#it often feels like my default emotion is sadness or depression. whatever i do i always find my way back there.

[cashew-milkk]

at times i feel like i’m finally alright, the light of the sun shining through clouds, the calmness around me, the singing of the birds, but then the loneliness catches up to me and i am washed over by sadness once again.

[owlpartytime]

Reading your latest oneshots has had me thinking and I’d love to put some questions to you!

You have such a wide variety of genres / tropes in your catalogue of work, you definitely are not pigeon-holed as a genre-specific writer.

1. What helps the transition between dark to fluffy/lighter fics for you? Or visa versa? Do you find it easy / difficult to get into the frame of mind required for the subject?

Another thing I marvel at is the uniqueness of your fics. There’s always a “never seen before” quality to them that leaves me excited to read everything you post.

2. What are your inspirations for your plots? Where do your ideas stem from?

Finally (I don’t want this to sound more like an interrogation than it already does) I’m someone who really enjoys picking out titles for their fics and likes to have meaning behind them.

3. Do you enjoy the process of titling fics? If so, where do your title references come from? Do you have a title sitting in a document somewhere but no fic attached?

Thank you for humouring me! 💖

1. My frame of mind usually determines what I write, rather than the other way around. It's super easy to write misery and pain when my mood is low, as it often is; sometimes I make conscious choices to write something a little lighter because I've been on a negative run and more sad/depressing shit bums me out more. I think the default writing 'setting' for me is angst and dark, but I must admit I was able to see the appeal in fluffier stories once I gave them a chance. They're actually more difficult for me to do, because I feel like it's harder to make them interesting, if that makes sense.

2. Majority of my non-prompt ideas are just.. whatever scenarios I think would be interesting to explore at the given moment, or a what-if question, or an emotion I feel like expressing. It's rare that I take anything from my life and turn them into fic (even though I did just that with the Eli cooking sweets fic) and very occasionally the stories will come about from conversations with others (like the Thrawn meets a snake fic).

3. Titles are almost always the last thing I decide on for a story, and it's usually just something taken from the story itself - either from a line or a central theme of the story or some other detail that feels relevant to the story. Multichaps usually get a title midway through the first drat; one shots I am almost always looking through what I have when they're done to find a title. It's rare that I have a title in mind before the story is written (the main exceptions being Ch'eo - the story came about from the title - and Silver Moon Rising - which I have yet to write, but hopefully will be soon).

Thank you for asking. ❤❤

[animearchetypes]

Guide to All Dere Types in Anime (Renewed)

I may as well do this again without editing and reblogging my own post this time so challenge accepted. Here in an academy of anime, I’ll teach you how some characters react to love with the dere types. Which dere are you and which dere is your favorite? Credit to The Dere Types Wiki for the information.

Tsundere

A tsundere refers to an outwardly violent character who "runs hot and cold", alternating between two distinct moods: tsuntsun (aloof or irritable) and deredere (lovestruck). There are 2 types of tsundere; tsundere type A (harsh is their default mood, they’re rude until someone triggers their sweet side) and tsundere type B (sweet is their default mood, they’re friendly in public but they act mean towards their love interest).

Yandere

They start out as nice and friendly, especially towards their love interest. That is until something or someone comes between them, then they become dark and obsessive over the one they love. Love makes them crazy, often violently so. They’re mentally destructive in nature through either over protectiveness, violence, brutality or all three combined.

Kuudere

Someone who is calm and collected on the outside, and they rarely panic. I believe there are 2 types of kuuderes; one who pretends to be emotionless, and one who’s actually emotionless. Either way, they turn out to be really caring - especially towards their love interest.

Dandere

A dandere character is one who is quiet and asocial, possibly to the point of coming across as emotionless at times, when they’re really just shy or afraid to talk. They will become talkative and sweet when alone with the right person.

Deredere

Derederes are extremely lovey-dovey, always chasing and fawning over the person they love. They're not ashamed and have no problems with public displays of affection. They don’t hide their feelings, and no matter what may happen, they quickly revert to their cheerful self.

Bakadere

Characters who are clumsy and stupid when it comes to expressing their love. They’re either oblivious to romance or don’t know how to express it. They are for the most part very innocent and sweet, but their stupidity outshines their other attributes.

Bodere

Boderes are usually shy around those they’re infatuated with, and get embarrassed easily. They don’t know how to handle their embarrassment and so they use their fists instead of their words, and lash out so they can hide their shyness. Though they don't necessarily have a harsh exterior otherwise, and may feel bad about their outbursts of violence.

Byoukidere

A byoukidere refers to a character who is usually very sweet and kind, but suffers from a physical disease, usually a fatal one. Due to this, they are weak and frail. They are very kind, helpful, and sweet in nature.

Darudere

Darudere characters would rather sit around and show no emotion towards anyone, including their love interest. They are nonchalant to those whom they love, but they do express emotions, they just usually show no interest in those who like them.

Dorodere

They appear sweet and lovable on the outside, but are twisted or disturbed on the inside for various reasons. They initially act lovey-dovey but their hidden deranged side can strike at any moment. They can also possess the mind of a yandere, except they don’t act on those thoughts.

Hajidere

A hajidere is someone who is nervous and embarrassed around their crush. They get so shy around their love interest that they blush and have trouble confessing their feelings. On some occasions, they might even faint from being so bashful. Nonetheless, they can be social and outgoing with their peers.

Himedere

A himedere is a female version of an oujidere. They act like a princess and want to be treated like royalty. They're often arrogant and overly dramatic. They will however, soften over time with their love interest.

Hinedere

A hinedere is someone who has cynical world views. They have a nihilistic view of the world and often see the worst rather than the best. Though cold-hearted and arrogant, their soft side is shown after their love interest breaks through.

Kamidere

This describes someone with a god complex. They are arrogant and proud, and aren’t afraid to speak their minds and show everyone how right they are. Their pride makes them highly arrogant, overconfident and stubborn. They think they should get special attention and priority, but will eventually become loving once their exterior is broken.

Kanedere

A kanedere refers to someone who is attracted to others with money or status. They’re the anime/manga equivalent of a gold digger, and they can be snobbish towards poor people. They only show affection and care towards people with money and how much money they have, but a true love can break their habit.

Kekkondere

A kekkondere is someone who wants to get married right away, despite having only just met. They immediately decide after they meet someone of interest that they're the right person for them, and begin planning their marriage.

Mayadere

A mayadere refers to a character who is often a dangerous antagonist of a series, but switches sides after falling in love with another character. However, they might remain deadly and unpredictable.

Megadere

A megadere is someone who is obsessed with their love interest. They’re like derederes but to the extreme. They fangirl/fanboy over their love interest whenever they can; sometimes to the point of stalking, and they might even steal their items. However, despite their obsessive nature, they will never commit violent acts or manipulate their love interest.

Nemuidere

A nemuidere refers to a character that spends much of his/her time sleeping. Nemuidere characters tend to be very lazy and laconic in nature but they can also be intelligent and artistic, if only they weren't such a sleepyhead. Unlike a darudere, they sometimes show interest towards the one they love. They can be motivated by their loved interest to become less sleepy.

Nyandere

A nyandere is a vague type of dere that's just cat-related. While they don't have to actually be a cat; they are picky, needy, and punctuate their sentences with a cute meow.

Oujidere

An oujidere is a male version of a himedere. They act like a prince and want to be treated like royalty. They're often arrogant and overly dramatic. They will however, soften over time with their love interest.

Oujodere

An oujodere (also spelled as oujoudere or ojoudere) is a "lady-like" type of character, who's prim and proper with a strict exterior. Unlike a himedere, an oujodere isn't arrogant nor bossy, and they don’t want to be treated like royalty. Despite that they often come from a wealthy family, they are sweet and kind. They’re basically a calmer and more mature version of a deredere.

Sadodere

They love to manipulate and toy with peoples emotions, more so if they're romantically or sexually interested in them. Sadodere characters are sadists who take pleasure in causing pain to people’s emotions. They are cruel by willing to cause pain to people without showing care or concern.

Shundere

A shundere is someone who is depressed without a specific reason. They might gradually open up, especially towards their love interest. They’re chronically depressed and they have a tendency to ignore and avoid others. However, not all shunderes show their chronic sadness, meaning their depression isn’t always obvious. They might open up slightly if they find the right one.

Teasedere

They are people who like to tease their love interest. They’re mischievous at heart and like to flirt. Inside, they care a lot for their loved one and so they simply tease as their way of showing their affection towards someone they like. They do not manipulate or want to cause pain, unlike a sadodere.

Thugdere

A thugdere is someone who often mistreats other people including their love interest, by physically or emotionally harming them. They’re delinquents with a love interest. Their cruel nature is often a way of hiding their sweet and loving side, since they believe their sweet side makes them look weak or foolish. They’re like tsunderes except they’re more of a criminal type.

Undere

These people agree with pretty much everything their crush regardless of their true feelings. They do this to get closer to their crush, and they don’t want to offend by saying no in fear of losing them. This may cause them to be taken advantage of since they do pretty much whatever their love wants.

Utsudere

Describes someone who is depressed, but unlike shunderes who are depressed from a start, theirs come with a specific reason; such as being bullied, abused, or their loved one dying. This would cause them to isolate themselves, worsening their mental state. But they might gradually open up in time when the right person shows up.

Yottadere

A yottadere is a character who is addicted to alcohol. They’re rarely seen without alcohol in their hands and so they’re often drunk. It is rare for them to be sober, but they might stop drinking if it means having their special someone.

[variantia]

HEADCANON   //   YOON BUM.

Characteristics of borderline personality disorder / emotionally unstable personality disorder that Bum tends to exhibit.

Borderline personality disorder (  BPD   ) / emotionally unstable personality disorder (   EUPD   ) is a mental illness, often something that’s lifelong, which manifests with symptoms of unstable relationships, intense emotional reactions, a warped sense of self, and other long-term patterns that are often harmful or self-destructive.   Bum (   in my interpretation, at least   ) is affected by BPD in several different ways.

There are characteristics or symptoms of BPD that are possibly also explainable by the C-PTSD (   complex post-traumatic stress disorder   ) that he also suffers from, but brief descriptions of characteristics that are probably a result of BPD, which affect Bum in his daily life, are outlined in the bullet points below.   Read on if you think it may help you understand and interact with him more easily, or if you’re simply interested in how his mind works !

SPLITTING : Bum often views the world in black and white terms.   People fall into vague categories like good or bad, kind or cruel, just the same to him as people might fall into specific categories like tall or short.   Cognitive behavioral therapy is helping him break these thinking patterns, but it’s a process and he still falls into those things sometimes.   When confronted with two opposing traits existing in the same person, such as a cruel person being kind occasionally, it’s difficult for him to accept that one person can be both.   If that happens, he usually defaults to the first category his mind decided they were.   For this reason, he can appear very stubborn and set in his ways and like he doesn’t want to change, when he does, and his mind just has a lot of difficulty reconciling the positive and negative.

INTENSE OR DISPROPORTIONATE EMOTIONAL REACTIONS : Bum seems to feel or express his emotions in a way that seems like an overreaction to most people.   He’s depressed instead of sad, manic instead of happy, furious instead of irritated ; his emotions frequently jump to the extreme end rather than starting out mild and building up to the extreme.   If someone does something nice for him that is very small, i.e. perhaps letting him go in front of them in a grocery store line, he feels as if it’s a huge gesture that he should be incredibly grateful for, even if it wasn’t that big a deal.   Conversely, if something slightly bad happens, i.e. he’s late for an appointment, he feels as if he’s an inconsiderate person who can’t keep track of time, even if he’s on time on every other occasion.   The medication he’s on is aimed at ‘ turning down ’ his emotions so he doesn’t react as intensely to things that don’t merit an intense reaction, but just as with his therapy, the medication can only do so much, and intense reactions are definitely something he still experiences, just not as often as if he wasn’t on medication.

FEAR OF ABANDONMENT : Bum is terrified of being rejected and left alone, and will go to extreme lengths to keep it from happening.   He, personally, wouldn’t go so far as forcing someone to stay with him, but he will absolutely make promises about being better, being whatever the other person wants him to be, begging them not to leave him alone, to the point of probably accidentally manipulating their emotions.   It’s not a conscious decision to make them feel bad for leaving or not wanting to be in his life anymore, but rather he truly feels like he’s not worth anything on his own.   Predictably, most people don’t enjoy being put in that position, so it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the more he begs and promises, the more most people will want to leave.

UNSTABLE RELATIONSHIPS : Bum often gets very attached, very quickly, to anyone who shows him kindness.   He has trouble maintaining relationships with other people because he wants all of their attention, and is very sensitive to what he perceives as rejection.   If the other person says that they’re busy and can’t be with him right now, but they will later, all he seems to process is the first part.   He feels as if they don’t care about him or don’t want to make time for him.   This can lead to him treating them with anger, such as giving them the cold shoulder or saying things he doesn’t mean to them.   Once the fight is over, he will usually apologize ... but he often expects an apology from them, too.   It also happens that he seems to move very quickly in a relationship ; saying “   I love you   ” within the first few weeks of a romance, calling someone his best friend after maybe a month, etc., which typically scares a lot of people off.   Dialectical behavioral therapy is helping with improving his relationships, but these issues will almost certainly still crop up from time to time in any relationship he has.

DISSOCIATION : Bum will sometimes ‘   zone out   ’, but in a more extreme way than daydreaming.   His mind and his body experience a disconnect, and when this happens, he seems to be staring off into space.   It takes effort to make him respond, to the point that it might be worrisome to those around him.   This will sometimes happen during extremely negatively emotional moments, where Bum will dissociate completely from himself, his mind’s effort to avoid the physical and emotional pain which comes with strong reactions.   He describes it as a sort of “   empty   ” feeling, like he’s suddenly ceased to exist for a few moments, like his whole being is filled with static, like he has no idea what’s happening to or around him, before he suddenly snaps back to awareness.   He seems numb immediately following an episode of dissociation, but he’s actually often distressed by it and doesn’t like the feeling.

SELF-DESTRUCTIVE OR RECKLESS BEHAVIOR : most of the time, Bum’s self-destruction takes the form of things like self-harm.   His typical method is cutting, usually along his arms, sometimes on his legs.   It’s not something he engages in daily or even weekly, monthly.   It is, however, something that when it happens, he does it several times within a short period.   He may make several cuts a few times a day for several days, then not again for months.   It depends.   Doing this causes his brain to give him a rush of endorphins to combat the pain, and that makes him feel ... good for a moment.   Then he feels guilty that he hurt himself, and wants to feel good again, and it becomes a cycle of addiction to his own hormones.   Again, it’s not a ‘   regular   ’ thing he does, but it does happen.   Other things he does are to engage in risk-taking - things like crossing the street without looking to see if a car is coming that might hit him, or going out in the rain for long enough that he’s almost guaranteed to get sick.   When he comes out on the other side of those things still alive and relatively okay, boom, rush of adrenaline that makes him feel good.   Therapy and medication are helping a lot with these behaviors, but he does still fall into them occasionally, especially when he’s experiencing a lot of stress, needs to feel in control of something, or is attempting to cope with an intense emotion where his healthier coping mechanisms haven’t helped.   He’s attempted suicide in the past because of emotional pain, and still sometimes has those ideations in his head, particularly as intrusive thoughts when things are actually going well for him.

POOR SENSE OF IDENTITY AND SELF-IMAGE : Bum doesn’t truly know how to describe himself to others, and doesn’t think he’s really worth much.   He thinks of himself as having only two big interests (   frogs and sweets   ) and the rest of his personality is simply nothing.   Often he feels like he’s only ‘   interesting   ’ when he’s with someone else.   When asked to pick a few words to describe himself or a few things he enjoys, he will struggle with doing so to the point that he might break down in tears because he feels like he doesn’t know who he is.   He’s working hard on discovering himself, but it’s a long, slow process that involves steps such as trying new things, which is very scary to him.

Bum is a man who has a lot of issues, and even though he’s working on trying to put the pieces of his life together and be healthier, many of the BPD symptoms he experiences will often inform his behavior.   It’s a struggle, but he really is trying.

Patience, understanding, and encouragement, coupled with the willingness to not enable or reinforce his unhealthy behaviors, will go a long way in helping maintain a good relationship with Bum !   Be kind to him, but also be willing to stand firm if the situation calls for it.   Even if it’s hard and upsets him at first, he appreciates those things, because he knows it will help him in the long run.

[theartfuldodger26]

Bellamort for the ship meme

 Thank you @knightessofwalpurgis for the ask and apologies for taking me a month to answer - March has been... quite the experience.  But Bellamort exists to give us comfort, so let’s get crackin’!

who is more likely to hurt the other?

Voldemort can tear anyone apart with some well-chosen words (as we see Locket!Voldemort do to Ron), but he rarely uses those on Bella, because a. she rarely deserves to be humiliated like that, and b. he just wouldn’t do that to her. 

What’s more likely, is that he hurts her inadvertently, since he may fail to understand certain emotional needs that Bella most people have - a touch, a kind word after success, casual conversation over a cup of tea. In addition to that, Bella, who is obsessed with him and the position she holds in his eyes, tends to overreact to those “omissions”, getting convinced he ‘never truly valued her’ and he’s going to ‘kick her out any day now’. 

However, let us take a moment to note the day that Bella deeply hurt Voldemort: the night of her betrothal to Rodolphus, when Voldemort proposed marriage and Bella turned him down for reasons that, in retrospect, she finds ridiculous. 

So in a way, you could say that of the two, Voldemort is the brokenhearted one, even if it’s Bella who cries herself to sleep from time to time. 

who is emotionally stronger?

They’re both incredibly strong people. 

Voldemort pulled himself out of the gutter, basically raised himself and became one of the most powerful and learned wizards ever.

Bella survived fucking Azkaban, which is code for severe depression in HP-land, so all I can do is salute her and ask for her secrets. 

The answer is a little tricky, in the sense that Voldemort appears to be a psychopath, medically speaking, who are... resilient people emotionally, if you will. This means that an event that would have had a massive effect on a neurotypical person, say witnessing a murder or war, to him it’s very blunted or even irrelevant. This description is very vague and generalising, but it’s supported by a lot of evidence. In fact, psychopaths can’t really feel fear, because their amygdala is the size of a pea, so it’s not fair comparing his emotional strength to others. In fact, I’d add that since he’s not used to “negative emotions” like sadness and fear, if they happen, they’d be more devastating to him, because he’s never learnt to cope with them, like the rest of us do. 

Bella obviously has her own emotional/psychiatric problems, but I don’t feel comfortable making guesses, since I’m not a psychiatrist and she’s no textbook description of any personality disorder I’ve heard. However, she got an interestng upbringing, that trained her to be a person of importance. So I’d say that even after Azkaban and with whatever issues she has, she can still hold her own in a very difficult emotional situation. 

I realise I haven’t answered the question, because honestly Idk. Also, take with a grain of salt anything psychiatry-related I said, I’m no expert, merely done some research, which I’m regurgitating here. 

who is physically stronger?

Naturally, Bella. She trains a lot, does ballet (which is fucking hardcore, let me tell you), enjoys physical activities and martial arts. 

However, after Voldemort’s transformation, he’s got many of his physical attributes improved, like the cat-eyes that allow him to see in the dark and so on (been reading a lot of the Witcher series as of recent so there’s that too), so he’s deceptively strong and yes, eventually stronger than her.who is more likely to break a bone? 

Bella, 100% XD She’s in battle all the time, and when taking part in Voldemort’s magical research (which is their day-job, world domination is a weekend hobby in case you haven’t noticed) her motto is ‘safety third’. 

An interesting point tho. Psychopaths have no fear and low-impulse control if they don’t train themselves. Fear is useful, informs us of danger ahead, so I HC that young Tom/Voldemort broke almost every bone in his body at some point doing something really dangerous simply because he didnt realise it’s stupid - like, say, go down a fucking cliff with waves crushing at it. Now he’s learnt to control those impulses and polices himself when it comes to danger, so no more broken bones. who knows best what to say to upset the other? 

They’re both excellent at judging characters and have tongues that sting. Bella will rarely truly dare upset Voldemort, but she does love torturing him a little with  something silly and not-truly important, like refusing sex, or messing with his OCD by taking stuff from “their proper place”. She knows that there’s only few things that tick him off: his loss of power to an infant, death and the abandonment from his mother. And she’s not that sadistic to bring up that last one unless absolutely provoked. 

Voldemort can be a tease as well, but he’s too mature and dignified for such childish behaviour most of the time. who is most likely to apologise first after an argument?

 Bella apologises compulsively out of fear she’s lost him even for things that aren’t her fault, tho in her mind they might be. However, she’s stubborn too, so if it’s a petty argument she might not apologise at all. Shes a spoilt little rich girl after all ;)

Voldemort’s never apologised in his life and never shall say the words, but he will change his behaviour if he realises he’s been wrong, because it’s the rational thing to do- also Bella is supersexy when she’s angry, so he wants to fuck her and he needs to her to be accepting to that. who treats who’s wounds more often? 

Voldemort treats Bella’s wounds more often by default, since she’s the one out in the battlefield more often, and also can be clumsy and absentminded. And very rarely *trigger alert* she might self-harm. 

Voldemort not only gets hurt rarely, but he also views it demeaning to accept help, so he won’t even mention it if he’s hurt. Bella will find out by accident or because he’s in so much pain he can’t hide it anymore, and with scold him first, he’ll storm off, she’ll hunt him down, they’ll argue and finally she’ll heal his wounds (usually his back which hurts because he’s Tall^TM) and he’ll act like a literal cat during this, touch-starved as he is. who is in constant need of comfort? 

Right after Azkaban Bella is in need of a lot of care and comfort, understandably. Her physical and emotional problems are their reality for many months after her escape, but the physical ones mend themselves relatively quickly. She’s forever changed emotionally, again understandably, but I wouldn’t say she’s in *constant* need of comfort. In an AU where they win, she’s perfectly functional as his right hand woman and partner, with only the occasional problem. 

Voldemort needs to get through his tough, bald head that he deserves love and comfort like everyone else, but he’ll never get it, so, in the whole, it’s him I’d say. who gets more jealous? 

Interesting question, because fandom’s given so many answers relating to those characters, especially since Bella is married. Starting with this piece of solid information, I’d hazard a guess that Voldemort doesn’t care that much that Bella also sleeps with her husband from time to time - maybe it even turns him on and strokes his ego that she doesnt get all she needs from her legitimate, pureblooded husband. How he’d react if she slept with a random bloke... probably badly; tho I cant think of a situation where that’d happen. My Bella at least, doesnt sleep around. She might tease with her sex, but she’s a well-bred lady after all, who does what is expected of her. 

Voldemort, I HC, used to be a bit of a whoremonger in his youth; good looks, mummy issues and no emotional attachment are the ingredients for that particular potion. Also he might have also been overcompensating for the fact that he was unable to marry the only women he found worthy of him: his pureblooded classmates. So he’d show up with a different, gorgeous girl at parties, which drove child!Bella crazy with jealousy, since she was still out of the healthy sexual attraction part for him and never thought he’d notice her. She’d stalk him behind curtains and through keyholes, keep her ears on alert for when the adults talked about him etc. Poor thing was really tortured by it. But now that they’re adults and, well, in a relationship, she’s far too confident to think he’d seriously care for another woman; after all, half the time she’s not sure he truly cares about her, and she’s the person who’s been closest to him. 

One thing I forgot to mention about Voldemort’s jealousy, or lack thereof, is that Bella has certain emotional needs that he cannot serve, and I’m not talking about tenderness, because to some degree he can give her that, and it’s not the same with her husband anyway. No, I mean that Bella is a sexual sadist, who gets direct sexual pleasure by hurting people. Voldemort on the other hand, is not a masochist. Not that when they have rough sex/BDSM sex he’s never in a sub position, but he’d never just sit there to be whipped or something, it just doesn’t turn him on, and that’s totally fine. So they may invite a girl (and very rarely a boy) to join them, so that Bella can get it out of her system if the war is slow/over. Don’t ask where these people end up, just don’t hang your coat in the second floor closet is all I’m saying. who’s most likely to walk out on the other? 

Depends on the situation? 

Bella would NEVER abandon Voldemort in battle or for the Cause. In a Muggle setting though, if he pissed her off she’d totally walk out of the restaurant :P 

Voldemort would never walk out on Bella either, tho, would he? He’s devoted to her, plus he does feel like he owes her after Azkaban. 

The only concept I can imagine relevant to this is Voldemort saying something in his anger that he doesnt exactly mean tho it holds some truth in it, that hurts Bella so deeply, that she leaves, both out of spite but also because she thinks it’s the best for him. In fact, I have a very specific HC for this which takes place in the afterlife, after they;re both killed in the battle for Hogwarts, but there’s no time for that here. 

There’s also another thing, but it’d quite controversial. If you, like me, HC that Bella started training with Voldemort since she was a child, and entered a sexual and later romantic relationship with him while still underage, this means that she literally hasn’t been alone as an individual, ever. So there’s also the chance that she, after they’ve had a huge fight and he’s terrible with her, leaves so she can find who she is without him. *cue the tears*who will propose? 

Voldemort did propose, on the night of Bella’s formal betrothal. Very rude and uncourteous of him, yes, but it had to be the last minute for him to realise his feelings, because he only has one (1) brain cell that works part-time on the Emotions Department of his brain. She turned him down, because she was young, immature, didnt realise how deep her own feelings were (she believed what her mother told her, that ‘all girls fall for Riddle, it’s an infatuation, it will pass’), wanted the power, fame, money and public adoration that her position as the Black Heir brought, not to mention that she was loyal to her family and terrified since Andromeda had just eloped with Ted. So she broke his heart then, even if neither realised it. But they did continue with their affair, because that’s how it happened in the olden days if you had money and space. 

After the war is over, neither proposes. They talk about it as a given (Rodolphus has fucked off to study penguins in Antarctica) and only need to figure out the details: how public it will be, who’s invited, what titles the ceremony gives them and so on.  who has the most difficult parents?

Spoiler alert: Voldemort’s an orphan! 

Okay, so hypothetically speaking, had any of his parents survived and raised him one way or the other, they’d for sure be a handful. Tom Sr. is a posh bloke used to getting his own way and being considered special due to his status as a squire, so he’d be fucking pissed if he were introduced to a world where he’s not all the shit. Nonetheless, I’d hazard a guess that in the end he, Bella and her parents would get along well-enough; after all they’re the same sort of people. 

Merope, on the other hand, is a whole other story. In the most sensible AU, where she survives giving birth and raises her son but they’re still poor and she’s got trouble with magic due to the trauma of Tom Sr. leaving her, I think she wouldn’t like Bella at all actually. Because Bella is all she ever wanted to be: beautiful, wealthy, well-bred and shows it, and, most importantly, emotionally strong. So she pesters Tom all the time about how Bella is not ‘feminine enough’ in her behaviour, too outspoken, too bitchy, not for ‘her boy’. Tom/Voldemort gives exactly one shit about her opinion and moves on. 

In the canon universe, it’d be naive to say that Bella’s parents were into Tom, simply due to his blood status. In the longrun, however, I think they'd come to terms with it, and they remember how brilliant and ambitious he was in school, so when he becomes successful in life, whether in-universe as Voldemort, or Minister or whatever in an AU, they’re sort of okay with it. Idk if they hand over the Heir of Blacks title to Bella tho, their kids wouldn’t be pureblooded after all. who initiates hand-holding when they’re out in public? 

No one. Not allowed. Not happening. Ever. It’s not their thing, anyway. Voldemort will offer her his arm, like a gentleman, tho. :)

who hogs the blankets? 

Bella, especially after Azkaban. She sleeps with five blankets piled on top of her, has the fireplace going all year round and puts a warmth charm on the sheets. Voldemort doesn’t care. He experienced such cold temperatures in so little clothing as a child, that hot and cold make little impression on him; he even takes cold showers because it’s all the same to him. *sobs* who gets more sad? 

Bella. She overthinks everything. Did she disappoint him today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? Will she ever be the person she was before prison? Why does Cissy wince every time she sees her? Should she have had children after all? These and all sorts of thoughts race through her mind all the time, torturing her to no end. 

Interestingly enough, psychopaths in general dont get that sad, but Voldemort can be very... pensive. who is better at cheering the other up? 

Bella has a wicked sense of humor that only Voldemort seems to find hilarious (comments from other people include ‘disturbing’, ‘scary’ and ‘morbid’), and even though he’s rarely sad, he can be very very serious and in need to relax his body and mind. 

Still, Voldemort, the eternal student of human nature that he is, if he does notice that Bella is sad (which isn’t always because he’s... you know), knows exactly how to distract her, just like he can do with any other person. Just, in her case, it’s sincere. who’s the one that playfully slaps the other all the time after they make silly jokes?

No one ever hits anyone. Voldemort’s been beaten and whipped and flogged enough as a young boy that he wouldn’t do it to the only person he cares about in a non-sexy way, and Bella’s been raised to view such things as ‘Muggle animalistic violence’. She might bite him hard for fun, tho :Dwho is more streetwise?

This may come as a surprise to you because of my username, but Voldemort grew up on the streets in a  Dickensian world. He knows all the tricks in the book; in fact he created many of them. Bella begged him to take her along in his travels incognito, and not on these formal things she attends with her family, and he did, so she’s learnt a lot, but she’s very much a pampered princess. who is more wise?

Hmmm... Hard to say. They have their areas of wisdom and their areas of not-having-a-fucking-clue. Bella, for example, understands emotions better than Voldemort, because she actually experiences them. Jk, jk, but you get what I mean. She’s also more knowledgeable in certain magical things, that, for example, not all prophecies have to be fulfilled and that there’s so much magic that it’s pointless to wish to acquire *everything*; had Voldemort listened to her more often, the books would have been very different. 

Voldemort of course is much older and has more diverse life-experience. He’s also less impulsive in his older years than Bella; he can be the voice of rationality and reason if he’s not superobsessed with something; at which point Bella should remind him to take his meds, because they really do help with fixations. who’s the shyest? 

Neither, in the strict sense of the meaning. They both know what they want and they’re not afraid to demand it. In the end, it’s Voldemort who’ll never say what he truly needs and feels, though, speaking about their everyday life together, it’d be Bella who’d rather have more affection from him but is too shy to ask. But yeah, Voldemort, not because he’s shy per se, but rather in deep hurt and denial. who boasts about the other more? 

In the books it’s obvious that it’s Bella. However, Voldemort does this hilarious thing where he praises Bella in random conversation with other people without even noticing; like, he brings her up every ten seconds even if she’s barely relevant to the subject, so *shrugs* have your pick. who sits on who’s lap?

Nobody, because they’re both tall. Bella will straddle him even in a non sexual manner from time to time, and they often spend their evenings relaxing on the same sofa: Bella will put her legs on Voldemort’s lap and he strokes them absentmindedly (after all they’re superlong and soft and hot), and Voldemort, who refuses to nap in bed, might catch a nap with his head on her lap. The reason Bella doesn’t nap with her head on his lap is because he’s very thin and his femurs hurt her skull, when she’s got plenty of skirts and petticoats cushioning Voldemort. Finally, Bella often sleeps with her head on his chest, because his heart-beat, even tho abnormally slow, relaxes her panic attacks, after Azkaban that is. He will then stroke her hair compulsively - it’s a bit of a fixation of his.

Well,what a ride! Thanks again @knightessofwalpurgis for the ask, this was tremendous fun to write, especially after a very difficult month! And it did help put some of my thoughts on those evil babies in a row. Hope you found it entertaining! I get that those types of asks are usually made for monolectic answers, but yeah, explanations are better. If you made it to the end, dear reader, thank you very much for your time! 

[lizzybeth1986]

I've been thinking about this statement of TRR writers that so many of them would date/marry Hana, and how it isn't reflected in the way the story is written, and then it finally hit me, that it's probably true but in the most depressing way. Because it's probs not about the fact that they love Hana-the-character, but about the fact that they've written Hana as the perfect bride, the always supportive, loyal and good at everything spouse, and it makes me feel really icky now.

Thank you so much for that very observant insight, @bubblygothzombie! That is a very real possibility, and it would make sense considering that whenever Hana is spoken about, she's spoken about in terms of skills and perfection. Which is harmful - because often the narrative has the characters spout these "Perfect Hana" tidbits so they don't have to bother with actual characterization. Case in point? Look at the the descriptives given to each LI if you decide to do a non-imported playthrough:

[[MORE]]

Notice how every other character has their most obvious character trait (Dashing. Sarcastic. Humorous) followed by a descriptor of their loyalty (Honourable. Steadfast. Loyal). Hana's descriptors are literally just her beauty and her skills. Why not "devoted"? Or "dedicated"?

That descriptor sounds so impersonal, especially when you take into account that she left her home and family for us...twice. Placed herself in a difficult situation where she was vulnerable to bullying and cruelty. And still stays by our side and does an incredible amount of work for us even though she gets nothing but dust in return. If that is not loyalty then what is?

But no, Hana will never be known for that. She will be known for her 'niceness' and her usefulness. The writers haven't really cared to explore her much beyond that, and it's sad because there is so much simmering under the surface with her!

The other thing that more often than not leads me to believe in a lack of caring from the writing team, is the fact that they will not hesitate to place Hana in horrific situations...but will rarely (if ever) give her the space to actually talk about what she is going through - not unless the MC gets to go on her own ego trip being this woman's "savior". I'm beginning to realize that most of Hana's scenes in Book 1 - while poignant and beautifully written - were probably written that way so the MC could be placed on a pedestal in Hana's eyes.

The more I think about Book 2 (and Book 3 too) from Hana's perspective, the more disturbing it seems. Liam is the one who brings Hana back to the court, not Madeleine. Who tells us this? Not Liam who made the deal. Not Hana who heard it from him personally, accepted it, and returned for the MC's sake at her own personal risk. It's Drake. DRAKE's scene tells us that Liam arranged for Hana to return.

In the meantime what happens? Hana never gets to personally acknowledge that Madeleine wasn't responsible for her return, and is therefore expected to be publicly grateful and obedient to her future Queen without whose benevolence "she'd still be on the other side of the world". Hana is not allowed to contest this by the narrative, even in private.

Madeleine is allowed to use the fact that no one knows who was responsible for her return, against Hana...but Hana is never allowed on her own to tell the truth or even push back (and we know from that diamond scene where she tells off Olivia that she can push back on her own terms). She's placed in a very, very dangerous situation where the woman in power can abuse and threaten her, right up till the point where her mental health is affected (the aftermath of the chocolate episode shows her breaking down, and her friends need to come in, comfort and distract her. Shortly after this, Madeleine reveals that she did it to "break" Hana - which is seen as 'fun'. The MC herself this and confronts Madeleine about it).

How is this addressed in the story? By having Madeleine pass off her actions as a hazing ritual, which the MC doesn't bother to contest even though she knows better. The MC doesn't even try to warn Hana, doesn't even attempt to protect her. Even that one time we can call out Madeleine on her behaviour in Italy, is an option. The MC can choose to keep quiet as well and therefore keep Hana completely in the dark.

In that final scene in Book 3 where Madeleine confesses to Hana the motive behind her bullying, the MC behaves as though this is brand new information, even though she heard her words in Italy that night, loud and clear.

Later, the books try to cast Madeleine in a more sympathetic light, and in a bid to do so try to completely erase this episode. The one rare time it is (vaguely) mentioned, Madeleine says this:

I'm sure she's willing to let bygones be bygones. That's what this was reduced to, up until people spoke out against the possibility of Madeleine being Hana's potential love interest.

Why was Hana not allowed to push back, given that she clearly knew Liam's involvement in her return?? Because no one writing the story seemed to want to give her the edge over a figure like Madeleine. They wanted Hana under Madeleine's thumb, to never really have any power in front of her. And Madeleine isn't the only one Hana is forced into a "lesser" position around. The MC - who is her friend - not only benefits from Hana's help if she accepts it, but sometimes even takes credit (eg. the polo scene in Book 3 where she becomes popular for a move that was created by Hana). Plenty of the MC's approval points come from Hana's advice and help, and it's clear that of the two women (by default, definitely, and this is often clearer in the playthroughs where the MC fails at everything) Hana is the better courtier, and would make a much better Duchess. Yet she only gets a duchy if MC marries her, otherwise by the end of Book 2 she's basically without a proper home to call her own, without much of a position, living on someone else's charity. Even though she is "Perfect Hana" who has all the skills, and even in a case where the MC can't do anything right...the MC still gets the duchy.

Hana never actually gets what she deserves because the narrative makes her less powerful despite her skills. She had apparently 200 PinStop boards full of things she wanted for her wedding, but somehow ended up wearing a muted black dress for her own bachelorette, was declared "husband and wife" by the officiant at her own wedding, was treated like a bridesmaid+wedding planner at her own damn reception.

Olivia, for all her good traits, is allowed to get away with shitty behaviour towards Hana as well.

Perhaps one wouldn't call this bullying or harmful, but it does highlight how much of Hana's voice the narrative robs from her. Hana is allowed that one time in Book 1 to call out Olivia on her behaviour and attitude towards her. Despite paying 30 diamonds so that scene can happen, Olivia still quips in my playthrough (when Hana stands up to her father in Shanghai) about Hana "finally developing a spine". In the scene above (Book 3 Chapter 15), Hana is allowed to express anger (Wow! What progress!) but never really allowed to do anything about it. Olivia can get away with saying bullshit about her, Madeleine can get away with her bullying, Lorelei can (mostly) get away with her emotional abuse, with Hana constantly striving and working to educate her.

The even more disturbing thing is that when harm is done to other people...it is acknowledged no matter what wrong they may have done in the past, but in Hana's case the same pain isn't considered worth addressing. Madeleine's behaviour is labelled as bullying...if the victim in question is Penelope. Penelope is allowed to be disturbed by reminders of Madeleine, she is allowed to put forth demands to the group, even Drake (the same one who automatically suspects a traumatized Kiara) steps forward to tell her she is safe and Madeleine won't harm her. And if you don't coddle her exactly in the way she wants, Penelope will not travel on the Unity Tour with you, and her father will refuse to attend the wedding. Hana is never given this space, and her issues and pain are never taken this seriously.

I mean, I can somewhat understand loving a character and still making them only "perfect"...and not working so much on the imperfections for whatever reason. But in this case they slap her with the "perfect" stamp, make her blameless in most cases, and then brush aside all the wrongs done to her. How does a writing team do that to a character they claim to care about??

Tldr: The writers will publicly shower Hana with compliments and show lots of love in their interviews and livestreams and constantly call her "perfect", because it's the easiest thing to do. But the bitter fact is that when it comes right down to it they want her less powerful, less fulfilled, given less support - and they will anyday create more sympathy for the people who harmed her rather than ever acknowledge her pain or work on making things better for her. As you've stated here, it's sickening.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

shake, i hope you'll still remember that you're p cool 2/2

oh man Thanks as fuck....... yeah like it’s funny b/c it’s both a difficulty that like, it’s kind of hard to get me to realize maybe ppl want to be pals in the first place because every time someone first is choosing to interact with me i have that casual assumption like “uh oh this person’s mistakenly thinking they’d enjoy talking to me! better just ease them through this experience without making them deal with that mistake” and stuff instead of trying to Have Fun And Be Myself....and then it takes me a hot minute to be like “hey they might actually want to talk to you, chill out” and also “i know social mirroring is your default mode but try to figure out how not to do that”

and then yet also yeah i’ll be like, oh is this person my friend now or?? too early and like. i always do it still despite being well aware now that i do it and knowing to watch for it, and it’s still disappointing sitting there telling yourself you’re not really ppl’s friend, but it’s a lot more manageable than it used to be at least thanks to being more attuned to the whole matter and stuff, like it’s still the “oh it’s exciting to have a friend :)” and then “oh it feels bad to remember that’s not really the case :(” but it’s like the feelings are happening on a smaller scale / lower volume and such. and like using sort of ~objective~ considerations like “okay, you know that most likely this person has Actual friends and stuff” and reminders about how your relationship with them is really just like, kind of light fare. and it’s like, it always kind of sucks but its easy to remember cuz it’s not like it’s not true? its just an unusual thing to have to consider, and if you DO have ~real friends~ and aren’t like disgustingly lonely maybe you don’t have to consider it that much lol. 

like it isn’t fun basically having to be all like, okay so a sorta-friendship might feel significant to you but you have to keep in mind that its not as significant to them. but it’s generally true and like.........better to remind yourself of that sooner than have to realize it later when you’re more invested or care about the other person more or whatever and it’s like oh shit yeah i’m not really that important to them, dang it........like it’s just a weird thing because there’s really no way to be isolated and lonely and not have close friends and be in a truly ~okay~ place with it because it’s just....a continuously detrimental place to be in? and that applies to a lot of things lol. like there’s all these mental approaches i’ll take to things that’s not really about thinking that i can Be Okay with some bad fucked up situation, but rather just trying to lessen the unavoidable and everpresent Not-Okayness of it. the Okay is relative but sometimes you can really only be so okay!

honestly one thing that’s wild is i pretty much did go through the route of “my self worth was so bad it circled around into becoming more positive and now i have fairly decent self-esteem even just on my own”.....cuz like at least when you have to figure things out and get through shit and look out for yourself mostly on your own, you do have that Practice in doing it without external support lol even though you shouldn’t have to. and like i’m not Peak Self Confidence And Self Esteem by any means but it’s decent, self-loathing really isn’t a huge issue or anything. one classic thing that just helped put shit in perspective is the “if you were someone else would you be as unsympathetic / think these things about them” and i’m not like evil so of course i wouldn’t and its like oh lol yeah true! and then speaking of evil another thing that helps is remembering that capitalism is inhumane and an empire of lies and it’s like, okay is this thing about me really At All Bad or is this based on the standards of capitalism and, again, would you be unsympathetic and if it was someone else and blame / criticize them in this way? and i totally wouldn’t. and yeah i get to this point where i appreciate myself by myself!! it’s pretty chill! like, well, i’ll be my own best friend forever if i gotta. is this sad and loserly? sure! but somebody’s gotta do it and that’s just the situation! gotta be a loser? own it!! (to make the references yknow)

like really even knowing that hmm maybe i just don’t have much deep appeal for most ppl is ultimately like well, if so, Shrrruggggg b/c what are you gonna do!! i know there’s ways i’m not “good” at interactions and stuff, but in terms of personality i figure there’s stuff that definitely might not be of universal appeal but it’s definitely not always bad, like i’ll be like “oh i’m too enthusiastic about what i like” or “oh i’m too hot tempered” but really then i’ll remember that no, this isn’t something that everyone hates lol and really what’s the point if i’d have to change fundamental things about myself so i might have more Appeal anyways like....yeah it sucks having ppl just generally not be interested but also? it helps that other ppl talk about having the struggle of like....its not necessarily like you’re a jerk or have nothing to offer or anything, but just seeming “off” to most ppl in terms of that social frequency can always have this effect of largely leading to being like, ignored but also sometimes ignored with A Hint Of Rejection, and it’s like oh hell yeah!! just inherent social Other People Repellent, bring it in!! it sucks but its not Just You!!

like really i feel like maybe for like a decade and a half i’ve always been overcompensating when i think somebody seems neat and trying to seem cool-tempered around them? which, why would i even want to, i’m not cool tempered at all and really am not even interested myself if other ppl are truly like that! but maybe i am tuning in to the fact that ppl generally arent quite so excitable as me and thus trying to play it cool. but like, at this point, even though i do try to “turn it down” for ppl like, all the time, it’s like, why bother. what is the difference between doing that and having ppl not like me and just getting to do my own thing and not having ppl like me, yknow? 

plus just to throw another element of chaos into it, i’m cagey with my ~True Emotions~ or something both in part because i know maybe they’ll seem Annoying to other ppl or something but also because (chaotic trumpet riff) abuseee ://// so like even on the rare occasions i realize that somebody’s okay with interacting with me, i’m still acting kinda elusive or trying to filter myself too damn much like there’s a point to trying to be friends anyways if everybody’s putting on too much of an act!! gotta self sabotage!! trying not to though

like really Would Love To Have Friends i’d just also love to not have to lower my standards despite that fact that being like, yeah the big L Loneliness is really pretty miserable and says you should want to grab on to any chance of friendship with both hands....that’s often not the case cuz it can be like oh wait hang on, do i actually like this person and are they being cool to me too? or like, the person is totally alright but the relationship isn’t going to mean that much to them cuz it’s more of an outer-orbits sort of casual...Friendly Acquaintanceship or whatever and you’re just like Ah Yes :’)

for example i could’ve trimmed this down to not be an overly long series of weird tangents about myself in depressing ways but this is what you get!! why put up fronts. it’s not that bad anyways.

[monsterbrush]

SO. I've been reading your asks, definitely giggling the whole time but I have a question about the nasty lizard. You covered pets, friendship/romance, and even his sexual preferences BUT... What if something killed his favorite f*** buddy? What would he do? How do you think he'd react? I don't mean a lover dying historic or losing a battle with fever, I mean bloody MURDER. What are Slit's stages of grief?

OHOHOHO I think we all know where this is gonna go. 

Warning for extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms, suicide, self harm, and depression, Slit is not gonna handle this well.

Disclaimer: I’m basing this on a Slit without significant character development. It is my personal interpretation of the character and can be subject to change.

Since the line between fuck-buddy and friend is kinda thin for Slit, his reactions to the aforementioned scenario are gonna be pretty damn similar between the two, and it is also important to note that it will not matter to Slit whether his partner deserved what they got or not, or that Slit might have done the same were the circumstances reversed, all that matters to Slit is his partner has been killed. What’s more is his partner has been abruptly taken from him and he. Is. Pissed. 

Slit doesn’t go into shock very often, and when he does, it is quickly followed by blistering anger. Anger is his automatic response to most things, it is his default, it’s how he protects himself from feeling soft, or sad, or scared, so his mind jumps to anger in situations like this. It’s just easier for him this way. So his shock doesn’t last long, he dives headfirst into his anger, channels it, fuels himself on it, and attacks. This line of action has two outcomes, so let’s explore them both shall we?

Option one: Slit gets his revenge. In his rage he will brutally slaughter the focus of his anger. Depending on his current level of coherence he will either kill them fast or choose to make them suffer first. Morals mean very little to Slit. He is mad, and they are to blame, so whatever he does to them is justified. It’s one of the things that make him such an effective War Boy—maybe not when directed towards his fellow Boys, but towards enemies it makes him very nice to have on your side unless you’re big on the whole “No unnecessary killing” thing, because Slit’s definitely gonna throw a wrench in that.

Naturally, once his enemy is dead Slit’s at bit of a loss. His partner is gone, and now so is the person that killed them. He might take his lingering frustration out on his surroundings, kick the corpse around a little bit longer etc. He’ll wear himself out until he can barely stand. War Boys aren’t taught to grieve for their fallen brothers, so with his anger out of the way Slit just… shuts down. He wanders around on cruise control. Doesn’t really do much here or there. His partner is gone, there’s a massive hole where they’re meant to be, so Slit does what any War Boy would do and gets the hell away from that. He changes bunks. He stops visiting the places where he and his partner used to hang out at. Avoids anything to do with them. He keeps their memory close sure, maybe carves a little doodle or two into his stomach to commemorate them, to take his mind off of it all—it’s his own twisted way of coping, being soft without being soft. 

If left to his own devices he’ll be quick to find his way to Valhalla, not out of glory but more out of a lack of seeing something else to live for. He can’t move on from this on his own. Slit’s not good at making new friends, he knows that, and he knows how unlikely it is for him to find someone else to fill the space his partner left, and he might not even want someone else, he wants his partner. So naturally Valhalla is his best bet, it’s impressed upon War Boys enough that dying in glory is what they might consider the only natural response to something like this. His partner is usually the one to help him out with his emotions and things so without them there’s not much he can do by himself in this regard, emotional support is vital and he does not have a lot of it. So he chases Valhalla in a blazing ball of fire and that’s it. That’s the end. 

Option two: Something stops him. Slit gets restrained, held back, or otherwise kept from achieving his desired revenge or dying in the attempt because you know damn well it wasn’t a sudden emergence of empathy that stayed his hand, and now Slit is left to fester. He is unsatisfied, stewing in his rage. It simmers and burns, churning his guts. He lashes out at everyone with the slightest provocation. Anything becomes worthy of a punch in the teeth to Slit. Any tiny little infraction. Without expressing his rage towards the one who killed his partner he inflicts it on everyone else instead, and when that isn’t enough he takes his frustration out on his environment, throwing things, hitting things, breaking things. Instead of avoiding the memory of his partner he soaks himself in it, he clings to the idea of vengeance and doesn’t let go. Never forgive, never forget. Under the right circumstances even Immortan Joe himself could become the target of his rage, if an adequate reason isn’t given for Slit to more easily accept his partner’s death. Gods and kings mean nothing to someone like Slit, it’s all about who’s on top, Slit knows that better than he knows God. As someone whose morals are so loose and subjective, his religious views are much the same. They are a means to an end for Slit. If something isn’t working, he either changes it to suit his needs or abandons it entirely. He’ll burn for himself before he burns for a God, his devotion ends where his God ceases to benefit him.

It is more than likely that this scenario ends with Slit destroying himself in some violent explosive death fueled by the rage he’s marinated himself in like a box of fireworks soaked in gasoline that’s been lit by a match, but on the off chance he does eventually achieve the revenge he so desperately sought after he is actually much better off for it (a relative term, nothing about how he is handling this is okay). Delayed gratification is one hell of a drug. Slit feels satisfied, he can move on with his half-life now, he can rest easy knowing the person who took his partner from him finally got what Slit felt in his soul they deserved. Now Slit can move on. He still probably ends up going to Valhalla, but that’s what War Boys are taught to do. 

Regardless of how things come to pass, Slit becomes self-destructive either way. His coping mechanisms are not healthy in the slightest. He doesn’t handle grief well. Or helplessness, or loss, or fear, etc. 

One might say he takes after Max Rockatansky when it comes to the loss of a loved one (haha that was a terrible joke, I’m so sorry Max). 

Ideally he needs intensive emotional support, a firm hand, someone to walk him through what he is feeling and support him through it, and an outlet for his emotions. Even then, the road to recovery is bumpy as all hell, as anyone who has experienced loss of that magnitude can tell you, and Slit will struggle and hurt practically every step of the way, but if he has even one of those things his chances of coming to terms with his partner’s death and moving on are better than if he is left to his own devices.  

[brigdh]

Reading Saturday

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. Book 6 of The Expanse series. "I made my name with the story on the Behemoth. Aliens and wormhole gates and a protomolecule ghost that only talked to the most famous person in the solar system. I don't think my follow-up to that can be "Humans Still Shitty to Each Other". Lacks panache." That's Monica Stuart, a journalist looking for her next story, but it makes a fairly good summary of Nemesis Games as well – though I'd disagree about it lacking panache. After five books of zombie viruses and a vast galaxy of empty planets for the taking and physics-defying abandoned security systems, Nemesis Games features pretty much no alien content at all. Instead we have humanity reacting to these events, mostly in negative ways that feature them being, well, shitty to each other. The biggest reaction comes from the Belters, millions of humans born and raised in no-gravity or low-gravity. Those conditions have led to extremely low bone-mass (among other physical adaptations), which means all those new planets out there for the taking? The Belters won't be going to them, at least not without months or years of expensive medical therapy that's out of reach for most of them. They can see the future coming, and it's going to abandon them to poverty and irrelevance. They lash out with terrorist attacks on a scale grander than any before, as though enough violence will force humanity back to where it was before the first encounter with the alien protomolecule. That might be an impossible goal, but a hell of a lot of people are going to die anyway. Meanwhile, the spaceship Rocinante is in need of repairs, which means our four main characters are out of action for a few months. They take this opportunity to split up and visit family and old friends – Amos to Earth, Alex to Mars, Naomi to the Belt, and Jim stays with the ship at the repair station. Having separate plotlines means that each one gets their own POV, and you guys, I was so excited! I've been waiting to hear Naomi or Alex's voice since Book One, and this does not disappoint. Amos's narration was particularly well-written; he's a straight-up sociopath (though one who tries to do good nonetheless) and struggles to recognize emotions either in himself or in others, often defaulting to describing social situations as a set of maneuvers toward a desired outcome. It lends his POV a curiously flat tone, but one that is really interesting to read. The four crew members are still separated when the terrorist attacks begin, and most of the emotion in the book comes from them trying to desperately make their way back to one another. Each one thinks of the others as family, as home – this is such an absolute fantastic series for those Chosen Family feels – especially Jim, and who would have thought the boring action hero of Book One could become such an adorable softie? He spends a significant portion of this book being sad that no one will do the space-equivalent of texting him back, and I love him so much. Holden could sit at a tiny table skimming the latest news on his hand terminal, reading messages, and finally check out all the books he’d downloaded over the last six years. The bar served the same food as the restaurant out front, and while it was not something anyone from Earth would have mistaken for Italian, it was edible. The cocktails were mediocre and cheap. It might almost have been tolerable if Naomi hadn’t seemingly fallen out of the universe. Alex sent regular updates about where he was and what he was up to. Amos had his terminal automatically send a message letting Holden know his flight had landed on Luna, and then New York. From Naomi, nothing. She still existed, or at least her hand terminal did. The messages he sent arrived somewhere. He never got a failed connection from the network. But the successfully received message was his only reply. After a couple weeks of his new bad Italian food and cheap cocktails routine, his terminal finally rang with an incoming voice request. He knew it couldn’t be from Naomi. The light lag made a live connection unworkable for any two people not living on the same station. But he still pulled the terminal out of his pocket so fast that he fumbled it across the room. Each character gets to star in a very different genre within this one book: Jim himself is in a political thriller, trying to find the mole hidden in the security forces; Amos is making his way through a post-apocalyptic landscape; Naomi is in a prison-break movie; and Alex gets at least two extremely cool car chases (well, spaceship chases) between being a detective following the paper trail. All of them are great, but I think my favorite is Naomi's, which is an incredible depiction of the harm and suffocation of emotional abuse (gaslighting in particular) and the depression and learned helplessness that can result, especially when everyone around you sees nothing wrong. We get a lot more about her long-awaited backstory, as well as Amos's, and there are reappearances of a lot of my favorite secondary characters: Martian marine Bobbie, failed murderer Clarissa Mao, foul-mouthed politician Chrisjen Avasarala. (Though I'm still holding out hope Prax will show up again someday; I miss him.) All through The Expanse series I've admired Corey's focus on petty human squabbling and politicking in the face of grand, universe-changing discoveries. Nemesis Games is that thread turned up to eleven. It's not a cynical series, though; for every narrow-minded failure there's an equally small but important triumph of friendship or justice or well-meaning. It reminds me of Terry Pratchett, in a way. Not at all in Corey's style of writing or type of humor, but they both have a view of humanity which is simultaneously realistic and fond and exasperated. And if there's a bigger compliment than that, I don't know what it is. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. A security robot/cyborg armed with all sorts of guns and other methods of killing has hacked its governor module, allowing it to do whatever it wants, and nicknames itself Murderbot. But it turns out that what Murderbot really wants to do is spend hours watching dumb sci-fi TV shows, avoid eye contact or any social encounters with humans, and not have to deal with its own emotions. Unfortunately that last one is hard to avoid. In this book, Murderbot is heading to a mining planet where it knows something bad went down in its past, involving lots of human deaths. But Murderbot can't remember exactly what happened, since its memory was wiped, and so it's off to investigate. Getting to the planet means hitching a ride on a spaceship run by a massively complicated AI (which Murderbot promptly nicknames ART: Asshole Research Transport) and then getting a job as a human bodyguard to a group of scientists heading down to the planet's surface. Things, unsurprisingly, go wrong, and Murderbot finds itself with another pack of dumb humans in need of protection. I enjoyed Artificial Condition a lot, but it's not quite as good as the first book in the series, All Systems Red. Part of that is very simply that it's a middle book of the series, and it shows; progress in the larger plot is made, but not much, and there's a feeling of spinning our wheels while we wait for big events to happen. That said, it's still an extremely enjoyable novella (only about 120 pages), which builds out the world from what we learned in All Systems Red. Now we have sexbots and ship navigators, more about how different governments interact and function (or don't), and some hints as to what's going on with the company that created Murderbot. Plus there's Murderbot's wonderful narration, which honestly is worth the price of admission all on its own. A section from where it introduces ART to trashy entertainment: I watched seven more episodes of Sanctuary Moon with it hanging around my feed. Then it pinged me, like I somehow might not know it had been in my feed all this time, and sent me a request to go back to the new adventure show I had started to watch when it had interrupted me. (It was called Worldhoppers, and was about freelance explorers who extended the wormhole and ring networks into uninhabited star systems. It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.) [...] “It’s not realistic,” I told it. “It’s not supposed to be realistic. It’s a story, not a documentary. If you complain about that, I’ll stop watching.” I will refrain from complaint, it said. (Imagine that in the most sarcastic tone you can, and you’ll have some idea of how it sounded.) So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again. C'mon, tell me you wouldn't read a million pages of that, plot or no plot.

[DW link for easier commenting]

[floralseokjin]

— aquiver | 04 (m)

aquiver (adj.) [uh-kwiv-er] in a state of trepidation or vibrant agitation; trembling; quivering

Yoongi can’t remember the last time he was able to successfully bring himself to the point of orgasm, then Namjoon gives him a business card advertising ‘Healing Hands’, and that’s where he meets you; pretty and innocent looking, who gets paid to provide hand jobs for a living…

pairing | min yoongi x reader genre/warnings | mentions of death, slight angst, mentions or mature themes, fluff words | 10,495

» 01 :: 02 :: 03 :: 04 :: 05 :: 06 :: 07 :: 08  ✓

It was approximately 2 days and eighteen hours later when Yoongi finally text you. You were almost sure he wasn't going to do it again and he'd end up coming back next Sunday, where you dreaded to think what would happen…but your anxiousness was cut short when your phone buzzed Wednesday afternoon. You were at home in your tiny apartment, curled up watching television. There was nothing on at this hour besides daytime game shows, but you took comfort in them. It reminded you of your mom. It had been ritual when you were off school sick to watch every fixed game show there was on the box, tucked in your blanket like a burrito. It made you sentimental, almost a little too sad, but it brought you comfort on days when you felt lonely, like she was there with you.

The buzz of your phone shook you out of an intense round of wheel of fortune and you picked it up absentmindedly, almost forgetting you hadn't had the device attached to you these past couple of days. When you saw Unknown, your heart suddenly skipped a beat and it all came back to you.

Yoongi.

It had to be him. Unless it was some scam informing you that you'd won a competition you never even applied to…

To your surprise and unexplainable excitement, it was him. Nothing could explain the rapid beating of your heart as you read his message over and over again, but saying that…it wasn't that surprising if you remembered Sunday’s events…

You had no explanation for it, other than being in that room did things to you. You weren’t kidding when you told him not to go back there. You dreaded to think what would happen next. When you were alone in that atmosphere an explainable lust and desire washed over you. Having sex on that medical bed was equally unsanitary and ridiculous as it sounded.

You had been praying with everything that Yoongi would text you because you knew in the outside world things would be different. The café had proved that. You were almost…shy… It was all new and exciting. You wanted nothing more than to see him and hang out with him in a different situation, one that didn’t include you wanting to jump his bones as soon as you saw him, which that tainted room seemed to do to you.

You didn’t know what it was about Min Yoongi but you guessed he was special enough to get instead your head. That's why you kept rereading his first message, unable to believe it was all true. Unable to believe a guy like him could be so cute and exist.  

This was it. This was all new.

[Yoongi] i’m finally ignoring the crippling anxiety i have over this and am messaging you… please don’t ignore me i don’t think my heart could take it

Things started off slowly. He stuck to his word and didn't show up at work. Two weeks past with just messaging back and fore. It started off as just small talk, but as the days went by you began to warm up a lot more. Of course, Yoongi and you had spent a lot of time together back in that room. You’d spoken openly and intently, but there was always something therapeutic about it—for him anyway. He seemed to like to talk to you to get things off his chest… in more than one way, but you knew after Yoongi’s second visit it was always more than just sexual for him…you too… That's how you were here right now.

There had always been something about Min Yoongi.

He phoned you one night randomly. It was 2am and you had just come back from work. It scared you sometimes how casual you were about your job. You remembered when you'd first started, just over a year ago, how anxious you had felt. How unsettled everything made you feel, and how often you felt sick when you thought about what you did. But you guessed along the way you had become desensitised to it all. You no longer felt any emotion connection to the words hand job. Long ago was it something you associated with first love, shy touches, nervous giggles. Now it just came natural. Like blinking. Maybe you should have felt sad about that. But you didn't. The need for success far outweighed your self-respect. And as you saw it, you had way more than any man that came through those doors. They were the ones paying you. They were the ones paying for your education so you could make something of your life and help people who really mattered.

You had come across the job by accident, nearly thirteen months ago. You had moved to the city wanting to escape your mundane life. You’d never had dreams when you were a kid growing up and that still hadn't changed by the time you hit eighteen. However, once twenty rolled around, that all changed. You were happy living by the sea and working in a small café that sold ice cream. Your life wasn't perfect, but it was as near as it was ever going to get. The day your mom died, changed everything.

It was a car accident. Totally random. If she hadn't been in the car at that specific time, at that specific place she still would have been alive today and you probably wouldn't be living in the city. You moved here to escape your father. It was no fault of his own, nothing he'd done on purpose. All he had been guilty of was being unable to cope with his wife’s death. As if that was a crime… But it turned him into a drunk and an obsessor. He didn't like you leaving the house in case the same fate would likely happen to you. You understood his worry, but his anxiety and his need to rely on alcohol drove you away in the end.

You became akin to a stay at home nurse, and while you loved your father will your whole heart, you began to look at him with bitterness in your heart. It wove like poison ivy inside of you and caged your heart, until the only way you could escape it was to leave home. He hadn't agreed with your decision obviously and you hadn't spoken a word to him since. It had been eighteen months and you were always consumed with worry over his wellbeing. You had no way of knowing if he was okay or not, and it depressed you to think about it every day. It weighed heavily on your conscience, but you prayed that he had finally gotten some help.

Moving to the city was a spontaneous decision. You could have just gone to the next town or two from you, but you decided to live your life to the fullest. Life was short, you understood that now and that's how you found yourself in alone in the big city. You had a choice; it was either find a full-time job or go back into education. Your mom had left you some money in her will as well as having life insurance and that helped to find an apartment and take some worry off your shoulders. You chose to work, not believing you had it in you to go back into full time education, that time in your life had passed you by. But has the weeks dragged into months, you began to wonder, what if…

Helping people had always been in your nature, you were a kind person by default and reeked empathy and sympathy for others. You still wondered if there was another way you could have helped your father and to put it lightly, running away from him still made you feel sick. If there was a to help others, maybe in place of your father—to make up for it, you'd take it. That's when you began searching for online classes. It was too late in the year to even look for a local college, let alone enrol. You didn't even know how much hassle or paperwork it would be, let alone the price. Online classes seemed the best option. And that's when you began studying your way to be some sort of counsellor.

Online classes were much cheaper than college but you still needed to purchase food and keep a roof over your head, your mom’s money wouldn't last forever. You’d been working in a restaurant, 4 days out of seven, 8 hours a day—sometimes 12 on special occasions. It kept you busy, but maybe not busy enough. You were lonely in the city, your only human reaction with your co-workers and customers. You wanted to work to distract yourself and you had no problem looking for a second job as long as you had time to write your papers for your classes.

You saw the vacancy for a receptionist at Healing Hands one day on your way home from work. It was in the window of the tiny building with a purple door. The idea of a psychic shop enthralled you, although the idea seemed slightly whack, but the hours seemed reasonable—Saturday and Sunday, 8pm to 12am. That would mean you'd have the days to yourself and you didn't have to work Monday’s at the restaurant so that saved you having to get up early. So, you jotted the number down and rang them that night.

The strange questions they asked you on the phone that night should have sent warning bells off inside your head, like your age and appearance, but you shrugged it off, agreeing to go and meet the manager for a face-to-face interview. You quickly found out you were incredibly innocent or dumb, whatever the correct word—take your pick…

While they were indeed looking for a receptionist, it wasn't to organise the different appointments for mystic ball or tarot readings… and it seemed, the manager—Greta, was incredibly amused to find out how your naïve little mind worked. How were you supposed to know it was a softcore sex shop?! You had only just moved there and in all honesty, you didn’t even know those kinds of places existed. You guess you were naïve back then, now not so much…

It did turn out however, that they were looking for a receptionist for the weekend’s. That much was true. Someone had recently left and Greta didn’t want to take up weekends as well. Your job description started off as innocent as possible even though you had to practically beg Greta to give it to you. You didn’t understand why you were so desperate or so intrigued to be employed here. Call it morbid curiosity, call it loneliness—whatever, but you wanted the job badly and Greta gave in. You guessed the sob story of a runaway daughter and a dead mom helped… or, as you’d found out later on, after months of working with each other, Greta was a softie stuck in the body of what some would call a middle-aged hag. She looked after you like one of her own. In fact, all the girls who worked at the shop she treated like her daughters, even if some were near her age.

It was strange to you, how this place could continue to tick along under the guise of a psychic house. In fact, that was a legit business when the store first opened, men and even woman coming in to ask for tarot readings and help on the supernatural. Greta said that was because the owner was a classified psychic, starting up the business to help her hide her sex work on the side. It was the perfect disguise and worked well for the first year or two, but she soon grew bored of coming here every day and gave up eventually. There was no need for her to bullshit naïve and vulnerable people anymore, not when she was rolling in the dough. You didn’t even know her name, she wasn’t around anymore. You had never met her, she just took the cash this place made and lived her lavish life style.

The customers looking for legit powers of the paranormal soon died off when all they had was Greta telling them they were going to win the lottery in a couple of years’ time or if she disliked the look of them, they were going to die next month… Soon there were just a handful of that type amongst the men who paid for sexual favours and now, you could count on one hand how many there had been in the past six months. You were surprised how this place was still open, wondering how the cops hadn’t raided and shut it down long ago. But according to Greta the police just really didn’t give a shit. This was the city after all. They had bigger problems to deal with, you guys were small fry. In fact, the chief of the local department was a regular according to Greta; his favourite was Porsche, a thirty-five-year-old divorcee, mother of two. Greta were sure they were in a secret relationship, despite the fact he was married.

You were happy just working behind the counter at first, watching the men that came in desperate for relief. Some were awkward, bashful, red in the face as they chose a palm reading option. Some gave literally no fucks, not a care in the world as they asked for the longest pull ever. Some old, some young. Some obvious virgins, some even married. Some even asked to bring their wives along. That was a big fat no, of course. The place may be a low-key sex shop but you weren’t here to help people activate secret kinks, or whatever kind of deprived shit they were into. This wasn’t a charity, that was the first rule Greta told you.

Soon men watching became mundane and you began to envy the girls who would make anything from $400-600 a night. You felt somewhat disgusted by yourself when it happened because you were never like that. Sex was a sacred thing for you, including any sex acts. It wasn’t just for fun in your eyes, you wanted to share the pleasure, you wanted to feel something for that person involved. That kind of job would never let you do that. You wouldn’t be able to hack it and besides, you were sure Greta would refuse point blank if you tried to ask her about it. So, instead, you pushed the thought out of your mind. You were being stupid, tempted by the money that seemed so easy to make. That life wasn’t for you, or so you thought.

The event that followed, the one that pushed you to that promotion shall you say… or most normal people would think of it as a demotion, was when Greta became short staffed one night. The unthinkable. There weren’t enough women on to dish out the pleasure, Tiffany off sick. She was half way ready to go in there herself, you watching with the question on the tip of your tongue, but then another girl asked it for you…

“Can’t Y/N do it?”

Absolutely not, were Greta’s first words. She looked flabbergasted, appalled by the thought. But there was no other choice, Greta knew that. She was married and like hell would her husband let her do such a thing, he was just about on board with her managing the place let alone participating. You could still remember the conflict on her face as she deliberated with herself, the utter torment etched in worry lines across her face. Greta didn’t want this life for anyone, even if it quickly became normal and routine. Nobody hated their job here—if they did, they left. Simple as that, they weren’t forced to stay. They weren’t used or treated horribly. Greta loved every woman who worked her, that’s why she didn’t want you to do it. If she could save you beforehand, she would, but it was too late. You were determined. There wasn’t anything she could do to make you change your mind, she wasn’t your mom…

You still remember the first hand job you gave that night, and the 5 consecutive ones after that. The first was messy, probably even shit in your eyes, but it seemed to work for the guy. In his late 30s and sweating profusely, you guessed he hadn’t been touched in months… You were grossed out, you couldn’t help it. The other girls said it was natural to feel that way at first, it would pass. And it did.

Soon, you began to relax. You felt powerful almost, after a while. In charge of someone’s pleasure was a new experience. Every sexual encounter you’d had previous had been shared and intimate. This was clinical and one sided. You took no pleasure in this. At all. You never would. It was a job. The money at the end of the night reminded you of that and besides, you saw no interest in men like this. Deep down you didn’t understand their thought processes, especially when you knew most were married, you saw their wedding rings, shamelessly displayed it in front you, no respect for their wives who were probably at home, raising their children on their own. Maybe that made you cold, maybe that made you moral-less, because you still carried on.

If they weren’t married, they were divorced. Like Mr. Lee, the regular you saw. Most of the girls had their own regulars. You didn’t know what made a guy choose to come back to a single girl, you didn’t care either. If you had to guess, it would be purely sexual, but Mr. Lee was more lonely than anything. Yes, maybe he was physically attracted to you, but you were sure he saw you more as a companion. You could tell by the way he told you everything about his life; every worry, every fear, every shit thing that was happening to him. His ex-wife trying to take all his money and his kids, to name a couple… That should have made you feel sorry for him and you guessed a part of you did, but mostly you saw him as pathetic.

A weak man. A loser. The reason his wife had left him in the first place was because he had a gambling addiction. He lost them their savings and their house, and now he was here, wasting money he could spend on his kids for a cheap thrill. A waste of space. Another man with an addiction. Another man who valued his own pleasure over other people. Be it with money or sex, or even alcohol to make them blissfully ignorant to others around them… They didn’t care about others.

Maybe you could say this occupation had made you despise men. Or maybe you always had, ever since the day your mom died and you were left alone… You refused to believe you could help yourself by leaving this god forsaken place, but you didn’t want to. Not yet. Not when you could get money for their weakness. Not when you could better yourself from their weakness. And then you were fine when you thought like that. You were happy, maybe some would say blissfully ignorant in your own little world. Ironic, right? And then Min Yoongi came along and everything you thought you believed in was proved wrong…

You couldn’t explain the wash of comfort that spread over your body when you saw his name flash on the screen, the dull sound of the vibrations echoing in your dark room. And just like that, it was just you and him in your own little world again. You don’t know how it happened. How you let another person in, a guy at that, but here you were, answering the phone with a smile on your face, feeling the beat of your heart hasten when he greeted you, your name coming out like a sigh from his mouth, as if he wasn’t expecting you to answer. it was a Sunday. “Your” day. But as he spoke, the point was further reiterated—what you had with Yoongi wasn’t purely sexual, that’s why he was different.

“I’m sorry if this is stepping over the line, but it’s been so long since I heard your voice. I miss you. I just wanted to say hi.”

The words came out rushed, as if he’d been thinking and rehearsing them all night, and you suppressed a smile, instantly reminded of how cute he was. You wondered if he liked that label? If you were to guess, it would have been a no, but tough—it was true. He was right, it had been a long time since you’d heard each other’s voices. Two whole weeks of messaging and now he’d finally given in to his urges. Once again, you were surprised to find how natural it was to speak with him. You hadn’t spent much time together, and given the circumstances of said time, it should have been awkward, but here you were catching up like old friends, or even, friends that were getting to know each other better. Hearing his voice over the line soothed you.

You stayed up until 5am night, talking about how busy he had been lately and new things he was working on. It always caught you by surprise when you remembered he was celebrity. To you he was just plain old Yoongi, you had no idea about his life in front of the cameras and you didn’t want to know either. If you were to guess, you think that’s why Yoongi liked talking to you so much. A face that could remind him of normality… even if you had met in abnormal ways… You spoke about yourself too, like the assignments you had due. You skirted around your night at work, but that was a given and more than fine with you. When you got home at night, that was the last thing you wanted to be thinking about. Everything that happened in work, stayed there. There was separate thinking space you used for work. No thoughts of the antics stayed with you when you walked through your front door and washed your hands, changing for bed. Well… that was until Yoongi came along…

Hanging up that night, you couldn’t be happier, because finally he asked you the one question you’d been waiting and hoping for. He asked you out. You were finally going to see him in person again and away from that sordid place. He’d brought up the record store again and you’d practically yelled out a yes from the anticipation of the long wait. Although nervous, you were desperate to see him again, but you understood he needed some time to get his head around everything too. You weren’t the only one this was new for, and you got that. However, he seemed just as excited to see you Tuesday as you were to see him. You went to sleep with a grin on your face, thinking about how long it took you guys to hang up, both not wanting to say the last farewell…

This was all new for you. You couldn’t remember the last time you had been interested in someone. There was part of you, when you moved to the city, that thought you’d meet someone and fall madly in love; build a home together and get married, have children—the whole kaboom…but that was just fairy-tale. It didn’t happen in real life. You’d given up on that quite quickly after the big move to the city. There weren’t many places to meet guys and the one job you’d had in the restaurant, where you worked among people your own age, had been short lived. You were making more than enough money at Healing Hands and with school work racking up, there was only one other option. With the restaurant went the ability to socialise and now friendships and dating seemed far out on the horizon.

You’d only ever been in one relationship. Only ever been in love once. And that was in the last year of high school. It had lasted nearly two years and had ended not long after your mom passed. You knew you were to blame for the breakdown in your relationship, even though he told you he understood, but you still pushed him away. You guessed that was your way of coping. Your grief made you change and sadly, that made him fall out of love with you. You weren’t the same person anymore. Everything had changed. As much as you hated to admit it, you were still bitter. Even if he’d said he understood, in the end it turned out he didn’t. Otherwise, why would he leave you?

You’d subconsciously given up on love after that and now, working in this place just further put you off relationships and even men. When you masturbate around ten men every weekend it kind of takes the urge and excitement out of sex… You had almost conditioned yourself now to not look at a man sexually. It was easy in that place. There was no way you could enjoy what you did, despite how sometimes handsome your clients were. That didn’t matter at all. The sexual act had been cut out—it was separate. It came as easy and blinking. It was nothing to you and so were the men…until Yoongi came along.

He was different. You were curious as soon as you met him. He was nervous, you could tell that as soon as he appeared at the door of your room. Of course, that was no surprise, a lot of men were nervous, but usually for different reasons. Maybe because they were cheating, or just embarrassed that they had to resort to paying to get off. And while you were sure that was the case for Yoongi a little, to you, he seemed nervous in case it didn’t work—in case you didn’t work. As well as that, you just couldn’t place him. Working at Healing Hands for so long had allowed you to pinpoint men into different categories and if you were being 100% honest, young men just didn’t turn up at your door. It was much easier for them to hit the club and pick a girl up if they were desperate. They didn’t need to pay for a measly hand job. That should have been your first clue that maybe he was special… his occupation preventing him from doing such things. You were sure “celebrities” living around here came to this place, but for obvious reasons, they never disclosed it and you were too out of touch with the showbiz world to know faces anyway. You could have a Hollywood actor coming through your doors and you’d have no clue at all…

Not that it mattered Yoongi was somewhat famous to you. You didn’t know who he was before all this, so it didn’t really matter that you knew now. All you knew was that there was something about him for you. Curiosities turned to knowledge and before long you’d found yourself head over heels for a customer. That’s what he was, right? A customer who paid you for the services you provided… Maybe to the outside eye, yes, but to you… it was more than that. Yoongi had stopped being a customer after the second visit. After you began to learn things about him, after he began to confide in you… he was no longer that. He was something else… It wasn’t seedy, what you had, at all. It was a connection.

It’s just the connection involved you getting paid to wrap your hand around his dick. It was getting dangerous in that place; with each visit, you were getting greedier and greedier. What happened last time was a classic example and you knew that was only the start. If he kept coming back to see you, your imagination could only fathom what would happen next. That’s why you had to tell him to contact you outside of that room. That’s the only way you could have a hold of yourself…

It still puzzled you how you both could act so normally when together in a different setting. You still remembered how panic stricken you had been when you’d first seen his face in the café, but surprisingly, in his company like that—in such a casual setting, you were nothing but relaxed. Two friends…maybe something more…meeting up for coffee and having a catch up. It made you chuckle that passers-by’s had no clue he paid you every week for a less than ordinary service. Not that it mattered, because when you were out like that, it was the last thing on your mind. Not a sexual thought in sight, a startling difference from how it was in your room…

No, in real life, you wanted to get to know him more. You wanted to grow closer… This connection you had was something you were unfamiliar with. You had never experienced it before, not even with friends back home, not even with your ex… There was something about Min Yoongi. He had broken through your barrier and let himself inside your heart. You were falling for him, you knew it… You weren’t thinking of the possible consequences, possible heartbreak, you were only thinking of him and when you’d finally get to see him in person again…

He took you to the record store for your first date. Even though you didn’t know it was a date until he asked to take you on a second. There were many silences, maybe some would say awkward, but to you it was more soothing—exciting. You couldn’t remember a time where you had felt this giddy, a nervous elation, your skin tingling with just to be around him once again. It was crazy, the startling difference between the last time you’d seen him and now. You had been ready to jump his bones in that room after losing the last bit of self-control you had. The first man to make you feel that way in months, well, maybe even years…

But here, there was no sexual tension in the air, just a silent attraction between the two of you, both incredibly happy to be around each other—to get to know each other. He looked slightly different to the last time you’d seen him, his hair lighter, a chocolatey brown, falling into his eyes, his bare face cherub like, making him appear younger than he was. He looked soft and slight, a white t-shirt hanging loosely over his torso in the breezy weather. You were constantly surprised by how relaxed you felt around each other, and you took the time to converse freely, sharing snippets of your childhood as you both perused the aisles of continuous records. You realised one of the things you liked most about him, was how passionate he was about music. Just by watching his facial expressions as he talked about it, artists he admired and his own—although he became increasingly modest when that happened—you could tell he lived and breathed the stuff. He was in his element when he was deep into a monologue and you found it cute when he realised you hadn’t been able to get a word in edgeways. For such a soft spoken and seemingly quiet guy, he sure liked to speak… Not that you minded at all, you could listen to him talk every single hour of the day. You liked the way his face blushed when he got embarrassed after realising he was talking too much and the way his voice faded out as he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

You were surprised to find that Yoongi had no problem opening up to you. You don’t know why you expected him to be closed off, you should have realised he wasn’t when he’d continued to confide in you back at Healing Hands. No, in actual fact, it was you who had a hard time opening up to him. It had nothing to do with him per say, it was just hard to talk about yourself. You’d spent so much time keeping everything inside and dealing with it privately that speaking out loud seemed frightening. You felt bad that Yoongi had told you so much; you even knew his brother and parents’ names, miscellaneous information about their lives and childhood stories about him, and you hadn’t even told him one iota of your life back home.

You think he understood silently though. He realised after the first few times of prying for information, you closed up quickly and beat around the initial question. He realised quickly that you weren’t comfortable but he respected it and that just made falling for him even easier and before long you were brave enough to divulge more about your life. Each more message, each more phone call, each more date, you grew closer and closer and soon it became easy to talk about yourself. You told him little tidbits of your childhood, your life back at home working at the ice cream shop beside the beach. You bonded over your love for the water, although, whereas you had once been able to see it every day, he had only seen it a few times in his whole life. He made you promise him that you’d accompany him on a trip to the seaside one day and of course you agreed with a grin on your face, imagining what it would be like to be alone with him for a couple of day, spending more than just a few hours together every week… You realised then, that you wanted to see him every day…

Within time, you told him about your mom, your dad and how you moved to the city. He was comforting but he understood that you didn’t want pity for what had happened in the past. It had been nearly two years since your mother passed away and you didn’t want old feelings to be dredged back up again. You wanted a fresh start, and Yoongi was that for you. You told him the full story of how you got your job at Healing Hands and you giggled together over your naivety. However, he let you know that he too was shocked to find out such a place existed around here. Of course, he knew they were around, but it wasn’t until his friend told him about it, he realised that it was truly a thing. And it turned out it wasn’t his thing at all, because here he was a couple of months later, enthralled with the girl he’d met there. When he’d said that, it had made you blush and then he’d called you cute and you’d blushed even harder...        

It was refreshing to speak about your occupation so nonchalantly—even with the guy you’d met there…even with the guy you were falling for… You loved the way he didn’t judge you like you were sure most other people would and when you told him that, he shrugged you off. “Why would I judge you when I was a paying customer,” were his words and you had to agree because you’d somehow both made such an abnormal situation become ordinary. You liked that. You liked how you could be yourself and, how you hoped he could too. Of course, you didn’t go into detail about your weekends at work, (not that you wanted to anyway), you knew Yoongi wouldn’t want to hear that, but it was good to know the subject wasn’t being ignored—like it wasn’t happening…

Actually, in fact, work became less important to you, in the rear of your mind each weekend. Your subconscious spent less time concentrating on it and more time thinking of other things. Like the next time you’d get to see Yoongi, or just even waiting for his next call… You had hardly noticed the change in yourself until people started pointing it out, namely Greta. She kept saying you seemed happier lately—actually, the happiest she’d ever seen you. You realised then and there, it was because of him. There was no other reason. You knew secretly, Greta realised it too. She wasn’t stupid, Yoongi had been coming to this place every Sunday for a number of weeks, and now he was nowhere to be seen, pair that with her having to practically kick him out a couple of times when you ran over time… you knew she knew what was going on. However, she didn’t say anything. It was nothing to do with her, and she was probably waiting for you to let her know instead of presuming…

The days rolled into weeks and suddenly you were spending more than just a few hours with Yoongi a week. He would squeeze as much time as he could with you, even letting you into his studio to show you how he worked on music. You had never seen anything like it before and you were amazed, watching in awe as he worked, loving the serious look on his face as he concentrated and the way his eyes closed and his head swayed, feeling the music. You were beyond flattered that he trusted you like this because you understood this was incredibly private to him. You became so comfortable with each other, you truly forget how you met, past realities seeming like light years ago now.

Your favourite time was spent alone together in his car, at the dead of night. He would drive somewhere remote and you guys would talk and listen to music down low. Sometimes you didn’t even need to talk, the comfort hung in the air, enveloping you like a warm hug. And sometimes you would speak nonstop—you were able to converse freely now, without feeling stupid or ungiving.

“Do you think people need love to be happy?”

Yoongi’s question caught you off guard, and you looked over at him as your head fell back against the headrest of the passenger’s seat. A comfortable silence had spread around you once again and his question hung in the air as you mulled it over. He waited patiently for your answer, his slouch similar to yours as he looked out the windshield. It was pitch black outside, other than the dim lights of the street lamps, nearing two in the morning.

“Well,” you began, your voice low, “don’t you think it would be a little lonely if no one loved you… I mean, it doesn’t have to be between a significant other…” you faded out, unsure of where you were going with this.

“Yeah, but sometimes platonic love isn’t enough. Sharing a bond with family and friends is great—knowing somebody is there for you,” he shared and you were once again reminded that you had practically no bonds to speak of. Your relationship with your father dead and the only friends you had were your co-workers—of course they cared for you and looked out for you, but there was no one really there to confide in, to share your thoughts and feelings with… well, until Yoongi came along and at that realisation, you suddenly felt happier, less alone with him by your side.

“What about sharing your life with someone—everyday of your life. That means something, right? Being in love?”

You stayed quiet for a moment, letting his words sink in. “It’s nice to know you’re not alone,” you agreed. “Having that one person is important.”

You watched Yoongi nod slowly, his hand reaching for the key in the ignition, toying with the keychains, the jingle ringing in your ears. You didn’t really know what he was getting at, and you were unsure what was going on in his head right now, his expression unreadable. You didn’t ask why he was having such a conversation, instead you wanted to know an answer to another question…

“Have you ever been in love?”

Past relationships hadn’t been a source of topic between the two of you. You’d actually been the first one to talk about your ex back and home, but thinking about it, Yoongi had never once spoke about past loves he may or may not have had. You didn’t think you were crossing the line, you were just curious. He didn’t have to speak about it if he didn’t want to. You’d just taken the opportunity because he had been the one to bring up the topic of love. You were curious about the people Yoongi may have been in love with one upon a time.

He paused before replying, shaking his head slightly. “Not exactly… There was this girl once when I was eighteen, but that was more infatuation, she never loved me back…I was childish and naïve. Everyone else has just come and gone during the years… I was always too busy with my music to pay attention to love…”

You listened in silence, piecing together the information he’d given you. It seemed that Yoongi had only been interested in his career and music, the one true love of his, you could say and while there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, you guessed he’d grown lonely, wondering if he was missing out on something. Missing out on that one person… in the back of your mind you wondered if that was you… but you didn’t want to get your hopes up. You were 100% sure you were falling for Yoongi and you wanted to believe he shared the same feeling. He felt this connection too. You knew that. You could feel the connection like electricity. It was hard to ignore.

“But you realise that concentrating on your work is fine, right? It’s amazing what you do, Yoongi,” you told him, making sure to hold his gaze to show him how sincere you were being.

It was true too. You would bet he wouldn’t have been able to achieve half the things he had at such a young age if he’d been too busy trying to find love, his attention elsewhere.

“I know that,” he nodded. “I just think it’s about time I lived a little. I’ve been happy for a while, but ever since…” he trailed off, dipping his gaze from yours, his mouth parted as if he was stuck for words, unsure of how to explain himself, before he carried on, cryptically. “Well, ever since lately, I’ve been more than happy.”

“That’s good,” you smiled, trying to curb it from turning into a grin because, to your glee, it was very obvious he was talking about you.

“What about you?” He wondered, and you looked up at him again to find him watching you, more of a serious look on his face now.

“I’m happier a lot more too, lately,” you continued to smile.

And it was true. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d felt like this. No one had been able to make you feel this way in so long, and it was from a plethora of things. It was crazy how many dimensions yours and Yoongi’s relationship had. But right now, at this moment in time, you were enjoying this one the most—getting to know each other so intimately that you could talk about anything. You just hoped that he’d be the first one to admit his feelings because you were unsure if you would be able to do so, and all this beating around the bush was slowly becoming unbearable. You wanted to be able to talk about your feelings for one another as freely as you could talk about everything else serious in your lives, but that still didn’t take away the contentment you were feeling right now, in the car…alone with him.

“That’s good,” he mimicked, catching your eye as he smiled coyly, nodding his head with the slightest of motions.

You giggled silently, dropping your gaze to your lap, feeling shy all of a sudden, the atmosphere becoming different, his gaze intense. Since you’d began meeting up, nothing had happened besides an arm around your shoulders as he guided you through a doorway or something, he hadn’t even held your hand, let alone kissed you. You were happy with it but sometimes the tension became noticeable, as if you both wanted something to happen but were unsure how to initiate it. It was hard to progress when you didn’t have the comfort of Healing Hands to fall back on. Now you were sure Yoongi was over thinking things and didn’t want to push his luck. There had been many a time where you had thought back to his last visit in that room, the way his hands had held you and how close you had been to kissing each other. It wasn’t even purely sexual for you, and you were sure it was the same for Yoongi, you just wanted to feel the warmth of his lips against yours, but you guessed he didn’t want it to seem like he was only after one thing. Even though you knew at this point he wasn’t.

The tension died down and just like that, you were back to two people sitting in car, sharing their thoughts and feelings. You heard him shift in is seat and lean closer to you, his hand reaching out to cup yours and he squeezed gently as you looked up at him, mouth parted in confusion when you saw his face was deathly serious.

“Have you ever thought about getting in touch with your dad again?” He asked, before smiling slightly, trying to ease the tension, “because, y’know, I just want you to be the happiest you can be.”

You sighed a little, wondering how to form your thoughts into words. It wasn’t like you were opposed to talking about it and in fact, you had thought the same thing many times before. How a weight would be lifted off your shoulders if you were to contact him…but—

“I’ve thought about it, but I really think that ship has sailed,” you murmured. “We’d be like strangers now…”

It was true. Too much time had passed, too much water under the bridge. You would be awkward around each other. Besides, what if he wouldn’t forgive you for leaving him? …or worse, what if you could never forgive him for keeping you practically a prisoner? You were better to just got along with your life in your own way.

“No,” you shook your head, mainly to yourself. “I really just think I should concentrate on getting my degree and trying to better myself.”

You looked back at Yoongi to see him smiling at you heart-warmingly, his eyes dancing with joy as he squeezed your hand again. “You know your mom would be proud of you, right?”

His words made your heart clench in your chest, the sincerity of them touching you. You hoped she would be too. She had always wanted you to go to college and make something of yourself, wanting you to leave for the city because she knew there were more opportunities there. You liked to think she was watching you from somewhere and happy, even if the methods you were using to fund your education were unconventional… It’s something you fought with yourself about on a daily basis, but you always told yourself it was the only way—there were plenty worse jobs out there. You had it quite easy, actually…that’s what you told yourself anyway.

“C’mere,” Yoongi hummed, mistaking your shiver for coldness and he surprised you by wrapping his arm around your shoulders, pulling you into a hug. It was awkward, his body stretched over the gear stick and yours at a weird angle, but as soon as you felt his body against yours, his warmth engulfing you, you forgot all of that. You were as comfy as you could ever imagine yourself being, feeling the steady beat of his heart against your eardrum, his scent filling your nostrils and you closed your eyes, letting yourself fall even deeper.

These past few weeks with Yoongi had been amazing and you’d learnt to openly express your thoughts and feelings, even opening up about your life and hopes for the future. You couldn’t imagine telling anyone bar Yoongi and that just showed how special he was to you. You had never felt this type of emotional connection with someone before, and if you were being honest, it scared you a little, as you wondered what was so special about him and why he had come into your life… but knowing that you were sure he felt the same helped you a lot. You were both in the same boat, two people looking for company but unable to admit it, and then you’d found each other…

You kissed for the first time the next week you saw each other. The wait was a little longer from your last visit because he had been busy and when you saw him again, you realised how much you had missed him after only a week. But it was all okay, because it seemed like he had missed you just as much, shocking you by taking your hand straight away and linking fingers. You loved the warmth of his hands against yours. It felt almost secure to be near him like this, like you were connected. You guessed the embrace in his car had given him a new-found confidence, and you walked in silence, shoulders brushing against each other you were so close, letting him lead you somewhere which when you asked where, he was adamant it was a secret. You finally worked it out when the river fell into sight.

“Seeing as we can’t conjure a beach out of thin air, this is going to have to do, huh?” Yoongi smiled, looking at you as he turned his head and stopped by a bench, shaded by a few trees.

“Excuse me, Min Yoongi, couldn’t you work out a way to magic a beach for even me?” You giggled, teasing him, and he grinned, looking down at the floor as he nudged your shoulder on purpose this time.

“I actually have a little surprise,” he told you, letting go of your hand and making you a gasp a little in shock when he wrapped both around your eyes, twisting your body to face across the road, his low voice making you shiver a little as his breath tickled you.

“Ta-da,” he sang, letting go slowly. “I found us ice cream—you have to tell me if tastes as good as what you’re used to.”

You blinked a couple of times, getting used to the sunlight that hurt your eyes and blurred your vision, to find a little ice cream hut on the other side of the road. It had been a while since you’d had proper ice cream from one of those places, these days opting for it straight from the tub at a convenience store. You squealed a little in excitement and Yoongi chuckled, motioning for you to sit down on the bench.

“Sit there, this is my favourite spot and this place can get pretty busy so I’ll get us the ice creams. What do you want?”

“Err,” you contemplated, sitting down on the wood and getting comfy. “Just vanilla—no, wait, chocolate—no, wait, what about strawberry…or mint…wait—

“How about I surprise you?” He chuckled, interrupting your inner struggle and you paused, nodding your head slowly, “that would be great,” you smiled, feeling a little embarrassed, but you were sure as he walked away to cross the road, you heard him mutter to himself, “you’re so cute.”

Your heart fluttered and you had to remember to calm yourself by the time he came back, feeling like a giddy school girl as she waited for her date to come. Ten minutes later when he rounded the corner of the bench, you couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He was holding a cone in each hand, one with a single scoop of vanilla ice cream and the other a…monstrosity. It was four scoops of the stuff in each flavour you had listed. God knows how it balanced and he gave you pointed look as you carried on laughing before joining you.

“I’m pretty sure the woman who works there now hates me,” he muttered, taking the seat next to you as he handed you your ice cream, making sure you had ahold of it safely. “Looks like we’re never going back there ever again.”

“She took your money though,” you chimed—it was always the same, before looking at your treat apprehensively, wondering how you were going to go about eating it without making a mess of your clothing.

You began to lick around the base, making sure to stop any drips that would soon threaten to spill and then you went for the first scoop, mint to be exact. You went to lick, but it was so big some got on your nose and you groaned. “Oh god, this is going to be hard to eat!”

“C’mere,” he motioned, shuffling closer to you as you moved your torso to face his. He reached with his fingers to wipe the green liquid off your nose and murmured ‘cute’ as you wrinkled your nose. He surprised you by licking the substance off his finger and you averted eye contact, your mind replaying the visual over and over again, realising he had done it so casually and definitely without thinking.

You began to enjoy the dessert in silence, looking out at the river and the ducks swimming in the water. It was a nice day and the sun shined down, making the water glisten, almost as if it was sparkling. Even though you were enjoying the view, you could tell Yoongi kept stealing glances at you from the corner of his eye, watching you eat your ice cream, and chuckling softly when you’d get into a mess. He quickly finished ice cream, even munching on the cone and you were still left with your humungous treat.

“What?” You asked, turning to face him after the tenth or so glance. “Do I have more ice cream on my nose of something?” You wrinkled your nose again to see if you could notice anything as Yoongi shook his head and chuckled some more at your behaviour.

“No,” he informed you, eyes falling to his lap as you rounded on him again. “It’s nothing.”

“No, come on! What is it?” You insisted, ignoring his dismissal. You were curious now, especially as it seemed he’d turned a little shy with the attention.

“I just…” he trailed off, before shaking his head and deciding with himself that he’d rather just say it. “You look really pretty.”

His words hung around the air, the word pretty ringing in your mind as your heart jumped about. Yoongi had never really been this direct, especially since your continuous meet ups. You willed the blush that wanted to fill your cheeks away and smirked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Just today?”

“No! Always!” He exclaimed, panicking before he saw your smile. “Ah,” he groaned. “I hate when you tease me, I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”

“You’ll have to learn more about me then,” you quipped, taking another lick of your ice cream.

“I intend on doing so,” he agreed, his voice serious, before he added as an afterthought, humour laced in his tone, “I’ll keep on hanging out with you until you get bored of me and tell me to fuck off.”

“I won’t get bored,” you grinned.

“Good,” he grinned back, before he turned serious again, but you hardly noticed because you were having trouble with something else. “…because—

“Oh, damn!” You butted in, feeling the ice cream drop down the cone and onto your fingers.    “I need help,” you whimpered.

He chuckled, quickly grabbing over your hand that held your ice cream, holding it sturdy as he licked around the top of the cone, catching the droplets. Your gaze automatically fell to his mouth, his pink tongue protruding out as acted rapidly and you averted it almost straight away. You’d been thinking about kissing him a lot lately and that was not helping.

“Let go and wipe your fingers,” he told you, taking the ice cream from you, and you froze for a moment, processing his words slowly before bringing your hand up to your mouth and licking them clean. You couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes also fell to your mouth and he looked away as they locked with yours, coughing absentmindedly to clear the air.

“Okay, four scoops were a bad idea.”

You agreed, nodding as you wiped what was left of the ice cream on your hand on your jeans, telling yourself you’d just stick them in the wash when you got in and quickly took your ice cream back, thinking of something to say to clear the awkward atmosphere, both your gazes falling to one another’s lips repeatedly as the seconds ticked on.

“Um… what were you saying just now? Before I rudely interrupted?”

Yoongi paused for a moment, you could practically see the cogs turning in his brain as if he was contemplating on whether to say it or not. You waited with bated breath, at this point unsure of what it was going to be, and you saw him close his eyes for a second, making up his mind silently. When he reopened them, his expression was serious, his eyes dark with an intensity you’d never seen before.

“I was just about to let you know I really like you.”

Time stood still and your heart stopped as you took in the words. You’d waited so long for some type of validation and now it was finally happening, you were awestruck.

“I wanted so bad to tell you in my car the other night, but I chickened out…” he faded out before starting again, determined to keep on going. “A part of me wanted you to get the hint and say something first, but I don’t think you did…or you were just waiting for my cowardly ass to man up…” he joked, his pitiful chuckle whipping you back into reality.

“I mean, I did guess, yes,” you got out. “We’ve spent so much time together lately and gotten to know each-other more than I could ever imagine,” you carried on sincerely.

“It’s been amazing,” he agreed, nodding his head. “I told myself I had to confess today because otherwise I never would.”

You paused, taking it all in before realising you hadn’t replied, moving closer so you could murmur the words right back at him, remembering his earlier words too.

“Yoongi, I really like you too. I won’t ever grow bored of you.”

As if he had been waiting on the end of a string for your reply, he pounced, his lips pressed to yours before you could even process them. You blinked a couple of times before releasing his mouth was on yours, his lips soft and warm and then you fluttered your eyes closed, kissing him back, applying pressure. All the blood was rushing to your head as you tried to piece together what was happening. You’d wanted this for so long and now it was finally happening you were becoming lost in the sensation. This just felt right. Everything you and Yoongi had been building up to was finally coming together in a single kiss and it felt amazing.

You felt him wind his arm around your waist, the palm of his hand flat against your back and you used your free hand to cup the back of his neck, your fingers brushing against the little hairs on the nape of his neck and he moaned softly, pressing his lips harder into yours, parting them as he went. You followed him, letting them slide together freely as the embrace deepened. Every nerve in your body was tingling, feeling as if you were having one big major static shock and you gripped his neck harder, is other arm now wrapping around your body and clinging you to him. Your hand that held your wilting ice cream hanging limp in the air, which would have looked comical to anyone walking by, but right now, in the moment, you didn’t care at all.

Your lips danced together, tasting hints of Yoongi’s morning coffee and your minty ice cream before he was placing the tip of his tongue inside your mouth, desperate for more. You gave it to him instantly, letting your wet muscle meet his, tasting the flavours stronger now. Your mind was a mess, all you could think of was him as your tongues tangled together, in disbelief the moment was actually happening. He moved his hands to cup your cheeks, slowing the pace as he straightened his posture, concentrating on the way your lips felt against his and you moaned quietly, loving the feel of his tongue gliding softly over yours, as if you had all the time in the world—you supposed you did.

After a few moments he became restless again, your noses pressing together as the embrace became more passionate and he began murmuring little things against your parted lips that sounded a lot like ‘finally’ and ‘you’re so beautiful.’ Your heart was thudding in your chest by now, the blood loud in your ears as it thudded through. All you could think, taste, smell and feel was him and you never wanted it to end. You wanted to kiss him for forever and a day. You couldn’t collect your thoughts, your mind a mess, clouded in a daze, but then—

“Oh no,” you whined, hearing the splatter on the floor, pulling away slightly to see your ice cream on the dirt, the now empty cone still in your hand. “My ice cream.”

You heard Yoongi chuckle lowly, continuing to peck at your lips as you stared at the floor, before moving on to your cheek, peppering it in large, wet kisses. When he spoke, his voice was gruff and soft, nuzzling his nose into the crook of your neck, tickling you and making you squirm and giggle lightly.

“Don’t worry,” he comforted. “I’ll get you another—I’ll buy you all the ice cream in the world if you want it.”

Your turned your head back to face him, a smile on your face, but before you could even think to answer, his mouth was back on yours, capturing you in another kiss.

Hopefully they’d never stop…

[mgtow-shenanigans-posts-blog]

Circumcision grief: would your girlfriend stick around?

I’m a man, and I was hurt by circumcision. Although I have blocked out much of the trauma of the event, I have experienced it once, late at night, an intense pain in my penis and a feeling of helpless terror that brought me to tears. And I’m speaking out, slowly but surely.

In the process of speaking out, I unfortunately often end up talking about myself, at the behest of my conversational partners, even though I prefer to keep the trauma abstracted from myself so that I can easily make my points without getting distracted by my own emotions. Eventually, the other person asks, “So what does your girlfriend think of all of this?”

I respond that she feels sad for me, hopes that I can feel better, and listens when I need to talk about my pain. And most often, the response I get is, “Wow, you’re lucky to have her.”

And on the one hand, I am a lucky guy. Many men in my situation are viewed, by shear fact of our acknowledged victimhood, as lesser, weaker, non-men. Instead, To be listened to and comforted by a girlfriend is a better outcome than being left alone to deal with this.

But let us revisit the statement, for one more pass. “You’re lucky to have her.” There’s something implicit in this response that’s worth teasing out. Implicit in this response is an acknowledgement that most women or girls, even when ostensibly “in love” with their partners, would not help their partners who were feeling depressed after discovering that they had been sexually mutilated. Perhaps, even, the person in front of you is implying that he/she would not help a depressed partner.

Really, this is just another example of what we’ve seen time and time again; a currently-malfunctioning male is worth the same amount as a toaster that won’t turn on, that amount is zero of any currency, and into the dustbin of history he goes. Men are most of the homeless, after all, yet receive less support, as there are beds reserved in shelters for women, but none for men. Or we could look at the numerous examples of men divorced after unemployment or illness.

This is how low our expectations for women have gone, gentlemen: no one, man or woman, expects women to provide comfort and support to a suffering man, and a woman who does so is seen as an incredible catch. For all men, I think the time has come and gone for discussing MGTOW. Men cannot dither about with the purple pill any longer. If the dating market isn’t getting you what you want, then stop putting yourselves at risk. Don’t even think about marriage. I’m sorry, but children are out of the question until massive changes are made to the family court systems across the West, guaranteeing men default shared custody, eliminating lifetime alimony, and backing up all prenups with ironclad court precedents, potentially taken on by the highest court in the US, the Supreme Court. Women pretending to be NAWALT’s in their 30’s need to be asked, “What happened in your 20’s that you’re single now?” and stood up by the men she turned down.

This may seem a bit jumbled, but this quote will tie it all together. What is it that men want? What should we hold out for, if we’re going to date at all?

I’ll quote Barbarossa, Humanity First and Foremost, part 1:

“How many women have you dealt with, as a man, that actually saw you as a human being, not as a man existing to do things for women, but a human being? How many women have said to you, in whatever particular expression it may take, some version of my interpretation of my interpretation of Julia’s note to Winston, that was “I know that you exist; I know that you’re a human being.”

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for my girlfriend, but I’m horrified at the number of women who will tell you, to your face, that they would not treat their boyfriends as human beings if they were in great pain over being sexually mutilated. So, gentlemen, I’ll close with this: if the dating market doesn’t provide you with a woman who treats you like a human being, she isn’t worth your time. You are the prize. Marry no one, and please, go your own way.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy2e4NsDnkQ

[ethicalredhat]

Darby Warner

Career Information

Occupation: Freelance Hacker and (unlicensed) Private Detective

Affiliations: ട0ṬeRiậ (Formerly)

Biographical Information

Aliases: Heedless Murmur (Handle)

Date of Birth: September 21st

Age:28~34 (It really depends on the verse)

Status: Alive

Pronouns: She/Her or They/Them

Ethnicity: Mixed-race Native American and Caucasian

Nationality: 🇺🇸 American

Sexual Orientation: Asexual  ♠︎️  (Doesn’t fully recognize that’s what it is/kinda denies it)

Romantic Orientation: Biromantic ⚤ 

Family: Terri Warner (Father), Rose Walten (Mother), Phillis Walten (Half Sister)

Physical Description

Gender: Female

Height: 5′7 (171 cm)

Weight: ~165 lbs (~75 kg)

Appearance

Darby is a muscular, handsome woman with tousled curly hair that rests atop her broad shoulders (sometimes worn in a bun or ponytail). Her dark eyes by default hold a calculating if not deadpan look in them though sometimes during social interaction there’s a spark in them.

Her clothing style stays on the “masculine” side and Darby seems to prefer flamboyant prints. Mostly seen in more professional clothing (button ups, trousers, blazers, loafers, ect) though she’ll go for more casual looks depending on the situation. For accessories she has the same old men’s wrist watch she’s kept since high school. Any other accessories are for necessity such as caps and sunglasses for Incognito Mode.

Personality

Not much for talking except for when she is, a true ambivert at heart. She avoids people like the plague but when the option for social interaction appears Darby will almost always bite, although cautiously since she has a paranoid streak. One of Darby’s biggest problems is that she unknowingly lies to herself. Deep down she craves human connection but due to her lifestyle (mostly after the events of La Galerie as she’s on the run from the UK branch of Mobius) she tries to keep herself isolated for others protection. Going by her cold exterior, Darby could be chalked up as your usual The Stoic archetype if not for the playful side of herself she sometimes lets run amok.

Long ago she learned to use her taste for dry humor as a defense mechanism, a shield between herself and the world. So at times, though rarely, Darby may seem she doesn’t take dire situations seriously but it’s all just a way for her to avoid her own emotions. Post La Galerie her already dwindling self-assurance has dropped, leaving her mind partially scarred from the months she spent inside the machine. During her lower moods when she’s just about hit rock bottom Darby can become successful in her attempts to keep her feelings snuffed out. Some days she’ll walk about like an empty shell and this is when the darker under layers of her personality can arise.

During these moods Darby has been known to display harmful and impulsive behavior such as having a complete disregard for her own safety, moral conduct, and lack of empathy. Her etiquette almost becoming Sociopathic in nature.

So all in all, Darby is just your typical human being with many different sides, moods and layers.

History

Though her parents are reluctant to admit it, Darby was born as the result of infidelity as her mother Rose Walten was stuck in an unhappy marriage when she got involved with Darby’s father Terri Warner. Unable to safely divorce her current husband as he was extremely abusive she simply walked out the door with her two daughters-Phillis Walten, and an unborn Darby who was still growing inside her.

Rose ran her cafe so she often wasn’t home and Terri had an office job though once the kids got older he started mostly working from home so he could spend more time with them. Darby’s love for computers started early when her grandpa bought her dad a newer model computer but he never used it, preferring his chunky 90′s computer to complete his work. It was then she began learning the ins and outs of computers. Long nights were spent pouring over any relevant books she could get her grubby child hands on, or through whatever info she could find over the internet which eventually led to her learning coding and programming as she got older.

Since early childhood Darby had always been athletic and only became more so as she grew older. It didn’t take long for her to be labeled a “Tomboy” but due to her androgynous appearance and unusual demeanor many of her classmates second guessed her gender. This naturally drew unwanted attention and cruelty. When high school arrived her confidence lowered significantly and she kept even more to herself. It came to a point where Darby just stopped going to school and got her GED, shortly after getting involved with a hacker group that simply went by ട0ṬeRiậ. Although they only communicated though a screen for the longest they were Darby’s closest companions. She had dabbled with hacking in the past but it was with ട0ṬeRiậ when she truly began to learn, but as her skills grew so did the ambition of the groups members. She had a falling out with them and that seemed to be the end of that until they threatened to frame Darby for a cyber crime a member of ട0ṬeRiậ had committed if she didn’t return to the group. Pushed into a corner she returned to ട0ṬeRiậ until she manages to collect and report all necessary information about the group and their crimes to have them arrested-keeping her own existence anonymous from the authorities all the while. Now with her former friends out of the way, Darby once again found herself alone.

She had few friends in school but after having to drop out they drifted further apart. She had the love of two, albeit, busy parents and her older sister Phillis but deep down Darby couldn’t shake the seed of loneliness that had long ago planted itself in her heart especially after the betrayal of ട0ṬeRiậ who she had believed in the beginning were her friends. This is the point where Darby started turning her hacking skills into a career. For the next several years she would turn over many criminals to the law in a very “cyber vigilante” fashion. Once she started making a name for herself people would contact her offering jobs. She did the usual missing persons, cheating spouses, ect, but later on the jobs started getting more bizarre and dangerous. For example the events of “La Galerie” Read Verses Page For Further Information

Relationships

Terri (Terrance) Warner

Darby had a good relationship with her dad but there was always a wall between them as her father suffered from undiagnosed depression due to his sad childhood. She still kept in contact with him until La Galerie where she cut off all ties with her family for their own safety.

Rose Walten

The two also had a fine connection but as her mother was almost always away at work Darby didn’t see as much of her as she would have liked growing up. Last time she spent any real time with Rose was a weekend after Darby graduated where she helped out at the cafe. Any other interaction after that had been over a phone and now nothing at all.

Phillis Walten

“I won’t leave my sister to die.”-Phillis, talking about rescuing Darby from La Galerie

The sisters always had a close bond since in their childhood it was mostly just the two left to their own devices. Growing up they did start to go their separate ways but they still found time every so often to do things together. The two haven’t had any contact since La Galerie.

Marnie Michelle

“This place messed with my mind, but I remember enough to know you don’t deserve an easy death.”-Darby, preparing to kill Marnie

One of the two hosts hooked up in the janky makeshift Stem system. Very hostile to one another (more so on Darby’s part), the almost opposite morals of the two women made them natural enemies. Marnie spends the entire plot of La Galerie serving as an antagonist to Darby, either thwarting her attempts at escaping the machine or tormenting her. After the months of torture Darby is subjected to during her time in the machine the hacker makes sure to pay it back tenfold when she kills her.

Dr Stuart Turney

“Is that where you got your degree in being an insufferable pretentious bitch?”-Darby, interrupting Stuart

The other host of La Galerie, Stuart almost tries to befriend Darby at times seeming a bit smitten by the hacker. Darby is openly aggressive towards the doctor, attacking him on almost every occasion they run into each other. Once he realizes she can’t be swayed he becomes much more unsympathetic to her. He eventually meets his end at the hands of Phillis who entered the machine to save Darby.

Trivia

In her free time Darby enjoys exercising (most notably yoga), puzzles (Darby has wasted many an afternoon on puzzle boxes), watching dramas (mostly foreign ones), and staring into the void.

In the past Darby has suffered from slight body dysmorphia most likely stemming from the criticism she received about her looks in both child and adulthood. Nowadays Gymnophobia is her only issue. Nude artwork won’t necessarily bother her but being seen naked can have varying effects for her. This has lead to some rather unbearable situations for her during times when getting undressed was required.

Has no qualms (at least in the moment) with killing someone if she has to and has done so in the past either in person or indirectly.

Doesn’t fully realize it herself, but Darby has a manipulative side and is a bit of a control freak.

Although never displayed as of yet, but if Darby were to acquire a friend (whether it be platonic or romantic) she might develop a well meaning tendency of lying to them/keeping them in the dark about what she does for a living if they aren’t already aware.

Darby has no faceclaim but Michael Hudson a Native American model and Ezra Miller were the inspiration for Darby’s appearance. Update: Technically Q’orianka Kilcher is Darby’s main faceclaim but she’s just too damn pretty and has like the opposite vibes that I need (I have very few icons using her because of this) so sometimes I use other folk for icons such Mica Arganaraz, a little bit of Ezra Miller and Willy Cartier but as they are all the incorrect ethnicity I try to partially obscure their faces.

[loweredexpectations365]

Start with Why

Okay, I realize I stole this blog post title from the title of some famous book that I’ve never read, but it’s catchy and also I’m not very creative. So thank you, Simon Sinek, for coming up with such a brilliant book title that got famous enough for me to steal it even though I’m practically illiterate (JK, I can read, and I even read whole books now and then). The point is, I stole this catchy book title because people keep asking me why I’ve chosen to write about lowered expectations. It’s actually an excellent question - especially since the concept sounds largely depressing at first blush. But this question made me realize that I should’ve started by explaining why I’m writing an entire blog about lowered expectations.

The short version is this: my default mode, like most people I know these days, is to just hate everything around me and feel frustrated like, all of the time, and then wonder why my life is so difficult. This meme was (and still often is) pretty much me:

Because I naturally have extremely high expectations of myself and everything and everyone around me (thank Bollywood for not giving me the slightest dose of reality throughout my childhood), I felt like I was constantly disappointed and furious. I am generally angry when I have to wait in line for too long, or when my coffee spills all over my shirt right before an important meeting, or when I don’t get a job I’m interviewing for, or when I date a guy and he turns out to be an absolute toolbag and somehow not the love of my life. The reason I’m so angry is because I expect the opposite: not to have to wait forever in line, to be coordinated enough not to spill my goddamn coffee all over myself, to be smart enough or the right fit to actually get the job I’m interviewing for, and, in the spirit of high expectations, to marry and have babies with the guy I’m dating who’s ideally not a complete tool (there’s a reason I’m single, I know, shut up). So I take that anger, and I do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with it. Which, in turn, has lead me to becoming an extremely short and angry person, not unlike Napoleon.

One day, my friend asked me over drinks what I would title a book if I ever followed my dreams or whatever and wrote one. In true Scherezad fashion, I said, “my book would be called Lowered Expectations, kind of like Great Expectations, except it’s an accurate reflection of my shitty life.” My friend laughed so hard and made me feel so clever and funny for thinking of that title that I always remembered that conversation and how it depicted my life at that moment. But as time passed, I started to really try to detach from my expectations because I realized how unhappy I was becoming. My unrealistically high expectations were constantly not met, and as a result, I was miserable. So I started to read.

I read book after book, and I cried a lot, and I watched a lot of romantic comedies (and every single episode of The Office about 800 times) and hung out with my cat a ton. And then cried some more. After all of that, I realized that having lowered expectations was maybe not the worst thing in the world. Maybe having lowered expectations meant that I had experienced real life and I didn’t need to keep attaching myself to my crazy high hopes, turning them into high expectations of my life. Instead, maybe I could just attach myself to a lowered version of those expectations that kept me somewhat grounded, but still motivated in my sad life. (Also I lied, this is clearly not the short version.)

Buddhism teaches you that attaching yourself to expectations only brings unhappiness, which makes total sense to me. However, it’s VERY hard for me to do that. And I hate doing hard things. It also requires faith in something greater than you, which I don’t have because I’m incredibly self centered and cynical. More than that, I’m like way too busy trying to make a living and survive (which is hard enough for me as it is) to actually do the real mental work it takes to unattach myself from my expectations overall. That’s some expert level shit. I need a happy medium that works with my lack of faith, limited intelligence, and overall subpar capabilities. I need to still be able to attach myself to some expectations because I have no faith in anything, so the whole “expect the worst but hope for the best” concept doesn’t really work for me.

Not having faith in anything makes my life more difficult than it has to be, in my humble opinion (I’m not opposed to faith/religion btw, I just don’t have it and haven’t learned enough about it or grown up with it so I don’t get it). That means that when something bad happens, I can’t just go, “oh well, it’s God’s plan” or, “it was meant to be” and actually believe that shit. When something bad happens, I feel like my entire life is crashing down around me and I just want to crawl into a hole and cry for a hundred years (maybe my reaction to bad things has less to do with faith and more to do with how dramatic I am, but that’s beside the point). Thus, I still have and am attached to my expectations, and I have a limited amount of hope. AKA, in order not to lose my shit all the time, I have to have lowered expectations. They’re not for everyone, but they work for me. I should seriously write commercials because I’m the tackiest person ever.

ANYWAY, I wanted to write about lowered expectations because I thought that it would help me (and maybe others) at least challenge my natural state of overly high expectations that produce extreme disappointment. Maybe this would help me stay mindful and grounded, while also giving me an outlet for my oceans of anger that result from things not going the way I’d planned. But also, instead of expecting the worst and being miserable because of that sad expectation and/or a small potential of something slightly better than the worst happening, and instead of expecting the best and being disappointed, maybe I could manage my expectations. I could create an expectation buffer1 by lowering my expectations to help me plan ahead (be able to regulate what actually is in my control and let go of what isn’t) but also believe that I might reach my goals depending on the effort I’m willing to put in, and level things out so that I could focus on handling what comes at me without investing large quantities of emotional energy in amazing made up situations that I come up with. Maybe I could lower my expectations to better align with reality so that I could be motivated, excited, and avoid utter, heartbreaking disappointment all at the same time.

I guess the better way of saying “lowered expectations” would be to say “managing expectations” which is basically what I’m supposed to do for a living. I’m a Customer Success Manager for a tech company in SF, which is so obnoxiously cliche I don’t even know what to do about it. Customer Success Managers were invented to manage customer expectations (apt job title) so that they could gain more value from products they buy or subscribe to but also not be assholes who expect more than they’re paying for. I think this same concept sadly applies to my life and also reminds me that maybe I’m not in the completely wrong field of work for having this perspective. Or I am delusional, which is also entirely possible. Either way, I like the title Lowered Expectations a lot more than Managing Expectations because that sounds lame and even more self-helpy than everything I’ve written so far.

To be clear, I don’t really think I have any help to give others, because I’m still trying to self-help myself. The truth is, as much as I love to dream that this nonsense might help someone else, I’m more just trying to keep myself accountable and write regularly. I’ve started journaling my thoughts so many times in my life, but I rarely stay consistent, and what’s more, I don’t learn as much when I’m not trying to express my thoughts in a way that someone else might understand and be interested in. I’m not under-valuing journaling, btw, because I think it’s a necessary practice and I really should be more disciplined and actually journal for just MYSELF regularly. I think everyone should. Probably should’ve done that before writing a blog where I say a bunch of shit I’ve only thought of in my head, but I tend not to do things in order of operations, so I’ll get to that next, or possibly never.

What I wish I could’ve told myself years ago is this: stay positive, but don’t let your expectations of a situation leave you disappointed or frustrated or angry. Lower your expectations of situations and remember that you’re human. K thanks bye.

Notes

McKeown, Greg. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Page 204. Random House, 2014.

[brandjamaica]

Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time

Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time By

Teresa Shimogawa

“Every moment of your life is a second chance.” ~Rick Price

We are constantly telling ourselves stories about who we are and what we are capable of achieving.

These stories are sometimes the nostalgia of once-upon-a-time that whispers longingly to us. The stories can be the remnants of hardened pain that want us to trace over the lines of old scars. They can also be the tales we invent about imagined futures—what we think will happen.

All of the narratives that we repeat to ourselves—both of the fiction and nonfiction varieties—are what we internalize and use to create self-identity.

Wait a minute. We use fiction to shape our self-identity?! That sounds crazy.

Yep. We do, and probably more than any one of us would like to admit.

The stories we tell ourselves about our shortcomings and failures fuel the negative self-talk that leads us to accept the myth of a single narrative—a belief in only one version of what our life can look like. We cast ourselves as a character locked in an inescapable maze, saddled with baggage we can not remove, riddled with flaws and insurmountable challenges.

It’s our interpretation of the past and how we project the future that determines the roads we take to all of our tomorrows.

These stories can either lift us up or lock us down. They inspire us to reach for more or they make us stuck. The narratives inevitably shape who we become.

Our storytelling begins at a young age.

There’s the narrative of your childhood dreams, the one where a kid like me thought she’d become a singer or an Olympic ice skater, own a house in Malibu, and have a Barbie doll body and an endless supply of money and youth.

Of course I neglected to consider the fact that I couldn’t sing or ice skate, had no desire to learn, and that Barbie’s body is make-believe. None of that would have deterred six-year-old me though. I felt truly unstoppable during my childhood.

But it passed in the blink of an eye.

Childhood narratives faded and gave way to the hormonally-charged teenage years. The boundless optimism of my imagination receded as my body changed and life shifted from the slow-moving days of childhood to the volatile ups and downs of being a teen.

This is when my narratives became toxic. My social life determined the tempo of my weeks, and my identity started to become intertwined with how I felt about my desirability to boys.

I was a walking powder keg of emotions who somehow managed to earn good grades and visibly hold it together. But on the inside, I was beating myself up to the tune of the dangerous stories I told myself: not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

I decided early on that I would never be as cool as the popular girls. I would never be skinny enough or pretty enough, and I wouldn’t even be smart enough to compete with the nerds. I would perpetually feel like I was falling short in all categories of my life.

Those negative affirmations increased as an adult. My future projections about what my life would look like were often rooted in fear, anxiety, and stress about the present.

A soundtrack of negative self-talk played non-stop in my head, reminding me about everything I was not, and everything I couldn’t do.

I’m a failure.

I’m too ugly.

I don’t deserve it.

Not smart enough.

I’m unlucky.

I make bad choices.

I am a bad wife and a bad mother.

It’s not my turn yet.

I can never do that.

I will never have that.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Whenever something went wrong, I blamed myself. We have this urge to blame someone for our problems, and like many people, I turned myself into my personal scapegoat. I would throw myself under the bus.

We perpetuate a narrative of hopelessness that makes us believe we are victims with problems that are unique to us. Scarcity mentality tricks us into believing that we can never have what we want. We think we are abnormal and defective and forget that we are merely human.

The terrible stories win. Those are the ones we become attached to and believe.

They are us.

We are them.

It is difficult to separate who we are apart from those narratives because we spend so much time repeating those stories over and over again.

I was thirty-four-years-old when I woke up one morning in April 2016 and had my story unexpectedly and irreparably changed.

I found my husband unconscious on the living room floor. My six-year-old, three-year-old, and one-year-old were asleep in the nearby bedrooms while the firemen tried to resuscitate my husband before they whisked him away to the nearest hospital.

By the time I followed the ambulance, a doctor met me at the entrance of the ER and greeted me with, “Nothing we could do.”

My husband was dead.

I would later find out that he had an aortic aneurysm and went quickly. There was nothing we could have done.

And just like that, the life that I had on autopilot was over.

I always experienced negative self-talk, but now I was living the real life horror story of being a young widow and single mother.

There was nothing more shredding to my identity than getting forced into a story that for once wasn’t the terrible fiction I usually concocted about myself. This was my terrible reality.

I couldn’t see any hope for the future. It felt too daunting and terrifying to even contemplate. Happiness felt like a cruel joke.

I defaulted to blaming myself. I spun narratives to explain why I was in that situation, and why I deserved to be miserable and unhappy.

I needed something to help me understand why I did everything I was supposed to do in my life and still got this crappy hand from the universe. There had to be a reason why I was alone while everyone else got to go home to their significant others.

My answer to those burning questions was to throw myself under the bus again.

I must have deserved this.

I was probably destined to live a miserable life.

I would feel shame and get judged by society, and I deserved all of it. Single motherhood would be hard and it would make me a societal outcast amongst my social circles. I would become just another sad, overburdened single parent.

My children would suffer and be damaged by not having a father. I would single-handedly ruin their happy childhoods by not being able to live up to the staggering amount of responsibility required to raise a large family on my own.

I would never accomplish the things I wanted to do in my life. I’d have to trade in those dreams for survival and my soul would wither. I would deserve it.

I would never find another person to love me. I was now damaged goods with too much baggage. I would die lonely.

I would always be mired in struggle. And I would drown in my fears. The pain would throb forever. It could kill me. I would never feel better. I didn’t even want to live. I would never be happy again.

The nasty voice whispered to my subconscious, wanting me to believe this version of my life. It begged me to accept an exile to the wasteland of a life I did not choose. In the midst of my despair, it seemed easier to give in to that story.

Later I would realize that I had to get it out of my system. Acknowledge the pain. Recognize the thoughts and emotions.

Feel all of it.

And then, let them all go.

What if we just flat out said no to a narrative that we didn’t want to believe? What if we rejected terrible narratives about ourselves?

I didn’t want to die a sad widow forced to accept an eternity of unhappiness. I didn’t want to give up my dreams and goals. I didn’t want to be alone forever.

There was only one thing to do: rewrite the future and reclaim my life.

Instead of capitulating to our darker thoughts, we can become a gatekeeper who chooses what to let in and what has to pass through.

Negative thoughts are normal, but instead of holding on to them and becoming attached to those narratives, a healthier alternative is to let those thoughts float in and out. Hold on to the ones that make you optimistic about life—let those be the ones that grow and take root in your subconscious.

Tell those stories every day.

Instead of believing the narratives that tell us what we can’t do, we can choose to focus on what is in our control. When we don’t like a narrative, we can write new ones.

Narrative two. Or a narrative three or four or five or whatever it takes to get to the version of your life story where you are going to be okay, you are important and worthy, and you can live a happy life no matter what happens. Living a life of your own design. One that is true to your authentic self.

The life you wanted. Not a life that you got stuck in.

At any given moment, we can make the next choice to move us closer to our personal goals. It doesn’t have to be a monumental choice—just a tiny baby step in the direction of where your goal sits brightly on the horizon.

That is all you need. Moving toward a new narrative, even at the slowest of speeds, is all you have to worry about.

It doesn’t mean that life will necessarily go as planned. It doesn’t mean that we won’t ever experience bad things.

We will.

Over and over and over again.

Choosing an alternate narrative is a way to make the best out of what we have to work with in our lives.

It took a good year after my husband died for me to feel open to creating a new narrative. I had to choose to leave behind the story about myself where I was given a death sentence of misery and obstacles.

To be able to leave that narrative behind, I had to trust that there were many more narratives in my future, even when I couldn’t always see the details or know what direction they would take me in. I had to embrace the idea that there were still many more chapters in the story of my life.

When I was ready to turn off the depressing noise in my head about who I thought I was as a pathetic single mother and widow, I began to brainstorm the positive things I had going on in my life. This was the prelude to my Narrative two.

-I was thankful that I got to share almost ten years of my life with my husband. I learned so much from him, and I feel like a better person for having known him and experiencing the loss of him. This was part of my story, not the end of it.

-I was thankful for the three children we had together. I wanted to become a mother ever since I was a little girl. I thank my late husband for these gifts, and I will be intentional about how I enjoy my time raising the children and enjoying their childhoods. I will savor motherhood, even when times are tough and stressful. I will focus more on my joy with them rather than the tediousness of single parenthood.

-I never thought I would get married to begin with, but I did. I will trust that when I meet someone worth losing my single status to, it will happen. Just like it happened the first time. Until then, I will enjoy living my life on my terms, as a whole person regardless of my relationship status.

-There are pros and cons to everything in life. I might as well take advantage of the benefits of being single and seek a life that I wouldn’t have had while I was married to my husband. I can explore new interests and take the time to reflect about who I am and what I want. I can pursue goals. This isn’t the life I chose, but I can still enjoy the unexpected benefits of being alone. In the end, this time will make me a better person.

This past summer I was on vacation in Australia. My children and I spent an evening watching the penguin parade on Phillip Island, near Melbourne. Every night when the sun set, thousands of the world’s smallest penguins swim back to the shore and waddle across the sand to find a place to sleep for the night.

We got to sit literally a foot away from where the penguins passed by. We listened to their noises as they called out to each other in the darkness. The Antarctic winds whipped across our faces.

It suddenly struck me. This is Narrative two.

I’m living it. Right now. Here.

It isn’t what I originally planned for my life. I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own—I would have rather had my husband here with us instead. But this is good too. This was me doing what I wanted to do, seeing the world, raising my children, experiencing beautiful things. Narrative two was not an exile.

It was an opportunity to rewrite my story. A story worth living, even after the tragedy that threatened to destroy me.

If you can believe in multiple paths, you can change your narrative.

If you can believe that whatever you don’t know, you can learn, it will happen.

If you have a willingness to try new things, you can change your narrative.

If you can take the time to figure out your preferences, it can happen. What do you like to do? What feels like enchantment in your life?

If you can believe in yourself, you can write any narrative you want.

And when something changes and the story isn’t what you want anymore, you can keep writing new ones. You don’t have to be a hostage to any narrative. Give yourself permission.

Tell yourself the stories about those times when you were courageous. Tell stories about your strength, perseverance, and resilience. Tell stories about how strong you are.

Tell the stories of your survival. The ones where you got through the hardest of times and experienced joy again. The stories where you knew in your bones that life was worth living.

You have those stories. Those are the ones to repeat.

Tell them over and over again so you never forget who you really are.

[sarahburness]

Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time

“Every moment of your life is a second chance.” ~Rick Price

We are constantly telling ourselves stories about who we are and what we are capable of achieving.

These stories are sometimes the nostalgia of once-upon-a-time that whispers longingly to us. The stories can be the remnants of hardened pain that want us to trace over the lines of old scars. They can also be the tales we invent about imagined futures—what we think will happen.

All of the narratives that we repeat to ourselves—both of the fiction and nonfiction varieties—are what we internalize and use to create self-identity.

Wait a minute. We use fiction to shape our self-identity?! That sounds crazy.

Yep. We do, and probably more than any one of us would like to admit.

The stories we tell ourselves about our shortcomings and failures fuel the negative self-talk that leads us to accept the myth of a single narrative—a belief in only one version of what our life can look like. We cast ourselves as a character locked in an inescapable maze, saddled with baggage we can not remove, riddled with flaws and insurmountable challenges.

It’s our interpretation of the past and how we project the future that determines the roads we take to all of our tomorrows.

These stories can either lift us up or lock us down. They inspire us to reach for more or they make us stuck. The narratives inevitably shape who we become.

Our storytelling begins at a young age.

There’s the narrative of your childhood dreams, the one where a kid like me thought she’d become a singer or an Olympic ice skater, own a house in Malibu, and have a Barbie doll body and an endless supply of money and youth.

Of course I neglected to consider the fact that I couldn’t sing or ice skate, had no desire to learn, and that Barbie’s body is make-believe. None of that would have deterred six-year-old me though. I felt truly unstoppable during my childhood.

But it passed in the blink of an eye.

Childhood narratives faded and gave way to the hormonally-charged teenage years. The boundless optimism of my imagination receded as my body changed and life shifted from the slow-moving days of childhood to the volatile ups and downs of being a teen.

This is when my narratives became toxic. My social life determined the tempo of my weeks, and my identity started to become intertwined with how I felt about my desirability to boys.

I was a walking powder keg of emotions who somehow managed to earn good grades and visibly held it together. But on the inside, I was beating myself up to the tune of the dangerous stories I told myself: not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

I decided early on that I would never be as cool as the popular girls. I would never be skinny enough or pretty enough, and I wouldn’t even be smart enough to compete with the nerds. I would perpetually feel like I was falling short in all categories of my life.

Those negative affirmations increased as an adult. My future projections about what my life would look like were often rooted in fear, anxiety, and stress about the present.

A soundtrack of negative self-talk played non-stop in my head, reminding me about everything I was not, and everything I couldn’t do.

I’m a failure.

I’m too ugly.

I don’t deserve it.

Not smart enough.

I’m unlucky.

I make bad choices.

I am a bad wife and a bad mother.

It’s not my turn yet.

I can never do that.

I will never have that.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Whenever something went wrong, I blamed myself. We have this urge to blame someone for our problems, and like many people, I turned myself into my personal scapegoat. I would throw myself under the bus.

We perpetuate a narrative of hopelessness that makes us believe we are victims with problems that are unique to us. Scarcity mentality tricks us into believing that we can never have what we want. We think we are abnormal and defective and forget that we are merely human.

The terrible stories win. Those are the ones we become attached to and believe.

They are us.

We are them.

It is difficult to separate who we are apart from those narratives because we spend so much time repeating those stories over and over again.

I was thirty-four-years-old when I woke up one morning in April 2016 and had my story unexpectedly and irreparably changed.

I found my husband unconscious on the living room floor. My six-year-old, three-year-old, and one-year-old were asleep in the nearby bedrooms while the firemen tried to resuscitate my husband before they whisked him away to the nearest hospital.

By the time I followed the ambulance, a doctor met me at the entrance of the ER and greeted me with, “Nothing we could do.”

My husband was dead.

I would later find out that he had an aortic aneurysm and went quickly. There was nothing we could have done.

And just like that, the life that I had on autopilot was over.

I always experienced negative self-talk, but now I was living the real life horror story of being a young widow and single mother.

There was nothing more shredding to my identity than getting forced into a story that for once wasn’t the terrible fiction I usually concocted about myself. This was my terrible reality.

I couldn’t see any hope for the future. It felt too daunting and terrifying to even contemplate. Happiness felt like a cruel joke.

I defaulted to blaming myself. I spun narratives to explain why I was in that situation, and why I deserved to be miserable and unhappy.

I needed something to help me understand why I did everything I was supposed to do in my life and still got this crappy hand from the universe. There had to be a reason why I was alone while everyone else got to go home to their significant others.

My answer to those burning questions was to throw myself under the bus again.

I must have deserved this.

I was probably destined to live a miserable life.

I would feel shame and get judged by society, and I deserved all of it. Single motherhood would be hard and it would make me a societal outcast amongst my social circles. I would become just another sad, overburdened single parent.

My children would suffer and be damaged by not having a father. I would single-handedly ruin their happy childhoods by not being able to live up to the staggering amount of responsibility required to raise a large family on my own.

I would never accomplish the things I wanted to do in my life. I’d have to trade in those dreams for survival and my soul would wither. I would deserve it.

I would never find another person to love me. I was now damaged goods with too much baggage. I would die lonely.

I would always be mired in struggle. And I would drown in my fears. The pain would throb forever. It could kill me. I would never feel better. I didn’t even want to live. I would never be happy again.

The nasty voice whispered to my subconscious, wanting me to believe this version of my life. It begged me to accept an exile to the wasteland of a life I did not choose. In the midst of my despair, it seemed easier to give in to that story.

Later I would realize that I had to get it out of my system. Acknowledge the pain. Recognize the thoughts and emotions.

Feel all of it.

And then, let them all go.

What if we just flat out said no to a narrative that we didn’t want to believe? What if we rejected terrible narratives about ourselves?

I didn’t want to die a sad widow forced to accept an eternity of unhappiness. I didn’t want to give up my dreams and goals. I didn’t want to be alone forever.

There was only one thing to do: rewrite the future and reclaim my life.

Instead of capitulating to our darker thoughts, we can become a gatekeeper who chooses what to let in and what has to pass through.

Negative thoughts are normal, but instead of holding on to them and becoming attached to those narratives, a healthier alternative is to let those thoughts float in and float out. Hold on to the ones that make you optimistic about life—let those be the ones that grow and take root in your subconscious.

Tell those stories every day.

Instead of believing the narratives that tell us what we can’t do, we can choose to focus on what is in our control. When we don’t like a narrative, we can write new ones.

Narrative two. Or a narrative three or four or five or whatever it takes to get to the version of your life story where you are going to be okay, you are important and worthy, and you can live a happy life no matter what happens. Living a life of your own design. One that is true to your authentic self.

The life you wanted. Not a life that you got stuck in.

At any given moment, we can make the next choice to move us closer to our personal goals. It doesn’t have to be a monumental choice—just a tiny baby step in the direction of where your goal sits brightly on the horizon.

That is all you need. Moving toward a new narrative, even at the slowest of speeds, is all you have to worry about.

It doesn’t mean that life will necessarily go as planned. It doesn’t mean that we won’t ever experience bad things.

We will.

Over and over and over again.

Choosing an alternate narrative is a way to make the best out of what we have to work with in our lives.

It took a good year after my husband died for me to feel open to creating a new narrative. I had to choose to leave behind the story about myself where I was given a death sentence of misery and obstacles.

To be able to leave that narrative behind, I had to trust that there were many more narratives in my future, even when I couldn’t always see the details or know what direction they would take me in. I had to embrace the idea that there were still many more chapters in the story of my life.

When I was ready to turn off the depressing noise in my head about who I thought I was as a pathetic single mother and widow, I began to brainstorm the positive things I had going on in my life. This was the prelude to my Narrative two.

-I was thankful that I got to share almost ten years of my life with my husband. I learned so much from him, and I feel like a better person for having known him and experiencing the loss of him. This was part of my story, not the end of it.

-I was thankful for the three children we had together. I wanted to become a mother ever since I was a little girl. I thank my late husband for these gifts, and I will be intentional about how I enjoy my time raising the children and enjoying their childhoods. I will savor motherhood, even when times are tough and stressful. I will focus more on my joy with them rather than the tediousness of single parenthood.

-I never thought I would get married to begin with, but I did. I will trust that when I meet someone worth losing my single status to, it will happen. Just like it happened the first time. Until then, I will enjoy living my life on my terms, as a whole person regardless of my relationship status.

-There are pros and cons to everything in life. I might as well take advantage of the benefits of being single and seek a life that I wouldn’t have had while I was married to my husband. I can explore new interests and take the time to reflect about who I am and what I want. I can pursue goals. This isn’t the life I chose, but I can still enjoy the unexpected benefits of being alone. In the end, this time will make me a better person.

This past summer I was on vacation in Australia. My children and I spent an evening watching the penguin parade on Phillip Island, near Melbourne. Every night when the sun set, thousands of the world’s smallest penguins swim back to the shore and waddle across the sand to find a place to sleep for the night.

We got to sit literally a foot away from where the penguins passed by. We listened to their noises as they called out to each other in the darkness. The Antarctic winds whipped across our faces.

It suddenly struck me. This is Narrative two.

I’m living it. Right now. Here.

It isn’t what I originally planned for my life. I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own—I would have rather had my husband here with us instead. But this is good too. This was me doing what I wanted to do, seeing the world, raising my children, experiencing beautiful things. Narrative two was not an exile.

It was an opportunity to rewrite my story. A story worth living, even after the tragedy that threatened to destroy me.

If you can believe in multiple paths, you can change your narrative.

If you can believe that whatever you don’t know, you can learn—it will happen.

If you have a willingness to try new things, you can change your narrative.

If you can take the time to figure out your preferences, it can happen. What do you like to do? What feels like enchantment in your life?

If you can believe in yourself, you can write any narrative you want.

And when something changes and the story isn’t what you want anymore, you can keep writing new ones. You don’t have to be a hostage to any narrative. Give yourself permission.

Tell yourself the stories about those times when you were courageous. Tell stories about your strength, perseverance, and resilience. Tell stories about how strong you are.

Tell the stories of your survival. The ones where you got through the hardest of times and experienced joy again. The stories where you knew in your bones that life was worth living.

You have those stories. Those are the ones to repeat.

Tell them over and over again so you never forget who you really are.

About Teresa Shimogawa

Teresa Shimogawa is a human being trying to do good things in the world. She is also a young widow who wants to be remembered as someone who turned her pain into something beautiful. You can find more of her writing at www.houseofteresa.com.

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The post Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/story-shapes-your-life-change-any-time/

[poptartsandwes-blog]

The Ramblings of a Tired Boy

I don’t know what exactly the purpose of this post is, or what I’m trying to achieve by doing this, but I guess I’ll just start talking and we’ll see what this turns into. 

I’m a very tired person. I mean, everyone’s tired. When you’re an adult, sometimes it can feel like you’re just consistently tired for a whole week, month, or even a few years. I remember a conversation my dad and I had while we were in the barber shop. My dad was talking about how he worked a lot when he was my age, and my barber was also talking about the same thing. They both told me that they were tired for a solid four or five years straight with how much they worked and went to school. My dad then asked me why is it that I always go right to sleep whenever I get home from work, even when we’re slow at the restaurant I work at. I simply told him, “Because I’m tired.” And he laughed. I guess its just one of those things where parents/older adults don’t think we know what its like to go through what they go through, or they think that we’re not even really in for how grueling and tiring life can be just yet. I mean sure, that’s true to an extent. No one really knows what something is like until they experience it for themselves, and even then, everyone experiences things very differently. 

I just find it funny how adults always tell me, “You’re gonna be tired for a long time,” or “If you’re tired now, just wait until you get into trade school or whatever it is you want to do.”

But see, the thing is, I’ve been tired since middle school. Tired is a pretty default emotion for me, aside from anxiety or depression. If I’m not either one of those two, I’m usually just tired. I think I’ve been tired longer than I’ve had depression, but not for as long as I’ve had anxiety. I can date anxiety back to pre-school, and I think depression started in early high school/late middle school.

There’s different forms of exhaustion I have. I’m usually always mentally tired, but lately I’ve been very physically tired and in pain, too. And that’s kind of scaring me a little bit, because when I’m both of those kinds of exhausted, things are never that great for me. 

It takes a lot for me to get out of bed. Often when I wake up, my first reaction is “Ugh. Why can’t I go back to sleep?” I can never just jump out of bed and start my day. It always takes anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours (unless I have to work, then I can force myself out of bed in about fifteen or thirty minutes). But even then, when I force myself out of bed, that depletes my energy so much that it isn’t even funny. I basically run on fumes the rest of the day when I do that. So basically when I go to work Monday through Friday, I’m typically always running on fumes. I’ve actually started drinking a pre-workout formula every day before work and that’s really helped to boost my energy (kind of pathetic that I have to do that just to get a little bit of extra energy, huh? But hey, at least I’m not doing lines of cocaine or taking adderall. (I’ve NEVER understood why people pop adderall like candy. Its so incredibly dangerous and easy to become addicted to that it isn’t even funny. That’s one thing, along with stuff like cocaine, that I’ve never considered trying)).

I can become so tired mentally that it can hurt physically. But I also have physical pain as well. Its usually all isolated in my legs and thighs, which it seems that I can thank marching band for, since a lot of us marching band kids have really awful legs now that we’ve been out of it for a while. My legs started hurting some time after high school, and I only just started acknowledging said pain a month or two ago. I used to just power through it and consider myself weak if I were hurting. But doing that has put me in the hospital multiple times, so recently I’ve been trying to be mindful of my limits.

But its hard. I hate having limits. Because I can reach my limits very quickly, and then I feel awful if I can’t do something. I have friends that always like to hang out and drive around and walk around and do all sorts of things, and I love them, but I can’t always do that. I remember one time a few of my friends wanted to go to Wal-Mart after we had just had some dinner, and I told them “I’m gonna head home. I’m really tired.” And one of them said, “What? You’re tired? But all you’ve done is work and we weren’t even that busy. How can you be tired?”

Its simple, really. Like I said before, tearing myself out of bed takes away a lot of my energy right there. So what happens to the rest of it? Its sapped away by depression and anxiety that I experience on pretty much a daily basis. 75% of the time it isn’t anything major. Just little things that irk me or make me scared that can add up to big things that take a lot of energy to deal with. 

If I were to explain it more accurately, picture a mana and a health bar from a video game. You have around 100 mana and health, and lets say you’re up against a boss (for the hell of it, we’ll just call this boss “The Day”)

The Day stands before you! What will you do?! You cast: Wake Up! (costs 40 mana)

The Day looms over you patiently.

You cast: Shower, Brush Teeth, and Get Dressed combo! (costs 30 mana)

The Day looks on at you eagerly with a fierce glare.

You use Item: Pre-Workout Energy Drink! (20 mana restored!)

The Day attacks with a Morning Shift from 10:15am to 4pm! (Minus 50 mana)

What’s this? You’ve been cut from work early and friends have appeared and are asking if you want to hang out! What will you do?! Player is out of mana! Player cannot attack!

Oh no! The Day has summoned a two hour college class!

Player is out of mana! Player cannot attack! The Day called its friend: Homework! Player is out mana! Player cannot attack! Friends have taken the field again and want to message you! Player is out of mana! Player cannot attack! Your mother calls your cell and/or texts you wondering if you’d like to chat! 

Player is out of mana! Player cannot attack! You have the urge to write, one of your favorite hobbies! 

PLAYER IS OUT OF MANA. PLEASE STOP ASKING THE PLAYER TO ATTACK.

There’s a new series out on Netflix, and some great music on Youtube to listen-

Player forfeits and takes a two hour nap. (No mana restored).

The Day still lords over you like an all-encompassing shadow. 

Player is still out of mana. Player cannot attack.

The Player wants to. They’re really trying, here. Can’t you cut them some slack? You can see it in their walk and hear it in their voice that they’re tired. 

The Day refuses to leave you alone. 

The Player does not know what to do. 

But suddenly! What’s this? The Player has started moving. They reach for something, but what is it?

The Player draws a knife. The Day, Homework, Writing, and Friends all look on at the player in confusion. 

The Player quickly drags the knife over their own arm and screams, “Why can’t I do anything anymore?” (Minus 10 health)

Blood trickles down the Player’s arm as the enemies stand, frozen in shock and fear. 

The Player takes the knife and slashes their own leg. “I just want to be normal! Why do I always get so tired?!” (Minus 10 health)

No one knows what to do. 

The Player presses the knife against their hip and slices. “I can’t stand being so tired! No matter what I do, even if I get extra sleep or eat healthier and take vitamins, I’m still tired!” (Minus 20 health)

No one knows what to do.

The player moves the knife up to their ribcage and slowly digs the blade deep into their muscle. They drag the knife slowly, shrieking all the while. “I don’t even have the energy to hang out with friends and talk to my own mom!” (Minus 20 health)

Everyone still stands. No one knows what to do.

The Player chuckles lightly as they press the knife against their wrist. “You wanna know what the funny thing is? I don’t even have the energy to kill myself. The amount of thought and preparation it takes in order to plan something like this so my parents and loved ones and friends aren’t the ones to find my body is so overwhelming that it just turns me off of it, despite wanting so desperately for this poor excuse of my life to just end. This, my job, my future– it all feels like one sick joke. And I’ve stopped laughing.” 

The Player drops the knife. They examine the cuts and gashes they’ve given themselves and shake in horror. They decide to go to sleep, and try again tomorrow. 

…

…

…

(Mana and Health fully restored!)

The Day stands before you! What will you do?!

You cast: Wake up! (costs 40 mana)

So um. I don’t know what else to say or do here. I feel better though, now that I’ve gotten this out of my system. I’m still sad, and I’m still tired. But hey, I’m a little better. Sometimes Most of the time, that’s about all I can ever ask for. I don’t know how much of a help this can be for people, or if anyone can really even understand it, but I don’t think that’s my intention here.

I just want to feel better. Maybe I will. One day.

EDIT: I'm fine and I did not hurt myself. Thank you to those who have asked me for your consideration. But I have not harmed myself and am fine 💙