#like WHY is my brain like this. why do I get so neurotic about tasks laying HOURS into the future

[stillwinterair]

My executive dysfunction means that I will sit in one spot for hours on end every day on the very edge of doing something but with the vague awareness of a task I will need to do in several hours, and that awareness means that the eventual task takes up 100% of my brain's task managing capability and so I will sit there and do nothing at all because I have to mentally prepare for something, like for example, making my fucking dinner and because I know the time will eventually come to pass in which I need to start preparing that, I cannot actually. Do anything useful in the meantime. Or even anything creative or for fun, and will just. Sit here. Worrying over a thing that I don't have to do for another several hours. And it is slowly driving me insane and making me an anxious mess all the time, especially combined with an additional layer of executive dysfunction bullshittery in which, in order to do literally any task at all, there needs to be a "transitional period" in which I slowly immerse myself in the thought processes of actually Doing A Thing so that the act of engaging in a task isn't abysmally miserable. I have a hard time doing anything on a whim, even for fun, and I have to sit in one place and think about it and slowly grease the wheels inside my brain so that they are at optimal functionality for the specific Thing I am about to do, immersing myself in The Concept Of It, and this takes, like, at least an hour, which means I spend 90% of every day in a transitory state between various other tasks, because something as brief as going out to get the mail requires me to transition fully into that frame of mind, and if I'm not able to transition calmly into it, then actually Doing The Task is like walking across hot coals while every inch of my skin is rubbed in sandpaper

All this is to say: there is a fucked up cocktail of mental eelness living in my brain which results in 90% of my life being spent not doing anything even remotely worthwhile because I am constantly settling into the brainspace of doing the next Thing to the detriment of literally everything else, and if I am aware of some task or activity sitting beyond whatever I'm currently mentally preparing myself for, then the whole process of that immersion feels pointless and so I will not do it and instead stretch out the transitory state for that other, future task laying hours ahead for an absurd amount of time

So then I can't PLAN anything, because if I start thinking about "what do I want to eat for lunch?" then I can't do anything throughout the morning, and god forbid if I ask myself "what do I want to eat for dinner?" then my entire day is shot because I will worry over it the entire time

[softinkshadows]

Shingeki no Kyojin Astrology: sun-moon-rising combinations

I was looking around tumblr for detailed astrology speculations of my fave anime characters, but there aren't that many! Being q well-versed in astro myself, i thought why not do my own version (very spoiler-free, don’t worry)! I followed the birth dates given by isayama:

Eren Jaeger - Aries sun, Scorpio moon, Cancer rising Aside from the fact that he can be hotheaded and impulsive, Eren's feelings of vengeance run deep and explosive. Remember that time he was chained to the bed after the attack on trost, and his eyes were wild with the need to violently eradicate all titans? He's so tenacious and emotionally stubborn too (a Scorp moon trait) to the point of being closed off from everyone else, especially towards the end where he seems to take the weight of the world's burden on his own shoulders. And all for the sake of protecting his community and ensuring the safety of his friends for the rest of their lives. His comrades and family are his motivation. This is his Cancer rising steering his life.

Mikasa Ackerman - Aries sun, Aquarius moon, Aries rising "Look that moody brat is running off on her own again." Mikasa is similar to Eren in her impulsiveness and determination, but different in two ways- what they aim to protect and their extent of fearlessness. Eren is aware of his own weaknesses and helplessness, but Mikasa's amazing physical prowess makes her act without any hesitation at all. She's hella fierce and driven to keep herself in shape too, doing all those sit-ups and chopping firewood post-injury. I think she deserves a double Aries! An Aries rising means a Libra descendant too, which is reflected her whole-hearted devotion in her close partnerships (Eren and Armin). Her aquarius moon really shines thru with her stoic independence, focus and perseverance.

Armin Arlet - Scorpio sun, Virgo moon, Pisces rising He's the brain of the 104th cadet corps, and is second to Erwin in terms of strategy! An intelligent planner with low self-esteem often found second guessing his own analytical abilities, Armin is a true blue Virgo moon. His emotional self stands out the most from the main three protagonists - Eren & Mikasa mostly express anger and desperation, whereas Armin is usually shrouded in fear and worry. He's a very soft bb, hence the Pisces rising, not to mention he gets so dreamy imagining the sea, the vast plains, and the magical world beyond the walled universe he knows. A spiritually-attuned and curious explorer :")

Levi Ackerman - Capricorn sun, Scorpio moon, Virgo rising Levi is such a complex person, thanks to Isayama's brilliance. Like many Cap suns, Levi is authoritative, cold and incredibly savage. That's not to say he doesn't feel anything either. Levi is an evolved Scorp moon (maybe even moon in 11th house) because his feelings are never for himself, but he hurts so much for others - you can tell every death hits him so hard, but he doesn't show this to anyone else. He also exudes this quietly intimidating aura of natural competence, a common characteristic of this sun-moon combo. He can take things personally as well (re: height issues) but it never snowballs into more than passing irritation. The turbulence of his emotions and habit for violence is balanced out by his earthy Virgo rising, which is emotionally subdued, quite thin and delicate in physique, and super neurotic and nitpicky when it comes to cleanliness and health. Cap, Virgo and Scorp are some of the most guarded signs, and a combi of all 3 are hellish. You can tell this poor beautiful man is always caught between feeling and thinking, between maintaining his humanity and forsaking it.

Erwin Smith - Libra sun, Capricorn moon, Leo rising In another life, Erwin Smith would be the damn CEO of a global conglomerate because he oozes so much charisma. Hell if charisma were energy Erwin Smith would be its prime, eternally renewable source. His stature alone is so commanding, and I find some strong Leonine traits in his thickset physique, strong eyebrows, beautiful hair, and that way he shouted in full glory atop wall Rose in that one episode to the cheering masses below. He might be a Libra sun, diplomatic in political affairs, but his Capricorn moon is what drives his decisions. Cap moon has a rep for being cold and unemotional, but i believe they are way more than that! Cap moons rarely boast about their long list of achievements, instead looking forward to the next goal. They struggle with emotional expression, and are super driven and disciplined. Erwin is capable of making the hardest decisions, putting aside emotions to strive for an abstract ideal, and this is to be expected of the commander who takes on the role of the devil.

Hange Zoe - Virgo sun, Sagittarius moon, Gemini rising All hail our favourite mad scientist!! Hange is such a breath of fresh air in the Survey Corps, balancing out the heaviness of missions with their wacky tales of titan research and experimentation. Their penchant for study and higher knowledge is typical of a Sagittarius moon, who is drawn to advanced academic study and spiritual truths. It's also a lighthearted and optimistic sign, true to Hange's upbeat personality. The Virgo in them contributes to their sheer intelligence and obsessiveness with research subjects. We also know they LOVE to talk, and once Eren asks Hange about experiments, they cannot stop (Gemini governs communication). Virgo, Sag and Gemini are the most intellectual signs, and because they are mutuable Hange tends to follow orders rather than give them, making it difficult to adapt to their new role towards the end of the series. Mutable signs also means rapidly-changing emotional states, and a whole lot of chaos, which suits our beloved squad leader.

Jean Kirstein - Aries sun, Virgo moon, Taurus rising Our third Aries on the list ohmygod. The snk universe is full of feisty hotheads. Jean is always seen clashing with Eren, fuelled by Eren's closeness with Mikasa and his own adorable jealousy. I mean, they had a full on fist fight right after dinner in the mess hall, although everything went downhill after the first few punches. Our first impression of Jean during his cadet days is coloured by his desire to work in the interior, and this favour for material safety and wealth is perhaps common to a Taurus rising. Also, Taurus is ruled by Venus, planet of beauty and harmony, and thus often figures in the charts of artists. If you've seen Jean's drawing skills in that special episode, you'll know that his artistic abilities are the finest we have seen, exceeding even that of isayama himself. Jean's strong principles such as being averse to killing people and oftentimes cynical nature, is also characteristic of the moral and cautious Virgo moon.

Sasha Braus - Leo sun, Gemini moon, Taurus rising Not all Leos are showmans. Sasha is the type of Leo who displays more of the quirky, unabrashed personality suited to her opposite sister sign Aquarius. Authority doesn't exist when food comes into play, as we see when she breaks potato with Shadis and later steals a slab of meat from the officer's warehouse. Unlike the visual artistry that Jean possesses with his Taurus rising, Sasha's Taurus centers around her love for food, and hell she can have fiery determination for it (rmb the wild night she mistook Jean's hand for meat?). I love that both of them were pitted with each other in that cooking special episode. I considered placing her as a Taurus moon, but Taurus moons are usually steadier and classier in emotion, whereas Sasha is often breezy, gets nervous and chaotic, with stellar intuition, making her likely a Gemini moon.

Connie Springer - Taurus sun, Cancer moon, Gemini rising Although not much attention is paid to Connie's growth, his character development reminds me a lot of Aang from ATLA. Cheery and happy-go-lucky at first, before the incident with his mother made him more prone to feelings of anger and vengeance, especially near the later chapters. His strong protective bond with his mother is what compels me to say he is a Cancer moon, which is a moon sign that is very homebody and drawn to family and traditions. His goofy self and him referring to Sasha as "his twin" puts him as the spunky Gemini rising, another sign he shares with her.

Reiner Braun - Leo sun, Pisces moon, Capricorn rising Aside from his natural leader personality (Leonine), Reiner likes to take on the persona of the big brother of the group. His outward stoicism, decisiveness and task-oriented nature is typical of a Cap rising, who is often serious and solemn in appearance. He reminds me of that Cap rising workaholic who does his best in a corporate organization, working 9 to 5 plus overtime as it fulfills his sense of purpose. Beyond his stoic facade reveals a more troubled personality. Like a Pisces moon, Reiner is impressionable, and it's difficult to tell if his emotions and personalities are his own, wavering and absorbing traits from those around him. His internal war with his identity and the ensuing fatigue characterises him during the second half of the series.

Annie Leonhart - Aries sun, Aquarius moon, Virgo rising Annie is the kind of Aries that is so motivated to achieve her goals that everything else is sidelined, including her own emotions. She's quite ruthless in chasing her objectives, and her composure, focus and endurance is highlighted with an Aquarius moon. I'm guessing she has a 4th house influence somewhere because of her motivations to go home to her father and lead a normal life. I find the daintiness and delicateness of her features similar to Levi, who is also a Virgo rising. The Virgo effect also registers as a brutal, unfiltered honesty (also seen in Levi), and Annie doesn't hesitate to speak the truth about her own or her opponent's capabilities.

Other characters which I won't go into much detail about:

Bertholdt Hoover - Capricorn sun, Virgo moon, Pisces rising Bertholdt is quiet with an unobtrusive personality. His lack of supposed iniative and aggression can perhaps be attributed to the mutuability of Virgo and Pisces, which goes with the flow instead of charging forward. He keeps his feelings to himself, but reacts when the people he wants to protect are threatened.

Historia Reiss - Capricorn sun, Libra moon, Cancer rising Historia initially lives for the sake of others (esp Ymir), and is more co-dependent than many of her other squadmates. She also tends to put up a front of pleasantness, afraid of disappointing or offending people. She has a strong tie to family, and a profound sense of duty.

Ymir - Aquarius sun, Pisces moon, Aries rising Ymir is extremely astute when it comes to evaluating human behaviour. The religiosity of her background is also usually found in this sun-moon combination, which tends to attract paths of strong spirituality. She also has a bold and noble sacrificial streak for the sake of her companions.

Zeke Jaeger - Leo sun, Capricorn moon, Scorpio rising A headstrong, intelligent and radical character. In a way similar to Erwin in his ruthlessness, but emotionally darker and much more sinisterly private.

Kenny Ackerman - Aquarius sun, Sagittarius moon

Rod Reiss - Virgo sun, Libra moon

Dot Pixis - Virgo sun, Sagittarius moon

Hannes - Capricorn sun, Taurus moon

[mugasofer]

It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

[fairycosmos]

can't believe you actually put that into words. i feel the same only i haven't ever even been capable of mantaining relationships or making friends but yeah. i feel like my brain does not work properly. i can't process words or even react normally. there IS a standard and basically everyone around me can function and i can't. it's just like you said. i feel like i am simply not fit to live. i can't function like a human being. i don't know if it's the trauma or some of us were not meant to live. i feel like i am never in myself or being myself like i am just a vessel and i don't even feel a connection to my body. also like you said like even the way i stand is wrong. like i am so out of it. it's all literally like you said. i can't even pretend or fake it and it takes all of my to even try to speak or make a facial expression too. i am absolutely certain i cannot live. like this is going to have to be over soon because it also can't be fixed. you just put all of this into words better than me but you are so right about everything. i don't know what are we supposed to do chloe? it's awful living like this everything is overwhelming and confusing and unbearable

:(( literally unbearable, that's the only word that keeps coming back to my mind, it's the only thing that comes close to describing it. i am really really sorry you can relate because it is is the worst fucking feeling but at the same time i have to say it's a bit of a relief to hear that someone knows what i mean. i'm so embarrased at my complete lack of ability to exist sometimes. facial expressions, completing simple tasks, emotional regulation etc it all escapes me. same, it's like there's quite literally a wedge in my mind stopping it from functioning. conversations are so hard, everything is. keeping up the facade. even when i'm just standing there, it feels so wrong. what you said about being a vessel, it's very much that. just the constant feeling of inhabiting some strangers skin. i am so clunky. i don't know what people want. and i feel like this has been talked about before in a, i don't know who i am, sort of way but it's not even that for me. i just don't know how to "be" in the first place, in the way that is deemed acceptable by collective society anyway. there 100% is a standard, yeah, idk why we pretend there's not. and most ppl seem to meet it. even if it's acting they meet it, and i don't know how. seems like they're all in on something i'm not?? i don't think it's that some people aren't meant to live, though i get feeling that way out of frustration, i do all the time. but we're all just here by accident, some ppl are just more.......compatible w their own brains maybe?? im phrasing that weird idk. i am glad you're here and i mean that in the least patronizing way. and u definitely shouldn't have to suffer so much just to make other ppl happy but just wanted to say it's a good thing you're alive and you do deserve better than what you've been through and i don't think it's impossible to think that better experiences r waiting for you. i think it's a mixture of trauma, mental illness, certain disorders, also just living in a world like this not 2 sound like the joker or whatever. a lot of that pain can't be fixed but it can be soothed, at least when it comes to trauma and mental health, adulthood CAN be a process of recovery, at least i'm hoping. well idk for me at this point w the whole money and therapist and working thing but for a lot of people, it can. i hope the opportunity for that falls on you soon and i really hope you just do what you can to take care of yourself above all else. ur messages make me feel a lot less alone, seriously. my inbox is always open and im always sending u sm love and gratitude <3 check in w me any time we will be neurotic and panicked and sad together

[jeonggukingdom]

your every wish is my command (m)

▽ Pairing: Jeongguk x Reader

▽ Genre: genie!AU, smut, fluff, crack

▽ Summary:  It’s Friday night and everyone you know in a 12 miles radius seems to be out and about dancing or drinking their lives away. Bored out of your mind you decide to call out the Genie that happened to fell in your hands a month prior to this very night. You just want some company, somebody to talk to and entertain you but things take a spicy turn when you accidentally make your very first wish and it’s a rather impious one.

▽ Word Count: 13.690 words

▽ WARNINGS:  Graphic depictions of sexual intercourse, unprotected sex, slight sub/dom dynamics, very light breathplay, rough sex, oral sex, thigh riding, tit fucking, swear words.

▽ AN: I’m going to take a moment to thank all the writers that participated in this collab, you guys are amazing and I love every single one of you! ♥ You were so supportive of each other, understanding when we ran into a few problems and honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch to share my very first collab experience with. Thank you, for everything ♥ @hobiwonder - @couture-kookie - @btsflufflysmut - @jimintykookies - @btssmutflufflove - @whichwaytowonderlandep

 "Uuuugh, I'm bored out of my goddamn mind!" You huff in annoyance, sprawling on your bed with a prominent pout on your face as the deafening silence of your room welcomes your words.

You roll your eyes to the ceiling, your feet dangling out the edge of your mattress in a perfect imitation of a kid throwing a tantrum.

It is Friday night and normally you'd be out and about having fun, quite possibly drinking your brains out along with your friends, only to regret all your life's decisions in the morning.

But you are regretting this one decision tonight after all so, either way, lots of regrets seems to be headed your way tomorrow morning. Usually, they would come in the form of an incessant headache and the shame for your actions the previous night but, tomorrow seems more like it would be in the form of your friends' tales about the night and all the good—and bad—things you have missed.

Your phone chimes then, right on cue, and you ungracefully roll on your stomach to stretch your left arm forward and fish the device from under the little colorful pillows and covers on your still unmade bed.

In bold black letters shines Doyeon's name, your friend since junior year in high school with whom you have the misfortune—or fortune, depends on who you ask it to—of sharing your college experience with.

The text she has sent you is akin to a cryptic secret message from the stone age and you do not have the patience nor the will to try and understand what it means aside from the fact that she is, clearly, already too intoxicated to even know how to type down actual words.

Your suspicions are confirmed in the matter of a few seconds when your phone rings again, this time with a notification from SnapChat. Dreading what awaits you, you still tap it open and are instantly met with the loud ass music and the glorious unfocused shot of people dancing around your pretty friend.

You can hear Doyeon screaming her lungs out along with the music and, rolling your eyes, you lock your phone again.

Your lips purse into another pout as you scan your surroundings in the desperate search of something at least a little entertaining to do.

You have spent the last hour scrolling through your entire timeline on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, and you have reached that bottom point where nothing new is up anymore for you to consume.

You let out a strangled moan of irritation towards yourself and turn flat on your back again, staring at the ceiling in dismay.

With the semester coming to an end and your grades not being as stellar as your parents' would like them to be, you have found yourself on the verge of constant panic every waking hour of the past few weeks and it is that dread that has pushed you to make a responsible decision tonight, for once.

Staying in to study for your impendent exam seemed only rational; finishing up the assignment due on Monday instead of rushing it in panic tomorrow night for the hundredth time seemed smart and, ultimately, getting a little ahead with your mandatory literature reads—like the perfect student your parents would love for you to be—seemed absolutely genius and something you would thank yourself for in the long run. Clearly, a farfetched assumption that has been discarded a long time ago in favor of resentment towards your own line of thoughts.

When you had planned out your evening, it hadn't occurred to you that in the silence of the dorm and with the absence of Doyeon's intrusions in your room, you could be productive and finish up all of these tasks in the few hours between the late afternoon and the early evening.

So now, at barely 10 PM in the evening, you are left with no company and absolutely nothing else to do beside pathetically stare at your white naked walls.

Your phone rings again and you roll your eyes to the ceiling, already sure of the identity of the person behind the receiver.

Without a fault, it is your best friend trying to contact you again in her riled-up state and you do consider ignoring the call but then again, it's not like you have anything better to do anyway.

You barely have the time to accept the call and move the phone to your ear before Doyeon's scream in the form of your name reverberates in your skull.

"Ya'llneverbelievewhadhappend!"

Doyeon's slurs her words out in a screech that hurts both your brain and your acoustic walls, ultimately forcing you to put her on speaker and drop the phone on the bed to avoid permanent damage to your neurotic cells.

Not so surprisingly, though, you still understand the words that are thrown your way and that is because you've had this conversation quite many times before, especially in person with your brain lost in an intoxicated haze and the lack of comprehension skills.

"What happened?" You ask back, honestly just to humor her and see what she'll come up with.

Doyeon tries, she really does, but she can't really describe the picture in her head clearly and even though you give her your undivided attention, the only things you can make-out out of her rant are the words 'kiss', 'Hoseok', 'gottagoBYE'.

Before you even get the chance to utter a single word in response, you're met with the sound of the line getting caught off and the consequential silence that comes right after.

"Really..." you whisper to yourself in annoyance, glaring at your phone as if Doyeon could even see you through the locked screen.

Curiosity has your mind reeling on the infinite scenarios that could link those few words together and your eternal romantic side hooks on the possibility of Hoseok finally confessing his feelings for your best friend.

It is not a secret that both of them have been pining over each other ever since the end of last semester. Well, not a secret for anybody except them. Those two fools have been going around for literal months believing their crush was very one-sided.

"Ugh, why tonight of all nights?!" You ask at the blank wall in front of you, your hands fisting the covers in utter frustration.

You turn on your back, ungracefully landing on the bed, your face flat on the mattress.

"I wish I could turn back time," you whisper to yourself, tilting your head to the side to fix your gaze on the right wall.

Your eyes comically enlarge as the realization comes to you, the solution to your loneliness and boredom shining like a beacon in the night.

Your gaze fixes on your most precious possession lying between your textbooks in your own rendition of a library: a genie lamp.

Looking quite tacky and straight-out of a cartoon for children, the lamp that has changed your whole perception of what is real and what isn't, shines under the lights.

You jump on your feet with the excitement of a kid who has just arrived at Disneyland and with a big smile plastered on your face, you reach for the golden object.

It still feels weird to hold the ancient lamp in your hands, feel it under your digits and trace the outline of the golden decorations embossed atop the teal surface.

The lamp feels absolutely weightless in your hands and even though you're sort of accustomed to magic by now, it still seems impossible for something so light to be able to contain so many things all at once, let alone a living person.

It has been a few months since you have found the object, placidly waiting to be picked up on a deserted beach in your hometown.

It was the crack of dawn and you had been walking the long way home, enjoying the summer breeze and the nice smell of saltiness—the smell of home and good memories and peace and safety, something you miss with your entire heart when you're back in the city, living the college life.

You had picked it up because it looked like a toy, something a child would have lost and also because growing up, Aladdin had been your favorite Disney movie and oh well, even as an adult you still held a soft spot for it. It was, after all, the cartoon that sparked up your fantasy and imagination. Little did you know though that, when growing up, you'd find out that Aladdin's fairytale wasn't so farfetched as you initially believed.

You will never forget the moment you blew air out your mouth to clean up the lamp, in an attempt to make it shine bright again, and watched it spark up to life. You will also never forget the scream of utter terror that erupted from your mouth once a thick teal fog erupted from it and engulfed you whole.

In the span of a few seconds, you considered the idea of being way more drunk than you initially thought; having gone completely insane; having fallen down somewhere, banged your head and ended up in a weird-dream inducing coma.

The quick escalation of panicked thoughts had made your head spin and your heart rate spike up in your chest.

As the fog seemed to clear all around you, you had found yourself breathing in almost normally again, the thought of having experienced a seizure wildly present in the recess of your mind as you took in the scenery anew.

You expected the beach to be in the same state you had left it before you picked up that goddamned thing but, instead, you were met with two doe eyes, staring right at you.

How you didn't faint right then and there it is still a question you have no answer to but you did scream, oh God if you screamed and ran on the beach like a maniac, scared for your own life.

"Why do you scream so much?"

It had the voice of a boy, damn, he looked like a boy but he couldn't be one, because he came from that thing and if you weren't hallucinating, dreaming or, worse, stuck in a fantasy world of your own creation as your body lied peacefully in a hospital bed, that meant he wasn't human.

"Wha-w-what are you?!" The screech that came out of your mouth made him flinch and scrunch up his nose in distaste as he took a step forward, trying to reduce the distance you had put between the two of you.

"Well, if you had given me the time to speak, you would've known by now that I'm a genie and I'm here to serve you." The 'boy' bowed before you, his head hanging low and his back at a perfect ninety degrees angle to show you the respect you were supposedly due.

Terror seemed to dissipate in your chest, suppressed by a fit of laughter that you had no idea whether it actually came from hilarity or absolute insanity. Still, you laughed until your stomach ached, until your eyes got teary and your cheeks hurt.

"What's so funny?" He asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion, his lips slightly protruding forward in an adorable pout.

"You-you said you're a genie!" You could barely get the words out before you were thrown into another fit of laughter, unable to control yourself over the absurdity of the whole situation.

"Is my species something to laugh about?" His thick eyebrows narrowed as he studied you and your scrunched-up form, still giggling uncontrollably before him.

The smile slowly disappeared from your lips as you took him in completely for the first time. His eyes had turned cold, his mouth was held in a tight line, his arms crossed over his chest in defense, his stance rigid and mildly uncomfortable.

"Wait, you're being serious?!" Your mouth opened in astonishment as you stared down at him, "You aren't shitting me, right now?"

"Why would I joke about this?" He looked at you, clearly confused by both your initial reaction and your current string of questions.

"Is this some kind of candid camera?" You looked around trying to pick up on the hidden crew or a camera perfectly concealed somewhere up the road.

"What's a candid camera?"

"What's a can-really?!" You looked at him with your mouth open, your eyebrows knitted together in astonishment. Honestly, who doesn’t know what a candid camera is?

"Oh my God, I'm dealing with a crazy person!" You exclaimed, raising your arms to the sky in an over-dramatic motion of incredulity.

"You screamed at me, laughed at me and tried to run away from me and I'm the crazy person here?!" He pointed at himself, his eyes shining with both disbelief and exasperation over your refusal to believe him.

"You are the one that came out from the freaking lamp! Wait-" You stopped on your tracks, suddenly reminded of why you had been scared out of your skin in the first place.

In response, the self-proclaimed genie pointedly looked at you, his eyebrows rising up to his forehead, his hands resting on his hips as he waited for you to finally connect the dots.

It didn't make sense. Genies aren't real, that's what you kept saying to yourself because, honestly, who would have believed him right away? Who in their right mind would have?

"Prove it." You crossed your arms on your chest and looked up at him, fierceness in your gaze and defiance in your stance.

"Because clearly coming out from a lamp is not enough," he muttered to himself, shaking his head a little before relaxing his posture to lift himself up from the ground.

Your chin dropped alongside with your heart, your mind reeling in the attempt to grasp what you were staring at. He was flying. Like, actually flying and that meant either this was very real or there was something really wrong with you.

You felt the blood drain from your face as he gracefully landed before you, his lips twisted into a satisfied smirk whilst panic raged back on inside of you.

You gulped down heavily, unable to tear your gaze away from him in fear the moment you'd look away, he'd kill you. Which is dumb, of course, in retrospective it is but there was alcohol in your system and fear and panic which aren't the nicest combination, to be fair to yourself.

You blow hot air on the lamp and rub on the fogged up surface with your sleeve, cooing him out of the lamp with the same sounds you would use for a cat—something he utterly despises but that you still do just to spite him.

Nine months have passed since you picked up his lamp by accident and you have been through your ups and downs together, so much so you have started thinking about him as a friend. Of course, he doesn't know this and he cannot know this because you are aware it is dangerous territory.

Genies aren't meant to spend a lifetime with a human, they are meant to grant wishes and move on and once they do, they'll never meet their previous owners ever again.

You know this, he has explained it to you on that very first day and even though you understand the rules very well, there is this part of you that refuses the idea of ever letting him go. It's silly, but the feeling is there and it seems as unshakable as a whole huge-ass-mountain.

The familiar teal fog engulfs you, warming up your body as it enlarges in the air, moving around until it thickens into a living human-like creature.

"How many times do I have to tell you I'm a genie, not a freaking cat?"

"Good evening to you too, Jeongguk."

He rolls his eyes at you, his hands resting on his hips as he taps his foot to the floor, annoyance written all over his face.

"Fine, fine, I won't do it anymore." You peel off your gaze from his little pout, turning your back on him so you can sprawl yourself on the bed again.

"You said that last time, as well." He takes a step forward, following you to the center of the room to look down at you, his eyes shining with judgment and a little bit of mistrust.

You giggle as you sit up crossing your legs whilst you reach out a hand for him, sticking up your pinkie for him to catch.

"Pinky promise?" You offer, batting your lashes in feigned innocence.

"I'm not a kid," he grumbles under his breath but still joins your fingers together, side-eyeing you as you burst into giggles at his antics.

That's the thing with Jeongguk: he'd mumble, he'd throw a tantrum like a kid and look at you with ice-cold eyes but he'll always humor you. You don't know if it's because it's in his nature or that is just the way it is but you love it, either way.

"So, what am I doing here?" He asks, tilting his head to the side, his eyes turning into slits as he studies you, "No, scratch that. What are you doing here?"

You sigh loudly, suddenly reminded of your pathetic Friday night at the dorm.

"I'm here because I had to study, you are here because I want entertainment."

"Is that your first wish?"

It has been nine months since you have met him and not a single day has passed without him asking you about your first wish. At first, you just wanted to consider your options before wasting three wishes on trivial things.

Now, you just don't want to watch him disappear into thin air and forget all about you.

"No, dummy, I'm just bored out of my mind."

Your reply sounds lighthearted but you can't really stop the sadness creeping up in your heart at the thought of ever letting him go. You wish you could speak about this with him or with anybody else but you can't. How exactly would you explain genies to other people without making them think you need some serious help? Also, the most egoistic part of you doesn't even want anyone else to know about the existence of Jeongguk and the rest of his lot.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"Ah! You won't trick me into making a wish, I'm not that clueless!"

He shakes his head lightly, trapping his bottom lip under his teeth before sighing loudly.

"That's what I don't understand," he says, his gaze so intense it almost makes you squirm on your seat. These days it almost feels like he can read past your defense and it scares you to no end because you know what he will say. He would be right, too, in saying it but you don't want a wake-up call, not just yet.

"Why don't you?" He asks, narrowing his eyebrows as you promptly look away, avoiding his gaze with all your might.

"I just want to make sure I don't waste them up," your voice says. I enjoy your company far too much to let you go, your heart secretly whispers.

Silence welcomes your words and you let your body fall down on the mattress again, your eyes fixing up on the ceiling anew while your heart feels even heavier than it did before.

Your mind drifts off to your call with Doyeon, how happy she sounded in her messy-ass state. The likelihood of her and Hoseok being together right now is pretty high and yes, you are happy for her but also yes, you do envy her. It has been months since you've last been with a guy and it has been even longer since you even felt something for one.

With a pout on your lips you turn towards your genie, still standing at the edge of the bed with his eyes fixed on you.

This is another thing Jeongguk does: he looks at you all the time. He never lets you out of his sight and at first, you found it odd, unnerving and almost creepy but now, after so many months together, you've grown to like it because it makes you feel special, almost cherished. Of course, it is all based on a lie because it is probably in his nature to keep his eyes on his master but, even so, the heart feels and believes what it wants to.

"You know what would make me feel really better?"

You ask after a few seconds, a wicked smile spreading on your lips as you study your next words. Usually, you wouldn't talk about this stuff with him, maybe not even with Doyeon to be completely honest, but the idea of making him all flustered is too tempting to resist it.

"What?" He asks, his eyes shining with the prospect of you finally using up your very first wish. You swear to God, if he had a tail he'd be wagging it like a dog now, looking so expectantly at you.

You almost bite back the words before they can leave your mouth but then, you don't, and before you realize it, they are hanging in the hair.

"A good dickdown."

He looks at you with his eyes big as saucers, his cheeks the color of rose petals and his mouth slightly parted in a silence reply to your words.

You giggle at his response—or lack thereof—basking in the way he looks so utterly bewildered with your sudden confession.

"Well, I'm-uhm-pretty sure you won't have any problems finding someone willing to...?"

Jeongguk scratches the back of his head, his eyes drifting a little away from your face as he tries to get his composure back after you have thrown him so off with your words.

You take this chance to look at him, truly look at him without the fear of being caught staring, for once.

His black hair shines particularly bright tonight, soft and fluffy locks slightly covering his sharp eyebrows in a way that makes him look young and dainty.

His eyes are your favorite thing to look at. They are black as coal but still shimmer as if stars are trapped behind them, they are big and kind and puppy-like and they make your heart hurt whenever they fix on you.

His nose is round and a little pointed at the end, an adorable freckle is almost hidden under his right nostril and you may or may not have dreamed of kissing it before.

He has a little scar on his left cheek, almost looking like a cut and you have tried asking him about it but an answer has never come your way, no matter how much you insisted on your pursuit. You imagined a lot how it would feel under your digits. The rest of his skin looks so soft to the touch you truly wonder if it would really seem like stroking peaches if you'd reach your hand and simply touch it.

His mouth is a nice shade of coral, small but pouty and honestly so kissable it hurts to look at it for more than a few seconds. But then, if you move your gaze you find another freckle under his bottom lip and that is dangerous territory because you'd love to kiss that one too.

Everything about Jeongguk's face is soft and delicate until he turns a little to the side, or inches his head backward and you can clearly see the sharpness of his jawline; the manly cut that makes your mouth water and your heart beat faster. Yes, maybe you have developed a crush for your genie and it would definitely not be a wise decision but then again, how do you stop your heart from desiring something?

Your eyes travel a little southern, landing on his open white vest with teal and golden details on his shoulders.

Where his face is soft and gentle, his body is strong and powerful and he makes absolutely no effort to conceal it.

His arms are all muscles and veins that lead to pretty hands—have you ever even looked at hands before you met him?—his shoulders are big and look like the safest place to be held in, his chest is broad and defined and surely the most comfortable pillow to rest your head on.

Your eyes drift towards his firm abdomen, your gaze lingering there as you unconsciously lick your lips, incapable of keeping your thoughts at bay as you are presented, once again, with a body chiseled by the gods.

Whereas his pecs aren't the most defined and sculpted once you've ever seen, he makes up greatly for it when it comes down to his abs.

Before you met Jeongguk, you had never seen abdominal muscles that reached the upper torso in such a precise and perfect definition in real life.

The lines that delineate his muscles almost seem to have been airbrushed in Photoshop and,  if he weren't standing before you right now and you were seeing him for the first time in a photo, you would easily bet a hundred bucks on them being absolutely fake and post-produced.

You love the little curve of his stomach, the way it looks a little bit softer compared to the rock-hard muscles above it and, to be honest, that's the part you prefer the most: his cute belly button, the way those muscles tense inward whenever he laughs too hard at one of your jokes and, further down, the truly mouth-watering little happy trail of fine hair that leads to the golden waistband of his white pants.

You can almost see the curve of his hipbones peeking through the fair fabric and you have to gulp down heavily in order to stop your thoughts from going there.

You abruptly peel off your gaze from him and redirect it towards his face, a mistake you wish you hadn't done because you find him staring right at you, a little questioning look drawn on his face.

You feel the blood quickly rush to your face, turning your skin so uncomfortably hot you almost fan yourself with your hands.

"W-well, it's not as easy as you think," you finally reply, your gaze fixed on anywhere but him, as you try to will your heart rate to slow down a little and your lungs to breathe in some more air.

"Isn't it?" Jeongguk tilts his head to the side, undoubtedly trying to catch your gaze with his own but failing when you refuse to even glance in his general direction.

"Well no because thanks to you I, unfortunately, doubled my freaking standards on males!"

There must be some kind of magical force acting here because not in a million years you would have said that out loud otherwise. The thought that had been ringing in your head ever since he had pronounced his words magically appeared on your tongue and, before you could stop yourself, there it was, hanging in the air like the freaking sword of Damocles.

Jeongguk sports a little grin on his face, clearly not so oblivious to the way he looks and how it affects people around him and, truth be told, you would give anything just to wipe it off from his mouth.

"Have I, now?" He inquires, his voice sickeningly sweet and thick with something that is not curiosity, like his words may suggest, but, rather taunting.

“Oh, please, don’t act like you don’t know how you look like,” you roll your eyes in response to his mocking behavior, gesturing at his whole lean figure for good measure, “I mean, who even has an eight-pack?!”

Jeongguk is fully giggling at your outburst, his cheeks painted in a nice pinkish tone that suggests he appreciates the implied compliment he was given far more than he’s bend to admit.

He’s shaking his head as if he can’t believe what is coming out of your mouth right now, and to be fair, neither do you, especially considering the fact that you are one hundred percent sober.

Your lips protrude forward in a little pout, your eyes glancing at the door to your bedroom without truly seeing it. You are lost in your thoughts again, the desires that have been repressed for long months burning you from the inside out, fighting to be expressed out loud, at last.

"I just wish I could have sex with someone as good looking as you, that’s all... Is that too much to ask?"

You sprawl your body on the bed, your eyes fixing on the ceiling yet again but, this time, it is to avoid the inevitable eye contact with your genie. It may also be to hide the way you are biting down your battered bottom lip in nervousness, and the way little droplets of sweat have gathered around your hairline, the result of blood rushing to your face uncomfortably so.

There is dead silence in the room for a couple of seconds before you hear the sound of clothes rustling, drawing your gaze to the side to fix on him again.

It is with utter horror that you watch him bow before you, a little smirk on his awfully kissable mouth.

"Your every wish my command."

Your heart plummets in your chest, your legs flying to the ground as you stand up in the span of a millisecond, ready to smash him down to a bloody pulp.

“Wait what?! That wasn’t a wish, you ass!”

Jeongguk rises back tall before you, his eyes glinting with mischief and absolutely no sympathy over the fact that you may just have thrown to literal shit one of your three wishes.

"I’m sorry but you can’t take back your wishes.”

"What do you mean I can't take back my wishes?! I didn't even make a fucking wish!"

You are boiling with anger at the way he so clearly took advantage of your little slip of the tongue, completely disregarding the fact that you weren't actually expressing a wish for him to fulfill in the first place.

"I don't make the rules, _______. You made a wish and now I'm going to grant it to you."

He wouldn't be able to hide the amusement glinting in his eyes even if he tried to and a part of you really wants to punch that smirk away from his face, the evident taunt in his features driving you absolutely mad.

Your mind races with thoughts and plans to get you out of this but after a few minutes it is clear that there is no way out, no matter how hard you try to work around it.

"Well...” You say, your voice quivering a little as you weigh down your options in an attempt to get the best out of what you were given, “Can I make it more specific, then? Or does that require another wish to be expressed?”

Your voice is filled with all the insecurity lodged within you, your poor bottom lip getting trapped under the vise of your teeth anew as you stare up to him, butterflies dancing in your stomach and heart spiking up its rate in your chest.

"I will allow it," Jeongguk says, tilting his head a little to the side like puppies do when they don’t understand well what has been said to them. It would be adorable if it weren’t for his eyes shining with cunning curiosity.

“What about someone that resembles you?” Your voices comes out much smaller than you initially anticipated but there is no doubt he has heard you loud and clear.

His eyes are fixed on you, his lips tightly closed in thought as silence hangs between the two of you.

The more he stands perfectly still, without uttering a single word, the more your proximity seems to become uncomfortable, unbearable even.

With all the cards laid out so nicely before him, there is no doubt Jeongguk has picked up on the fact that you have obviously developed a crush on him.

But even if he did, he decides to not address this but, rather, scratching his head a little he utter his next words:

“I’m sorry, but I can’t create someone from thin air. Genies cannot create humans nor kill them or revive them after death.”

You inhale loudly, your eyes drifting to the wall behind him as holding his gaze seems to become an impossible task from here on forward.

It almost feels like the walls around you are crumbling down, allowing him to see the most private and not-so-pretty parts of your soul. Something you never wanted him to see.

“So... if you can’t create someone are you going to summon a real person?”

You are playing with your hands as you say so, trying to wrap up your mind around genie magic and its infinite set of rules that you can’t even begin to comprehend.

“Not exactly,” Jeongguk seems hesitant as he speaks those words, his feet fidgeting as he clicks his tongue, a habit you know means he’s in deep thought—in this case probably trying to figure out the best way to explain to you how his magic works.

“Well... there must be some human being somewhere in this vast world that even remotely resembles...” your words get caught in your throat as you dare to lift your eyes up to meet his. It feels so humiliating to be saying this, finally admitting out loud the grandness of your feelings for him but at the same time, it is not lack of fine male specimen that has stopped you from fucking around in the past few months. It’s the fact that your platonic crush for your genie has made it impossible for every single human to stand a chance against him.

“I am no human being so, no, there is nobody else like me.”

His voice is deep as he stares down at you, all hilarity gone from his gaze as he takes you down, evidently studying you to the point it makes you squirm on the spot. You have never desired to disappear inside the ground as much as you do now. Would that be an acceptable wish to express?

“I see,” your voice is small, your eyes unable to peel off of him now even though you desperately want to, his gaze locking you in place, entrancing with the stars shining like beacons behind them.

“But I guess there is a way for you to have sex with someone like me.” He says after a few seconds, wetting his lips quickly as he scratches his head in uncertainty.

“What do you mean?”

“Well... you could have sex with me.” He bites his bottom lip, his eyes shining with a hint of doubt you have never seen reflected inside of them and it makes your heart stutter in your chest and traps your voice inside your throat whilst you try to process what he has just said.

“Come again?” You whisper after a few seconds, the words rolling off of your tongue feeling like rocks in your mouth as you try to push them out, all heavy and rough around the edges.

Jeongguk gulps down heavily in front of you, his eyes glued on yours as he takes a step forward, forcing you to lift your head up a little to stare back at him.

“Tell me you have never thought about it.” He says, licking his lips as he steadies himself, boldness firing up his words as he slowly musters up the courage to freely speak his mind.

“Tell me you have never dreamed about me and all the things I would do to you.”

His voice seems to drop an entire octave as he presses onward, his words thick with lustiness as if he were trying to seduce you.

Your silence and the way your mouth parts to breathe in loudly seem only to fuel him forward, prompting him to take another step forward.

You can feel the heat radiating from his body, the sweet hint of cinnamon he’s embodied with engulfing you whole and your brain starting to get fuzzy with wanton desire.

“Tell me you have never touched yourself thinking about me, about my tongue teasing your sex, about my fingers moving in and out of you.” His voice is rough and husky and it makes your legs tremble with the tantalizing fantasies his words depict in your head.

When he takes the final step forward, all you can think about is his mouth on top of yours, his hands roaming all over you and as he takes your chin with one hand, caressing your skin as he tips your face forward, your heart drops in your chest.

“Tell me you haven’t imagined how my cock would feel like inside of you and I’ll take back my offer.”

Your mouth suddenly feels as dry as a desert, your mind reeling with the infinite possibilities nicely laid out before you—if nine months worth of wet dreams is anything to go by.

You should jump at the offer, don’t even stop for a whole second to consider it and just take it but there is that little drop of doubt squeezing your heart, making it impossible for you to blindly follow your desires.

“Do you really mean it?” You ask in a whisper, wetting your lips as you search his eyes for any hint of doubt hidden inside them, “I don’t want this unless you truly want it too.”

Jeongguk tips his head a little to the side, inhaling deeply before sighing out loud, his eyes closing for a brief second.

“I thought I had made it clear enough with my words,” he says after a moment, his hands traveling down your body to rest on your hips, slightly guiding them forward until they meet his.

You gasp out loud as you are met with his semi-erection, pressing slightly over your core so to not leave any doubts he desires you just as much as you want him.

“I don’t have to have sex with you,” he whispers, his face moving forward until your noses meet, your lips so close they almost brush against each other, “I want to.”

His warm breath caresses your face as he confesses his own desires out loud, leaving you completely speechless.

In the span of a few seconds, your whole world has been turned upside down by Jeongguk again but you do not stop wondering, you do not waste time asking yourself questions you can always get back to later on. No, as soon as the words are out, your lips are on top of his, claiming his mouth like you desperately desired to do so many times.

He gasps loudly as your hands fly to his hair to pull him down towards you, your fingers getting lost in his locks as you tug on them, forcing him to bend a little forward and welcome the intrusion of your tongue.

Jeongguk tastes like a summer drink: refreshing and sweet and so much more than you ever imagined or wished for.

His lips are as soft as cotton and they feel like heaven against your own, pressing and pulling on the supple flesh until you’re sighing for him, relishing in how amazing it feels to finally have him like this.

His hands slide down from your hips to reach behind your back and tightly clasp around the curve of your bottom cheeks.

“Jeongguk,” you whisper atop his mouth, opening your eyes to fix your gaze in his shining ones.

His lips are all red, slick with your saliva and so incredibly inviting you fear you may never want to stop kissing him for as long as you are breathing.

He touches your nose with the tip of his own, his hands engulfing your butt cheeks a little roughly, making you whimper in return.

His palms come to rest under your ass, pushing you upwards until your legs are encircling his waist and your arms are clasped behind his neck.

In this position he is the one that has to look up to you, his head bent a little to the side so he can still gaze inside your eyes.

If you thought the way Jeongguk looked at you before was heartwarming, now you are met with the raging fire summoned by his love-struck-like gaze.

He inches his chin forward, flicking your nose a little with his own, a shy smile on his lips as he silently asks the permission to claim your lips anew.

You nod your head yes, holding your breath as your eyes close for him, waiting for his mouth.

Jeongguk’s kiss is slow and delicate at first, it’s drawn out in a way that makes you want more, so much more, and at the same time, it’s precious and laced with not only the passion of the moment but also the tenderness of a first time together.

It makes your insides twitch and your heart hurt and it fogs up all of your thoughts to the point you feel yourself drowning in the sensation of his lips, pressed tightly on your own.

It’s maddening and exciting and a little bit scary because how will you go about your life now that you actually know what it feels like to be kissed by him, held by him so tight your bodies may even merge together.

Your heart is beating like a maniac in your chest and you pull him even closer, so tight your chests have no choice but heave against each other with every single breath you take. You don’t want to let him go, ever.

And these thoughts turn you desperate, they force you to make the kiss deeper, to lick his lips and bite them down, to gulp down every sigh and whimper that comes out of him and make them your own.

“I want you so much,” you whisper and in those words, there is much more than the initial layer. You want to feel him inside of you, on top of you, all around you but most importantly you want him for yourself and not just for one single night.

But you do not dare say it out loud, you do not dare taint this moment with the depth of your emotions in fear of ruining it, of shying him away. It may hurt in the long run but at least, you will have one memory you share together to go by.

Right now, he wants you just as much as you want him and maybe it’s not the same kind of desire but you’d still take everything he has to offer.

“Then take me,” he purrs out in your ear, kissing lightly the soft skin of your neck as he slowly puts you down on your own two feet again.

You wet your lips quickly, your breath coming out in hot puffs of air as your hands immediately fly to his vest, roughly pushing it past his shoulders and then down his arms. You are completely blinded by the passion burning inside of you, your hands eager to explore and touch every expanse of his golden skin. No, not just that. You want to taste him.

Your lips attack his neck, all rough and passionate on the tender skin, blooming purple roses against it until he’s softly moaning out your name, his hands pulling you closer so that you won’t stop torturing his flesh in the best ways possible.

Jeongguk emits the most beautiful sounds your ears have ever heard. He whines and sighs and grunts for you, he closes his eyes as he parts his lips to whimper out your name with every new thing you find that excites him and it drives you absolutely insane. You can’t stop wondering how he would sound like as you fuck him hard, rock on his cock to milk his orgasm, make him beg not to stop. God, you desperately want to break him and draw all these nice sounds out of him.

Your lips are scorching hot against his naked skin and he shivers as you start kissing him along the line of his clavicles, slowly moving south to his pecks and even further, to the object of your current desire: his muscular abs.

Your tongue darts out of your mouth to taste the tight and firm skin and he whimpers again at the sensation, throwing his head a little backward as his fingers grasp your hair.

It feels like breaking him little by little and you can only imagine how good he will sound once your undivided attention is finally on his cock.

A wicked smile spreads on your lips as you keep kissing and licking the expanse of his abs, particularly focusing on the supple flesh around his belly button.

Your once rough kisses turn gentler as you keep inching downwards, exploring the trail of hair that leads to the treasure still concealed by his white pants. Goosebumps gather on his skin as your lips turn even softer, barely pressing over the flesh whilst your nose nuzzles forward, teasing him a little with the briefest of contacts.

You lift your gaze upwards, smiling when you find his eyes trained on you, focused on your every movement. His pupils are blown out and his hair disheveled with your previous kissing session making him look already well-fucked while you haven’t even started yet.

Keeping your gaze locked on his, you move your hands behind his back, reaching for the firm curve of his ass only to grasp the golden waistband of his pants.

You slide them down slowly, your eyes taunting him as you keep studying his face, the way he bites his lips in anticipation or gulps down heavily at the prospect ahead of him.

As the soft fabric of his pants moves past the curve of his ass, consequently sliding down his legs, you watch him shudder and bite his bottom lip in foretaste and it is that sight that prompts you to look down again, seeking a glimpse at the treasure hidden between his legs.

Your breath trembles as you exhale loudly at the vision laid before your very eyes. Jeongguk's cock stands almost fully erected before you in all its glory—his underwear nowhere to be seen—ready to receive the attention it so desperately seeks.

As you stand up before him again, mouth watering with the prospect of finally having him all for your self, you offer a hand for him to grab. His fingers intertwine with your own effortlessly and it is a simple touch really, nothing to compare with the activities you have been sharing thus far but still, it makes your heart leap in your chest and a smile spread on your lips.

Without uttering a single word you slowly guide him to your bed to make him sit on the edge of your soft mattress.

His legs automatically spread nicely for you as he tilts his head upwards, looking up at you expectantly.

With a soft smile you inch forward, quickly capturing his lips with your own yet again while your left hand slides down from his neck to his pecks, your fingers slightly grazing his skin as you move southward, taunting him with your slow movements and relishing in the way his muscles start to tense more the closer you get to his sex.

He whimpers on your mouth as soon as your fingers graze the surface of his length with the softest of touches and you smirk atop his lips, rejoicing in the way he so easily reacts to your every movement.

“Someone’s a little eager,” you whisper, searching for his eyes with a little taunting smile on your lips.

“Don’t tease, please.” His voice is thick, his eyes big and staring at you in a puppy-like fashion that makes your heart hurt. How can someone be this hot and cute at the same damn time? In an instant, you want to devour him whole, make him beg you to let him cum inside of you and then let him ruin you completely in return.

You take a step forward to sit on top of his muscular right thigh, your lips so close to his mouth that your breaths start to mingle whilst you slowly rock your hips forward on top of him.

Your fingers wrap around the base of his cock, slowly gliding upwards in delicate and tentative strokes that will bring him a little pleasure without the risk of you chafing him in the process.

“I want to touch you,” he whimpers out, his eyes pleading as he looks up at you.

You watch him gulp down heavily as your hips roll a little faster over his thigh, you watch his pupils dilate as your mouth opens in a sigh of pleasure given by the nice friction his toned muscles provide on your fully clothed core.

You nod your head yes in response, your breath quickened by the excitement coiling nicely in your belly and he jumps at the chance of finally putting his hands all over you.

It is such a juxtaposition for him to act this way—all needy and submitted to your desires—when only a few instants ago he was being all confident and cocky but it is also utterly endearing and new for you, at the same time.

His fingers are timid as they approach your skin, slowly infiltrating under your shirt to finally caress your flesh and burn it with his digits, imprint his passage on every inch of your body.

His touch is soft at first as he scans your entire upper body with his hands but as soon as he finds the supple curve of your uncovered tits, he turns rougher, needier.

Your hand is still taunting his cock, your thumb teasing his head ever so slightly to draw out unsteady breaths and little whimpers out of him.

You catch up the glint in his eyes as he keeps tugging on your shirt, hoping to make it ride a little higher and expose your entire chest to him, and with a silent grin, you help him get the garment off of you and give him the treat he so desperately desired to receive.

His mouth is on your chest in the span of a few seconds, his tongue playing with your nipples with the same rhythm of your hand around is now fully erected cock.

Your back arches a little for him, your mouth opening in a silent moan as the wetness of your underwear begins to uncomfortably stick to your slick sex.

You gulp down heavily as you still your hips on top of him, your tongue daring out of your mouth to lick your dry lips and slow down the rampant beating of your heart.

He looks up at you ardently as you rise on your feet again, releasing your hold on his cock just long enough for you to get rid of your sweat pants and stand before him in nothing but your very flimsy pair of white panties.

He bites down his bottom lip as he stares up at you, his arms inching forward to grasp your hips and guide you back to him so he can keep studying and mapping every crevice of your body.

He kisses your stomach, nuzzles his nose between your tits to inhale loudly the sweet scent of your skin and you shiver under him, sighing in pleasure at the simplest of touches.

“Can I ride your dick?” You ask in a breath, your eyes searching for his to gauge his response to your lewd question.

“Fuck,” he whimpers out, his eyes almost rolling back inside his head just at the thought of having you above him, fucking him to completion, “Please do.”

You push him down the mattress with your hands to quickly climb on top of him, your legs straddling his hips as you inch a little forward to capture his lips.

His hands are firm around the curve of your ass, guiding your hips up and down to create a little friction between his hard cock and your clothed sex.

The sensation of his girth between your slick lips is already enough to make you sigh for him and as you do he takes the chance to slip his tongue past your teeth and inside your mouth. The kiss is scorching hot, it leaves you breathless and desperate to finally feel him inside of you and as soon as one of his hands is between your legs, you turn a whimpering mess for him.

He pushes your panties to the side and if the lewd sound your underwear emits as he pushes it away from your sex is anything to go by, you must be soaking wet at this point.

He inhales sharply atop your lips, cutting the kiss short so that he can focus on the little bundle of nerves between your legs.

You have been dreaming about his hands for literal months and yet they feel like nothing you have experienced before.

His little circular motions are slow and deep and they make your stomach contract in waves of pleasure.

“Oh, Jeongguk,” you moan his name and he attaches his mouth to the base of your neck to suck on the tender flesh and tint it a dark shade of purple.

A sob escapes your mouth as he pushes a finger inside of you, stretching your walls with its dragged out circular motions in and out of your core.

Jeongguk may have looked like a needy sub up to this point but there is no doubt he really knows what he is doing.

He finds your pleasure spots with utter ease and he is not afraid to hit on them with sheer precision to draw all the beautiful sounds out of your mouth.

“I want to fuck you,” you whimper out after a while and he chuckles a little, quickly retrieving his exploring fingers from inside of you.

As he pushes his back on the mattress again his expectant eyes focus on you anew, a little smirk on his mouth.

You visibly shiver as he brings his coated finger to his lips and sucks on the slick digit.

You lick your lips a few times as you watch his tongue dart out of his mouth to keep licking his finger in a lewd depiction of what he would do if that were to be your sex instead of his own digit.

Fire seems to be burning inside of you as you hastily remove your underwear and align your core to his turgid cock, eager to finally feel him inside of you.

Your hand grips his shaft by the balls, keeping it perfectly still as you gradually sink onto him, welcoming him past your slick walls.

He inhales loudly, closing his eyes as you slowly keep pushing yourself down, meeting his cock to its fullest potential until he is completely lodged inside of you, stretching your walls in a blissful way that makes you sigh in pleasure.

You stay perfectly still for a few second, willing your core to relax and adjust to the intrusion of his girth while your left hand reaches behind your back to squeeze his balls and add pleasure to the feeling of your walls slightly contracting all around him.

He hisses at the new sensation, biting his bottom lip to gulp down the heavenly sounds you love to hear from him and you retaliate by squeezing him harder, almost painfully so, until he is forced to cry out loud.

“Don’t hold back,” you whisper into his ear as you lean forward to steal another kiss from him, “I want to hear you scream.”

Jeongguk whines at your words, his bottom lip protruding forward into a little pout as he stares right inside your eyes.

“Fuck me,” he whimpers out, his hips slightly rotating against your own in his desperate search for some friction, “Please.”

Your eyes almost roll back inside your head at the needy tone his words are laced with. All the power he has bestowed upon you is making you dizzy, mad with the desire of taunting him until he breaks and begs for more.

You lift your hips a little and then roughly sink onto him again, relishing in the sound of your ass cheeks smacking his thighs and balls in the process.

Tilting your head a little backward you start rolling your hips forward for him, your bottom lip trapped under your teeth and your hands roughly grasping the soft skin of your breasts.

“Fuck you’re so hot,” he whispers as he looks up at you and the way you keep taunting him with your hands roaming all over your own body, with the little sighs of ecstasy you emit every time he exhales loudly in pleasure.

Resting your palms onto his pecs to keep yourself balanced, you readjust your pace to a rather rough and bruising one that has you whimpering and sighing for his heavenly cock, for the way it seems to be getting even bigger as time progresses and pleasure arises inside both of you.

Soon enough your room is filled with the lewd sounds of skin smacking on skin, of deep moans and low grunts, of lips desperately searching and finding each other in the blindness of desire.

“Ugh, you take my cock so well.”

Jeongguk is breathing fast beneath you, his sighs turning into full out high-pitched moans that make your insides clench with arousal. Every single one of his words or needy sounds works as fuel for the fire burning between your legs and it makes you even more eager to make him burst inside of you and come all over him in return.

“Am I living up to your dreams?” He asks after a few seconds, his eyebrows furrowed as he searches the answer inside your eyes.

“Yes, you are, ugh, you feel so good Gukie.”

The little nickname seems to work wonders on him as he grunts in response, his hands almost turning bruising around your hips as he starts guiding them down, forcing you to pick up your pace a little more.

“Harder, fuck me harder.” He pleads, closing his eyes while his mouth opens to form a silent ‘O’, the only inkling of the deep pleasure you are giving him he seems capable of showing right now.

You lift yourself up a little higher to plant your feet on the mattress and sink into him harder just like he asked for, desperate to please him and be pleased at the same time.

Jeongguk’s breaths turn even louder—his diaphragm contracting madly beneath you— his sobs a little bit more desperate as his orgasm draws nearer and nearer by the second.

“Aww, faster baby, please.”

His nails start digging the soft flesh of your ass and you whimper at both the pain and the pleasure the roughness provides, his hips start rocking upwards to try and fasten up your pace by meeting you halfway and bring himself over the edge.

The battering speed inside your pussy is heart-stopping, the head of his cock reaching your G spot with utter precision is absolutely devastating and it has you whimpering for him in a matter of seconds.

Your walls madly contract around him, squeezing him even tighter and making it almost impossible for him to resist any longer.

“Are you going to soil my pretty cock, uh?” He asks in a whine, his eyes searching for yours as he realizes your orgasm is as close as his very own.

“Yeah, oh-shit, I’m-I’m gonna cum all over you, Gukie.”

He growls at your words and you roll your hips even faster in response, chasing your release so desperately it almost hurts.

“Are you going to fill my pussy up?” You ask in a breath, mirroring his own question as you feel the wave of pleasure rushing from your head down to your core.

As your walls start to spasmodically contract all around him you feel him getting stiff beneath you, his breath getting caught in his lungs with the depth of his pleasure finally exploding in and out of him.

“Aww, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck.” His deep moan is followed by the sensation of his cock pulsing inside of you in unison to the spasms of your core and the one of his release milking your insides with generous spurts of white nectar.

By the time you both come down from your highs you are sprawled all over his body, his soft cock lying between your stomachs as you rest your head above his heaving chest, your legs nicely mingled together.

“That was mind-blowing,” you whisper making him chuckle as he encircles your frame with his strong arms.

His gaze is warm now, softer, and it makes you wish to stay like this for the rest of your lifetimes.

“Jeonggukie?” You ask in a whisper, making him tilt his head to the side with a questioning look on his face.

“I want to make another wish,” you confess, blood rushing all to your head as you tilt it upwards to stare back at him.

“Tell me,” his right hand comes to rest on your cheek, slightly guiding your face forward to place a tender kiss atop your lips.

“I want to have sex with you again.”

“When?” He breaths out, not a single hint of hesitation in his voice, signaling you he wants it just as much as you do.

“Now.”

“Your every wish is my command,” he replies, a playful smirk tugging on his lips as you lift yourself up and slowly make your descent towards his soft cock.

There has been this desire stuck in your mind ever since you undressed him and as you come to a halt between his legs, Jeongguk is made aware of your lewd intentions rather quickly.

His sex is covered in both your juices and a few drops of his own cum. To you, it looks like an absolute feast.

You lick your lips expectantly, pointing your eyes on his face as you open up your mouth to let your tongue do the trick.

You lap at his warm skin to gather up all the spilled remnants of your orgasms and he visibly shudders at the sensation of your scratchy muscle working on his flesh.

Jeongguk closes his eyes as you come closer and closer to his cock, already foretasting the moment your lips will close around it and work it to hardness anew.

You take your long-ass-time though, opting for a rather teasing pace and kitten licks that make him tremble and whine in annoyance when you keep getting so close to his sex while remaining so impossibly away from it.

“You really are a tease,” he mumbles under his breath, his head tilted forward so he can stare at you as you giggle in response.

“And you really are impatient, Gukie.” He shivers at your words and you tilt your head to the side, a playful smile tugging on your lips as you study his features.

“Do you like that? Me calling you Gukie?”

He hums in response, biting his bottom lip as if in deep thought and maybe he is, trying to decide whether he should elaborate on the reason why or not.

Either way, he doesn’t really get a chance to add on it because your mouth is all around him in an instant and he has a hard time breathing all of a sudden.

He whimpers a little as you suck on his soft flesh, your mouth slurping him loudly as if you were sucking on a candy.

“Ah! Damn.”

His abs contract as you suck on him a little bit harder, coaxing his dick to a new erection.

Your tongue darts out of your mouth to swiftly lick his head as you pointedly look up at him to study all the little twists on his features, learning what he likes and what he doesn’t.

Your left hand reaches between his legs to squeeze his balls and he whines as you do so, his eyes rolling back inside his head.

You can feel his cock hardening as you lick a long stripe from the base of his length up to his head again.

“You taste so good, Gukie.”

You mumble on top of his reddened flesh before engulfing him completely in your mouth again. Your jaw is slack and your cheeks are hollowed as you suck on him as hard as you can, closing your eyes to hum as his flavor invades your taste buds.

His hands come to grasp your hair, locking you in place above his cock, begging you to not stop anytime soon.

You let him guide your head, adjust your bobbing to his preferred pace and bask in the sighs of ecstasy that come out from his mouth, especially the ones that sound a lot like your name.

“Wait-” he whines after a while, his hands leaving your head to grasp the bed sheets, his chest heaving with the effort of keeping his orgasm at bay, “Wait or I’ll come in your mouth.”

You consider pushing forward, bring him to his knees and let him fill up your mouth, feeling his essence coil down your throat and invade your belly but, in the end, you lift your head up and with a lewd pop, you leave his cock alone to stand perfectly tall before you, glistening with your saliva.

“How are you so good at sucking cocks?” He mumbles, more to himself than to you but you still giggle in response, quirking your eyebrows at him.

“I’m a natural talent,” you reply before tauntingly licking your lips. ‘Talent and lots of experience here at college, actually,’ but he doesn’t really need to know that, does he?

“Can I try something, though?” You ask biting your bottom lip in uncertainty. There are plenty of things you have never tried before but have been dying to for a while now and Jeongguk makes you want to explore all of them, all at the same time.

“Anything,” he promptly replies, his eagerness so endearing you can’t help but giggle again. Who knew Jeongguk had this much cuteness in him? Surely you had no idea prior to this very night.

You slowly roll off the bed, your knees hitting the ground as you drag him with you to the edge of the mattress again.

Jeongguk’s gaze is fixed on you, curiosity shining in his pupils as he studies your every movement, eager to discover what exactly you have in store for him.

You arch your back a little to align your chest to his erected cock standing tall in front of you, ready to be the center of your undivided attention again.

Your hands start caressing your breasts, bringing them together to squeeze his sex between them and give it a nice deep stroke.

Jeongguk’s breath trembles, his body shuddering at the new sensation and you look up at him earnestly, trying to adjust your pace to something that will bring him real pleasure.

You tilt your head a little forward as you gather some saliva in your mouth to coat his cock with in the absence of lube.

Jeongguk seems to find the visual particularly exciting as he grunts at the image depicted before him.

A smile spreads on your lips as a new idea surfaces in your mind, then.

You spread your legs a little further to stabilize yourself on the ground while bending your neck all the way forward, ready to welcome the head of his cock inside your mouth with each passing stroke of your tits.

"Oh, fuck." Jeongguk's high-pitched whine encourages you further, prompting you to set on a pace that is bound to make him crumble in the span of a few minutes.

Maybe it's because you told him not to hold back earlier or maybe he is just incapable of gulping down all of his lovely sounds but, yet again, Jeongguk is turned into a whimpering and moaning mess and each one of his little mewls makes your walls contract on thin air.

You unconsciously start bringing your legs closer to rub your thighs against each other, hopelessly seeking for a little friction on your neglected core.

Your arousal is dripping down your sex, coiling in big rivulets on your inner thighs, making them slick and slippery.

"I'm-" Jeongguk wets his dry lips, his pants already giving away what he is trying to say but you do play innocent, pretending not to know what exactly you are doing to him.

"Do you want me to come like this?" He asks in a breath, his hands fisting the covers while the muscles of his thighs contract in the effort of keeping himself steady.

Your mouth turns a little rougher on the head of his cock, your silence perfectly proving your point.

"I-ah! I want to make one of your wet dreams r-real" He confesses in a whine, his eyes closing and eyebrows furrowing with the incessant waves of pleasure that keep rushing over his body, menacing to bring him down.

"Is this what you dreamt of? Me coming in your mouth like this?"

You slow down your movements, your mouth leaving his cock again as you ponder his words. The answer would be no, actually. You had never dreamed about doing this with him and despite the excitement of the act, you do have to admit that what he is offering right now sounds far more tempting.

"Not exactly," you confess, your voice a little hoarse.

"Tell me," his voice suddenly turns sharp, losing all the needy and sweet tone he stuck with for the rest of the night and transforming into something more demanding.

You can't help but shiver at his sudden character switch and he is quick to catch up on it, to the way you instantly start biting down your bottom lip at his words.

His once gentle hands turn hard on your body as he lifts you up only to roughly throw you on the bed.

He climbs on top of you with no hesitation, fire burning in his eyes as he kisses your lips with a new-found fervor.

You whimper in the kiss, your fingers grasping his sweaty locks of hair to pull him even closer and feel his erection pressed atop your core.

"You like it a little rough, don't you?" He asks, his voice husky as he puts a hand around your neck, slightly pressing over your carotid to cut down the oxygen income.

"I-I do," you reply, your bottom lip trembling with excitement as he rolls his hips on top of yours.

This Jeongguk is the one that has been haunting your dreams ever since you met him but, after discovering his other side too you find yourself unable to decide which side you actually prefer: the one that likes to be teased, tortured and submitted or the one that loves to be rough, dominate and break his partner.

He pries your legs open with his hands, his mouth sliding down your neck so he can bite the tender flesh and leave his mark there, in plain sight.

The pain is sharp for a second, making you yelp, but as warmth spreads over your skin it is quickly subdued by pleasure and the feeling of his tongue lapping the battered skin.

Jeongguk slides his cock inside of you with one swift movement right in that moment and you whimper at the sudden feeling of being filled again by his rock-hard length.

Your eyes close as he keeps pushing deeper inside of you, seemingly only satisfied when he is completely lodged inside of you and ready to fuck your brains out.

Jeongguk's strokes are slow, dragged out to the point it makes you want to scream in frustration. He almost slides his cock completely out of you and then slams it right back in with one single stroke, making you jump as he hits the perfect spot with maddening precision.

You know he is doing this on purpose to get back to you and make you beg for it just like you did with him. Still, you don't give him the satisfaction of bringing you over the edge this easily, this quickly.

You endure it, closing your eyes and grasping the crumpled bed covers, biting your bottom lip to hide any sign of both pleasure and frustration.

"You want to play though, uh?" He asks as he fists your hair, forcing your head to lift off the bed and directly face him, "Two can play this game, baby."

A wicked smirk appears on his features making you shiver in anticipation, his eyes glinting with mischief as he lets go of your head only to focus on his cock, slowly moving in and out of your slick core.

His hands find purchase under your ribs, guiding you forward until your legs are resting on his shoulders and he has complete access to your sex.

With the new position, he wastes absolutely no time to slam inside of you with all the strength he is capable of, instantly making you mewl in pleasure.

You try to bite your bottom lip again, you try to gulp down all the sounds you want to emit out loud but as he starts pounding inside of you, it proves to be an impossible task.

The taste of blood fills your mouth as the tender flesh breaks under the vise of your own teeth and you are forced to let go of the poor battered flesh, consequently giving up your resolve of not showing him how much you are enjoying this change of scenario.

Without a force helping you contain your moans, they flood out of you like water from a broken dike and they quickly fill the room alongside his grunts and the heavy sounds of skin slapping on skin.

He pushes himself forward, bringing your legs with him so that you are almost folded in half, unable to escape his bruising pace inside of you.

"Jeongguk," you whimper out for him, your eyes searching his dark pools as your chest starts to heave with your panting breaths.

He rolls his hips harder into you in response, making your eyes roll back inside your head, your jaw turning slack as your mouth opens in a silent moan of pleasure.

You feel your walls starting to spasm, your legs quivering a little with your incumbent release and you start to fear he might retreat, edge you and denial your orgasm in order to make you cry out loud and beg him to let you come but what he does, instead, is roll his hips faster and throw you over that edge completely.

Your ears start ringing as the orgasm fully takes over your thoughts, blanketing them with white cotton.

His cock still hammers inside of you, milking your orgasm incessantly, ready to throw you back into it as soon as it seems like it has washed out of you.

It almost feels like too much having him still inside you like this, battering your pleasure spot so tirelessly but the slight discomfort gets washed away by bliss again in the span of a few seconds.

"Fuuuck," you whimper out, the word dragged out by your ragged breath.

His mouth finds yours again at this moment, ready to completely steal your breath away and leave you absolutely breathless.

Slowly, he draws a little backward, allowing your legs to fall on top of his as he repositions himself, turning you a little to the side so that he can rest right behind you.

You immediately turn your head behind your back, eager to keep your eyes on him and watch him come inside of you for the second time tonight. You do not want to miss a single twist in his features as he keeps fucking you like this.

His hands keep you firmly in place as he resumes his pace inside of you, effort and arousal painted all over his features as he chases his own release.

Even when he is being rough like this, bent on breaking you into pieces, he is letting out those heavenly sounds that captivated you in the first place tonight.

They are absolutely intoxicating, they ring like music to your ears and if you could hear a single sound for the rest of your life it would be exactly this: his moans and the sound of your name on his lips.

You can sense his orgasm nearing by the way his hips start losing their perfect pattern, by the way his breath is hitting your ear more rapidly and by how more high-pitched his moans are turning as time progress.

You purposefully contract your walls around him, making him grunt at the sensation, giving him that slight more push towards the verge of his release.

One of his hands lets go of your hip to travel forward, his fingers quickly finding your clit to draw large and deep circles over the bundle of nerves to bring you over the finish line in unison with him again.

The arousing sensation makes it hard for you to stop your hips from eagerly rolling onto his, following the movement of both his hand on your sex and his cock inside of you.

He comes inside of you with a low and deep moan that makes your walls contract and your mouth moan loudly for him in return.

Your body quivers for the third time tonight before turning into absolute jelly, shutting down in defeat.

Silence engulfs you whole and for a moment you think you may actually drift off to sleep like this, with the warmth of Jeongguk's body behind you and the reassurance of his presence by your side.

It is actually him that stirs you back into consciousness, bringing you closer to his chest so that his lips can brush against your ear.

"Was that how dream-Jeongguk did it?" He asks, chuckling a little over his own question.

You turn inside his embrace so that you can face him and shake your head no with a little smile on your lips.

"No, this Jeongguk is actually better."

His smile is full of pride as he steals a quick kiss from your mouth.

It is so endearing to watch him get back to his more cute side but again, it makes your heart hurt. As you rest like this, looking up at him, the misery of your situation awakens back inside of you.

There is no doubt by now that you have feelings for this boy right here, very big ones at that, and it is something clearly impossible, something you have to forget and pretend like it never existed.

It is with that fear of tomorrow in mind that you open up your mouth again, your eyes shining with the menace of tears.

Jeongguk seems to read your mind again tonight as he quickly presses his finger on top of your mouth.

"Don't. Don't say it."

His eyes turn serious as he stares down at you, all warmth and banter quickly disappearing from his features.

"Don't waste your last wish on me." He adds, his voice thick with emotion as he gulps down heavily, almost as if he were fighting against tears himself.

"Once your last wish is fulfilled I'll have to go back inside the lamp and we will never get to see each other again."

You nod your head a little because he has already explained this to you, yet, you still want to make another wish, extend this moment for as long as possible, rejoice in it while it lasts.

Jeongguk shakes his head no a few times, hugging you closer as if afraid you'd disappear in front of him when, actually, it would be him turning into a teal fog before your very eyes, leaving you alone to deal with a broken heart.

"There is no need to make a wish when I'd gladly stay here with you for as long as you'll want me to."

His left hand caresses your head lovingly, his eyes pleading you to let him finish, to not shatter this moment and turn it into your last one together.

"And I'll gladly make love to you whenever you want to and not because a wish binds us together, but because I want it too."

Before you know it, there are tears falling on your cheeks, turning your vision hazy as the real meaning behind his words finally hits you.

All this time, you had no idea. You didn't know that his eyes were always on you because he couldn't look away; you didn't know that he kept asking about your wishes not because he wanted to move on but because he was afraid of doing so; you didn't know that when he was granting you that first wish he was actually granting himself his own.

"Don't cry," he whispers on your lips, his thumbs drying your hot skin as a smile finally spreads on your lips.

It is happy tears that keep flooding from your eyes because it feels like a dream, a fantasy you'll have to wake up from eventually but it is not. Not this time.

And tonight, Jeongguk makes you his again but this time it is slow, gentle and sweet; this time he keeps whispering loving words inside your ears and kissing your lips to steal away all your beautiful whimpers and make them his own. This time, as you come together in each other's embrace, there is more than passion shining in your eyes. There is love.

Copyright © 2019 by jeonggukingdom. All rights reserved.

[shadowfae]

I have like these bursts of memories that flow on me sometimes that are labeled hallucinations but idk. I have memories in my dreams and in my wake of me being an Aztec god. I remember my periodical tatoos and being tortured In a Hut in the desert then all flames. But im worried these are just hallucinations and not actually an kintype. But I feel like this aztec god is connected to me/is me. But my mom always puts me down saying it's not real and that I'm just a phsyco with a god complex

Okay, let’s tackle this point by point. I did reference the DSM-V, but that fucker’s hard to navigate so I also just googled shit. Praise wikipedia.

Also, disclaimer, I don’t hallucinate and as far as I know, never have. Forgive me if I get some info wrong on those experiences, I don’t hang out in the social circles that would allow me to know more about that. (I should. I still don’t know what to do about it when one of my friends is decidedly having delusions and if I’m supposed to gently argue them down or just go “Yup. That is a Thing.”)

But anyway.

1) A god complex, by Wikipedia, is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks. The person is also highly dogmatic in their views, meaning the person speaks of their personal opinions as though they were unquestionably correct. Someone with a god complex may exhibit no regard for the conventions and demands of society, and may request special consideration or privileges.”

So basically, if you’re not acting like a Royal Dick and refuse to admit you’re wrong ever and are the most arrogant asshole on the planet, you don’t have a god complex. And from your ask, you’re worried that you’re crazy and you’re unsure what’s going on. And that’s a pretty good sign of not having a god complex. 

Also, a psycho is just a derisive term for someone who isn’t neurotypical. It implies someone who experiences psychosis but in the stereotypical violent-and-neurotic way. It can also be short for psychopath, which is more along those lines, but why use a better term when we can put down those of us with psychosis for being Weird And Wrong, right? /sarcasm.

Your mother is just being rude, so disregard what she’s saying. She doesn’t get it, she doesn’t want to learn, it’s not worth your time, pretty much end of story.

2) Usually when people make these questions, they ask if they’re delusional, not hallucinating. To cover that base, here’s what I found on a decently accessible medical journal about the two. “A hallucination involves the senses and feels real but is not. A delusion is a false belief that persists in spite of evidence.” Hallucination is a unintentionally falsified experience, delusion’s a unintentionally falsified belief.

So the first thing we need to tackle is: can we prove or disprove this? Can you concrete say that it Did or Did Not happen? Probably not. Thus, it’s not a delusion. By extension, it isn’t a hallucination either. You can’t quite hallucinate memories. Now if you’re hallucinating doing the things in these memories but in real time right now, okay, that’s a hallucination. But memories of the past? Not really.

Memories of past lives are gonna be the same kind of thing as memories from this life. A kintype can feel a whole lot like having been five, as someone else ages ago put it. You’re gonna look at something and remember it by association to a memory of being five, you’re gonna miss being five, maybe you want to go back and just be five forever. If your memories of being this Aztec god is like that, then yup, that’s a Thing all right.

3) Whether this is a hallucination or a Kin Thing can be put to a really easy test. Does it stay, even when it’s not at the forefront? Hallucinations come and go, and as far as I know, they don’t stick around 24/7. A Kin Thing would stick around 24/7 - even if it’s not as strong right now, it’s still there. Even if you’re not shoveling garlic bread into your mouth right now, you still like it if it’s one of your favourite foods. Kin things can flux in intensity, but they’re always there. They don’t just Up and Leave.

4) Dreams, as fun as they are, really don’t mean all that much. Dreams are, as far as human knowledge goes, brains processing experiences and churning out garbage while they’re at it. Sure, the type of garbage in there can get you some insight on things, but whether it’s a chip bag or a water bottle won’t really help you. It’s still plastic, and dreams are still weird brain garbage.

If you’re constantly getting chased by something in your dreams, sure, that might be worth noting. But small details will mean very little. Dreams can help you in a direction, but like a pendulum, do not base your questioning on them. They’re little signs, not big ones, and a pile of little signs gets you nowhere. 

5) You don’t sound sure if this god is you or is just connected to you. Go take a look at that. Go study the pagan worshippers and how that god talks to them, if they have active worship. They may be talking to you, go see if it’s that. If the signs the pagan worshippers of that god get are the same as yours, then there’s your answer. If your experience is wildly different, then chances are that god isn’t talking to you, and this might not be spirit work, which means it’s a lot more probable to be a Kin Thing. Check that out, see if it’s a connected to you thing or a kin thing.

6) Yeah, that torture memory thingy? We call that exotrauma. Exo-, a prefix that means ‘from outside’; and trauma, well, you know what that is. It’s trauma that didn’t happen in the body you have, but is still fucking there. 

Don’t start poking those memories with a stick. It is a bad idea and it will suck. Those are things you want to handle when you’re in a good spot. You don’t unpack the trauma while you’re still processing everything else. You wait until you’re done questioning, when you have all the context you need, and you’re willing to take at least a week to do not much but cry and eat Depression Meals. 

Be patient with yourself, when you’re ready to deal with them. (You are never going to be properly ready. Trauma sucks. It’s okay that you’re not.) Be patient, get the resources you need, fuckin’ talk to someone who is willing to help oh my gods do not forget that step, and go through it slowly. You don’t rush working through trauma, and exotrauma is no different. As as someone who also has exotrauma of being tortured, trust me, deal with this last and with the most security and foundation possible.

I’m not kidding. This part will suck, deal with it last.

7) I posted a questioning guide. Probs how you got here. Go through, do the introspection, figure out what this is. Get a second opinion if you trust the person - for the record I can be that person if you want me to idk. You got this, aight? Don’t worry about being called weird names. 

8) Watch Betsy Lee’s No Evil series on Youtube. It takes a lot of Aztec, Native, and Inca (I think?) inspiration and involves furries. Good comfort series, you’ll probably like it.

Good luck, kid. Hope you find what you’re looking for here. 

Luteia 💚

[scrawnydutchman]

‘Inside Out’ Movie Review

*NOTE: The following review contains major spoilers, highlighted in bold letters for readers convenience. If you haven’t seen the film yet, skip past the bold letter segments and come back to read them once you HAVE seen the film for my full thoughts.*

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why in the hell am I putting up a review for a film that’s close to three years old now? Well, here’s a little context. Those of you internet surfers may have seen this little meme float around the web recently:

Everybody has their own opinions on this and there’s good reason why it’s trending. It’s a legitimately fun discussion to hear about everyone’s favorite movies from the “happiest” company on earth. For anybody curious on what I think, HERE’S the version of the meme I created:

*the distinct lack of any and all Emperor’s New Groove and/or Hunchback of Notre Dame is a crime against cinema*

You’ll notice how Finding Nemo beat Inside Out in the first round, and next to the bracket for Inside Out  I wrote “never saw it: may change later”. Well, after family and friends highly recommended I sit down and see it, I’m here to tell you that now that I’ve seen Inside Out . My opinion . . . has not changed. Finding Nemo beats it. Easily in fact. Let me explain why, starting with Story.

Story:

Synopsis: Inside the minds of every human being resides five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. These emotions have a duty to protect their human from danger and guide them through life. We follow the inner workings of a little girl named Riley’s psyche in which Joy has taken the leadership role to make sure every day of Riley’s life is a good one. She maintains Riley’s optimism and makes sure nothing gets in the way of her happy life by keeping Sadness on a leash. Things change though when a challenging time in Riley’s life occurs; she and her family move to San Francisco. Joy struggles to keep Riley’s optimism up and inevitably she and sadness get removed from headquarters, leaving the rest of the gang to try and do Joy’s job while she’s away (and failing at it). Can Joy and Sadness get back to headquarters in time to save Riley and make sure she can be happy again?

This movie is infinitely praised for being one of Pixar’s most creative and original films,and to be fair it’s not hard to see why. It’s a very outside the box idea that’s rarely been explored before and this movie explores it in a way only Pixar can come up with. It also has a lot of fun with demonstrating real life psychological concepts in a way that feels very fresh. 

It also has a moral lesson that’s both original for a kids film and absolutely necessary for children to learn. Accepting that sadness and other negative emotions are not only a part of life but an ESSENTIAL part of life is a pill most people, even adults, have trouble swallowing. Of COURSE everyone wants to feel happy all the time, but it’s unhealthy to bottle up feelings that are a necessity to dealing with life’s special challenges.

Also . . . the climax of this film IS very emotional. Not Coco levels of emotional, but still sad in a way that got me to tear up a bit.

That said, it isn’t ALWAYS effective in how it expresses it’s ideas. While the visuals of this film are excellent (which we’ll get into in a bit) this film often runs into a bit too much of a ‘tell, don’t show’ attitude. A lot of concepts introduced in this film are verbally explained by one of the characters when they could have just as easily been presented clearly enough with visual context clues. I get that it’s a kids movie and kids may not be as skilled in picking up nuances, and to be fair this movie DOES explore a lot of concepts a child may not be immediately keen on, but film is meant to be a visual medium in which ideas and concepts are made understandable by what the audience sees rather than what they’re being told verbally. It especially makes it a problem for how characters are portrayed because one in particular feels like she exists solely as an exposition dump for three quarters of the run time. We should probably talk about characters for a second.

Characters:

So not gonna lie, this is by far the weakest area of the movie. How can I be such a heartless monster to say such a thing? Well, the best way to explain it is to compare it to Finding Nemo, the whole reason I even saw the movie to begin with. Coincidentally enough, these two movies actually have a lot in common. They’re both “buddy road trip” movies where two characters go on a big scope adventure, come across wacky colourful characters on their path and ultimately learn a lesson not often addressed in kids films. The difference is, Finding Nemo does more to establish character motivation AND it takes more time to establish multiple character arcs, ironically within the same runtime as Inside Out more or less. Marlin’s motivation for being a strict and neurotic parent is immediately shown, NOT told, in the opening. Same thing with Nemo’s tendency to rebel. Both characters are given arcs in which they each learn a unique lesson. Marlin learns to take more risks to accomplish goals and Nemo learns to be self reliant when separated from his dad. Plus along the way they come across TONS of memorable side characters. Dory, The Sharks, the school of fish, the seagulls, the pet fish in the fish tank. It does more to establish an infinitely more appealing cast of characters.

Inside Out is focused on Joy . .  .TOO focused on Joy. She’s the only character with a truly fleshed out story arc. She’s the first character we see in the film and we’re verbally told through her perspective on why things are the way they are. She’s the only one of the five emotions who really learns anything and really changes. 

The only other character in the story with an arc is Bing Bong the imaginary friend, who appears pretty late in the film and effectively dies soon too. His arc is wrapped up pretty hastily.

Every other character in this film is a means to an end. Fear, Disgust and Anger all exist to get a major story beat going. That’s it. Their banter between each other is likable at first but is pretty wash rinse repeat. Her parents only get one entertaining scene in the film that express any kind of personality and then the rest of the time they serve the same functions as each other (seeing if Riley is okay but ultimately not doing anything about it). Sadness is the biggest offender of not serving much beyond being a means to an end because despite having the most screentime after Joy she mainly serves as exposition dumping. Every time Joy isn’t sure about how the brain works (if she doesn’t know where things are or what they are why is she in charge?) Sadness just verbally explains it to the audience. “Oh, that’s long term memory. Oh, that’s abstract thought. Here’s what we should do about it.” She also propels the plot forward in a pretty lackluster way. The reason conflict even happens is because Sadness is compelled to taint memories (for reasons they never really explain). Riley isn’t even a character, really. She’s just an outward demonstration of the ramifications of the real conflict.

And I’m just gonna come out and say it . . . .Joy is too difficult to like for a good chunk of this movie. The movie shows her as very controlling and bossy and selfish. It immediately made me sour towards her. I know, I know, the idea is that everyone wants to feel Happy more than anything else and she DOES learn the error of her ways in the end, but they could have done a little more to make her actions sympathetic than just immediately show her hog the controls once Sadness shows up. It’s weird that Joy rubs me the wrong way more than Disgust does, a character specifically designed to be bitchy. To compare to Finding Nemo again, we understand that Marlin’s actions aren’t right in the beginning, but we know WHY he does it. It’s not for any malicious intent either. He only wants to protect his son because he learned the hard way how fragile life is and he feels like he failed to protect his family before. Joy just gets needy as soon as another character shows up and seemingly for no other reason than she just wants to have the final word in what happens. Maybe they could have made her more sympathetic by showing Riley get into a hard to cope with situation like her dad being really mad and yelling at her for something she did and Joy feeling like she owes it to Riley to make sure she never feels that bad again. That way it’s at least for somebody else’s sake besides her own. This is admittedly a hard problem to articulate because you could argue everything the emotions do, they do for Riley’s sake, but while all the other emotions clearly act with Riley’s best interests in mind Joy is shown to do what she does more out of competitiveness than duty.

Acting:

Every cast member of this flick does a great job. Amy Poehler makes a strong performance as Joy, really communicating the oozing enthusiasm and the struggle to maintain a positive attitude. Bill Hader does a great job as Fear and has some of the more effective deadpan line delivery in the film. Lewis Black makes an effectively funny Anger who makes great comedic foil for pretty well every other character he interacts with. Mindy Kaling arguably does the best job as Disgust. I say that because making a character designed to be unlikable like this (the typical girl bully “shallow bitch” archetype) endearing and not annoying has to be no easy task. Phyllis Smith does an okay job as Sadness. She’s especially funny when she has to say something sarcastic. Richard Kind plays Bing Bong and does a great job as sort of a washed up but charming imaginary friend. The rest of the cast is passable but not remarkable.

Visuals (Animation & Design):

As anyone would expect from Pixar, Inside Out is yet another visual marvel. This movies greatest strength is it’s use of colour. More specifically, colour contrast. The shear opposition between the bright saturated colors of the mind and it’s deep, unsaturated grays and blacks of the sadder scenes is excellent. There are some shots in this film that are poster material simply because the contrast adds SO MUCH to the overall composition of the frame. It makes your eye all the more drawn to the colours that really pop when they’re set against gloomy atmospheres.

One shot in particular that stands out is an extreme wide shot of Joy crying in the abyss, with her glow piercing the darkness and another memory fading away in peripheral vision. 

The animation is great too. I like how while the human characters move rigidly and in accordance to real world physics, the emotions go to a cartoony extent with their dynamic poses, snappy energy and great use of line of action. The designs really showcase the best of their over the top acting, ESPECIALLY fear. the lanky, noodly armed guy has some of the most effective slapstick because of how fast and how far he stretches his limbs. In fact, all the designs of the emotions are great. As is always a necessity in character design 101, you can put them in silhouette and still be able to tell which is which.

Of course, a standout moment in the film when it comes to animation is the “abstract thought” scene. Borrowing a page from the book of Picasso, the designs in this scene are wonderfully out there and I love how it addresses such a meta idea for a kids movie. This is the one moment of the film where i think verbal explanation from Sadness is necessary.

The textures on the emotions are a nice touch too. I wouldn’t have guessed that the fuzzy, almost plush like look would have been an effective choice on characters meant to represent concepts as metaphysical as the emotional spectrum, but it’s genuinely a sight for sore eyes. I’ll admit SOME of the textures of specific location pieces seem a bit . . .dated and unpolished, but to be perfectly honest I saw this after I saw Coco so chances are the unbelievable textures of that are just spoiling me. I won’t hold it against the overall score.

Sound design (Music & Sound Foley)

As I’ve said in past reviews, this is a hard area to talk about, mainly because the film handles the sound design about as well as any other big budget film. I don’t remember anything music wise aside from one scene where I swear to God they just took the melody of Plug-In Baby by Muse. 

There’s also the scene of the movie where they’re trying to break Bing Bong out of a balloon cage while not waking up a nightmare clown. The balloon sound effects are REEEEEALLY loud; easily the most blasted up sound foley out of everything in this movie. I guess it’s effective as the point of the scene is they’re trying not to wake the clown guy up but even so I think they could have made that point without making the loudness of it outweigh any other sound THAT much.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a serviceable Pixar film. Where does it rank as far as Pixar films go? Well, probably lower within the Top 10 if I’m honest (The best Pixar films are The Incredibles, Coco, Wall-E, Ratatouille, Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up, not necessarily in that order). It’s DEFINITELY not better than Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo does a lot of what Inside Out accomplishes except better with a more memorable cast, more relatable main characters, more fleshed out character arcs and less on-the-nose portrayal of it’s ideas. Inside Out has greatly effective animation & design as well as a healthy set of clever ideas, but I’d say it’s weak amount of character is what drags it down. It’s definitely worth checking out at least once, but it’s effect isn’t enough to shake the decisions of my Disney bracket. You now have permission to rant to me about how wrong I am.

Score:

Story - 1/2 - Average

Characters: - .5/2 - Below Average

Acting: 1.5/2 - Above Average

Visuals: 2/2 - Excellent

Sound Design: 1/2 - Average

6 out of 10. An okay movie, but ultimately disappointing.

[fanfictionconnectionwordpress]

okay..i have a request that i think would be funny + i love your writing. can you do a hc with the RFA + Minor Trio with an MC who is pretty ditzy & clumsy? Like she's not duMB...but she's really slow & doesn't always understand things. it's cute though.. oblivious and innocent i guess. xD

***T_T ditzy MC’s make my brain hurt a little lol, let’s see how the characters do…hmm  Imma see what I can do with this mega clutz ~Let’s Connect! FFC***

Characterbreakdown: Good ending canon characters, Secret ending 02 Saeran, V from theoriginal routes with an operation to restore most of his sight, my version ofVanderwood as seen in my VanderwoodBackstory Fanfiction

V:

You’re knocking into things and hurting yourself so often that he actually worries that Rika hurt your eyes too

V can’t see anymore, so he doesn’t actually know you’re just a mega clutz, and you’re always so confused when he says things like ‘it’s alright, MC, you don’t have to tell me, but I hope one day you’ll trust me with the story’ What is he blabbering about?

Eventually, V decides to go through with eye surgery, because he just can’t get around very well with all the things you knock onto the ground tripping him all the time

Well….once he recovers he’ll know you’re just a giant clutz at least???

-

Saeran:

It seems like every time he asks you to complete a task, you manage to completely destroy whatever room you were in while doing it

Saeran isn’t the neatest person around, but he finds it incredibly irritating that you take so long to complete simple things just because you’re tripping and falling all over the place

He finds your clumsiness supremely annoying, no matter how…cutesy and giggly you are about it, so he just takes to assigning you to sit somewhere whenever something needs to be done.

Does he have to do everything around here?

-

Vanderwood:

You couldn’t possibly be this ditzy and clumsy for real, right?

In his time as an agent, he’d met plenty of people who would pretend to be dumber or less skilled than they were in order to force people to underestimate them, and for his sanity he had to believe that that’s what you were doing.

The time you tripped over a coffee table and just laid there afterwards with a shocked look on your face before looking his way with a smile and then giving a light little giggle and an ‘oops~’ just made him all the more hopeful thst it was all an act.

and why is he always the one cleaning up after your clumsy mistakes, do you enjoy torturing him, you sadist???

-

Jumin:

Taking you to galas and other events is so difficult.

You’re always tripping over your dresses, nearly faceplanting or almost spilling things on other people.

It’s somewhat endearing, even if it’s impractical.

The magazines seem to think it’s adorable, and Jumin isn’t going to go against that popular opinion, particularly since he assumes all commoners must just be a little clumsy.

Zen did break his ankle, after all, so that must just be the case.

He safeguards the house by studying online about gentle furniture, ending up hiring an American babyproofing company.

Now you will be safe, at least at home.

-

Jaehee:

She didn’t know how clumsy you were when she asked you to be a partner with her in the cafe, oh dear goodness.

As much as you’re adorable, it’s really hard to keep the customers hapoy when you’re constantly spilling their drinks on them!!!

At least you’ve only spilled iced coffees on people so far, because Jaehee does not want to get sued so soon after opening.

You are moved to a register only position for the safety of everyone involved, and for the sake of the customers’ happiness.

-

Zen:

He is impressed by how adorable you can look while falling, but he starts to be really concerned by your constantly scraped knees and bruises on your body, even worried that tabloids might start thinking he’s abusive.

In hopes of teaching you to be a bit more graceful…Zen attempts to teach you to dance.

At first, it’s going really well, other than that you keep stepping on him, but then you accidentally trip him and the both of you end up on the ground, with him nearly knocking his face into a chair.

Okay so…maybe he can’t teach you to dance…He’ll just have to let the paparazzi get plenty of pictures of you tripping when the two of you are out and about, which is fine since he doesn’t have to do anything other than walk with you outside for that to happen…you’re really that clumsy

-

Yoosung:

Constantly worried, constantly neurotic, and constantly putting bandaids all over you.

He’s so worried about you falling when the two of you are out on a date, that he now calls ahead to where you’re going to ask about first aid kits.

Yoosung is certain that he once saw you walk into a closed door at the university because it was a glass door and you couldn’t tell it was closed.

He now opens doors for you at all times, both to be chivalrous and protective.

-

Seven:

At first, he thought it was cute, now he thinks it’s cute and hilarious

Seven develops a scoring system for your falls and mistakes, giving you a number out of ten based on three categories: fall style, expression, and recovery.

He even takes to coaching you on how to improve your performance.

Your clumsiness has essentially become an Olympic sport.

-

Asks MasterList.

Send me an ask! Want your ask answered almost immediately? Become a Patron. Everyone else is first come first serve. NSFW and SFW accepted.

Current unanswered HC count: 27

Check out my fanfictions.

Want to commission a one-shot, rp conversion, full fic? Send me a message.

[fancycollectiontale-blog]

In my non expert opinion. To be coiled and wound up to such an extent, that our insecurities have snaked their way into our minds and hearts is a thought that I cannot bare to process without thinking there were people in need. Many, unaware yet bummed out with a streak of what one may think is an extreme case of hard luck!

Afterall your a law abiding tax payer who helps the rent lady take out her trash. At the surface sure all is well still many people with the same attributes remain distressed and repressed despite an overwhelming amount of online and app based hubs that show us bodies shaking, breasts sweating, panting, and a techno real world mashup of emails detailing whose willing to slide the panties to the side to get to the cream, and juicy fact that at our base, that is the subconscious level, many of us are hurting deep inside.

Many people today are over worked and underpaid, sexually frustrated, angry, irritable and cant understand what the heck is going on after all with all this awesome technology available why then have we become neurotics instead of nu-erotics who struggle frantically and impatiently are often searching for ways to gain some type of deeper release than normal so that we may get the mind on a path to steady itself but alas for many of us it is to no avail.

#The#Tongue, Pamela, and Franklin have taken Notice of this emotional and draining pandemic of emotional attachment to digital bombardment an inanimate, and illusionary digital pit, filled with the quick sand deposited by a shadow of a figure that strongly resembles the women or man in the mirror, like in a horror flick the ghost kid that stood before the main protagonist breaks the ethereal plane and the time space continuum, then! With a sudden chill she tries to shield herself from an immediate blast that hurled glass at blinding speed, while hands and arms pale, cold and crusted reached out, gripped, then grabbed  firm tight hold on both that of that main character and all of our psyches. 

What im saying is the human brain cant see the difference between a steady girlfriend and an every Friday night app GFE/Girl Friend experience!

This can cause the problem of emotional detachment as well as diminish perception and ability to distinguish real life from entertainment and play life...

Dont Know what your going to do..?

...RELAX...its not your fault...As you guessed it..WERE all still Awesomely Sex-33'! With such recent changes in the world like, ultra fast high speed data connections, social networking of various types and for many tasks and purposes, even a move with the VR/virtual reality realm to invest more focus on Adult Sexual games and education. There are websites galore from sexual education portals, to learning utilities, and language programs and digital platforms that instruct us on how to write Portuguese, to prepare for our trip (Yes theres gonna be Pics, Video and a whole heap of literary bliss on the way, which we enjoy the pleasure of crafting to help you on your way towards release, peace, abundance and subsequent enlightenment...Happiness Dam-nit !!!, in reference to the aforementioned) to the golden wet sun down in Sunny Rio de Janeiro, or a trip to the west to New Mexico to a once in a lifetime some time ago (which ill tell ya all about soon) it was THE!, trip that changed my idea about ignorance, acceptance and experiencing other cultures and customs when a friend sneakingly took us to a posh Adult getaway retreat where release was definitely what I needed and what inspired myself and through resonance, networking, love and unity on our minds we utilized tools and these same networks to bring the team together for one sole purpose lol ...

We Be Came, to help you! 

Stay Tuned More on the way, Dont forget you cant have gone if you never Came!!!

Future Artcls:

*Perhaps your aim is to tickle your more primal urges with what some may describe as an app that helps you explore terms such as hedonism.

*We will discuss fear and prejudice and how a Black man whom at first i was terrified of him but as the metaphysical realm and its dwellers practice harmony with the universe and resonance with positive righteous souls and entities,

[psyprick]

whoops, i’m gushing because i... think this is the best day of my life, genuinely. 8)!!! 

god, i feel so... so amazing and so wonderful. the sheer contrast of feeling CONNECTED when i spent my whole life not and... just, the validation that comes from realizing that all this time i wasn’t fighting myself, i was fighting these awful uncontrollable hyperfixations.... when all i wanted at my core was to love people and support them and... ohh, there’s so much good i’m feeling, i can’t ever hope to put into words i haven’t already said to other privately five or six times by now, but...!!!

i may not be around today, as-- and this is so very exciting for me, so please be patient, if you can!!-- i took adderall... suspecting that these quirks (this... was not a suspicion i fostered myself, but one my boyfriend had-- one that made so much sense i couldnt help but try)-- these oddities about myself that made me feel HORRIBLE, that made me think i was inferior, that i wasn’t human... with the way the medicine has impacted me, with the perspective it’s granted me, i want nothing more than to enjoy this temporary freedom. GOODNESS THIS IS GETTING LONG, BUT I’M SO VERY WORDY... as a result of... being so very excited that i can finally express these twenty years of feelings i have inside me, without blood sweat and tears, without abstract metaphors that never seem to resonate proper... 

all this time i thought i was abnormal because i had no idea that what i was looking at was ADD, not some... awful version of myself that i had no choice but to combat, not some pretentious, snobby core personality that i had to deny. and now i can SEE! i can focus. i have clarity. i can watch my thoughts follow through to the end... and then stop them. i can choose to start a task... instead of jumping on the first thing that needs it the most, according to this dumb brain i have.

i think i’ll have a bit of difficulty prioritizing things until it wears off (maybe, tonight sometime, by my estimates?), just because i’m so... not used to being able to do things... that i WANT to do, that i WANT to focus on... instead of being jumbled and distracted and unable to progress in a linear way... that’s why i think i might be afk a bit.

THIS POST IS SO DISORGANIZED... i completely recognize it, but it’s... flowing in an order that i picked, myself, instead of just... flowing in the way this dumb thing decides it should, so im having to learn how to prioritize stuff, like. pfftb, “all over again”, i guess?? BAH.... i’ll take it. i’m honestly.

i’m so grateful that he had the insight to step back-- and when i told him i was a freak, that i had these awful quirks, that i didnt see things the way everyone else seemed to (though, i know everyone is different, it was like-- the expectation of norms, and deviation from it, that made me so... scared and insecure)... he was able to assess, with his experience, and by way of the universe being so damn wonderful as to place this perfect person within my reach (SOULMATES!! you know!! ive decided we ARE soulmates, we MUST be, and how wonderful it is to be able to DECIDE SUCH A THING!! it’s so FREEING!!!), he was able to deduce that these oddities that disturbed me, depressed me, made me feel alienated... wasn’t a personality thing. wasn’t me being neurotic. wasn’t me being crazy or robotic or inhuman.

that all this time, it’s just been a dumb brain. i can FEEL things the way i’ve always known people feel them-- things as simple as KISSES, and while my brain still went YOU KNOW THERE’S SALIVA THERE AND THAT TEXTURE, and drew my attention to it... i could focus on something else. it wasn’t all i felt. kissing, which seemed so natural and pleasurable to EVERYONE BUT ME... i knew it was foreplay, but i never knew, never understood how people ENJOYED IT... so much time was spent thinking that i was a freak. so much time was spent trying to pretend i fit in, and such a complex was developed in how all i desperately wanted for myself was to be normal... and this medicine. this wonderfully lucky thing happened where i had the opportunity to take it... and i could get lost in my boyfriend’s kisses just like i’ve always read about. just like i’ve always wanted to be!! i could feel it in the way i’ve always wanted. i could feel it like everybody else, finally...

i can touch people without the recoil... without bolstering my endurance, without rushing through actions, knowing that my time was ticking, that i would only be able to handle so much before the feeling of even my own skin brushing against mine was too overwhelming. GLOVES!! we really-- and bless, bless my boyfriend and his flexibility, james, i love you, TRULY-- we really were both going to wear GLOVES all the time because those were easier to process than actual skin contact. UNREAL!!

and the problem this whole time... it wasn’t me. all that fighting i did... all those nights i spent hating myself because i thought that since all i could think of was awful things when i wanted to focus on the good, i was a miserable wretch of a person... and all those days that i fought against that, yelling from my mental prison that i loved and cared for my friends, the people around me, the world; all those hours i spent telling myself i WAS a humanitarian, that i WANTED peace, that this chaos that led my thoughts... somehow, it couldn’t have been the REAL me, because the real me-- had to be-- someone who loved, not hated-- THE WHOLE STRUGGLE!! IT WAS WORTH IT!!

it was ALWAYS worth it. i didn’t have the words to describe what i was feeling. i wanted to die, it hurt so bad, living in such discord! but i can see, i can process... i can finally speak. and oh, i’m speaking so much. i know there’s no rush, i don’t need to rush-- but i just can’t stop talking! i love it so much. i love being connected, i love being able to share, i love being able to talk-- and feel-- and be compassionate, and anyway if you’ve read this far you’re a real trooper, what eth HECK.

god, being alive right now is such a good feeling.

also yolo, no proofreading we die like men.

[eyesaremosaics]

Any advice on virgos?

As an almost Virgo (born a day late because my soul wanted to be a Libra), I relate to this. Also: I think Virgo is a very overlooked, unappreciated and deeply misunderstood sign within the zodiac. Their attention to detail, makes them masters at whatever it is they set out to do.

The crux with Virgo is in over analysis, perfectionism, and a need to please or be of use to others. Virgo analyses things to the point where it makes sense… And then they take it to the next level, where it never needed to go. They are prisoners in their own mind because they can never live up to their own unrealistic set of standards.

Most people don’t realize their sexual power either. They are very earthy, sensual creatures, yet self contained. This makes them all the more fascinating because of their rigid control of themselves. Often they are all tied up in knots, which is why they are often very submissive sexually (unless there are more fiery signs in their chart). There is a purity to their desire, as though they were feeling sexual attraction for the first time–every time. They are very adaptable to circumstance, and are quietly calculating and assessing their environment at all times. You won’t get anything past them. Their neurosis comes from obsession with perfection. If anyone criticizes them, or points out they are not perfect, they fall apart.

They pride themselves on the meticulous nature of their process. Rather like the subtle art of alchemy, just the right formula, the exact measurements are required for a specific outcome. You can always count on their honest advice, and the fact that they are reliable and highly efficient. A Virgo is the best companion to help you with any task at hand. They are highly adaptable to circumstance, and they are a deep reservoir of useful information. They are “specialists”. Unlike Gemini, who knows a little bit about a lot of things, virgo’s devour subjects in their entirety.

People often don’t realize that there is a dark side to them. Virgo’s are dark in an embittered way dripping with sarcasm. They have low expectations of people, and often enjoy banter and commentary. They are wicked conspirators when they want to be. Trust and believe that they know where all the bodies are buried, and they will never get caught .

Virgo is very opinionated, yet deep down they fear being ostracized for their convictions. They worry that others judge them as fussy, or judgmental… Which… They are in all honesty. Because they judge themselves so harshly, and strive to be perfect in all that they do, they project their insecurity of not living up to their personal expectations on to others. Some virgo’s are more quiet about their judgements ( if they have a lot of earth or water in their chart) if they have a lot of air or fire, they will be very vocal about their criticism. They are direct, they don’t beat around the bush, and hate when others do.

They don’t have time to waste on bullshit, because they already have a full itinerary. They often get suckered into enabling people, because they feel most fulfilled when they are of use or in service to others. It validates their belief that they are worthy, because they know how to approach things properly and can help others. They are very masochistic, self hate or self doubt is a huge problem for Virgo. They are very harsh and critical of themselves, far more than others (which is saying something). They can put up with a lot, because they go with the flow, but they have a breaking point.

Virgo’s love hard, and their feelings die slowly, but once they are dead… There is no resurrection.

I relate to that aspect of them more than anything.

Virgo will work tirelessly to please, they are giving lovers. Loyal friends, very quick to help those in need. Yet they won’t baby you or enable you the way a Pisces would. Pisces would roll in the mid feeling your feelings. Virgo will clap their hands and be pragmatic about the situation. “So what are we going to do about this? How can we fix this?” They are fixers, problem solvers, and often get roped into picking up the pieces for other people, who in truth–don’t really want to get better. They get taken advantage of a lot, because they need to be needed.

Virgo is the sign of the virgin, or the maiden, but I have known many promiscuous or sex positive virgo’s. The thing about them… They are not prudish. Actually quite the opposite. They are kinky, down for whatever, often drawn into whatever most excited their partners, because getting their partner off gets them off. The ultimate satisfaction for Virgo, is figuring out another person’s sexuality and mastering how to please them in exactly the way they like it.

Virgo’s often love S&M, because they torture themselves mentally. They have such rigid structural control of themselves, others, their environment in their daily life, that to surrender all power to another person, to let go, is an orgasmic release to them. They love sex, and are very healing. Like Pisces (their opposite) they have healing abilities. Their touch is like magic, and with the earthy sensuality that comes naturally to them, they both heal and arouse. This makes sex with them an explorative experience, because they will heighten and evolve with your interests. They will go to the limits with you.

Of course the other signs in their chart will heavily influence this aspect. If they have a Venus in cancer for example, they will need lots of cuddly alone time with you. They may be day dreamy or romantic in nature. If they have a Leo Venus (as I do), they will be fiery, passionate, creative in love. They will need to be proud of their partner, and will want to worship each other. If they have a air Venus it will make them less affectionate, more mental. Words will hold more weight with them.

I have a Virgo friend, and she is very charming because she had a lot of Gemini (Mercury) in her chart. So she is more charismatic, charming, social… Yet she silently judges people, and ends up making snap decisions about what she will and will not tolerate in her space. Virgo’s usually have clear boundaries, despite the fact that they are mutable, but they also bend and barter with their boundaries if they are in love.

Vjrgo’s dread being in love. They are like the shrew in Shakespeare’s play, avoidant, because they love so deeply and completely. They will be completely devoted to you once they fall in love (which is a rare occurrence for them–they are picky about mates). They will dedicate themselves so entirely to you, that it will be like tunnel vision. They are very loyal, and will literally die for their loved ones. They take relationships so seriously, that they fear ever connecting deeply to anyone… Because they know they will lose themselves. They hate being out of control.

Virgo can be very neurotic, thinking that people judge them as harshly as they judge themselves and others. Deep inside… They feel they have no value other than their service to others. They base their self worth off of the response they get. A friend of mine is a Virgo, and he once confided in me sadly saying: “I don’t feel like I am close to a single soul.” This is because they isolate themselves at a very deep level, they don’t like to admit to weakness, because it makes them feel inefficient–which they fear most.

They seem cold, hard, sometimes even bitchy or bitter, but inside is a very pure being who loves deeply and just wants to help. My sister is s Virgo. When she was little, she came into my room looking miserable. I asked her what was wrong, to which she replied: “can I HELP you with something?!” I had to give her a task to calm her down.

One thing I have noticed about Virgo, is that their intentions are pure. You may not think so because they seem so remote and calculated, but they are pure. Every emotion they feel, comes to them as though it were happening for the first time, then their conscious mind had to regulate and control it to feel safe. In this way, they are “virgins”, because their experience is so raw and pure.

If they have a Mars in Scorpio or Aries, they will have a deep hidden rage, which will surface randomly, and often inappropriately. They are realists. They don’t idealize things. Yet.. Love can make them bend their rules. Love often incapacitated Virgo. It makes them give more chances, allowances, because they do rarely feel for people on that level. They worry the chance will not come again, so they cling to what they have. They often settle for what is beneath them, which is a shame. They deserve so much for what they give.

Virgo can be dark, but in a playful and sarcastic way. Tim burton is a prime example, as is Jhonen Vasquez (creator of invader zim and JTHM). They brood. They are brooders, and often retreat from the world to get lost in their heads. Tim button said that Edward Scissorhands was his most personal film. This is because he feels like an outsider. So misunderstood, but truly gentle inside.

Virgo is your favorite bedtime story, they are the hours you spend wondering why someone never called, they are the critic, they are the brains behind the operation… The “man behind the curtain”. They are the comedians, embittered by life but find the humor in it. They are the hermit, the voice of reason. They are the helping hand. The satisfaction of reaping the harvest after a long season.

[hollygopossumlovesj2]

Dean Winchester’s Lyrics, Part 2

Warnings: Adult language, violence, mentions of death

Summary: Y/N takes charge of the situation and helps Dean as much as she can. But will it be enough?

Tagging: @perpetualabsurdity, @maileann, @daydreamingintheimpala, @gecko9596, @gemini75eeyore, @jotink78, @dancingalone21, @winchesterprincessbride, @sandlee44, @exploratiionist, @arryn-nyx, @littledarlinhavefaithinme, @tiffanycaruso, @boredoutofmymindstuff, @feelmyroarrrr, @raeganr99, @ruprecht0420, @anokhi07, @letsgetyourdeanon, @sis-tafics, @jensen-gal, @theoneandonlysaucymo, @27bmm, @callmesatansprincess

a/n- This is the second part of my addition to @creatively-charlie‘s Anniversary Writing Challenge. I hope this is entertaining and please let me know what ya think!

Part 1

In a very uncoordinated fashion, you slowly guided Dean to sit into the closest chair. Which was no easy task considering Dean had been hunting most of his life. The man was a 38 year old wall of solid muscle, skin and bone. He was hot to the touch despite the chill of the rain on his skin. “Do you remember the words to the hex, Dean? Maybe we can look it up?” His head lolled back like he lacked the strength to hold it up any more, making his voice croak. “I ‘member s'me.”

Pretty soon Dean would be completely useless, but you couldn’t deal with it here. Casey wouldn’t understand and your life here would be blown. “Hey Case!” You yelled, stepping a few feet away from Dean so your voice carried into the kitchen. You startled a little when Dean’s chair scraped loudly against the floor as he tried to stand up. “Dean, stay put.” You pointed at him sternly before walking a few feet closer to the kitchen door. “Casey!” Dean struggled to stand, and when he finally succeeded he nearly brained himself on the counter. When you caught him against you just in time you could hear him muttering but you couldn’t make out the words. “Dean, seriously. What the hell?” You muttered back at him, half worried and half scared out of your mind. You were out of practice for this shit. You weren’t used to living by the seat of your pants in life or death situations anymore! You’d guided him the short distance back to the chair to sit down before you tilted his face up with a few fingers beneath his chin. “D'ne leave me. D'n go.” You’d seen Sam’s puppy eyes, but right now Dean was giving him a run for his money. “Pl’s?” The look was familiar, and you knew why. It was the look Dean always got when he was at the end of his rope, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. He never shed this many walls without a huge disaster and nearly lethal amounts of social lubricant. You studied him a moment longer, trying to wrap your head around this. If Dean hadn’t been hexed he probably would have died trying to get his brother back rather than coming to find you. Whatever hex this witch had used was turning out to be rather catastrophic. “Yeah, okay, Dean. I won’t leave you.” He took your hand and kissed the top of it, leaving it there and leaning into it. “Umm, I guess you need to get his drunk ass home, huh?” Casey’s voice startled you out of the puddle you’d become but you tamped it down. If you showed any weakness Casey would be all over this and you’d have to tell him everything. “Yeah, I’m sorry.” You turned your attention to Casey, hoping that you were looking as sincere as you felt. “I can manage the trash when I get here in the morning.” You offered, but Casey just shook his head. “No worries. Lord knows you’ve bailed me out more than once. Just get him outta here. He’s messing up the floor.” And with a dismissive wave, Casey disappeared behind the door again. That left you to wrangle an increasingly uncooperative Dean into your compact car. He’d only mustered up enough energy to grumble a few times as his knees still dug into the dash board even though the seat was back as far as it could go. “You try living on coffee house tips, see what kind of car you can afford.” You grumbled back before throwing your car into reverse and then maneuvering out of the parking lot. Somewhere along the way, Dean had slipped his hand over yours. ———-—— If you had thought getting Dean into the car had been rough, getting him out and up the stairs to your second story apartment was a whole new level. But, now he was sitting on your covered toilet seat while you pulled out your first aid kit, dripping muddy water every where. It surprised you to see that you’d actually still kept it well stocked. What a little obsessive compulsive former hunter you were. “Okay, we’re gonna kill two birds with one stone.” You were more or less talking to yourself now. Dean would only acknowledge your existence if you made direct eye contact or tried to leave the room. You were not looking forward to a time that you needed to use the bathroom. You got an absurd picture of when you’d had a cat and it had pawed and meowed at the bathroom door until you’d reappeared. Surely Dean wouldn’t be that neurotic? You’d grabbed paper and a pen, resting them on the bathroom counter within reach. Dean had given you an open eyed, innocent look full of worry. “We’re not actually killing birds.” You amended and he seemed satisfied with that. Oh God it was going to be a long night. You’d cleaned him up the best you could, stuffing him into your ex’s t shirt and sweat pants since his clothes had been shredded. You’d been able to write down a few of the words that Dean recalled in the hex while you’d cleaned him up, but there weren’t very many words to go by. His injuries were gone by the time you’d wrangled his shirt from him. Only morbid splashes of blood here and there remained. Oh the things you would give just to be able to call up Bobby to brainstorm with. Or even Sam to help you think this thru. Maybe there was a chance that he might have gotten away? You made a mental note to check Dean’s pockets for his phone. Dean had obediently taken the thermometer into his mouth, shocking the hell out of you. The last time you’d battled Dean to check his temperature the thermometer had been broken, sending the toxic mercury all over the counter. You huffed out a sigh, trying to expel some of the worry getting trapped in your chest. You were feeling wound tight with stress. After you helped Dean figure this thing out and got Sam back, you still had work tomorrow. You still had a 5,000 word essay due in two days that you’d planned on starting tonight. Obviously hunting didn’t mix with going to college. The thermometer beeped and as you took it from him to read he sagged against the wall. His expression was absolutely pitiful. His eyes glassy as they looked up to you like he was begging you to fix it. You ran your fingers through his hair and he practically purred, pushing up a little into your hand. “101.5… Not terrible, but enough to make you miserable.” Dean nodded his head in agreement, the pout on his lips making him look all of five instead of a hardened hunter. He’d dutifully taken the Tylenol you’d offered him and took charge of the ice pack when you handed it to him. After a little persuasion you managed to coax him into bed. You tucked him in beneath the duvet, and sat up next to him while you searched the for the right spell with your laptop. An hour in and you were getting desperate and talking to yourself. “I can’t find anything… this could take weeks and what if-” Dean’s sleep roughened voice cut you off, still slurring a little… But maybe it was getting a little better? “S'not really gonna kill me.” You swallowed, letting a chill of fear run its course before asking your question. “What do you mean it’s not 'really’ going to kill you?” But he never answered. You assumed that he’d gratefully fallen asleep and that’s when you finally got up to clean up the mess he’d made in your bathroom and search for clues in his still soaking clothes. There was no phone and no clues. At a loss, you picked up your own phone and dialed a familiar number. They’d probably trashed their phones a million times over in the past couple of years you’d been away. You knew it was a long shot, but with only a few words from a spell and no real references to research into, you were a lot desperate. There was no telling what an angry witch would have hit him with. “Hello?” Even tense and suspicious, Sam’s voice was a balm. “Oh thank fucking Christ, Sam!” You took a much needed breath, “Its Y/N, I have Dean.” You heard him let out a breath of relief, and probably a few muffled curses too. “Okay, I’m headed towards you.” He confirmed and you heard the familiar growl of the Impala. It hadn’t occurred to you to ask Dean where his car was. He must have walked from where he’d been hexed. “How is he?” “Sleeping. He showed up at the coffee house soaking wet and covered in cuts. He’s acting like he’s drunk and he won’t let me out of his sight!” As you spoke to Sam you peeped in the doorway to make sure Dean was still asleep. “Makes sense. He’s been hit with a pretty nasty curse, but I don’t think it’s gonna kill him. The coven we came to investigate turned out to be white witches. They just want him to suffer like they did over their friend. They were bating hunters in the area and hexing them.” “Well that’s good to know. Wait, how the hell are you gonna find me without the address?” “Uh, gps on your phone? You didn’t think Dean was going to let you go quietly, did you? There’s also the LoJack on your car that I’m probably not supposed to mention…” You plopped down on the closest surface that just happened to be your kitchen counter.  "What?“ Last time you’d been around Dean hadn’t exactly been a happy moment. So, the fact that he might still give two shits about you was a shock. Then, you heard a loud thud and an inhuman scream. "Shit. Dean’s awake!” “Okay, don’t panic.” “Don’t panic? Are you kidding me? His chest is in shreds! He’s gonna… Dean? Dean?!” “Y/N it’s okay! It’s just the spell.” “I don’t care if it’s just a fucking spell! It’s…” “…” “…” “…” “Did it stop?” “…” “Y/N, did it stop?!” “Yeah, there’s just blood now. He’s… The cuts are mostly gone already… How..?” “Good. Good. I think the spell is just making him relive his death. All of his deaths.” When Sam magically found his way to your apartment door, you were a wreck. You’d given Dean a cursory clean up, glad that it was just the shirt that was ruined, still baffled that his skin wasn’t in shreds like it had been twenty minutes earlier. You’d contemplated putting plastic down on your bed, but there was no point. The sheets and duvet were ruined anyway. So, you helped a mostly unconscious Dean into the clean side of the bed and hoped for the best. Now, in front of Sam for the first time in a couple of years, you must have looked like you’d just come back from taking out a nest of vamps on a Friday night. You were spattered with blood, your hair was a mess and your eyes must have been glowing with the amount of adrenaline you had pumping through your veins. You let him scoop you in for a quick hug, his strong arms holding you up for a brief moment, before pulling away. He looked like he could use some sleep, but beneath the dark circles that pooled underneath his eyes, he looked the same. He followed you back into your bedroom, but didn’t make an effort to wake Dean. You supposed death could take a toll on a person. Even if it wasn’t real. So, you let him sleep. “How many times did Dean die while I was gone?” You asked, leaning against the door way, not taking your eyes off of Dean’s slumbering face. You didn’t want him to go through this alone and you thought maybe this is what he’d meant at the coffee shop. He’d said not to leave. He’d said please. Then the second you leave something horrible happens. “Uh, just once actually. Stabbed in the chest after having his ass handed to him by a scribe of God. That was the last. You missed out on demon Dean. He was a lot of fun.” Sam leaned against the wall just inside the room, speaking quietly. “But if that was the hellhounds then next will be the bullet to the chest.” He ran his long fingers through his tangled hair. He must have been searching for Dean when you called, driving himself crazy. It was now around 1 am and you were already starting to feel the effects of tonight. Not to mention you’d had a full day of classes and work under your belt. However, the evening seemed like it was just beginning. “He must’ve died a hundred times before he found you. Freakin asshole Trickster.” “He looked terrible. Like he’d run into Edward Scissorhands on the way over.” The image must have been amusing because a small smile made its way momentarily onto Sam’s lips. It always made you glow a little with pride when you made a Winchester smile. “The spell has to run its course? There’s nothing we can do?” “Yeah, I called Rowena, repeated the incantation to her. She said it was a nasty spell but 'not particularly life threatening.’ So, we’ll just do our best to keep him hydrated and comfortable.” He watched his brother fondly for a moment, seeming to catalog every breath and twitch Dean made. “Ya know, I’m not looking forward to doing this a second time. I mean, once was really enough.” You nodded in agreement, even though you had no idea who Rowena was. Now certainly wasn’t the time to catch up. “I bet.” “I hate to do this to you, I remember what it was like to be in school, but I gotta get back to the station to wipe their files. That was the deal. They’ll stop hurting people and I’ll get rid of the evidence. Do you mind..?” “Do I mind watching your brother die a couple of times until you get back?” You asked with all the seriousness in the world before you couldn’t keep up the charade. “Of course, Sam, I got this.”

[cafeconbrujeria]

I keep on trying to condense what I want to say, @ookamianiyou, about that meme question. What’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten from a witch?

Nothing in words, nothing I can easily say. The most powerful and terrifying witch I’ve ever in my life was my mother. I also haven’t seen my mother in over a decade. She kicked me out when I was 17 years old, not because of anything I did, but fundamentally, I think, just because of something biological and time sensitive. Apex carnivores need big territories. As far as she was concerned, I think, in some essential animal way, I had come of age.

Mother isn’t a very nice person in a lot of ways, though she can be. And I hope she’s doing well now, but in her youth, let me repeat: she was terrifying. She was terrifying and beautiful.

I’m lucky, in that many people find me pleasing to look at. I’m a certain mainstream value of pretty, and it’s great. I’m forever grateful and I mean that sincerely. Hashtag blessed! For real.

But mother was so beautiful people on the street would approach her in awe and politely ask for a picture. The beauty that inspires that degree of awe is something else.

Mother isn’t a good person, for certain prosocial values of good. And like many daughters with complicated family relationships, I am desperate to be nothing like my mother.

Or nearly nothing.

Because, you see, mother was a woman and mother was a witch and mother was herself with no apology. She taught me that women could be powerful. Or, no--she taught me that women were powerful, none of that “could be,” “can be,” whatever. Women are powerful. She taught me that women are powerful and that sometimes includes physically powerful. She taught me that you could beat men at basketball and laugh in their faces when they were legitimately surprised. And you’d still be beautiful and you could still be good at putting on lipstick, all at the same time.

She never said anything about it. But she did it.

She had many arbitrary and outright abusive rules. I wasn’t allowed to go into the kitchen, for example, ever, to get my own food. No closed doors ever. No staying over at anyone’s house. All on line communications monitored. Etc.

But some rules were priceless.

Mother did not tolerate negative self talk. You were not allowed to say, in her house, that you were stupid or ugly or worthless. You could say that you wanted to improve in some way; you could say you would try harder. But you couldn’t say anything bad about your inherent worth.

And because mother was terrifying, if she told you that you were smart and the assignment didn’t show your full potential: you believed her. You would believe anything she said, because the consequences would be hell.

But I internalized a lot of things, and not all of them were bad. I’m kind of high strung and neurotic and ambitious. I strive. And when I fail, I try to figure out why I failed, so that I can figure out how to do better.  I know someone who fails at goals and then just says “I was weak,” and it drives me nuts. That’s useless. That’s just a general statement that it doesn’t give you any idea of how to grow or change. And you need to grow and change, and you’ll learn from your mistakes, so you can make new mistakes and fail at new, more lofty tasks. And I do. I try to.

But while I might fail at a task--

There’s a difference between failing a task and telling yourself that you’re a failure. And I never, ever do the latter.

Your brain believes what you tell it. Simple enough. But that’s some high octane mind over matter shit, right there. What you believe drives what you do, and what you do ultimately changes a lot about who you are and where you are.

It’s a type of magic. The best type of magic, in some ways.

Mother also gave me my first deck of tarot cards when I was 12. She didn’t teach me. She just expected me to learn. But she also told me I didn’t need to listen to what anyone else ever said about the cards, and that I would know what to do and how to read them, with time, and I should trust myself.

And this was really the exact same lesson.

Mother was MAGICAL.

And magic isn’t always nice.

But that. Somewhere, in all of that, is the best advice I’ve ever gotten from a witch.

[gaiatheorist]

Testing boundaries.

OK, I did it, I went ‘out’. No big deal for most people, but I’m not most people. I’m socially awkward, and have, historically, had a tendency to get catastrophically drunk, to avoid just lurking in the corner, like an unwanted ginger standard-lamp. As it turns out, I don’t ‘need’ the booze, which was fortunate, because it was quite expensive.

I’d seen the ‘flyer’ for the Twitter meet-up a few weeks ago, and just dismissed it with “Can’t go.”, because it was 2 hours travel away, and an unnecessary expenditure. Some time on Thursday, I’m not entirely sure when, I started looking at train-prices, and dabbling in the arena of ‘could go, if...’ That’s abnormal behaviour for me, and I’m still not entirely certain whether it was turning-away-from this episode of poor emotional well-being, or holding my nose, and jumping straight into it.

Crowds freak me out, unfamiliar locations make me uneasy, I don’t cope well with excessive noise, flashing lights, and the proximity of unknown-people. I know, let’s travel to another city, alone, and spend a few hours in a pub, with a bunch of strangers! Add to that the facts that I’m probably more neurotic-protective than most, and never really went ‘out’ much on my own for 20 years, and my anxiety probably burned off the three glasses of wine before I eventually threw myself back in through my front door. (Without falling out of the taxi, which I did last time I was ‘out’. No, for anyone familiar with my back-story, or PIP-assessors, I didn’t fall off the toilet, either.) 

Yesterday, I went ‘out’, this waffly-blog is likely to be the very dull story of how I didn’t get murdered, or wake up in a gutter with my pants on inside-out. I know I ‘should’ have saved the money I drew out of the cash-point, but, in my off-centre logic, it was ‘spare’ money, left over from last month’s salary, and I virtually never do anything for myself. (Yes, there was a really weird side-thought about ‘What if the washing machine breaks, and I have to do my laundry in the bath for a month?’ I wouldn’t be doing my laundry in the bath, washing machines are relatively easy to reverse-diagnostic repair.) Welcome to the less than wonderful world of ‘What if?’

First up “What if somebody takes a photo, and I look half-dead?” Well, that’s easy, I DO look half-dead, but I tend to dye my roots on pay-day anyway, so I’ll at least look less like I’ve walked through cobwebs if I do show up in the background of someone else’s photo. I’m not ‘big’ Twitter, nobody’s going to want to snap a selfie with me to prove they’ve met me.

Next, “I have NOTHING to wear.” Don’t be an idiot, you have cupboards full of clothes, as was demonstrated by pulling EVERYTHING out of said cupboards, and raging at myself for putting things ‘out of the way’ instead of ‘away’. I’d wanted a particular top, I’m not as emaciated as I was this time last year, but I didn’t want the glockenspiel look, people have a tendency to try to make you eat pies when they can see your ribs, and if you complain that wheat doesn’t suit you, the automatic assumption is an eating disorder. I’m a pain in my own arse, because once I’d found ‘that’ top, I decided I didn’t want to wear it, and settled on another one. 

“Is that going to be enough money?” It’s going to have to be, and that will ensure you don’t go overboard with the drinks. (Half-grinning, because it turned out to be exactly the right amount of money to cover my slight miscalculation.) 

“Where’s my make-up?” Ah, remember when you threw a tizz about the ‘expectation’ that women should tart themselves up, and smear tonnes of crap on their faces to be deemed acceptable? Remember your ‘refusing to be aesthetically objectified’ tantrum, when you threw the make-up in the bin? It’s in the bin. Your entire make-up collection now consists of the one mascara that hasn’t completely dried out, a black eyeliner pencil that needs sharpening, and the boy has had off with the sharpener, and several red lipsticks. Challenging.

“Why is my hair so shit? Why won’t it behave?” It’s shit because you’re overwhelmingly stressed, which in turn leads to you not eating properly, the combination of stress and poor diet is responsible for the fragile hair, and the hair-loss. It won’t ‘behave’ because it’s part of you, it is ‘behaving’ entirely as it always does, which is like a dead ginger mop. (Interesting couple of minutes on the train, where I realised I’d used some gel the boy had left here to stop the frizzy-cloud effect, but not scrunched it through, leading to stiff tendrils here and there, and a very difficult to manage urge to shout “It’s not spunk!”)

“What if I miss the train?” Just get the next one, you nine-tonne mega-idiot, you’ve already allowed additional time for when you invariably get lost. “What if there are no seats on the train?” In that case, you’ll regret wearing five inch heels a bit sooner, won’t you? “What if I get on the WRONG train?” Seriously? This was getting tedious, bearing in mind I hadn’t even left the house. Occam’s razor is applied to my thought process even less often than razors are applied to my skin. I’m Stig of the Dump, and I ALWAYS start at the most ridiculous-unlikely, and work my way back from there. I’ve generally completely forgotten what the ‘problem’ was, by the time I’ve explored all the disturbing tangents my brain likes to send me off on. “What if I trip over something?” can very quickly morph into “What if I’m murdered, I don’t think I closed the living room curtains, and next door will assume I’m ‘in’, and nobody will realise I’m missing.”

Given the cyclic nature of my peculiar anxieties, and the fact that I’d imagined myself murdered and dumped in the canal about seventeen times before I even put my impractical boots on, the logical thing to do would have been not to go. I’m not logical, and I’d set myself the ‘task’ of travelling, alone, from the arse-end-of-nowhere to Leeds, having a couple of drinks with a load of strangers, and then finding my way back without my head being discovered in a bin, and my body only being identifiable by my tattoos. No, I don’t know why, either.

Neurotic-protective. I’d let different people know where I was going, which is awkward, because of the cross-over. I was ‘going’ as @GaiaTheorist but I’d also notified two real-world people, and alluded to my plans on my tiny, locked Twitter account. (Not Fakebook, though, the ex is on there, and the boy would flip shit if he knew I was trotting off out unsupervised. Oh, and there’s the “Well, she can’t be THAT ill if she can go out!” tangent.) Welcome to the messy web that is me, remembering to use the hashtag on the Gaia Twitter so I could be ‘tracked’, but not mentioning the # on my quiet-Twitter in case I was cross-referenced-outed. I’m like a really shit James Bond.

I set off earlier than I’d originally intended, and stood, freezing cold, wearing make-up in the day-time at the bus stop. (DID I lock the door?) The USB charger-point on the bus didn’t actually increase the battery-power on my phone, because I kept flicking between screens, checking routes that I knew I wouldn’t remember. (What if the battery completely dies?) Two kids on the bus appeared to be having a game of “Who can make the most annoying noise?”, and I had an intense desire to bang their heads together. The man on the seat in front of me for half of the journey had appalling body odour, and I could smell wee from somewhere else. I realised I’d forgotten to put any painkillers in my bag, and hoped that I wouldn’t have to use the hospital codeine, that’s probably expired by now.

The reason for setting off early was to make sure I didn’t get stuck in a queue for the automated train-ticket machine. I didn’t actually know where the ticket machines were, and had a bit of a panic about “What if I buy the wrong ticket, or the machine over-charges me?” I walked into the ticket-office instead, and managed to ask the man behind the counter for the right ticket. No biggie for most people, but, when I’m anxious, I sometimes muddle my words. I was anxious. I didn’t however end up with a yearly Oyster card or anything, so that’s a bonus. I’d also set off early so I could empty my bladder in the interchange toilets. I’d already walked past the toilets, and my fucking stupid head won’t let me ‘walk backwards’. I was half an hour early for the train, standing outside, in the cold, concentrating so hard on not ‘jiggling’ because I sort-of needed a wee that my thigh decided to do that weird tremble-spasm thing it does sometimes. Nice. In those heels, I’m a touch over 6ft, I’d just re-dyed my hair a fairly intense shade of auburn, I was wearing scarlet lipstick and heavy eyeliner, and my leg wouldn’t stop shaking. I had sufficient personal space.

Train. OK, there are seats, so I wouldn’t have to stand for an hour and four minutes, with my left thigh having its own personal disco, I also didn’t use the toilet on the train, due to five inch heels, and the aforementioned disobedient thigh. About ten minutes before Leeds, I found all the stiff bits in my hair, the person behind me might have thought I had headlice with all the fluffing and scrunching going on. (I’m SO 1990s, ‘scrunching’ my hair is still pretty much the only thing I do to it.)

Train station. In a very boring aside, the last time I alighted from a train in Leeds, I walked in the wrong direction for 20 minutes, completely lost, and alone, in a city I didn’t know. It was bad enough then, when I was trying to find a training venue in the daylight, it was dark by the time I hit Leeds, and I was wearing heels and lipstick. I excelled myself by getting lost IN the bus station, which didn’t help with the general panic situation. That tripped-out to me not text-messaging the person I was going to contact, because I ‘had to’ save my phone battery for emergencies. I’m a knob. After several laps around the train station, becoming increasingly aware that 5-inch heels don’t make stairs or escalators easy, I found the right exit. I also ‘found’ a probable homeless man, who offered me the use of his cigarette lighter. Then he asked me if I had a boyfriend. Of COURSE I do. Would I go out with him if I didn’t have a boyfriend? Well, I couldn’t answer that, because I DO have a boyfriend, but thank you very much for the light. Yes, I have a spare cigarette for you. Yes, enjoy your evening too, I’m going to meet some friends now. At that point, I pulled a ballpoint pen out of my bag, and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans, in case of needing to stab sex fiends/muggers in the eye. Off I strutted, in my impractical heels, with my imaginary boyfriend. In the wrong direction.

I don’t know Leeds at all. I had a vague idea of where I should be going, but I have no sense of direction, and irrational anxiety about being mugged for my phone, so I’d wandered about, trying not to look lost for a while before I caved in, and tried to get Google maps to work. I CAN read a map, but reading a map in stilettos, on cobbles, while you’re having a massive panic about being mugged for your phone is a whole different kettle of fish. I’d saved the photos of the maps on my phone in case I didn’t have enough signal for Google maps, but a static map is only any use if you know which direction you’re walking in, and I didn’t. I managed to get the voice-directions working on Google maps, but couldn’t really hear it over the traffic, cursing myself for not bringing the earphones, but aware that wearing earphones, on your own, in the dark, makes you more vulnerable to muggers, sex-pests, and people who might cut your head off and put it in a bin. I then had an irrational burst of anger at the bits of the instructions I could hear “Walk east...” Which way is east? The sun had already set, so I couldn’t walk away from west to ascertain east. There’s a compass feature on the phone, but that would mean coming out of the ‘map’ app. I had many strange and interesting things in my bag, but not a compass, I only went to Brownies twice, remember?

I found the bar about half an hour before the thing was scheduled to start, and ‘stuck’. I accidentally tweeted a photo of the outside of the bar on the wrong account, in a desperate “Somebody come out and get me?” panic, and then deleted the bloody thing, because I like my quiet Twitter as it is. I didn’t know if I ‘could’ go into the bar before the thing was due to start, so I stood outside, like an absolute pillock, absolutely resolute that I WASN’T going into another bar to sit on my own with a drink, in case someone mistook me for a prostitute. So I stood on a street corner. Like a prostitute.

I eventually made my stupid legs take me inside the bar, and realised I didn’t ‘know’ anyone in there. Well, of course I didn’t not everyone has their face as their avi, do they, and the ‘function’ was in a back area. 17 million people pushed in front of me at the bar, and, when I eventually was served, I didn’t count the change from my allocated £20 for drinks, but it looked like a glass of wine was over £6. (I’m SO Yorkshire-stingy.) Shitsticks, not counting fire-escapes, that I’d have no idea where they came out, there was only one entrance/exit, which disturbed my not-claustrophobia PTSD ‘knowing where the exits are’ thing, and would have led to a panic-loop if I didn’t MOVE.

I moved. I found the event organiser, and introduced myself with “See my comfort zone? It’s all the way back over there.” I babble when I’m anxious, and I was very anxious. I wrote my @-name on a sticky label, and wondered where to put it, not wanting to draw attention to my ‘impressive rack’, but the alternative being my forehead. Then I stood in a corner, like a 6ft ginger spider. Some boys rescued me, and I didn’t realise I was talking to a man I’d followed, and interacted with for years, because I didn’t want to stare at his sticky-label. I drank my wine slowly, because I was only ‘allowing’ myself two drinks, then had a minor panic about ‘spacing’ alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones, and wetting myself on the train home, which was lovely. 

Other than Venus’ funeral, that was the first Tweet-up thing I’d been to. Contrary to popular misconception, we didn’t all stand about staring at our phones, but it was still weird. Not in a bad way, in an “Oh, I don’t think I follow you, do you know so-and-so?” way. Pointless fact about me: when placed in a situation where I feel uncomfortable, my default-setting is to make it MORE uncomfortable, which makes the initial uncomfortable-thing more bearable. I used to think that was the alcohol-impulsivity, that would often see me presenting strangers with teaspoons, sweets, or all manner of jumble from my bag, but it’s not, it’s just ‘me’. By the time the only other person there I’d ever met arrived, and asked me to hold her cut-out-ferrets-on-a-stick, and her drink, I’d already produced a neon pink bra from my bag, and was wondering who to give the vibrating cock-ring to. You can’t take me anywhere.

I drifted about, giving people bouncy-balls, and yo-yos, and spinning tops, and mini-slinkies from my bag and pockets, I let lots of complete strangers put their fingers in my craniotomy scar, and I was generally a bit of an arse. Not a complete arse, because I couldn’t risk missing the train home, and ending up sleeping on someone else’s hotel floor. I sleepwalk, and talk in my sleep, and I hadn’t brought a change of pants. I only hugged a handful of people, and I didn’t lick anyone, if I am in any of the pictures, it will only be in the background. I didn’t fall over, and, when I showed one of my tattoos to someone, I did it out of the way, around a corner.

I knew I couldn’t walk back to the train station, so one of my babysitters took me outside, and managed to phone me a taxi. I missed the train I was supposed to catch, and had to get the next one. A gaggle of drunks boarded, and one sat next to me, it was bad enough when she started to do the drunk-wobble-falling asleep thing, it was hideous when she vomited into the aisle, but at least it didn’t splash on me. I’ve been in that state myself, and I don’t ever want to be that drunk again. Her ‘friends’ weren’t interested, which shook me up, and made me wonder where I’d be able to put my phone if I had to perform CPR if she asphyxiated on the vomit, after they just hauled her into the toilet and left her there. 

Missing the ‘right’ train also meant I missed the last bus from the city centre, and had to phone a taxi. Warpy-wrap-around-head phoned one from a company that DBS checks their drivers, and text-messages you the registration plate for the car. I had my ballpoint pen in my hand, and was ready to send the text-message out onto Twitter if the driver started going the wrong way. He didn’t, but that’s a worrying train of thought to have when you’re on your own, and going back to an empty house. I managed to cobble together enough money for the fare and a small tip, so had stayed within-budget for the night. I tweeted a photo, to let people know I was home safe, and I’ll periodically flick onto Twitter today, to check if I’m in the background of any photos scratching that spot inside my left nostril. 

I did it. There was no real point to doing it, other than to prove I could. I have no unexplained bruises, I won’t be the subject of any gossip, and I managed to get myself there and back without incident. There’s something to be said for going out and not getting drunk.

[anneedmonds]

Life Update: Hanging On

Crikey. If there’s anyone else out there who’s been trying and failing to do the whole work-life-balance thing over the summer holidays, can they please make themselves known? That’s right, hold your hands up high: I need to do a full and accurate head count here. The more people the merrier. Anything to make me feel less bad about myself – less like a neurotic malfunctioning android. And more….well. More like a  human.

Yes, I’ve reached Basil Fawlty levels of stress and irritation and I’m not afraid to admit it – I feel as though I’m hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails and that normal life, if anything could be called normal these days, will be forever beyond my grasp. The many, many months of the “new routine” (ie trying to keep work going whilst also becoming a very shit version of a primary school and pre-school) have taken their toll.

I adore my kids. Obviously. They’re funny, they’re cute, they’re close enough in age that they play together for hours, they get excited about tiny things like going to a cafe or getting one of those extortionate magazines from the supermarket, the ones with useless plastic tat sellotaped to the front and a pull-out page of crap stickers. They give the best cuddles, the slimiest kisses that you have to surreptitiously wipe away when they’ve finished, they put their shoes on the wrong feet and they have tiny high voices that make them sound like they’ve been playing with helium balloons.

I love them unconditionally, which isn’t anything remarkable for a parent, but I feel it has to be said nevertheless, because it’s always a touchy subject when you talk about having to work or simply needing time to yourself. Never mind the fact that bills need to be paid, or that you need a little respite just to be. In this case both, although it’s definitely the work element for me that tends to send my stress levels soaring.

The worrying thing about how difficult it is to work through the summer holidays is this: the summer holidays happen every year! Six weeks! At least with lockdown you could console yourself that they were unprecedented times, everyone was in the same boat: there’s nothing unprecedented about the six week holidays. Suddenly you’re plunged from a relatively acceptable work-life situation (six-ish hours a day, five days a week in which to work or catch up on sleep or go to the toilet unaccompanied) into what can only be described as a childcare abyss. It’s like falling off the edge of a life cliff that you simply weren’t prepared for!

One week you’re calmly typing away on your laptop, getting on with your work from about ten until two, maybe with a cup of tea or even a lunchtime sandwich, radio playing downstairs and perhaps a little twenty minute power nap at your desk to look forward to; the next you can’t even find your laptop because the Barbies are using it as their drive-thru cinema.

Trying to work from home is the absolute singular worst thing you can do with children around. They sense it when you try to work. They sniff it out. You can be at your computer watching stupid kitten videos and they won’t disturb you for a full forty minutes, but open a desperately important Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (still can’t read or edit them and I’ve been trying since 1994) and they will be mountain-climbing your back within twenty-five seconds.

“Can I do some typing?”

“What does this button do?”

“Why doesn’t the screen work when I press it?”

“Play Optimus Prime!”

If you’re working from home then good luck trying to switch into professional-person work-mode when a small person is having a poo in the bathroom next door to your office. If you’re trying to conduct a Zoom meeting then pat yourself on the back if you manage to get through it without having to mute yourself to shout at one or more kids to stop them from eating plaster of Paris or snipping at the leaves of the houseplants with the fabric scissors. (“It’s a haircut.”)

The only way I can work from home is to shut off all noise and distraction, which means either wearing earplugs and locking the door in the daytime (and obviously having someone to supervise the kids!) or shifting the working day into the evening and forgoing any sort of relaxation or Netflix binge.

But none of this is particularly a bad thing – at least not for me. I have to say (ooh, big reveal) that the last few months have taught me to do something I’ve never managed to do successfully before, and that is to completely detach myself from work for longish periods of time. Consecutive days. A whole week, even. It’s a revelation. You immerse yourself fully into domestic life and suddenly everything slows down – you still fill the day with chores and looking after other people, but you’re just a bit more present when you do it. Rather than frantically going from task to task and seeing the day as some sort of giant, tickable to-do list, you just sort of deal with things as they are presented to you. When I try to do too much at once, every element of the day becomes a challenge – breakfast, getting dressed, answering the doorbell, but when I allow myself to just chill out (which doesn’t come naturally, I’ll admit) everything is suddenly a little bit easier. And a bit more fun.

So to cut a long story short, I’ve been really trying hard to be less rigid about what I need to get done on the work front. Or actually, that’s not accurate: I’ve been trying hard to be less rigid about when I get things done. This, I think, is going to have to be my mantra each and every school holiday from now on; go easy, set the bar reasonably low and be flexible with timings.

And with that pearl of wisdom to myself, I’m going to bed. It’s a quarter to eleven and I’ve already had my sleepy tea, which I have to say doesn’t do my writing any favours. It makes me quite soporific and my brain goes spongey and refuses to think of anything witty to say. I also know that the kids will be up at 6am – although they have started to do this amazing thing where they sneak off and play together for an hour before they wake us up. How incredible is that? The only thing is that they quite like to do a jumping game for the aforementioned hour and the room is directly above us, so the light in the ceiling shakes and all the glass bits jangle and it sounds like the entire roof is going to fall down on our heads.

Nothing like being woken up by what you initially think might be a serious earthquake. Keeps you on your toes. Who needs relaxation anyway?

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

The post Life Update: Hanging On appeared first on A Model Recommends.

©2020 " Life Update: Hanging On published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley

[toselfimprovementtips-blog]

15 Tricks to Improve Your Memory

Remembering is one significant skill in any individual that needs to be always honed and sharpened. With a good memory, you are always able to remember things like dates, names, currency figures and many other finer details. However, a poor remembrance habit is normally embarrassing especially in public and can lead to situations like low self-esteem. Therefore, you always need to look for ways in which you can enhance your memory so that you can avoid such life-dreaded circumstances. On that note, in the following discussion, we are going to look at 15 tricks to improve your memory.

1. Eat Right and Be Healthy

Our modern lifestyle has a few adverse effects on the power of our memories. From food habits to enormous stress and avoiding proper rest - all these play detrimental roles to improving memory. This is the reason it is of paramount importance to lead a healthy life with quality food habits.

It's on record that eating foods and supplements that contain flavoring such as berries, grapes, tea leaves, hops, cocoa beans and vitamin D greatly boosts the neurons in the brain in the sense that they are able to form fresh memories. Additionally, these foods normally associate with enzymes and proteins that are significant for the memory and, even more importantly, help in the formation of new neurons and the crucially sufficient flow of oxygen into the brain. The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of vitamin D helps to maintain healthy brain functions.

So, if you are keen to develop your memory, you must restrain yourself from junk foods and alcohol. Moreover, just like the body, the brain also needs sound rest to work at its utmost potential. As far as foods are concerned, you need to include fruits and green vegetables in your daily diet that supply the needed antioxidants to protect the brain cells from getting damaged.

2. Avoid Sugar

Sweet dishes are common weakness for many and if you are one of them, you may find it sad to know that intaking refined sugar more than the recommended limit can be harmful for your memory. Let's find out how sugar can affect the memory.

There is a significant amount of data to indicate that a high intake of refined sugar into the body of a human being has a detrimental effect on the brain and memory health. Many people consume in a day about double the amount of sugar calories recommended by the medical experts. Refined sugar leads to difficulties in forming new memories, depression, and a reduction in the brain functions. Refined sugar minimizes the production of Brain-Derived Neurotic Factor (BDNF) which is a very crucial element when it comes to learning and creating new memories.

3. Drink Caffeine

Caffeine has a positive effect on the memory relative to taking other substances. However, this must be done carefully to avoid habitual consumption. After consuming coffee, several cognitive tasks are carried out and in the final analyses drinking caffeine enhances the memory of a human being.

Adding to that, green tea also has a very positive role to play when it comes to improving the memory. It contains Polyphemus, a powerful antioxidant that prevents free radicals from damaging the brain cells. Moreover, regular consumption of green tea is the best guide to improve memory and mental alertness and it can significantly slow the brain-aging process.

4. Exercise Your Brain

Appropriate brain exercises can help keeping your brain active through ages. Just like the muscles of the body, our brain, too, needs food and exercise of its own type. There are certain exercises that help in evolving the functionality of the brain and the power of memory. You can consider them as these are the best memory improving tricks. Moreover, if you keep on practicing these exercises over a long period of time, it's going to bring some miraculous results for you.

There are several ways in which you can exercise your brain to improve it. Some of these include reading as much as you can, increasing your vocabulary, learning new languages, writing something, post problem solving and turning off the television. With these activities you can exercise your brain and, more importantly, expand your memory, thus improving it.

5. Exercise Daily

It is said that "to achieve something you never had, you must do something you never did".

In today's busy world health is the most neglected aspect of our lives whereas, it should be the other way around! We must manage at least half an hour everyday to devote to our health. Daily exercise has multiple physical and mental benefits to offer and undoubtedly, when it's about improving the memory power, one can receive splendid results through this process.

Daily exercise can immensely enhance your brain and thinking skills. This is achieved through indirect and direct means. Through direct means, it acts on the body by stimulating physiological changes such as inflammation and reductions in insulin resistance as well as encouraging production of growth factors. It directly works on your brain by improving your sleep and mood. Through this, it's crystal-clear that consistent daily exercise is a great recipe for the improvement of your memory.

6. No Multitasking

It sounds great to have a title of "multitasking" but, do you want to know that what type of impact it has on your brain? While we are discussing about how to improve the brain's memory, you may get disappointed to know that multitasking is not helpful in improving your brain's memory.

Many times, multitasking has been termed as a counterproductive and exhaustive process. An average and perfectly working mind prefers shifting from one task to another instead of multitasking. Therefore, the exhaustive nature of multitasking, does not in anyway, improve the nature of your memory.

Various studies have already suggested that it not just causes a lack of concentration, it might slow down the work process and cause errors! If you are trying to complete 3-4 tasks by a certain point of time, you better put attention on the individual tasks because it will take much less time to complete than all the tasks being performed together. This is why it is one of the best tips to improving memory.

7. Sleep Well

After a long day of work, our body needs sound sleep at night and this is also important to stabilize the functionality of the brain. The brain performs thousands of activities throughout the day and a good sleep of 6-8 hours stabilizes the brain and puts it into the best working condition the next morning. On the contrary, not having proper sleep in the night will make you drowsy for the entire day and you will not be able to concentrate on anything.

A good amount and quality of sleep activates brain changes aiding in memory improvement. When you are asleep brain tasks can be executed accurately and quickly and with less anxiety and pressure. This is basically a recipe for boosting the capacity of your memory.

A study conducted among st children suggests that when kids take naps between learning lessons and testing them in real life, they are very likely to perform better. It helps the process of brain growth (called plasticity) that controls the brain's capacity to control behavior of learning and memory. So, sleeping well is very much associated with the brain's memory improvement.

8. Reduce Stress and Laugh More

Stress and depression can actually take a toll on one's ability to remember things. However, by engaging yourself in laughter, you reduce the levels of your stress and improve the capabilities of your memory. In a nutshell, laughter brings down the cortisol stress hormone.

Sometimes, we put so much stress on ourselves without even realizing the bad impact that it is having on our health and brain. It puts way more pressure on the heart and when it comes to the brain, you experience a lack in its memory power. Laughter is indeed a great medicine to get rid of this situation! With the help of emotional responses, only a few parts of the brain are activated but, with laughter, all the regions of the brain are engaged. This is the reason, it is helpful to spend time with light-heated people and laugh everyday as it is one of the proven tricks to boost your memory.

9. Chew Gum

Chewing gum helps to remember more. People who chew gum test both the short-term and long-term memory. These gum-chewers are deemed to produce higher scores than those who do not chew gum when it comes to remembering things. It is difficult to explain the scientific reasons behind this but, over time, it has shown some effective results for people who are keen to know "how can I improve my memory?"

10. Learn a New Skill

They say keeping your brain busy with learning new things has a good impact on improving your memories. This is also one of the best memory improvement tricks that everyone must apply. The question here is - does age have anything to do with this process. It is seen that keeping your brain busy with purposeful and meaningful activities improves the neurological system and this is how to boost your memory. Science has already proved that this has no relevance with age.

It's always been true that if you want to enhance your brain you must work on it. Learning a new skill that you were initially unfamiliar with has a significant effect on improving your brain. People who always engage their brains in learning new things always demonstrate improved memory function. As a person gets older, by trying new things, he/she ensures a healthy mind.

11. Try Mnemonic Devices

In our everyday life, we come across a lot of things and we can't really keep all of them in our memory. Probably, we don't want to store all of them in the memory. But, what about those incidents, names, events, dates that you want to keep in your memory but face challenges? You can simply try Mnemonic devices as one of the best tricks to boost your memory.

Mnemonic devices are basically memory techniques that aid the brain to encode better, and importantly, remember some fine, but important details. An example of a mnemonic device is the famous '30 days hath September' rhyme which is very significant in helping so many of us to remember how many days in each calendar month. Sometimes, without mnemonic devices, it's often harder to remember some things. Regarding new studies, these techniques highly improve the state of your memory.

There are many other similar devices that you can be applied for this purpose but, the best thing you can do is to innovate some own techniques to improve memory. It works excellent!

12. Association

Every piece of information that we think of is always linked to another piece in one way or another. Our memory basically works by association. For better remembrance, we always try to create an association between pieces of information. When two bits of information are related to each other, we have a greater capability to be creative in linking the two and, as a result this enhances our memories.

13. Rhymes

This may sound like an old-school method, but sometimes, forming rhymes really help memorizing things much better. Our brain is not configured to remember multiple things at the same time but, forming those details in a rhyme structure is helpful to keep them in mind and apply at the right time. This is the best guide to improve memory. After practicing it for a particular time, it becomes very exciting for anyone to remember things in the form of rhymes.

It's always easier to forget a list of six items in a shopping list than it is to forget the lyrics of a song you have not heard for ages. Basically, our brains easily remember things by rhymes since they are linked to each other. Therefore, a person who knows a poem can more easily remember it than remembering random words. This is an excellent way in which you can enhance your brains since you can rhyme things making them exciting and memorable.

14. Flash Cards

Flashcards are commonly used in schools and institutions to help learn school subject material. With flashcards, you are able to remember things like vocabulary and questions about a subject. Flashcards require you to take time so that you can make the studies more useful and memorizing more effective. Through the use of flashcards, you can greatly boost your memory.

15. Organize Your Life

This is an amazing fact to know that the first thing you do after lifting yourself up from the bed to the last thing you do before going to sleep has an impact on our memory. The more organized your life is, the better your memory will become. Your regular activities, food habits and even your sleeping habits - all these have significant impact on the memory.