also just helps her sleep in general to have that comforting, loving presence in her bed snuggled up to her ;w; mack is a big help in general with pepper’s mental health, pushing pepper to make better, healthier choices and get out in the village more and have fun. mack for sure does not “”cure”” pepper of anything but shes a very positive light in pepper’s life that helps her pull thru tough times!

- i love all my goofy trolls so much. its so fun to just chill and blab about them to relax between working on big projects ;o; ty if u cared enough to read this whole thing ur so rad

[soytayleur]

year mmxxii, day iv: ένταση (éntasi)

my body feels like a thousand horns bursting at once. a symphony of all brass and no beautiful, delicate aria of strings and soft percussion. i am gripping my abdomen because i have and have not eaten. is my hunger an ambiguous conceit that i am making up so that i can have your empathy?

i had to work today, so i got up at six a.m. to take the bus and arrived at the college bookstore at eight. it was slow at first. and by the time more students arrived, my shift was ending. i stayed an extra ten to be nice. but i had to rush home and get back in time for my online residency because i didn’t want to miss anything. 

at the halfway point, i had stopped at starbucks and bought an iced peppermint latte. the sugar, the milk, the caffeine! it was what i needed. and as if the divine knew what else i needed, an uber driver whose former life was a masseuse in venezuela drove me home. her vehicle, a honda, was a little small... but it turned out that inside, it was a relaxation spa. the heat softly blew on my cheeks, pinkening them. there was soft spa music playing when i climbed into the back seat. 

“your car,” i said in awe,” it’s so relaxing. it’s like a sauna in a way.”

when i arrived home, i didn’t want to get out and climb into another hectic part of my day. in a way, i slacked in my responsibilities. but i’ve been working so hard for the past seven days that i think i deserved a little bit of a break from my education. i did go to a poetry reading. but it played with my perception of writing poetry as joy and reading it with such measurement. it felt more disarming rather than soothing. but is poetry soothing? what purpose does poetry serve today?

i’ve been thinking a lot about this question lately as i ponder what i could possibly write about. i have always wanted to write about family inheritance and loss. i am currently revising a manuscript from 2019-20 about the divinatory, almost-synchronous ability to find yourself in the middle of loss, growing up, and trauma. the story ends on a scene that is really the climax. i wrote in big letters on the page, not the ending, resolve it! because  it did not feel like a satisfying conclusion. 

i’ve written a micro-chapbook--a delirium of flowers--last year. in fact, exactly last year. i finished it a month later and sent it out to a press for their summer series. and to my wildest surprise, they actually liked it! it came out last september. but i’ve struggled with finding another writing project. a larger one, since my micro is only twelve poems of various lengths. while i enjoy writing about mental illness, it’s hard to pinpoint a specific creative project that makes me hungry. as i’ve mentioned before, i’ve thought about family inheritance and loss... but i don’t know what form that will take. and i become so caught up in form and genre that, by the time i actually have something, it doesn’t feel good enough. 

so before i go to bed, i want to say a little intention for my dreaming eyes. to see something new and in a different, more unique light. i’ve become so obsessed over certain things and certain languages that i don’t technically “hear” anything else. tonight, i promise that i will listen to whatever self is talking and that i will really listen. until later. 

xoxo. 

[allcatsaregreyt]

Sollux Captor - Today at 4:47 AM

[TA began trolling CA!] @Eri Ampora TA: hey, i know you really don't want to talk to me right now, and reflecting on everything, i can't say i blame you in the fucking slightest. TA: you don't have to respond to me TA: but TA: uh TA: please dont block me yet TA: because there's a lot a want to tell you and itll take a few messages to do it TA: afterwards ill leave you alone

Eri Ampora - Today at 4:49 AM

[There's no response. But there's no idle message.]

Sollux Captor - Today at 5:59 AM

TA: when i met you, you were just this fun guy who memed the appropriate amount to be unserious and likeable, and you were fun to mess with too. just. a really fun person to be around. i really wanted someone like that around in my life, you know? TA: the pitch crush i gained on you should have really stayed just a crush, because outside of playful banter and memes, our relationship didn't really have much foundation. you weren't ready yet, and i wanted more out of you than you were ever willing to give me. TA: you started getting flush for me while i started getting pale for you because the more i learned about you, the more i started to pity you. the more i wanted to help you. TA: i wanted to fix you. TA: what an arrogant thought, right? TA: but i never thought of you as a project or a puzzle, i always thought of you as a person, my partner, someone hurting that i wanted to see heal. i wanted to be the one who could help you get there. TA: but, well. i'm shit with people. TA: and we both agree that you have a lot of shitty qualities too. TA: i couldn't figure out how to help, the only thing i knew that worked to get you to open up was to push you until you cracked. no one ever offered any other solutions, and it was the only thing i had to get you to talk to me. TA: that was wrong to you, and i don't think i can ever apologize enough for doing that to you. it'll never be enough. TA: i feel like i was wrong for making you be in a relationship with me to begin with. TA: i'm proud of how far you've come, of how much you've healed. TA: but trying to evaluate that pride, maybe that's wrong too. maybe i'm only proud because you did what i wanted you to do. TA: and that's disgusting too. TA: i hate people doing what i want because they don't want to bother telling me otherwise. Sollux Captor - Today at 6:00 AM TA: all this time i thought i was doing the right thing. doing right by you. i genuinely believed it. i've poured so much into trying to get you to thrive and be happy that i lost that ability for myself, and i'm realizing that it not only wasn't ever asked for, but didn't even help. TA: i wasted both of our times, all these last few months. TA: i'm still guilty about hurting you, when i was trickster. TA: i remember the whole thing. i remember that i was made to hate you. but i was so bitter even without that. TA: bitter that you kept running away because you needed to be left alone, and i wouldn't give you that. TA: i should have given up, back then. TA: when of all the things you could have chosen to forget to make your life easier, you chose me instead. TA: that i was the thing making your life so terrible, that you needed to erase me from it to find peace. TA: what did i do instead? TA: i kept pushing. TA: maybe mindfang was right about me and i do have some kind of hero complex. TA: need to be a savior. need to create the disaster. TA: and it did this to you. TA: you deserve so much more. TA: you deserve someone who can love you the right way, not poison you with "good intentions". TA: i really hope karkat can do that for you. TA: i hope that nothing happens between the two of you because of me. TA: please dont be mad at him. TA: we never really even had a real talk about breaking up. TA: just some vague ventposts. TA: i've never been more blind in my life than i have when being in a relationship with you, eri. TA: i didn't know where to go, had no one who would tell me, and you wouldn't talk. TA: i had to do trial and error and even that was hard because you wouldn't tell me if i was doing something wrong. TA: i didn't WANT to give up on you. TA: but trying to help you has eaten me to the point of crying constantly, and i just couldn't fucking do it anymore. TA: my heart can't handle it. i couldn't do it anymore. TA: but i didn't have an intention to stop being your friend, or to stop supporting you. TA: karkat said he'd keep doing what i tried to do, and hell, god knows he's doing it better than i ever did or could. TA: he said that maybe, once you'd healed, we could be together again. TA: but i knew then that it wouldn't happen, even if i could be hopeful. TA: i knew karkat and i wouldn't be enough, that's why i used my contacts to set you up with a therapist who could. TA: i hope she helps you. > There's a pause. TA: i dont know what pushed you to want to kill people in my town, i don't know how saness found you to stop you. TA: karkat and i were really, really sick when that happened. TA: i could barely walk and still i told her i'd come there if i needed to. TA: i wanted to make sure you were okay. TA: but i TA: i felt like you didnt want me there TA: that me being there would have made it all worse TA: so i didn't TA: after i found out where you were i was trying to figure out how to make things better TA: i'm fucking terrified of star but i contacted him because you two were close TA: i thought maybe you two could stay together TA: so that saness wouldnt have to keep you prisoner TA: but then star told me that you two fell out TA: and i didnt know any other options TA: i wanted to talk to you so badly TA: i wanted to understand what was happening TA: i was at school when shit hit the fan and i asked saness again if i could go there TA: because there wasnt another way to you TA: and i was so fucking scared eri TA: i couldnt lose you TA: i couldnt lose another moirail TA: i didnt want anyone doing anything they would regret TA: and i didnt have any fucking answers to suggest anything TA: i heard you were going to that prince guy TA: nadire? TA: and he was kind to karkat TA: so i thought youd be safe there TA: and im glad you went TA: and fuck i've already said so much but there's still so much i want you to know TA: i'm sorry about everything that's happened with saness TA: i'm sorry i pushed you so hard TA: i'm sorry i couldn't be a good kismesis TA: or moirail TA: or matesprit TA: fuck i haven't even been a good friend to you. TA: i'm never going to regret meeting you, or loving you. TA: i'm never going to regret kissing you, or forget anything that the stuffed wolf stood for. TA: did you know i got the scarf its wearing from star TA: star told me not to tell you that but i dont think im going to talk to you again TA: star was the one who hired me to check up on you while you were still living with me too TA: i wasnt supposed to say that either but it doesnt matter anymore TA: you deserve to know all the things i didnt tell you or couldnt tell you or wouldnt tell you TA: ive appreciated all the time weve spent together TA: theres been so much trouble but theres been so much good too TA: i miss you TA: i miss holding your hand TA: im not going to live all that long compared to you but TA: youre someone im always going to think about TA: no ones ever going to replace you eri TA: so what if theres people with your name TA: so what if im dating one TA: hes not you TA: and hell never be you TA: hes got your voice but ive never heard you in his words TA: youre sweet and kind and troubled and so so gentle and TA: not replaced TA: im sorry i just realized you wouldnt care for any of this TA: im sorry ive guilted you so much TA: im sorry ive pushed you TA: im sorry i broke promises TA: im sorry ive hurt you TA: im sorry ive forced you TA: im sorry ive cornered you TA: im sorry for all the things i cant name TA: i blocked you because i thought youd be better off without me still trying to engage this awful friendship TA: and im going to want to every time i see you TA: because just seeing your username on the dash makes me smile TA: just like it did months ago TA: even after everything thats happened TA: thinking about you makes me smile eri TA: and it still will TA: im not going to go to your lighthouse anymore TA: im having a transportalizer put into the hole so i dont have to cross your property to get into it TA: and its far enough away that it shouldnt be a bother for you TA: ill stay out of sight so you dont have to see me at all TA: and if its still not good enough ill abandon it and dig out elsewhere TA: but i can't leave it because the bees need cared for TA: and im sorry for getting mad TA: at this point i dont have a right to be angry TA: i took your tag as an invitation and broke in TA: and hell thats probably what you were baiting me for TA: because youre fucking smart and im just a shitty lowblood that happens to know how to hack TA: i'm not going to say im sorry for being in your life TA: you would have died TA: and i dont know maybe you would have preferred that TA: but ive been grateful for the extended time ive gotten with you TA: but i dont think ive helped you at all since the start TA: just gave you a few laughs but ultimately ive only hurt you TA: and i dont even think youre still reading at this point ive sent a lot TA: youll probably block me before you finish because its annoying TA: so its probably safe to say this by now TA: before we cut this off forever TA: i want to see you one more time TA: i want to give you a hug TA: and i want to say goodbye TA: because youre a real person TA: and you deserve a proper seperation instead of everything happening over text [TA ceased trolling CA!]

Eri Ampora - Today at 6:05 AM

CA: i don't think i could look you in the eye wwithout feelin' sick. don't come to see me.[CA ceased trolling TA!][CA has blocked TA!]

[a-polite-melody]

A couple of people have suggested I set up a way to donate to help with Melody’s medical stuff that’s going on.

I’m not exactly comfortable doing that because we’re not sure what’s going to happen moving forward. Basically, I might start trying to get donations for the medical treatment we have planned, but find out that we can’t go forward with that or with very much at all and end up needing to refund most of what people had donated. And on top of that my dad made me aware that he put away money over Melody’s life in the event that she would need medical treatment. While what he had put away may not be enough to cover everything we need for however long she has left, it’s certainly a start and there isn’t as much financial worry as I would have thought.

I didn’t go over what exactly happened at the vet because I was so distressed that night, but I’ll do that now to give you all an idea of why things are a little complicated moving forward. Actually, I’ll give a full account of everything so far under the cut.

I’ll put a tl;dr up here...

tl;dr I’m not going to put up any kind of donations thing for Melody. She’s been through a lot over the week, and she may not have a ton of time left, but even if things go the most hopeful route, we’ll probably scrape by with what we have. I do very much appreciate everyone caring so much for Melody - the best dog I ever could have asked for.

However, if you’re still feeling generous, there is a family and a dog that need your help. I wanted to donate to them, but because of my money going toward school and my own dog, I can’t. Right now @vaspider has a youcaring up for Kusto [x]. If you do have some spare change and want to make a difference, please donate to them. I’ve been made aware that my family can cover what Melody needs, even if it is very tight, but these people need your help to keep their dog as comfortable as possible for the rest of his life (yes, it is a hospice plan).

A quick quote from vaspider’s byf:

“Kusto (SmallDog) is terminally ill. Please don’t send me messages of support that require responses. He’s 14. It’s fucking me up. I don’t have the energy to respond to those messages. I can feel that you are sad about my dog, and I appreciate it. Genuinely. I just can’t talk about it right now.”

So be sure to keep your support to things that don’t require a response.

Now on to Melody.

From August 4th to August 8th my dad, my uncle, and Melody were up at the family cottage (I was at my mom’s). According to my dad, everything seemed fine there. When they got home in the evening of August 8th, Melody didn’t eat, but it isn’t too unusual for her to skip a meal after coming home from the cottage. My dad didn’t worry about it and left the food bowl down for her overnight, expecting the food to be eaten by the time he got up for work the next morning like it usually is in these situations.

When my dad woke up the next morning (August 9th) he checked the food dish and none of it had been eaten. He thought that maybe this was Melody being stressed from travel longer than usual because of her age, but he wanted to get something into her stomach, so he tried giving her one of the hard treats she likes. Melody took it, bit into it, yelped, and spat everything out. He had to get to work, but once he was there he called me about what had happened, and said he’d try to get a vet appointment to look at her teeth. The earliest he could get was August 14th, so that’s what he booked. That night when he got home he gave Melody some cheese, bread, and lunch meat because they were soft and easy for her to chew, and she needed to eat something.

On August 10th my dad picked me up from my mom’s while he was coming home from work because I was going to stay with him for the next while. When we got home and let Melody out I noticed that her right eye looked strange. I took a closer look and realized it was nearly swollen nearly shut. My dad called the vet and asked if there was any way we could get in that night, but there were no openings. Rather than going straight to an emergency clinic (because those are extremely expensive) we called other vets in the area and we found one that could take us about an hour from when we called, though they had to get their vet to come in from their other practice.

We got Melody to the vet, and when the vet came in he asked if there was any way for either my dad or I to open her mouth for him to take a look at her teeth, since over the phone we expressed that she was not very good with being handled by strangers. We both said no. My dad can’t because Melody won’t let him, and while on a good day I can pull back her lips, because she was in pain I said that I wouldn’t be able to. So the only way to see inside her mouth was to sedate her.

They did a medium-low dose of the sedative into Melody’s back while I kept her head busy with cheese. The vet left for about twenty minutes, and when he came back to check on how she was doing, Melody was still wide awake and pacing around the room. He said they’d have to do an IV injection this time to be sure it knocked her out, and to do that they’d need to muzzle her. I asked if I could try muzzling her before we had someone try to force it on her face, they said yes, and I got it on her no problem with the help of some cheese. They took her into the back to do the second injection, and when they brought her back in she was already almost out.

The vet checked her mouth and felt around the eye and said he felt no abscesses or tumours or the like. So the problem was most likely that a couple of her back teeth in the right side of her mouth were infected and since the roots of those teeth go up near the eye that's what caused the swelling. He wanted to do blood work on her to see if the infection had spread to her bloodstream, so he did that, as well as an injection of an antibiotic, a pain killer, and a rabies vaccine since she was pretty much due for the vaccine at this point, so why not do that as well, right?

We were given antibiotic pills, painkiller pills, and anti inflammatory eye drops, they gave Melody the reversal for the sedative, and once she was able to walk we were sent on our way, saying that in a day they’d call about the blood work, and in a couple weeks they would probably be able to put her on anesthetic and remove the infected teeth.

Melody wasn't right for the rest of that night. She was woozy and not all there. She fell a couple of times because her back legs completely slid out from under her. I stayed up and checked on her every hour or so that night to make sure she kept breathing.

The next morning all was well. We soaked her food in water until it was mushy and she wolfed it all down! The vet called about the blood work and said the infection was in her bloodstream, so she needed to take another antibiotic as well. They also discovered she was in the beginning stages of kidney failure, which could likely be treated by simply switching her over to a kidney support food for now.

Things started getting better. Melody was taking pills fine, and while the eye drops were a struggle, her eye was looking back to normal. It was obvious her mouth was still bugging her, but that would only be until we ran the course of antibiotics and could have her mouth be operated on.

Tuesday morning (August 9th) I got up and started gearing up to go to work. I tried giving Melody her pills like normal - shove it in a cube of cheese, give her the cube, she’d grab it and scarf it - but unlike normal she very gently took the end of the cheese in her front teeth and tried to work the cheese further back into her mouth. She tried a couple times then spit the cheese wrapped pill back out. I tried again, and no luck. I tried feeding her other things, and every time she’d only take the very edge and try to get it further back into her mouth from there. I watched her panting and she would only open her mouth a very small amount. I called the vet and they wanted to get her in for X-rays on her jaw.

Once both my dad and I were off work we brought her in. She was doing better than she had been that morning, but she still wasn’t wanting to chew. She was sedated again for the X-rays. My dad and I were eventually brought back to the X-ray room to be shown the images. Her jaw looked pretty much normal, though she did have a touch of arthritis in the right joint. He then said he did full body X-rays, and switched to an image of her chest. He pointed out a mass up near her lungs and said that it was a tumour. At this point it’s small enough that it isn’t pressing against her lungs or heart, but we don’t know when it started or how fast it’s growing.

Knowing there’s a tumour in her chest is terrifying, not just because, you know, there’s a tumour, but because it also complicates putting her on anesthetic to have the teeth pulled. If the tumour grows very much by the next time we have an appointment (August 29th, the day before Melody’s 15th birthday) it will be too dangerous to put her on anesthetic because the tumour may interfere with her breathing or heartbeat.

So right now we don’t know what we can do. If the tumour doesn’t grow or only grows a small bit we’re going to try getting the teeth pulled. Of course there’s the problem that she’s very old, so being on anesthetic is already dangerous, and there’s no guarantee that she will be able to come back out of it, even under the best circumstances. If the tumour does grow enough that getting the teeth pulled would be too dangerous, we’ll likely start giving her a more powerful painkiller and just try to keep her happy and comfortable for however much longer she has or until the pain becomes too much for her.

I’ll probably post semi-regular updates on Melody for as long as I can to keep anyone who wants to know how she’s doing... updated on that I guess.

[blackrupee]

Wow your life sounds complicated right now I'm sorry for that. So you aren't gonna have any managers what the fuck? And OH MY GOD I hate when people come in to eat so close to close!!!! ( I work @ zaxbys) if someone is acting passive aggressive I would act even more passive aggressive- make that bitch regret it- regarding the 2 guys: 2 guys is better than no guys:))) wish the first one didn't pressure you though. How did the 2nd one hurt you? - and I care so don't worry about boring me

hi hello would you like to read a novel on my life thanks i talk too much (tldrs at end)

nah like.. we had been managing with a general manager and 3 assistant managers even though we really need 4 so as not to overwork anyone. we recently hired a new one from a corporate arbys (we’re franchised) and two just quit. like i mentioned, theyre not coming back even though the original plan was that their new jobs would be only temporary (6 weeks). sooooo now we have a general manager who only works weekday day shifts, one assistant manager who is relatively new (she had been working at this place for a while but was promoted to manager 6ish months ago) and another who is brand new but still has some experience. they said theyre looking to promote from within initially, but they might have to hire outside people if no suitable potential manager is picked. id love to get manager pay and its not like managers do anything hard so id be WILLING to be a manager..like the whole reason why i got trained on backline was because we have such a big turnover rate with backline people since it fucking SUCKS and i was wanting to be helpful and flexible. so like. thats what i offerred. but one assistant manager was like “lmao all youd do is swear at the customers” and im like bitch when have i ever?? i talk shit about them all the time but ive only sworn IN FRONT OF a customer twice and neither time was it directed at them. but i mean im sitting on a small handful of customer complaints so its not like the gm would even consider me probably. idk dude. i can be nice if you pay me to be nice. but i get paid to do food and do it fast……….so

but yeah literallyyyyyyyyy i have no idea how people can be so??? inconsiderate???? and they dont??? care??? im learning that my contant frustration with people in my personal interactions is due to a disconnect between what i value in  expectations and what actually happens. like. when i go somewhere i already KNOW what i want, so i say it quickly and competently. i preface a lot of my interactions with people im requesting food or services from with “i’m sorry but…”. i phrase things as “could i get” as opposed to “get me” or “i want” which sound HELLA rude tbh. id always have my money ready at the window or the register, im always trying to pay attention and not miss anything or just….be rude in any way bc i know fast food fucking sucks. i know some of the people i interact with probably hate their job as much as i do and i want to be the smallest burden i can be. and it seems like nearly no one else has these same values???? and i dont understand how people can just??? be? so? inconsiderate?

also yes bitch im the queen of passive aggression. literally the night before i was working a short shift and my friend was closing frontline and this bitch was closing drivethrough. i just got the okay to clock out and i was like “bye! have a beautiful night! just know that i love you so much and ive everything ive ever said has always been fake until this point! never meant anything ive ever said until now especially if your name starts with k or ends with ristin (drivethrough girl/the one whos being so difficult is named kristin) but just know that i love you!” and basically being really dramatic and extra as satire.

i guess for context the whole reason she decided to be mad at me was the other night when she was drunk and was like “do you even likeeeeeee meeee i feel like you hateeeee meeee wahh wahh wahhhh” even though im like…..yes bitch i enjoy your company? i joke/use hyperbole/satire/irony/whatever a lot but like occasionally id be like “ey yo you know its all jokes right u know i love u right” just to ensure that she knows but she fucking. ignores it all. i feel like she so desperately WANTS me to hate her and tbh i got fucking sick and tired of hearing her complain all the time about this shit! i fucking hate repeating myself! so sure. if you want me to hate you so fucking much there. i hate you. i fucking hate you so fucking much. like is that what you want to hear? is that validating? are you fucking happy?

its so fucking frustrating

but i will not be held accountable for her decision to be upset. because thats what it is. she wants to be upset, and she wants me to be responsible for it when its literally not my responsibility. i am absolutely not going to stand for this shit like i kind of want to say its emotional abuse lmaooo but im just so fucking sick of it. 

everyone knows that i take chicken tenders and turnovers that would be thrown out at the end of the night and she was closing frontline yesterday and made a point to throw out the turnovers right next to me without asking if i wanted any/leaving any for me. i mean i completely expected her to be that petty of a bitch so it was kind of funny tbhonestly. also im p sure she unfollowed me here lmaoo

with regards to the guys and this paragraph could get a bit tmi/nsfw: yeah the first one kind of sucked but i feel like a little bit of the New Person Nerves have worn down so id do better if we were to hookup again. because like i totally would love to have fucked him but…..anxiety. he was hot tho. like 10/10 body and ass holy shit. plus he complimented me on my ass eating so (assuming that was genuine and not a vapid ego boost haha paranoia am i right) hopefully he comes back for seconds. 

second guy ive had a longish history with. started talking to him at the beginning of last fall semester and we hooked up kinda regularly for about a month. things fell apart, we both understood that we wouldn’t be good dating wise but still enjoyed meaningless cuddles. whatever. it got to a point where he would only hit me up like once every month and a half or so and towards like january-ish he hits me up again. so im like nice cool lets chill. im getting ready for this but my phone is in the other room. while im doing this he drove by my place to pick me up (since he was on his way back from nashville), didnt get a response to an “im here” text (bc i was busy and tbh not expecting him to do that), and left. he lives within like walking distance tho so im like “?? sorry i was busy are you still out or should i walk over?“ and he texts me like “sorry hold up a thing just happened” and im like…….okay. so im just.. waiting around for him. periodically texting like “hey are we good for tonight and whats going on?” because like there was some drama with his friend? hes like.. apologizing and shit but this goes on for an hour. BUT. the ENTIRE time he’s dealing with this friend problem or whatever he’s literally on grindr. and at the end of this hour im like in full blown paranoia panic mode and i literally text him something mentioning this and he BLOCKS ME ON GRINDR so im like ??????!!!!??? and i text him (all while saying “not to be crazy or paranoid bc im probably coming off that way but like could i get an answer or something??”) AND HE LITERALLY SAYS HE DELETED HIS GRINDR. but thats a LIE because i have a secondary account to see like……if guys are still on grindr/if a thing with a guy might turn into something more like if i see he’s not on grindr as much?? thats prob incredibly stalkerish and probably really creepy but hey. thats me. so i KNOW he lied to me but i cant really say “hey ur a liar” without disclosing this weird creepy stalker part of me (funnily enough this isnt the first time a guy has lied to me and i caught it with my secondary account! so it proves to have some function use in the end. not totally crazy). so. yeah. that was the incident. after this i dont trust him at all, and i still dont, but i had it in my mind to like somehow get him to fall in love with me just so i could break his heart for doing this? never really worked out. so now im at the point where im like….eh he’s a piece of shit and i hate him but ill cuddle with him bc it feels good

back to nsfw/tmi: the sex was okay. he’s weird about people being near his like….dick and stuff because he was raped and i totally get it bc i was too but he was comfortable enough for me to finger him and my finger still hurts from where he clenched when he came lmaoooooo. was totally hot tho. and i got to east his ass so im like eyyyyyyyy. its been so long since ive eaten ass so having it two consecutive nights in a row has been cathartic.

tldr; we have 2 assisant managers and a gm rn. looking for more

tldr; bitch. same.

tldr; bitch. same.

tldr; he’s a liar

[ggiame]

all the stuff under the cut

Everything is wrong at the moment, its 70 degrees in february, DT is president, and everything just seems transitional and out of place and temporary. I have 6 jobs right now. im working all the time and yet theres no money. i dont know. just having one of those weird surreal chunks of weeks that im trying to capture with a long text post on a public forum. here we go. 

(heads up, me and my therapist named and externalized my anxiety into a character I call ‘chanel’ after the terrible ex and I quote her for clarities sake when ‘quoting’ my anxiety. so yeah. thats who chanel is)

money:

none, somehow. 

work:

float sixty, leghorn chicken, aloft reception, pole teaching, online tutor, property manager, and also segway is coming back and also maybe still street performing? dude. 

okay highlights version

F60: my boss is Lia, a White Lady who used to work in the beauty industry and is On. a. Diet. She is neurotic and perfectionistic but also a weird hippie which is an odd combination of traits i happen to understand well so we get along nicely. She likes me and I like her. All of my co workers seem cool. Also There is a Cute Boy there who i know next to nothing about.

LH: wow okay its food service but i really like my co workers and also the food is decent but not addicting and i do make some tips. Im making friends there the fastest but its also the job im least attached to. conflicting feelings. 

Prop Man: oh my god. rats. broken washing machines. broken stoves. intrigue. sabotage. tune in sundays at 8/7c

My family was joking yesterday that i have the “Karlin Family Work Ethic” and that i was doing too much but somehow i still feel like a lazy, useless, slug who should really just work a little harder. Weird. 

The injury-----

The elbow is healing relatively fast. it still feels like a year and a day since i last climbed a rope. its probably two weeks out from being -mostly- functional. right now its int htat good enough for life but not for circus zone. Also now im kinda scared of going back up a rope. which is. not. good. but ill deal with when i get there. fear is the worst. ugh. 

FeElings-------------

Okay theres a lot of relationship feelings stirring around in my life despite the fact that i have no significant other and here’s why. 

boys: 

east coast boy- just as bad at keeping in itstouch as I am. is still wonderful. but its been so long theres really only echoes left. 

west coast boy: all that weird buildup for an extremely short lived fling that did next to nothing to release all that pent up wierdness. it continues. This boy is much better at keeping in contact.  its getting harder for me to keep talking to him as it gets clearer that neither of us is going anywhere soon. 

work boy: cute, seems cool, but i have no idea who he is at all. 

tinder boy: i like him a lot, but im not attracted to him yet and i dont want to do that to another person. also can i make myself be attracted to someone? thats playing with too many things. no answers yet. needs more pondering. 

Other work boy: Chanel  “he did not come to the diner with you on valentines day. has not liked any of your social media posts. probably hates you and also thinks youre ugly. its okay you probably wont see him for another two months.”

Girls and others:

Theres a couple straight girls im into and we all know how that goes. They have boyfriends. it sucks. 

the circus one:i havent seen this person in a frustratingly long time. dammit. 

also im still afraid of flirting with girls because of Amber Chanel B. the Ex from Hell. which is super awesome. 

not. 

The Room Mate:

1) is mysterious and doesnt say much

2) is clearly in a bad mood a lot. cause shes working sleeping or working out and never gets a second to herself. 

3) which totally means that shes mad AT ME ALL THE TIME 

4) and she has taken this super central place in my anxiety tornado which I am now worried that she is aware of and annoyed by. which is also part of the tornado. yeah. 

The pot: 

wow i started to get into serious problem territory this past month and i felt it building up to the moment. which happened a few days ago. i came to this conclusion

- I have the capabilities of controling and being responsible with my drug usage but my situation right now is making that difficult. The next time i end up on solid emotional ground ill stop until the cravings go away.- 

and here i am. the good weather is helping a lot and i finally felt ready to cut myself off for a while, so i smoked it all and now im out and well see how this goes. 

Bonus---Musings on hunger and stuff-----

So body talk. 

Ive been injured and unable to exercise the way i like

ive taken a job in a fried chicken place. 

so yeah i have some weight gain and acne and loss of muscle tone and its making my body image issues flare up. So ive been doing okay and I havent made myself vomit but I have been eating noticeably less and ive started to just kinda let myself be hungry more which is something i had forgotten about. 

and then i was thinking about it and I realize that im part of this weird subgroup of extremely priveleged people who also know what its like not to eat for 3 days at a time, or what its like to eat less than a thousand calories a day for more that a month, and that I got complimented for what that did to me. I would sleep through classes and almost pass out when i stood up all the time but i weighted 105 pounds and everyone said i looked great.  its a weird thing especially cause it was never really about how I looked, and was entirely about trying to control myself when i have needs that are at odds with my situation. 

Then i thought about last year when i was training so much that my body could not get enough food, but my anxiety and depression were at such a place that I could barely eat, and the way that kind of hunger was different. I had never vomited from hunger before but I got to find out what that was like. That was where the weed problem really started btw cause if I hadnt had pot last year I would not have eaten at all and would probably be dead. Having anxiety so bad that your stomach clenching makes you nauseous and then you get nauseous with hunger on top of that and then you have to fly to ankansas to be at your fav cousins wedding and manage to pull it off and not be a zombie. whew. 

Also I would like to thank lin manuel miranda because (along with pot) Hamilton is what got me through that experience. 

yeah.  

thats all for now. 

[themoneybuff-blog]

The Balance Between Novelty and Stability - and How That Affects Your Dollars and Cents

Recently, I had a face-to-face conversation with a reader (yep, this happens every once in a while; I have a few readers in my local community that Im not close friends with, but they recognize me and seem to always have some sort of question or topic to bring up in conversation) about the idea of having everyday meals for the family, something I mention often as a frugal strategy. For those unclear, an everyday meal is just a meal that Sarah or I can prepare quickly and easily on any given weeknight that our family really likes. You might call it a staple meal or a regular meal. For us, those meals include things like spaghetti with tomato sauce, scrambled eggs and pancakes, chili, and tuna casserole. Both Sarah and I can whip those things out in a jiffy without even a second thought; the recipes are internalized and efficient. This reader was pretty pointed: dont meals like that get boring? My gut instinct was to tell the reader no without really thinking about it, but instead I said, Hmm Ill give that some thought, and suggested a post on the topic might appear soon. Over the next few weeks, I had some conversations with my family about the topic in a roundabout way. I mostly just asked for meal suggestions and asked what meals they liked the best. Our three children were all pretty specific on what meals they liked the best. My youngest loves any sort of pasta and cheese combination if it has pasta and cheese, hes in. My middle child loves taco night above all else. My oldest loves chili and enchiladas above all else. Interestingly, if I have them pick a meal that they think all three of them will like, theyll pick pizza, whether its homemade or picked up somewhere. My wife listed a litany of meals she really likes. I asked them what they thought about trying different meals and the children were all okay with it as long as their favorites remained in regular rotation and I avoided certain specific foods. My wife is more on board with trying new things, but she also still wanted a few favorites in rotation. They all said that they like to try variations on the familiar dishes, like trying a chili variant or experimenting with a pizza, than something radically different. It turns out that Im probably the most adventurous and experimental eater in my family, but even I enjoy our everyday meals. I actually like varying them a little and trying new angles on the same old things (like experimenting with cheeses for the mac and cheese) and, when I have time, making things as from scratch as possible, like making fresh pasta for pasta night or making from-scratch bread or making my own vegetable stock (just soaking vegetable scraps in the slow cooker). This realization, along with some Google searching, led me to this interesting article on Food52 by Amanda Hesser entitled Im the Food Expert, But My Kids Love My Husbands Cooking. Her experience falls right in line with my own: Her family is fine with experimentation, but they end up putting a lot of value on regular repeated family meals. Theyd rather have daddys pasta (rotelle pasta wagon wheels with a simple sauce) than something unusual or complex, and she often would, too: Im an unabashed homebody. A comforting home and stability are things I have an almost desperate need to maintain. And yet, even when I have a home that feels comforting and right, Im always itching to iterate and improve the physical spaceto paint a wall, rearrange the furniture, recover the chairs. The same thing happens in my kitchen. I may love being in the kitchen and cooking for family, but I clearly cant help myself from exploring some new taste, technique, or idea. This urge for newness and evolution worked for me for many years. When I was a full-time writer, whose job was to constantly discover and write about whats next, it was like feeding candy to my pathology. Now that I have kids, though, to whom I feel an intense responsibility to nurture a sense of security not to mention, to establish family traditions my searching ways floundered. The night after the podcast interview, while joking about it over dinner, I asked the kids what dishes of mine they liked. They paused and looked at each other. It was difficult for them to conjure up anything specific. Kids rarely need to be direct for their message to be loud and clear. If I wanted them to remember my cooking, I had to slow down, I had to repeat, I had to make food that they could count on. Like their daddy did with pasta. Over the past few years, Ive done just this. Ive stuck with dishes, and I keep a folder of recipes we like to go back to again and again Robertas garlic dressing, porchetta, and Thai steak salad. This made me think quite a bit about my own change in food habits during my life. When I was growing up, my family definitely had regular meals that we repeated with frequency. Im sure, looking back, that those meals were fairly convenient for my parents to make and that doing so had become, with practice, quite easy for them. There was another factor going on, though: it provided a touchstone of shared experience. There were certain dishes that we would have frequently that I would love to smell coming in the door, not just because they were delicious, but because they made me feel things like family and safety and comfort. When I reached adulthood, that feeling basically went away unless I was visiting family. I either viewed food simply as forgettable fuel or I purely chased novelty by eating at a wide variety of expensive restaurants or preparing really fancy things at home on occasion, like a $30 grilled steak. For all of the expensive meals I ate in my twenties, none of them filled me with the sense of familiarity and comfort that my mothers humble tuna casserole would make me feel, or the smell of a fried egg cooked in just a bit of butter with a lot of black pepper on it. Those things made me feel something beyond mere food they made me feel safe and loved and comfortable. An expensive meal might be delicious, but its usually a one-shot thing simply because of the financial constraints of 99.9% of Americans. Thus, it can never create those feelings of home like humble dishes eaten frequently with loved ones can create. Theres a clip at the end of the movie Ratatouille where the hardened food critic Anton Ego takes a bit of a dish prepared by the humble hero Remy. The dish is the titular ratatouille, a pretty humble dish thats basically just a casserole of sliced vegetables, and Ego initially turns up his nose at it. But when he takes a bite well, watch for yourself: [embedded content] What does this hardened critic think of when he tries the dish? His mind doesnt consider flavors or texture. Rather, he flashes back to his grandmothers kitchen when he was a child. He has feelings of peace and love and comfort and family. Those feelings dont exist the first time you try a dish or even the third or fifth or tenth. Rather, they come from a body of positive experiences over time, and they can be triggered by the most humble of things. You dont need an expensive restaurant meal to feel those feelings; in fact, youll almost never feel that way unless youre a regular at a family-owned restaurant. On the other hand, you can get that feeling from something as simple as an egg fried in a bit of butter with a bit of black pepper on it. Were really talking here about two different values that are at least somewhat in opposition to each other. Novelty comes when you try a new experience. Youre interacting with new people. Youre trying a new meal. Youre going to a new store. Youre going to a new place. Those are enjoyable experiences our brains like novelty. Yet, at the same time, novel experiences dont last. They dont scratch the same itch that familiar experiences do. Stability, on the other hand, comes when you enjoy a familiar experience of some kind. Youre enjoying time with family or close friends. Youre eating a family favorite meal. Youre hanging out at a familiar haunt. Those are also enjoyable experiences and familiarity breeds enjoyment. Such experiences fulfill us in a completely different way than novelty does. Whats really interesting to note here is that novelty is typically more expensive than familiarity. New products come with a price premium. They require additional travel because youre familiar with the things in your area. Restaurants you havent tried before are often the expensive ones because youve already tried all of the regularly priced ones. This is not to say novelty is always more expensive than stability, but that its frequently the case. What does all of this mean in terms of our finances, then? First of all, its easier to be frugal if you have an appreciation for familiar experiences. If you hold familiar experiences in disdain or if your life history has made it difficult to build up familiar experiences, its hard to find appeal in them and youre going to inherently seek novelty. Remember, the psychological benefit of novelty is much easier to enjoy than the psychological benefit of stability and familiarity. Novelty can be experienced at pretty much any moment; stability and familiarity take time and a history of positive similar experiences. So, in a practical sense, there is a great deal of frugal value in finding simple experiences you like and repeating them (or close variations on them) until the familiarity brings additional joy. For example, Ive come to love sitting in the soft brown chair in our house with several windows nearby and just reading a book. It is an experience I indulge in often and I get a great amount of joy out of that experience, not just because it feels good, but because it inherently reminds me of the many moments when it felt good in the past. It feels comforting to sit there with a book in my hand. I feel it when Im playing a familiar board game with close friends, where we all know the rules and we all feel comfortable with each other. I feel it when Im making a pot of chili or a homemade pizza for my family and then we gather around the table and eat it together and talk about our day. I feel that warm stability in many experiences in my life, and Ive come to intentionally notice it and value it. Those types of experiences, because of their repetition, almost have to be very inexpensive or free out of necessity. If there was a significant cost in such a repeated experience, it would cause a great deal of financial damage, which brings me to my second point. Constantly chasing novel experiences is hard on the wallet. If I want to eat at a new restaurant every night, thats going to cost a lot of money over time. If I want to simply have something new for dinner every night, the cost of all of those different ingredients is going to add up (not to mention the time invested in constantly jumping from culinary technique to culinary technique without mastering any of them). If I want to read the latest books constantly, Im going to have to buy them, and popping $15 to $20 for a new hardcover once or twice a week adds up fast. If I want to play the latest board games constantly, I have to routinely spend $30 to $40. If I want to watch the latest movies constantly, I have to routinely spend $10 or $15 at the theater (Id probably buy a movie pass, but it still adds up). You get the idea. A constant stream of novel experiences is expensive. Theres an even bigger problem A costly novel experience that you start to repeat until it takes on some aspects of familiarity is a road to financial disaster. Lets say you go to a coffee shop and its a wonderful novel experience. You decide to go again and again and again. Slowly, it starts to become a familiar and stable experience. You feel a certain comfort in that routine. The problem is that the routine is expensive and engaging in it with frequency is like acid on your budget. Another element Ive personally noticed is that most of the really valuable stable experiences I have in my life things like familiar family dinners, familiar experiences with friends, and so on are incredibly inexpensive ones. The family dinners that are really successful on all cylinders are ones where were gathered around the table with people we love and who love us, eating a food we all enjoy and basking in the afterglow of many such dinners before us that have built a certain bond. You can get some of that while chasing novelty at the latest restaurant, but you miss some of it, too, and youre also hammering your wallet. None of this is to say that novelty doesnt have value. It does have tremendous value. Many of the joys of life are held in new experiences. Yet there are many elements of life that novelty cant bring to the table and cultivating stability often provides those elements. If you take one message home from all of this, its that novelty is fine, but theres a tremendous financial value in appreciating the positive stable experiences in life. Find the small things you actually enjoy (not things that merely pass time), whether theyre shared experiences or solo experiences, and fill your life with them. Repeat them, so that they take on a sense of familiarity and stability. Vary them, so that they dont become boring, either you wouldnt read the same book over and over or watch the same television show over and over, but you might consistently read in your favorite chair or watch a new episode of a beloved program while cuddling with your partner. Dont abandon novelty that would make life dull but dont overlook or abandon the many values of stability and what it can bring, too. Enjoy that simple comfort food with family. Enjoy that comfortable chair and a book from the library from your favorite author. Theres incredible value to be found in that kind of stability and it wont erode your finances. Good luck. Related Articles: https://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-balance-between-novelty-and-stability-and-how-that-affects-your-dollars-and-cents/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What the marshmallow test can teach us about money

By now, youve probably heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. Most folks are familiar with this fifty-year-old study and its conclusions. In case this is the first youve learned of it, however, Ill give a quick review. During the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel tested the willpower of young children (roughly four years old). A researcher would bring the children one at a time into a room where they had access to a selection of treats, including marshmallows. The children were told that they could eat have one treat right away or, if they waited fifteen minutes, they could have two. Then the researcher left the room. [embedded content] While this study gave researchers an immediate glimpse at how children handle delayed gratification, it also yielded some interest long-term results. In 1990, Mischel (and colleagues) reconnected with some of the kids from the marshmallow test to see how life had turned out for them. This second study revealed that the children with the best self-discipline at four years old grew up to be more popular, more successful in school, and better able to handle stress. The kids with patience and willpower were less likely to turn to drugs and they were more physically fit. In short, the ability to wait fifteen minutes to earn an extra marshmallow as a preschooler seemed to be an excellent predictor of how well a child would be able to delay short-term gratification later in life in order to pursue long-term goals. Thats it. Thats the marshmallow test. Seems simple, right? Yet this simple experiment has become one of the most oft-cited studies in the world of pop psychology. Youll find it in books about entrepreneurship, habit formation, decision making, and yes personal finance. Theres just one problem. The NEW Marshmallow Test New research shows that perhaps the link between childhood willpower and adult achievement isnt as strong as we once believed. The new study the full text of which is available for free, at the moment attempts to remedy perceived flaws in earlier experiments. It uses a larger sample size, for instance, and draws info from a wider range of subjects. (The original studies used kids from the preschool on the Stanford campus, a relatively limited population.) This new study found that yes, there was a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and future academic achievement. However, this correlation was only about half as strong as reported in the original marshmallow test. Among kids whose mothers did not have a college degree, each extra minute a child was able to wait before eating a treat, his first grade achievement (how do you even measure that?) improved by roughly one tenth of a standard deviation. (To my mind, this still seems like a relatively substantial effect.) Academic achievement at age 15 showed a similar differentiation. Among kids whose mothers did have a college degree, the correlation between childhood willpower and future academic achievement was much smaller. The authors write: We observed that delay of gratification was strongly correlated with concurrent measures of cognitive ability, and controlling for a composite measure of self-control explained only about 25% of our reported effects on achievement. These results suggest that the marshmallow test may capture something rather distinct from self-control. What else might the marshmallow test be capturing? Interesting question. When looking at other variables tracked by the study, there seems to be a correlation between willpower and socioeconomic status. In households with higher income and greater education, kids waited longer before eating their marshmallows. (For more, see this recent article in The Atlantic. [embedded content] Scarcity and Abundance In college, I studied psychology. In the twenty-five years since I left school, Ive spent a lot of time reading about psychology in my spare time. Im fascinated by the human condition, by the things that shape us, motivate us, give us happiness and fulfillment. No surprise then that when I write about money, I do so through a psychological lens. I used to find a lot of finance advice frustrating because it ignored psychology. The books I read seemed to assume that humans are purely rational creatures who make only logical decisions with money. These assumptions didnt match my reality. This new interpretation of the marshmallow test that childhood willpower may stem from socioeconomic status fascinates me. It seems to be an concrete example of how our childhood environment helps to create our mental blueprints. (I believe we each possess mental maps or invisible scripts, if you prefer that guide our lives. Although Im primarily concerned with your money blueprint here at GRS, I believe we have mental maps that guide us through many aspects of life.) Although its not a popular opinion, I believe there are very real differences between the rich and the poor. There are certain wealthy habits that lead to better odds of success with life and money. But heres the thing: If youre not raised in an environment where these habits are prominent say youre the victim of systemic poverty and are never exposed to how wealthy people think and act it becomes much more difficult to learn them. For many people, poverty creates a scarcity mindset. This scarcity mindset can lead to all sorts of faulty financial habits. A couple of months ago, Erynn Brook and Emily Flake published a visual essay at Longreads about the difference between being broke and being poor. The piece is short and interesting you should read it! but this passage, in particular, reminds me of the marshmallow test.

When you live with lack for a long time, it changes how you approach life. If youre a kid whose family has struggled to get by, when youre given a marshmallow, youre going to eat it now. (Can you really trust itll be there later let alone that youll get the second one youve been promised?) If you were poor as a kid, when you manage money as an adult, a scarcity mindset can lead you to do things like immediately spend a windfall instead of saving it for the future. My Money Blueprint I think of my own family as an example. My brothers and I grew up poor. Our extended family had always been poor. My parents modeled the best habits they could, but they were limited by their own experiences (and mental blueprints). As a result, I entered adulthood with some faulty invisible scripts. For instance, my parents taught us that windfalls were to be spent. Although they rarely had much money, when they did come into cash, they spent it. Quickly. And on frivolous things. They never modeled what it was like to save and invest for the future. This is the adult version of failing the marshmallow test. Naturally, my brothers and I grew up with similar behavior patterns. None of us was poor and my parents eventually escaped poverty but we couldnt hold on to our money, either. When we had it, we spent it. We lived paycheck to paycheck despite decent salaries. (My youngest brother eventually lost two homes to foreclosure and had to declare bankruptcy.) If I had participated in the marshmallow experiment as a four-year-old, I can guarantee I would have eaten the treat as soon as the researcher left the room. Im nearing age fifty now and I still have to fight this sort of behavior. My scarcity mindset is real and its damaging even though I know its present. Im not trying to use my money blueprint as an excuse for my behavior but as an explanation. I acknowledge that Im responsible for my actions; I just want to know why I choose the actions that I choose. For more on this subject, check out my article about how to master the abundance mindset (and change your money blueprint). https://www.getrichslowly.org/marshmallow-test/