#occasionally unemployed girlfriend | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nukenai · 2 months

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Extremely stressed about having all my money stolen so I'm in a bad mood.

Not to be gossipy or anything (irl friends follow me here lol), but. This is a big vent post.

Over the con weekend I learned that my unemployed-since-January roommate has been lying to people about why he has no job (says he quit because he didn't Feel Like working there - he was actually fired in January for being bad at his job. Nothing to be ashamed of but very weird to lie about), and has been flirty and physically affectionate with female friends (who are engaged), who keep having to enforce boundaries, while not telling them that he is in a long term relationship. Huh. Interesting. He's also been telling lies about me (saying I don't do enough shit around the house, and other stuff like complaining when I'm fixing things in the house and he is trying to sleep in the middle of the afternoon) while I have to twist his arm to get him to pay fucking rent and his half of the bills. I get the money eventually but it's always "after my next UIB check" - except he also went to the fucking convention over the weekend, which usually is not something you do if you're struggling to pay bills? I continually tell him that if he's having issues paying for stuff, to LET ME KNOW and we can work things out. But it's always "i'm good because of my UIB checks" until I actually need the money. I've offered to let him do stuff like yardwork to take off of rent, but he doesn't ever want to because of allergies and it's hot out and his back hurts. Funny shit to say to a chronically ill person handling everything herself.

Also had additional confirmation that when Zero died, he was making it entirely about himself to his friends, acting like Zero was his dog as well and he felt like he "had everything taken from him" when he died. He apparently also refers to Sammie as "OUR" dog, when he is MY fucking dog (he sees him twice a week max for like 5 minutes and has nothing to do with his care, aside from very occasionally letting him out when I'm out of the house - like once every 3 months), and is also referring to my cat Stella as if she is HIS cat. He hasn't even cleaned the litter box once. For the record - I do not expect anyone else to take care of my animals, because they are mine. I take care of them myself. But I do not appreciate people hanging out with my animals all day and pretending they belong to them when I am the one caring for and paying for them.

Technically, most of this is hearsay, but from his pattern of behaviors (constantly talking shit about friends' significant others, every single ex girlfriend being a "crazy abusive bitch", acting like putting on a purchased costume of a licensed character and being in the local paper makes him a Famous Cosplayer, working for a local advertiser paper and saying he's a journalist when he has terrible spelling and grammar, etc), it's not at all surprising and I 100% believe it. This friend of his I was talking to, the engaged person he was being flirty with all weekend, became a friend of mine before she moved away. There was an instance last year where he wanted her to go to a convention with him, and she said she could not go because she had a school thing. He decided to stalk her social medias while he was at the con, and saw she was "just with friends", and messaged me to let me know that she was "a fucking liar" and gave me all the details. I told him to fuck off because he started implying I needed to stop talking to/being friends with her, and it was weird of him to "check up" on her for not wanting to go to a fucking convention. I'd bet money he was weirdly pressuring her to go when they had known each other for like 2 weeks and she felt like she had to make up an excuse. This woman has been nothing but incredibly kind to me, and I will never forget the look on her face yesterday when I said "[roommate]'s girlfriend" and her eyes went wide and she said, "Oh, he's seeing someone? He hasn't mentioned that." He's been seeing her since like last November and has been in consistent contact with this friend.

Since I don't have any Actual Physical Facts to confirm my suspicions of what's going on, I can really only wait for like one more annoying inconvenience before doing anything. I feel like he doesn't say anything to my face because he knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on. He complains about having to empty the fucking dishwasher a couple times a week. That was the only chore I asked him to cover consistently while not having a job, besides taking out the weekly garbage. He's also constantly leaving the kitchen a mess, and apparently lying to his friends that I'M the one leaving the kitchen a mess!

I don't want to kick him out. We've been friends for over a decade. I know deep down he is a good guy. But he's a 32 year old adult man acting like an absolute fucking child because he's never had a responsibility in his life. I don't take his word for anything anymore and write off every single complaint he has about other people. In the past month he has - multiple times - tried to mansplain animal care and behavior to me, like implying I was very wrong to think Oersted could have gotten into the basement when he escaped, because "snakes don't like being on the ground"??????????

He has a lot of growing up to do and I refuse to be taken advantage of anymore. His rent money is extremely helpful to me, but he's in for a rude fucking awakening if he thinks I'm such a huge pain in the ass for giving him one chore that interrupts his 17 daily hours of Nintendo 64 and Youtube time. I haven't told him but he has a deadline for getting his shit together; I'm dealing with a lot of legal shit with the house right now and if he doesn't shape up by the time it's all settled, he's getting an ultimatum. I've been too lenient with him for too long because I like to be good to my friends who I fucking care about.

Can you imagine if I had kicked him out back in May or whenever it was, when I heard him loudly talking on the phone with his girlfriend about how I have "too much shit", I don't clean the house enough, and he wishes I would spend time doing housework instead of "going to Pokemon Go raids or whatever" after working 40 hours a week? While he was unemployed and couldn't even pick up a fucking vacuum?

He apologized for that, but literally only because he got caught. The fucking nerve of mediocre men. I am extremely stressed due to having all my money stolen and he can only give me $200 of rent. But he was able to go to a convention just fine.

At the convention, I was told, surprise! He was going to come home in my car when he went down with someone else. And he had like 4 fucking suitcases worth of stuff, when I was already driving our other friend home. Usually, not a huge deal. On top of everything else? Holy shit.

I consider myself a very patient, understanding, and kind person, but god's love has fucking limits. And I don't fucking like liars.

#probably will delete this later. just need to scream.

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toadkisses · 2 years

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alistairs years in review continued

when we left off, i had quit my job because it sucked and i was having some real mental health struggles because of it. at this point in the story, i am still unemployed and living at home. spoiler alert, at the time of writing this, i am ALSO still unemployed and living at home! but a lot happened in between these two unemployment bits so let us continue.

in may of 2021, my irl friends and i got together for the first time since february of 2020. i was glad to see them of course, and especially glad to see rose, since i had been wanting to talk to her.

we had all regularly voice called on discord, often for multiple hours at a time at least 3 nights a week. and during that time, i became more and more aware of some romantic tension between rose and myself.

rose and i met in high school, when i was a junior and she was a senior. well, we actually met two years prior, in an art class. but that only sort of counts because we were both too shy to talk to each other even though we were the only ones at our table. this is somewhat prophetic now that i think about it.

anyway! rose and i had mutual friends, so when we ate together at lunch or hung out before the first bell, so off the bat i just assumed that meant we were friends too, haha. rose remembers liking the frog i would bring with me to school every day. we did wind up getting along well, and stayed in touch even after i wound up being moved to homeschooling like i did every school year, and after she graduated.

in 2019, we watched lord of the rings along with another friend. and it made me start thinking about being transmasc, and made her start thinking that maybe she liked men, and wasnt a lesbian. we held each other and cried while frodo and sam lay there on mount doom and our third friend asked what was happening to the hobbits.

unbeknownst to me, rose was planning on telling me that she had feelings for me in january of 2020, but some personal events made it so we didn’t actually see each other irl around then. and then of course, we didn’t see each other for another year because of the pandemic! my poor girlfriend. 😭

from my point of view, rose was my best friend who i thought was really pretty and funny and warm, and who i felt extra tenderly towards. she was the stable presence i really needed during the aforementioned irl events. sometimes i would accidentally think about us having sex, but then i’d shove it out of my head because it seemed a little rude to imagine that with my best friend! and if i felt a little jealous and left out when she’d mention dating someone, then that just must be because i had never dated anyone myself and felt left out!

i very occasionally had crushes on people in middle and high school, but never pursued them. not to get too deep into my backstory, but i am not familiar with being somebody’s favorite person or first choice, even among friends. im familiar with being sexually harassed, but not with someone being actually romantically interested in me with good intentions. all this to explain that i had no experience acting on romantic feelings or even how to really identify them.

but after hundreds of hours of voice calls, i did start to have an inkling that rose might have feelings for me. stuff like how she has never been a fan of dogs, but she mentioned how she’d be willing to get along with them if the person she was with liked them, etc. and it made want to figure out how i felt about her.

i have journal entries from this time that i’ve shown her where i talk about how i didn’t know how to tell what i was feeling, but that i was concerned about if we dated, what if i would be using her to figure myself out? which concerned me because she’s my very dear precious friend and i would never want to hurt her if i figured out “no actually im not interested in women, thanks for helping me learn that!”

i knew i needed to talk to her though when, as a group, we all compared star sign compatibility. and of course someone made the joke that whoever had the best compatibility had to start dating! and wouldn’t you know, rose and i had a STELLAR (haha) chart!

like im not super into astrology but check it. anyway i could tell that she was a little flustered so i knew i needed to talk to her because i didnt want her to be anxious.

and about a week later, we all had our vaccinations and some of us finally met up irl. i have very detailed journal entries about this day because i knew it would be something i’d want to have later in my life. i sat next to rose at the coffee shop we went to, was very pleased that she rode next to me in my car, we broke off from the group and walked around the craft store together. and i was glad when she asked me to drop her off last, since i knew we could talk then.

and once everyone else had been ferried home, i parked in her driveway and she told me she had an ulterior motive for asking to be dropped off last, and she wanted to talk to me! perfect as i’d been hoping for the same thing.

and she mentioned lord of the rings and the revelations we had at the time, and that she had feelings for me, but it’s okay if i don’t return them. and i got emotional because “i don’t know how i feel but i wish i did so i could be with you”. of course, i now know that wishing you knew what romantic feelings were so you could date someone is an indication of romantic feelings!

she was really really kind and patient and understanding. and she said that if i wound up not feeling the same, it would be okay, because she loves me and loves being my friend. which of course made me feel really loved and i suggested we try kissing and see how it feels! and we did like five quick little pecks and laughed and i was still like “i don’t want to take advantage of you” and she encouraged me to think a little and we could see each other the following day and visit.

we talked more on voice chat with everyone later that night and were all giddy, i asked a different friend for advice in private. and the next day i went over to her house where it was just the two of us alone in the house, to watch one of our mutual favorite movies, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which in retrospect is a VERY romantic movie for people who have not confirmed that they’re dating yet.

our expectations going into this were very different though, quite humorously. rose was preoccupied with making sure i didn’t feel like she was expecting me to have sex with her, because she’d never want to pressure me or make me uncomfortable. i went over thinking that the plan was that we would have sex, and was happy about this proposed activity.

and after the movie we had a little conversation about what we were comfortable with, and did wind up being intimate. which honest to god still makes me a little teary because it was my first time and it was such a gift to feel so safe and happy and cared for, i love this woman so much.

and after that was when we decided yes, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. 💖

we were very sappy and unbearable! and still are, i suppose. :-) spoilers, but the 12 months that follow are ones that i could very well call the worst year of my life; except i cant, because they also had some of the best parts of my life so far because of her. 💖💖💖

it’s been really fun because i will think like “i love her so much i can’t possibly love her more”, and then time will pass and our relationship evolves more and i find that i CAN love her even more.

i have an amy lowell poem i really like that expresses the change from like exciting but still nervous to familiar but no less adoring

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, / And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness. / Now you are like morning bread, / Smooth and pleasant. / I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, / But I am completely nourished.

we’ve gone on road trips and adventures together near and far. sharing things with her is the biggest joy in my life. my world is bigger with her in it. for the first time i am excited about what the future holds because i know she will be a part of it. she supports me when i need her and encourages me to support myself at the same time. i love making food or tea for her, or finding little gifts that i hope will delight her. i love when she falls asleep in my arms. i love doing her hair while we watch something and comment our thoughts and opinions back and forth. she makes me riotously happy.

i have not mentioned anything publicly, and i still don’t intend to give any details, but nine months ago we lost someone who was very, very, very dear to us in a very upsetting way. earth shattering is the closest words can come to describing it. in my very worst times i have wondered how grief like this is survivable, both literally and figuratively. but even when i was at the lowest i have ever been, when i felt like all i’ve ever done is tread water and am ready to just slip under; she’s been a rock on a sandbar. i can rest with her, i can find strength to keep swimming. i adore her.

she’s my favorite person.

next installment will include my hrt diaries and dreadful medical saga!

#rose gave me the okay to post btw she reviewed it :3 #alistair talking post

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hackett-out · 2 years

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@missn11 said: Now I gotta know why XD

so the novel book club chose instead of like actual genre horror or something halloween themed was Layla by Colleen Hoover:

When Leeds meets Layla, he’s convinced he’ll spend the rest of his life with her―until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla’s behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that’s just one of many inexplicable occurrences.

Feeling distant from Layla, Leeds soon finds solace in Willow―another guest of the B&B with whom he forms a connection through their shared concerns. As his curiosity for Willow grows, his decision to help her find answers puts him in direct conflict with Layla’s well-being. Leeds soon realizes he has to make a choice because he can’t help both of them. But if he makes the wrong choice, it could be detrimental for all of them.

Now here’s the thing - this novel is told entire from Leeds’ perspective. Keep that in mind as I go through the plot. Serious trigger warning for gaslighting, abuse, manipulation, attempted murder and non-consensual body swapping.

Essentially, Leeds is the bassist of a ‘bland country band’ he hates being in bc I guess he hates the music he plays and feels like he has more to offer musically (even though he’s too chicken shit to publish his own stuff) that falls in love with Layla, a recently unemployed Quirky Girl he meets at a wedding. After sleeping together for the first time, she mentions wanting tacos really bad and he just can’t believe it, her mind is so different from other peoples!! because she swaps from topic to topic at the drop of a hat. babe, she probably just has adhd

Somehow this walking jar of mayonnaise had a fanclub run by a woman who eventually became his girlfriend, though he didn’t know about the club and broke off their casual relationship. She was obsessive, stalkery, and eventually shoots both Layla and Leeds, though they both survive - this ex, Sable, doesn’t because Leeds shoots her right after the attack in a rage. Very dear sister

Layla isn’t the same after the attack (because?? obviously???) and Leeds feels immense guilt over the fact that she’s not the same carefree girl she used to be, so he arranges a vacation to the place they met in order to reconnect, and it seems to be going okay until Leeds discovers that the b&b has a ghost (who doesn’t remember her past life, of course) and is occasionally possessing Layla’s body in order to enjoy the sensation of eating food again. Leeds is not nearly as pissed off about a spirit taking control of his girlfriend as he should be, and is way more fascinated by the ghost. Lbr thank god the ghost was feminine bc otherwise there wouldn’t be a story

ANYWAY Leeds starts encouraging this ghost that’s named herself Willow to possess his girlfriend’s body regularly without her knowledge or consent because he’s fascinated by her. Despite the toll it takes on his girlfriend, he gaslights her regularly into believing her exhaustion, confusion and sickness is because of the head injury she received months before. He doesn’t tell her about Willow, and what starts off as a little interest turns into a full blown obsession. As time passes he only wants to spend time with Willow, at one point considering drugging Layla with her own sleeping pills so that the ghost can possess her body quicker.

Leeds cares so little about his girlfriend that the further you get in the book, the more he contemplating how he can manipulate their vacation to be longer so he can stay with Willow. He’s fully in love with the ghost at this point, even when it’s revealed that the ghost might be his stalkery ex, Sable. Despite the giant red flags about the entire situation, Leeds decides - after already packing up Layla to leave the b&b - that he should stay and help Willow because she’s lonely :((((

So instead of trying to explain anything to Layla, he keeps her tied up and gagged inside the house while Willow occasionally possesses her, the two of them waiting for a ‘detective’ (aka a guy on the internet who knows Paranormal Stuff) to come and figure out what the fuck is going on. It turns out of course that when Sable shot Layla, the latter was dead for a short while and Sable’s soul entered Layla’s body while Layla roamed free as a spirit. You see? It’s all fine now! because the bitchy version of Layla that Leeds was falling out of love with was actually his ex, and the ghost was Layla all along!!

The detective has no answers about body swapping back, however, so Layla decides that if dying got them into this mess, dying would get them out of it! So they arrange for Leeds to drown her just long enough for her to need resuscitation so Layla can shove Sable out of her body and repossess it herself. Layla leaves her own body long enough for Sable to repossess it just as Leeds pushes her under, and we, as the reader, have to read about this man drowning a woman that was barely a character in the first place.

And somehow, this works, and despite all of the abuse Layla literally watched Leeds commit against ‘her’ the two of them have a happy ending together again.

I hated every second of this book. I hated the fact that Layla/Sable was treated as undesirable after being attacked by someone she didn’t know and almost dying, then apparently suffering memory loss and ptsd because of it. I hate that the abusive tactics Leeds used with Layla/Sable was considered justified because it ‘wasn’t REALLY Layla’. I hate that Sable wasn’t even a character, just another doll to move around to make the plot go, and even when she was inhabiting Layla’s body, her only character traits were vain and horny, bc evil I guess. As if being a stalker and obsessive wasn’t enough. I’m mad that this was written from Leeds perspective because the actual horror inherent in your partner becoming cold, distant and abusive - then realizing the twist later - would’ve been FUCKING FASCINATING! But we had to read it from his perspective as he committed atrocities against his own girlfriend because he ‘cared about her’

anyway this book was fucking terrible, -10/5

#amara reads things #amara.txt

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openingpandorasbox1 · 3 months

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AUTUMN Part 1 (2)

Even though I kept a distance from Autumns “love life”, she seemed to tangle me up in it occasionally. Autumn used chat rooms often. One day whilst I was visiting her at her dad’s house I found out by pure accident that she had been sending a photograph of me to men on the internet who she had been talking to online. She was telling them that the girl in the photo (which was me) was actually her. She told me and didn’t see it as a problem. She told me that she liked that photo of me and that’s why she was using it. It wasn’t the best photo of me, it was a photo of me in Townsville with dark red hair. I usually ignored what Autumn did when it came to men but this time it involved me so it wasn’t something I could ignore. I told her I didn’t want her using my photo anymore and she said, “What’s the fuss? They don’t know who you are.” I told her to stop using my photo, even though I took the photo home she had already scanned it and it was saved on her computer so I don’t know if she actually stopped using it or not. I made her promise me not to use it again and she said, “Yeah okay” casually and I took her word for it and that was the end of that. I was concerned about it, I mean; I don’t know who she is conversing with or where they lived. This could have potentially put my safety and security in danger. I’m assuming she didn’t meet these men in real life considering we both look completely different.

It wasn’t long after this that she fell in love with this man on the internet who was from Finland and I knew she wasn’t sending him photos of me because she told me she was sending him pictures of this actress who starred in one of those daytime soapies, Young and the Restless or Bold and the Beautiful (one of those). She told him that this actress was actually her. Whenever we went shopping together Autumn would be in the Newsagent buying all the daytime soapie magazines. I didn’t know who this actress was because I don’t watch daytime soapies. I don’t know why this guy in Finland believed that this actress was actually Autumn but in his defence the actress wasn’t famous and I don’t believe he would be sitting around watching daytime soapies all day (he should have been suspicious though). The problem arose that Autumn and this man from Finland were in love and they wanted to meet. There is no way Autumn looked anything like this actress and regardless of what kind of makeover she did, she still wouldn’t look like her. Autumn was in love with him so she told him the truth and sent him a real photo of herself. She didn’t hear from him again. I believe after this she was more honest with men and started to use her own photo.

Autumn and I both struggled to get work over the years but in comparison to others. We did work over the years but there were times we would find ourselves unemployed between jobs we worked in. Once when Autumn was out of work she had to do this WFTD scheme where she met this man Ryan who had a girlfriend, lived with his gf and had many children together. When Autumn and Ryan finished WFTD they remained in contact over the internet. Ryan started working at Australia’s Wonderland at the same time when Melissa (a friend) was working there. One day Melissa rang me and told me that she has seen Autumn standing outside her work every afternoon on the days Ryan worked. I told Melissa that Autumn loved amusement parks and I assumed that Autumn was going in there, Melissa said, “No she never goes inside. She takes the bus to the [theme park name] and waits outside for him” and she said, “He doesn’t even like her.” Autumn had showed me a photo of him and I used to see him on Facebook sometimes. Ryan at first would converse with Autumn online but I noticed he kind of disappeared and stopped communicating with her online.

When that theme park closed down, Ryan gained employment inside our local Penrith RSL club. I assumed that Autumn would have known about this because she would often tell us that they were both in love with each other. One night I was at the club for dinner with my mother and family members and mum told me that there was a man who worked there who kept looking at me. I looked up and noticed it was Ryan. He may have recognized me from my correspondence with Autumn online. I later told Autumn that I saw Ryan working at the RSL club and I assumed she had already known he was working there, but she didn’t. When she found out he was working there she started going to the club and quickly learned his work roster. She usually went by herself and never invited Claire or myself to go with her. This scenario continued for months. Autumn would frequently text us from the club when she was there. Once I was at the RSL club with friends including Autumn, Ryan was working that night and she waved to him but he didn’t go over to her and never spoke to her. This Ryan and Autumn relationship was a mystery to myself and my friends. One day Autumn and I were at the shops and Ryan walked past with his wife and some kids and even though he was near us and most likely saw her, he didn’t acknowledge Autumn at all and walked straight pass her. Autumn grabbed my arm and pointed to his girlfriend (or wife, or whatever she was) and said to me, “Look that is Ryan’s wife, isn’t she fat and ugly? Why would he want to be with her?”. That was the only time I got to see Ryan’s girlfriend in person, however, Autumn did show me his girlfriend’s Facebook account once when I was with her.

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rockinlibrarian · 1 year

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For the fic writer ask game: 7, 18, 22!

Thank you for the asks! If you would like to ask from this ask game, the list is here! If you would like to ask from the music related ask game I reblogged yesterday, you can do that one, too!

So #7: How many ideas for fics do you have right now?

That's a tricky question, because I'm not sure where I draw the line between "idea" and "work in progress," because when I get an idea I tend to jot down a bit of it to get a feel for it, and then I never quite give up on it, so it's KIND OF in progress, but it's more just, there? Okay, I count seven such docs in my fic Scrivener file, "WIP"s that aren't actually "IP." (For comparison's sake, there's an additional 3 in Scrivener I can more confidently call WIPs and not just ideas, even though I haven't been working on them within the past couple weeks, and 1 that is the WIP I'm currently focusing my energies on). And I can think of three more off the top of my head that aren't in Scrivener. And I do occasionally think of one that was me jumping off with a suggestion somebody made on Tumblr once but I have NOT started in any way because I don't have the slightest idea where to begin-- it's action-based, and action isn't really my forte. But who knows, I do still think about it sometimes.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

Huh. I don't know. Here's a whole bunch:

--Kerry suspected the reason her brother and Oliver Bird had hit it off so well was less because they were two mutant freaks with dreams of mutant liberation and more because they’d finally found, in each other, someone they didn’t have to dumb down their vocabularies for.

--“He gets to communicate with Alpha Centauri and I’m not even allowed to join the wrestling team?!”

--“I, on the other hand, have lots of common interests.” That didn’t sound as impressive as he’d meant it to.

--“We were just assaulted by your ex-girlfriend!” “Note the use of the prefix ‘ex-’! She’s very old news and will not be bothering anyone ever again. Whereas my current girlfriend will be delighted to bother us all for the rest of our lives, which is why I am here.” He paused as if to reset the mood for the grand announcement he’d intended. “It is my great pleasure to invite you all to my wedding.”

--My prior hist’ry with this one’s (forgive me) discommodius (this one is much better in context, but trust me, it's probably one of my favorite lines I've ever written EVER

--“I’ve been studying this thing for years, in person, and still can’t make heads or tails. Then I read your papers and you’re there writing it intimate love poetry from across the country.”

--“You don’t have lungs!” Oliver looked triumphant. “You must have been having a psychosomatic reaction to the impression of a smoky room which I was projecting into your mind! Write that down.”

--"I’m not the one who can’t appreciate the magnitude of scientific achievement we have here!”

--“Frank’s DEAD!” “So I heard. There’s also this obituary hanging on the wall.” “You didn’t tell me Frank was DEAD.” “He wasn’t dead last time.”

--“Please don’t swear in front of the Aslan-in-a-Bucket,” a crisp American voice interrupted from somewhere above him. “He may be just an artificial construct programmed to behave as the real Aslan, but it still feels irreverent.”

--“Pfft,” Billy said. “Who doesn’t know a ruddy Aslan-in-a-Bucket when they see one; what are they teaching you kids these days?”

--"I’m here to save you from your reckless stupidity.” “Good! I must admit my stupidity is so profound that I haven’t the slightest idea what you just said.”

Yes, that makes FOUR taken from "The Pipeweed Mafia Epic," a work that is pretty much just a long private joke between me and my friend who is the inspiration for the character speaking with the "crisp American voice" above, but I don't care, they're MY favorite lines, dangit

--“And who might you be, Mademoiselle?” “Imminently unemployed,” Sir Reginald snapped.

--“Is it possible, or am I imagining it, that we are watching an eldritch Horror play the glockenspiel?” “Ben has named her Jennifer, and she’s becoming quite adept.”

Okay, I'll shut up now. There's also a line I want to include from the Firefly fic I started writing a decade ago and still haven't finished, but I can't find it at the moment. It still makes me laugh whenever I think of it though.

This is how I count to "one."

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

It depends on the fic. For many, especially those glorified ideas, I probably don't. But others, short fiction being what it is, come in one lump and that includes the ending. The ending was actually the second thing I wrote for my current most IP WIP, "The Magic Man of Oz," and the first was the opening, because my whole drive for taking that on was to get to experiment with Oliver being the narrator, and the beginning and ending would be where his voice would be the strongest. Otherwise, I'm kind of notoriously bad at writing endings, even if I do know what HAPPENS last-- it's hard to actually end it!

#ask game #fanfic #In which I am too amused with my own writing

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carlfranzen · 2 years

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Brain Freeze

“Fuckin A,” Declan said aloud to no one from where he lay, sprawled out on the old sleeper couch, the one he’d slept on every night for the past two months—still in seating mode, never unfolded out into a bed.

He reached out his arm and fumbled for his phone on the clear plexiglass coffee table to check the time. But when he finally found his squishy, fleshy, device amidst the empty, torn bag of cheddar popcorn, the overturned can of San Pellegrino tangerine flavored sparkling water, and the frosted white glass bubbler with mildly used, amber water inside, he was reminded again that it was all out of battery.

Worse still, he was still just too lazy to get up and walk the four steps over to the counter and the charging pad he shared with Sheila

“Share,” was a bit of a generous word, a stretch, if Declan was being honest. His college ex-girlfriend, the woman who’d taken his virginity and later became his good friend after he came out, was allowing him to crash with her after Declan’s breakup with Sean, his boyfriend of half a decade.

Sean hadn’t kicked Declan out of the apartment they’d been cohabitating before (well, more Sean’s apartment) but he didn’t try to stop Declan from leaving, either. Declan knew he probably should’ve tried to stay for at least a little while after their breakup for the cost savings alone—as awkward as it would have been, living with a fresh ex. But, he couldn’t bring himself to. And less so because of the constant reminder it would have been of their love lost, turned sour and spoiled, and more because of the shame he felt in the overarching circumstance that had weighed on their relationship for its duration and finally broken it for good: the money problem.

As director of an environmental justice nonprofit, Sean made far more than Declan’s shitty photo editor jobs ever paid. More importantly, at least in Sean’s eyes, it was far steadier.

Declan had been laid off three times in a row from jobs during the course of their relationship, which to Sean suggested some deficiency in Declan’s character, a lack of hard work and discipline, of responsibility, of maturity and adulthood. And Sean, with all his careerism and organization and savvy internal politics gamesmanship and regularly updated calendar and zeroed out inbox, was not interested in dating a child, as he reminded Declan with growing frequency until their break up.

“The math doesn’t lie, Dec,” Sean would say, the cool, smooth patience on the surface of his voice masking a dagger sharp accusatory tone underneath, one Declan felt emerging more pointedly with every progressive conversation about his career. “Three jobs in a row, three different places, the only common denominator is you. You need to do some serious self-reflection and questioning, ask yourself how you keep ending up back here.”

Declan usually scoffed at Sean’s accusation and would move quickly to defend himself from his boyfriend’s critique. “That’s totally unfair! They were three completely different situations! My entire team was laid off this time, and with Orbit News, the whole fucking company shut down! There was nothing I could do. No amount of kissing ass or playing politics or working harder or anything could have saved me.”

And Sean would just sigh and glance down a moment and look disappointed, the state he constantly returned to with Declan, and shrug and flash his stupid, beautiful, heart melting smile and say “okay, I hear you. And I’m here to help to the extent that I can.” But his eyes would remain sad and forlorn.

Finally, six months after Declan’s last layoff, when he still unemployed except for the occasional cat sitting and line holding gig, they had a version of that conversation, that argument, to call it what it was, for the last time. Declan wasn’t pleased with how he’d blown up and stormed out, but what he’d said at the time was true: he wasn’t sure he could ever be the person Sean wanted or expected of him, let alone who Sean deserved, and he was done trying to fit his square peg personality into Sean’s round hole of a life.

Sean was better at holding down a job than Declan, but so what? Sean had clearly found something that suited him well, good for him. Declan viewed that outcome as much to do with luck and circumstance as it was to his ex-boyfriend's obvious talents and abilities, his merits.

Declan, by contrast, had endured something of a rocky career journey. He’d fallen in love with photography and old cameras as a teenager in Los Angeles, and gone across the country to New York University for photojournalism — a compromise between his true aspirations to pursue art photography and his dad’s admonition about higher education entirely.

“You’re going to go pay some asshole to teach you obsolete bullshit when you could learn everything for free, on your own, online?” his dad would say. “You think these fucking profs know anything about the real world? They’ve been living in ivory towers for decades, they can’t teach ya shit, Declan. I’m telling you, you want a degree? You don’t need it, look at me!”

“You got a degree,” Declan noted in one such conversation. “College is where you met mom.”

“Yeah, but that doesn't change that it was still a huge waste of money,” His dad answered, eyes wide and wild. “Did it teach me anything about vlogging or building an audience or monetizing my subscribers? Hell no, my man! I started figuring shit out on my own, didn’t ask anyone for permission or help. That’s how I built this life we all enjoy now, just trying shit out myself and seeing what worked.”

That part was true, as far as Declan could tell, though he privately quibbled with the word “enjoy.” Declan certainly did not enjoy his dad’s obnoxious and constant filming of all their private domestic dramas and staged misadventures, his narration and editorializing of what Declan and his older brother Moe and their mom felt and thought—even filming Declan’s coming out speech—all pandering to the audience of millions of fucking random, sycophantic losers around the world who tuned in to his YouTube channel.

And Declan was pretty damn sure Moe and his mom didn’t enjoy it after a while either, which is why his mom divorced their dad when they were still teenagers and gone and joined a fucking wellness cult out in the Valley, while his brother had married some hippie hiker chick and moved with her out to the wilderness in bum-fuck West Virginia and dropped off the grid.

Declan too, couldn't wait to flee his father's influence. He went to NYU and planned to never look back, only to discover that photojournalism wasn’t for him. He had no real interest in documenting atrocities nor injecting himself in flashpoints of conflict, domestic or abroad. No, he preferred capturing the magic of the mundane and peaceful, the quiet moments and laughter and life around the city; the poetry of inanimate objects like leaves and trash; the eternally moving sight of buildings bathed orange in the rays of sunset; which it unfortunately seemed was not an interest shared by enough people with enough money to be an actual paying job.

It didn’t help that when he was going to school in the 2040s, particle cameras started becoming cheaper and way more popular. Tiny solar-powered devices the size of a pea or smaller with adhesive backing, people could and did stick them to pretty much anything, from their clothing to buildings and vehicles. These cameras had AI that automatically detected and captured interesting and beautifully composed scenes. You could review all the photos in an app, pick your favorites, and publish them to whatever social media network or website or e-commerce platform of your choosing. The photos they took tended to be pretty generic and uninspired in their framing, Declan thought, especially since they were usually captured from one constant angle. But they were good enough for most audiences, and affordable enough that you could buy a whole bunch, stick them in multiple locations, and link them together in the app, giving basically anyone who desired a small army of competent photographers for a fraction of the price of one human like him.

As a result, human composed photography quickly became a profession restricted to a very small group of already famous photographers who’d shot models and celebrities for fashion spreads and movie premieres, red carpet shit; and seedy paparazzos; and the extreme war photographers and adventurers, which he was not by constitution; and the independently wealthy —which he supposed he sort of qualified as if you counted his dad’s social media influencer fortune, but which he assiduously avoided bumming off of because it would entail the unpleasantness of speaking to his father, of sublimating himself before him, of admitting tacitly or expressly that his dad had in some ways been right all along—his college tuition had been a waste and not led him to a promising career of any sort.

No, instead Declan found himself taking on the photographer-adjacent role of “photo editor” at news publications and companies that needed inoffensive photos to market their shit, basically sifting through all the photos taken by particle cams and a select fortunate few human photogs, curating a selection and touching them up, and sending them over to an uninspired, fast-talking, dimwitted mid-level executive whose title was like, VP of sales or marketing or some droll shit, and letting them pick the final images to be posted alongside an article or in an advertisement or wherever (ultimately, it didn’t matter where they ended up, as it was typically for something short lived and forgettable, and Declan himself could barely remember after a day’s work just what the hell he had been doing — his mind simply went blank, onto autopilot.)

As a younger single man in New York, he’d still made time to take his own photos on the side of his day job, and even tried to sell prints as a street vendor in Washington Square Park and Union Square and Tompkins Square— all the fucking squares. In winter, he'd set up a small collection of photos in the long, poorly lit, dirty hallways of the subway. But no matter the season, Declan never made enough to pay off his costs of printing and materials.

After a few years of failing to commercialize his art, the art he actually enjoyed making and seeing in the world, Declan gradually ceased. He sold off most of his cameras and lighting and other equipment and resigned himself to his fate as a lowly white-collar cog.

Declan's camera equipment fetched a good chunk of cash, but he burned through it all within a few months after his last layoff, and was now living on unemployment plus the income from sporadic gig work—barely enough to keep him fed.

He definitely couldn’t contribute much to rent or any other bills, and understood why Sean had gotten fed up. Maybe Declan really was a failure as a human being, truly a misfit, belonging nowhere and to no one, and maybe all of his attempts to succeed to the contrary had been futile and fatally doomed from the start, fighting the inevitable entropy that had now led him to his only logical end point, into a rut.

More than a rut. A ditch on the side of the highway full of trash. The bottom of a long abandoned, dried out well. A fucking canyon. A bottomless pit. Alone and unloved. Useless. Worthless.

He sighed and thought about closing his eyes, but was conscious of the hot, sweaty night air and his gnawing cotton mouth. He desperately needed a drink. All Sheila had left in the fridge was beer, which he wasn’t interested in, and tap water, which couldn’t possibly hydrate his bone dry tongue and throat.

He needed to go to the bodega down the street, which was open 24 hours and had a plethora of drinks behind a wall of transparent cooler doors. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted, but something neon colored, sugary sweet, ice cold.

He winced as the craving brought back his most painfully embarrassing childhood memory: the "I'm soooo cold!" viral meme he'd accidentally become, immortalized for eternity online thanks to his dad.

Back when Declan was six years old, his father took him to Target on one of many shopping trips to buy the most outrageous, ridiculous holiday decor they could find. His dad would bring it all back to their home in Yorba Linda and "surprise" the rest of their family, filming their astonished and perturbed reactions.

On this particular trip, Declan was hungry or thirsty or maybe just whiny. When his eyes landed on the Icee drink machines — two transparent tubs filled with churning blue and red slushy liquid, glistening seductively under the bright store lighting — it was game over. He knew he had to have one.

His dad acquiesced, but of course, filmed the entire process on his smartphone, starting with Declan’s excitement, his literal jumping up and down, his chanting of “Ice-EE, Ice-EE!” and finally, Declan triumphantly slurping the drink through a thick red straw, only to go catatonic with shock, his face clenching so tight his features appeared to collapse into a pit of gnarled flesh in the center, as he wailed in his prepubescent voice: “It’s sooooooo cooooold!”

His dad chuckled warmly in response. “Aww, you got a little brain freeze there, bud?”

And yeah, if had been just a little brain freeze, it would have been a cute but inconsequential, forgettable childhood moment. But by recording and posting the moment for posterity on his YouTube channel, Declan’s father made him into a pop culture artifact: "Icee Kid," a.k.a. "I'm Soo Cold" Kid.

Millions of people reshared the video, adding their own reactions, their laughing faces and large watery eye emoji, their commentary of “lol” and “awww” and “I can’t stop watching this,” and “poor kid," using it to joke about and illustrate mildly comedic situations in their own lives —“stepping onto my bathroom tile floor with bare feet,” "when she says she thinks we should see other people" “me at my gyno appointment.”

All the major news networks caught onto it, and Declan and his family did some live interviews on Good Morning America and other shitty daytime broadcast TV shows. He remembered the audience screaming outside the studio windows, mostly older women, his mom’s age, and their kids, too. He wasn’t sure why they weren’t in school. The way the moms looked at him wearing shirts with his face and his words, their eyes alight with intense fixation, a kind of lust, almost. It made him feel creeped out, observed too closely and yet missed entirely for who he really was, and felt like that was how it must feel to be an animal in an enclosure at the zoo.

Declan could admit that he did enjoy a brief surge in popularity at his elementary school as a result of being the "I'm Soo Cold" Kid, with the cool kids even asking him to appear in their vlogs, for once. But his aura of celebrity quickly wore off, and within a few months it had been mostly forgotten or turned against him, used to bully and taunt him anew with calls of “cold cock,” and “Icee bitch" echoing at him down the halls.

His dad thought the whole thing was awesome and hilarious of course. And why wouldn’t he? The clip paid for at least a few years of their family’s income after his dad started selling cheap memorabilia — shirts, hoodies, hats and mugs, even shovels and ice scrapers — with a still frame from the video showing Declan’s silly expression and the words “I’m sooooo cooold!” printed on them.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Declan was sure his dad still made some small amount of money from these merch sales and the ad impressions on the video. It had crossed Declan’s mind to confront his father and demand a cut of the profits — after all, it was Declan’s likeness, Declan’s public humiliation that had birthed the meme, and without his express, informed, adult consent. If anything, his dad should be paying him to go to therapy to recover from the violation. But again, the idea of conversing with his father in any capacity seemed like more trouble than it was worth. So Declan just kept his resentment simmering deep inside him and scraped by on his own.

Declan thought about all this as he wandered downstairs and outside of Sheila's apartment. The street was quieter and more desolate than he expected. Sheila lived down south in one of the few remaining quasi-industrial areas of Brooklyn. There were a few cafes and laundromats and even a small art gallery nearby, but it was hardly a top destination for anyone in the city, let alone anyone young and trendy and zwarmy.

The air still felt thick and soupy with humidity. As Declan approached the first intersection, he heard a whining, whirring, screaming machine sound that seemed to tigger a similar acceleration of his heart. As he stepped out into the road, was nearly run down by a hover bike zipping by.

Fucking dick, Declan thought to himself, once he quieted his pulsating chest. They’d only been around a few years now, but the damn hoverbikes were an ever growing scourge to those navigating the city without them. Too loud, too fast, too often ridden by young hotheads with poor self control. He wasn’t a fan of most state sponsored bans on anything, but he could make an exception for these fucking flying menaces.

He could see the bodega now up ahead of him at the end of the next block, a glowing white light beckoning him like a beacon. As he moved toward it, he heard a crackle of radio static and a voice blaring above him. He glanced up to his left and saw an open window on the top story of an apartment building, the room lit yellow from within.

There was no visible figure up there, or even a silhouette, just a gauzy curtain undulating casually in the gentle breeze. The radio voice was saying something about how particle physicists at CERN were racing to help the astronauts stranded around Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, repair their spacecraft’s damaged particle engine so they could return home, even as their supplies dwindled.

Declan had been following the suspenseful, real-life saga of the first human crewed mission to the outer reaches of the solar system about as closely as everyone had around the world — which was to say, sporadically — or maybe even a little closer because Sheila worked as a producer at at WNYC, the New York public radio station, which had been broadcasting regular updates about it (perhaps even the very one he’d heard in the window). The mission had launched to great fanfare a few years ago and was supposed to be an incredible milestone — humanity’s first trip to the place likeliest to support alien life — until their spacecraft had reached the extraterrestrial moon, only to be inundated by dangerous radiation and debris.

Oh, and one of the astronauts had gone mad and suggested they were under attack by aliens capable of manipulating spacetime, though this had been dismissed by his colleagues and experts as a mental illness episode triggered by the stress of the mission. Now it had become a rescue drama and all of Earth was pulling for the stranded crew. Whatever, it was tragic and thrilling, but ultimately unimportant to Declan — he wished them well, but had enough to worry about in his own sad, lonely existence in this solar system.

Declan kept moving. He was almost there now, could see the curiously foggy, backlit windows of the bodega; the neon dotted signs for “OPEN” and “BEER” blinking in his vision; he could almost taste the cool, sweet, blue liquid running down his throat, moisturizing his parchment-dry mouth like rain in the desert.

But a dark shape rounded the corner just as he was within reach of the door handle, forcing him to awkwardly side step them. At first they were just a silhouette, a blob outlined by the white of the bodega light. Then as they continued on, their details resolved. They were shorter than him, an elder femme, ancient actually, her yellow-brown skin thin and wrinkly, as ashen as his mouth felt. She wore a bonnet on her head and walked with a herky herky mechanical gait, reminding him of a video game character glitching and stuttering.

Declan was confused and alarmed by this motion at first, until he noticed the strips of metal encasing her arms and legs, the tiny gears at her joints spinning rapidly as she walked away from him obliviously. An exoskeleton, one of the new affordable ones the pharmacies had started carrying in the last few years, lightweight robotic suits that helped those with physical impediments walk and carry heavier objects than they’d otherwise be able to.

Declan imagined unprompted that this dark skinned femme was a longtime resident of the neighborhood, one who’d managed to hang on as it has gentrified and more white faces like his and Sheila’s had shown up. She probably resented their asses, hated seeing them moving in, making her neighborhood more expensive and bougie and alien to her. His kind was like an invasive species, crowding out the previous inhabitants and ultimately destroying the ecosystem. He felt a sudden and surprisingly deep pang of guilt at this — more than a pang, a geyser, like a reservoir had been tapped. But also, a sense of injustice, of being mislabeled. He was almost certainly poorer and worse off than her. He wished he could tell her this, somehow, or even just share the feeling telepathically: I’m not a threat. I’m not like them. I’m like you. I hate them too.

Declan sighed and pulled open the door to the bodega, analog bells jangling and announcing his arrival. As he did, he felt an immediate blast of ice cold air — the AC was cranked up far higher than he’d ever felt it in there — and a motion swishing down by his legs. He looked down and saw clouds of cold vapor swirling out the door, and then Scraps, the old white and grey tabby cat that called the bodega home, sprinting outside faster than Declan thought he was capable of moving. It seemed as though he were racing toward something, perhaps some rat he’d spotted, or possibly fleeing from something or someone inside the store.

Declan discovered the apparent source of Scraps’s anxiety not long after. For as he moved into the bodega, he saw something glowing bright white and blue through the white fog, behind the tall shelves crowded with large bags of chips, cereal, cookies, canned food, chocolate bars, crackers, and other assorted dry goods. The light appeared to be coming from the very center of the store, not the beverage coolers alongside the left wall, which were flickering oddly and dimly in comparison. The light seemed to be pulsating rhythmically, brightening and darkening in perfectly timed intervals, like the beating of some mighty, luminous heart. He heard it too, a whisper at first that rose in volume and intensity into a rushing, a howling, a wailing, like a cold wind blowing forlornly across a desolate tundra. The vapor clouds swirled around the store furiously. The air grew even colder on his skin, raising his arm hairs and sending an electric prickle up and down his limbs.

His desperate thirst momentarily forgotten, Declan moved closer to the light, pulled by an irresistible fascination and terror.

The floor beneath his feet was coated with a layer of ice, shiny and clouded with curling lines of frost, like a hundred miniature whirlpools frozen stiff.

And there up at the counter was the cashier, one of the older Arab guys who ran the bodega. At least, Declan thought they were Arab, he honestly wasn’t sure and felt horrible about never asking or talking to the dude about his ancestry, because now he’d never be able to: the guy was frozen, too. Standing still, eyes wide and petrified, his skin tinged blue and glossy from the frost encasing it. His face bore a look caught between disinterest and surprise. He wasn’t screaming or anything, his mouth was only opened slightly, but it was still an unusual sight for a man who usually communicated through terse, grimaces and grunts. The expression was more haunting than if he had been openly horrified, Declan thought. It was the look of someone seeing but failing to comprehend until it was too late.

And to the cashier’s left was the sight itself. It was the same height and rough shape as a person, but in place of eyes and mouth and skin, any discernible features, it looked as though it were made of a moving ice storm. Vortices of the most striking blue in every shade mixed and congealed and pulled apart, revealing lines of aching white and silver and indigo, all backlit by some bright inner light. It looked like something out of a fantasy novel, but it was real, and so cold that it had frozen everything nearby it, all the bodega shelves and floor and ceiling, now barely visible within chunks of ice; so cold that the air around it had condensed into rolling clouds of fog.

The loud wailing, windy sound grew quiet. The fog continued to rise and curl around the sight, expanding to fill the room. And as the light inside the sight grew brighter, Declan felt his skin chill and rapidly harden solid, the blood in his veins congeal and his heartbeat still. He was struck by a final regret, that he had not charged and brought his phone nor kept and carried his camera equipment, as he would have loved to take a picture of this unbelievable, impossible scene. It would have made for a beautiful photo.

Images: 1. Midjourney; 2. Starry AI; 3. DALL-E 2; 4. Stable Diffusion

#science fiction #fiction #speculative fiction #specfic #scifi #short stories #short story #generative ai #generative art #midjourney #starry ai #stable diffusion

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meatmechapilot · 2 years

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Rivaeri FallFest 2022 Day 8/AU August 2022 Day 9 Prompt - Coffee Shop

We met in a coffee shop, but neither of us work there. Chapter one Eren has been studying for exams at a quaint little local cafe, Paradise Coffee, since he started college, which would for about a year now. He loved the quiet atmosphere of the cafe and that he could find a tiny table at a corner and study all day, and nobody would bother him about taking space for potential customers. He of course, always makes sure buy one drink and pastry every time he comes into study to support the business. Another perk of the cafe are the owner's cats. The cats seem to have taken a liking to him and always cuddle up to him when he comes in to study. Eren started to bring in cat toys and treats with him whenever he visits the cafe. Lately, for the past few months, Eren's been doing anything but studying. He's been preoccupied with someone he mentally dubbed "The Hot Guy". The man seems to be in his late 20s or early 30s and is always dressed impeccably in a sharp suit. He would come in, order his customary drink, which happen to be tea, and find a seat. After sitting down, he would pull out his laptop and work for hours. Eren wondered just what kind of person "The Hot Guy" was. Once he was doing group study with his friends and "The Hot Guy" came in. After being teased by his friends about his crush, they speculated on his job. Jean said he must be a businessman, while Armin proposed that he's probably a lawyer. Either way, they agree that judging by his wardrobe and expensive laptop, he must be loaded. Eren sometimes wonders if "The Hot Guy" is married or otherwise unavailable, but he always thinks this is a futile endeavor. Either way, there's no way an accomplished guy which his life together would go for a college student like him. --- Levi has been working at a quaint little local cafe for the past few months. It's been a tough couple of years for him. He's been on top of the world in his 20s, way head on his life goals with an amazing career and a supportive boyfriend/later fiancé. However, ever since he turned 30, his luck turned. He's fiancé cheated on him, and they had a nasty breakup. The company he worked for got bought out by a giant corporation and the work culture went to shit. His colleagues begun to get laid of left and right until finally he was on the chopping block. While searching for a new job, Levi came upon an epiphany: he had been doing what society expects of him since he was a child, he did everything right and still got screwed in the end, so why should he still bother with the rat race? He decided that he's going to start pursuing his passion instead. He's always wanted to be a writer, so why not pursue his passion? If all else fails, he can always start freelancing in his field. He found it rather ironic that he's current lifestyle is being funded by the money he would have spent on his now canceled wedding. Levi looked up from his laptop discretely at the cute college student that was his reason for keeping coming back to the cafe despite not being impressed their tea offerings. The boy usually studies alone, but occasionally, he studies with two other guys. Must be for exams, Levi thought, but thanks to the group study sessions, Levi found out the boy's name is Eren. Right now, Eren is attempting to study, but is really playing with the owner's cats instead. He noticed that whenever Eren comes in the cafe, he always has some sort of treat for the kitties. Levi wondered if Eren has a girlfriend or boyfriend, then decided that it's pointless to think about. Either way, there's no way a cute college student with his life ahead of him would go for an unemployed 30 something guy like him.

Read Chapter Two Here

#AU August 2022 #Rivaereri Fallfest 2022

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thewhiteroseofvermilion · 3 years

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Moving Forward

Hello everyone. It’s been a long time since I’ve last spoken to you all, and an even longer time since I’ve last updated this story. Over the months and years, my absence has saddened, frustrated, and even angered many of you. Despite my own valid feelings of how—to put it bluntly—I don’t owe any of you anything as this is something I do for free and in my own free time, I still recognize how it must feel for you all to see something you enjoy so much slowly lose momentum and eventually grind to a halt. Furthermore, my habit of making enthusiastic yet empty statements in between didn’t help either.

As such, a proper and honest explanation is due, as anything less would be unkind. This will be lengthy, but please bear with me.

For the past four years, it’s been increasingly difficult to find the time, energy, and motivation for me to properly sit down and write. Seemingly gone are the early days of this story’s life when I was able to publish a new chapter every month or so, or even every two weeks when I was at the top of my game in terms of activeness. Even though I had an immense workload due to being a double major in college, leading me to adopt the best work ethic I’ve ever had, I still led a sheltered lifestyle where I didn’t have to worry about the many looming, inevitable adult responsibilities that were ahead of me.

Those tranquil years of course came to an end when I graduated, and I soon felt immense pressure to shift my attention to finding work, living independently, and working on things that would further my career. While I received support as an aspiring writer from the majority of my family, those being my mother and sister, the both of them commented more frequently as time passed by that my “fanfiction” wasn’t something that I should be spending so much time on anymore. After all, it’s not like I could sell the work as my own, and the fact that despite fanfiction absolutely being a valid artform, it wasn’t something that the world of professional employers cared about.

Nonetheless, when I did eventually find work as a film freelancer, I still tried to persevere and write on the side. My goal back then was to work in film in order to sustain my pursuit in writing. Film was something I went to school for, greatly enjoyed, and even saw a possible future career for myself in, but it was the writing aspect of it that I was truly after, that being primarily screenwriting.

After two years of living at home, I felt the need to try and live independently as I outgrew my tiny room and my mom started dating a man that I didn’t particularly like. I knew it wasn’t financially smart of me to do so when my mom allowed me to live with her rent-free. But at the time I thought that it would help me to become more mature and productive, as I would have to force myself to work in order to put a roof over my head and food on the table—as opposed to living a sheltered life at home where everything was taken care of for me. Essentially, I was longing for the lifestyle I had in college, thinking that once I returned to it, I would be able to reacquire that once incredible work ethic I had.

So, I became roommates with a friend from college and together we rented a townhouse together. Rent wasn’t terribly expensive, but it wasn’t cheap either. Regardless, I was able to make ends meet. My greatest challenge however, was to live up to my family’s spoken and unspoken expectations. On one hand, my mother was sweet and understanding, naturally giving me her full support. My father, on the other, always thought that it’d be better for me to pursue something safer and more lucrative, and to not risk being a starving artist. But the one I had to prove myself the most to was my older sister, who was wildly more successful than I was—financially and professionally. My pay compared to hers was like a drop in a bucket, and I felt both indirect and direct pressure from her to be more “professional” like her. Therefore, I threw myself into my work, which is when things slowly began to go downhill.

As a film freelancer, my work hours usually averaged between 10-12 hours a day, and with my work taking me all over my home state of Maryland and even into neighboring Washington DC and Virginia, my commute time to and from work ranged anywhere from an additional 1-3 hours. It became incredibly common for me to wake up for work anywhere between 3-6 AM and not get home until 8-10 PM.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I slowly slipped into a routine where when I did have the “time” to write, I had zero energy or motivation as my work was so taxing. I reached the point where I had to drink two energy drinks with 300mg of caffeine to get myself to and from work. I saw less and less of my roommate and friends. I spent an alarming amount of money and gained weight from ordering take-out so often because I hadn’t the energy to cook for myself when I got home late from work. There would even be days when I fell into what felt like comas, sleeping up to two days straight at one point. My physical, mental, and emotional health was in serious decline. And yet I didn’t see it that way, as I had become obsessed with trying to prove to my family, my sister in particular, that I wasn’t a failure and that my pursuit of writing wasn’t a hopeless one.

During the first month of COVID-19′s outbreak last year, I finally had a much-needed vacation. This was undoubtedly the best time for me to have returned to writing—but I didn’t. At this point, so much time had passed since my last proper writing session that the few times I did try to write, I found myself completely unable to write anything. I was so out of practice and so out of touch with what I had written. This honestly frightened me, and I soon began to doubt if I could ever be able continue the story with the same quality that so many readers fell in love with. Regrettably, I fled from this revelation long enough for a full month to pass by, and I soon found myself busy with yet another distraction: unemployment.

I was out of work for about 4.5 months, from the middle of March to the beginning of August. During this time, I had to rely on state unemployment, which earned me great scorn from my older sister. Our relationship had always been uneven since we were kids, but it was becoming increasingly toxic as of late since our college years. I felt so ashamed to tell her how much money I made in a year from my job as a film freelancer, and how I barely managed to move to a better position after four years of work. Riddled with guilt and disappointment in myself, when work became readily available again in August, I frantically threw myself back in harder than ever before. In the past where I had turned down the occasional job to give myself some time to relax or in order to make it to a social outing with friends, I now accepted every job thrown my way, only declining those that would make me double-book myself. I earned a lot of money during those months as a result, and I was so happy to finally distance myself from the stigma of being “unemployed.” However, I once again failed to see that I was yet again sliding back into the lifestyle that had been slowly poisoning me for the past two years.

After essentially working non-stop from August to March, my body, mind, and soul soon returned right back to the brink of collapse. It wasn’t until then at my lowest point when I finally realized how I initially went from working to sustain myself in order to write, to not writing at all and only working to sustain myself to work even more. It was truly scary to see myself fall victim to a brutal cycle of unfulfilling work that could have trapped me for years to come if I hadn’t broken free first. That’s when I realized that my lifestyle was personally unsustainable, and that something had to change.

Henceforth, I’ve made the difficult decisions to both transition out of film freelancing and to soon return home to live with my father. At the end of April, the homeowner of the townhouse my roommate and I had been living in for close to three years gave us our 30-days-notice to vacate, as they no longer wished to rent but to sell the property. As my roommate had been planning on finding a place of his own with his girlfriend for quite some time, we split amicably at the end of last month in May and I’ve since moved into a temporary apartment with a friend who has traveled back to Maryland for seasonal work.

Regarding the change in my career, I’ve been looking into applying for writing positions for something that I’ve grown to enjoy over the past few years, which is to write reviews for media such as film, anime, and videogames. This of course is not what I truly want to do in life, but I think that because it actually involves writing, it would be both good practice in terms of practicing my writing and experience in terms of resume-building. Furthermore, a stable “9-5″ job as such would be good for me, I think, as it would introduce some desperately needed structure back into my life. Being a freelancer was definitely fun as I had the power to choose my own schedule, but it unfortunately fostered a lot of laziness and procrastination when I wasn’t completely burnt out.

I’ve shared with you all this information, a great deal of it being very personal, in the hopes that it helps you better understand who I am as a person and what I’ve been going through these past four years.

I understand that my word may be difficult to trust due to my history, but I sincerely wish to let you all know from the bottom of my heart that I do plan on continuing writing The White Rose of Vermilion until it’s completed. My fears and insecurities may have alienated me from that promise, but not once did I ever entertain the idea of fully dropping the story. And I promise you, I never will. It most likely will not further my career in any way, bring any revenue in, and will continue to consume a great deal of my precious free time—yet I still choose to pursue continuing it because I can’t see a future where I don’t finish it.

It is after all my most cherished project; the reason that I was able to truly find my calling as an aspiring writer, its success also ultimately being the proof to my mother that I had some skill as a budding writer, who then gave me her full blessings to pursue it as a career. But most important of all is that it’s the reason why I was able to experience first-hand one of the most important and beautiful discoveries in my entire life. That being the incredible phenomenon of how art is like a beacon—its bright light is powerful enough to reach out and inspire others to create art of their own. From Monty Oum to Nancy Phetchareune to myself, I was blessed enough to see readers create wonderful fanart to show me or tell me in a review that reading my story had inspired them to create something of their own.

I am officially leaving behind my prolonged hiatus and returning to working on The White Rose of Vermilion. While I am extremely hesitant to even estimate when the next chapter will be published, please know that I am genuinely trying to leave behind my habits of old and returning to a more consistent schedule.

The White Rose of Vermilion will return in:

Arc II, Chapter Twenty-Seven: Stranger in the Night

#TWRoV #The White Rose of Vermilion

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supercantaloupe · 4 years

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@dimension20alphabet prompt fill #6: Flowers

title: A Little Fall of Rain - campaign: Fantasy High: Sophomore Year - 1882 words - set post-fysy

Aelwyn learns a new way to grow.

The window of the wizards’ tower overlooks the backyard of Mordred Manor.

There’s a small graveyard plot, its grass overgrown. There are a few trees, as old and strange and history-filled as the rest of the house. There’s a hill that gently slopes down to the edge of the woods, a short walk into which you’ll reach a creek. But you can’t see that from the window; just the hill and the trees and the messy grass.

Aelwyn spends a lot of her time looking at that yard, when she’s home-where-it-does-not-feel-like-home. Plain and drab and sad. Her sister and her friends go to school and the adults go to work, but Aelwyn spends most days home alone. She can hardly stand to look at that empty yard for another second.

So, she decides she won’t.

She goes to the library one day, and spends hours browsing the shelves and reading, taking notes. She comes home in the evening when the library closes with a stack full of books, and stays up late reading them in bed while her sister trances in the bunk below. The next day she scours the garage and basement and storage of the manor for tools, anything she can scrounge together. She gathers them out back in preparation, leaning them against the wall outside. The next day, she goes out again, borrowing cash from Jawbone to get the items she’s missing. She thinks about stopping by the mall, too, for the right outfit, but Sandra Lynn catches on and gives her an old pair of boots and overalls for free.

The next day, she gets up early, and gets to work.

The first few days are nothing but digging, ripping up grass and sprinkling fertilizer and turning the soil until there are new, neatly defined beds outlining the house and the yard, blank canvases.

She loses two days to a spring thunderstorm, one raining her out all day and one sunny but swamped with mud, setting her progress back at least a few more days. She feels like tearing her hair out, and throws a trowel across the yard in frustration.

She comes back the next day, pulls the trowel out of the ground from where it’d stuck, and gets back to work. She spends hours one day lining the beds with rocks to keep them neat and pretty, and checking the levels of soil temperature, nutrient balance, everything. She makes a chart in her notebook, portioning out where everything will go.

The next day she spends ten straight hours planting. Her only break, around noon, is when Jawbone comes out and brings her a sandwich and a lemonade and practically begs her to take a rest. She obliges, if only to quiet the distracting growl of her stomach. He has to come back out and drag her in when the sun goes down for dinner, despite her protests. When she washes up to eat, it takes her two minutes of scrubbing to remove the dirt stubbornly caked into her fingernails.

If there’s anything good to come out of being an unemployed, out-of-school teenager slowly and painfully rebuilding herself from trauma, it’s that Aelwyn has a lot of free time. Free time she spends every day out under the sun in her new garden, planting seeds and sprouts and monitoring their progress, new greens popping up row by row. She covers the beds with mulch and straw to protect their roots, just like the books say to do. She waters them every morning, and curses when the rain comes and renders her work redundant. Her delicate elven skin starts to burn in the sunlight, even after she takes to wearing a wide-brimmed hat, but after so long it just starts to tan instead. Now when she washes in the evening she sees someone her parents would have hated – face sweaty and flushed, hands caked in dirt and callouses from work – and it feels good, in a strange way. There is a satisfaction in going to bed each night, climbing up onto the top bunk and collapsing in the pillows with the deep-set, satisfied exhaustion of hard work in her bones.

Her garden starts out well enough, neatly arranged and manicured and ready to go. Then days pass, and weeks, and there is not much more to show. Nor is there enough new work to sustain her breakneck pace. Aelwyn stares out the window of the wizards’ tower and grows restless and frustrated again. She’s doing everything right. She’s double checked every book in the library about it. Why aren’t they growing? Why isn’t it perfect?

The manor’s inhabitants have long since figured out Aelwyn’s project, and her dedication to it, and they respect it. They don’t bother her when she’s working and they don’t offer to help, an interference. But visitors don’t always get that so intrinsically, and the Bad Kids have a lot of friends. There are the girls who live here, and then their male partymates, and occasionally other guests. The half-orc brings a satyr girlfriend along often, most times he visits.

“I like your garden,” she says. Aelwyn is sitting on the back porch, staring broodily over her stunted plants. She glances over her shoulder at the satyr unkindly, she who has broken the unspoken rule against disturbing her in her yard.

Aelwyn grunts and turns back, scowling. “I don’t.”

“O-oh,” Zelda says nervously. “I’m sorry, that was stupid. It’s, um, it’s just…fine?” she stammers to correct herself.

Aelwyn huffs. “They won’t grow properly. I’ve done everything right.” She gestures in frustration at the neat rows of plants, manicured but underwhelming.

“Some people, uh, some people just don’t have a green thumb,” Zelda says. “I mean, like, satyrs are supposed to be, like, really in touch with nature and stuff, right? But I can’t even keep a fern alive in my room, it’s like, crazy,” she continues. Aelwyn grunts again. “Have you tried talking to a druid?” Zelda continues. “They’re supposed to, like, know a lot about plants, right?”

“I don’t know any druids,” Aelwyn says bluntly. She’s talked to Sandra Lynn; a ranger is as close as she can get, but Sandra Lynn doesn’t know any more about gardening than Aelwyn does.

“I could ask Danielle for you?” Zelda offers. Aelwyn turns again and looks at her, confused. “Danielle Barkstock. She’s, uh, my party’s druid.”

“Danielle Barkstock,” Aelwyn repeats, placing the name. “She was one of those girls in the crystals.”

“Um,” Zelda says. “Yeah. Um. We all were. Uh…we formed an adventuring party together after…that.”

Aelwyn laughs once, no humor to it. “I’m sure she would love to help me out with my pathetic little shithole here.”

“I could ask her for you,” Zelda repeats, sounding intensely nervous again. “I don’t have to tell her it’s for you.” Aelwyn looks her over again. “Sorry, it’s a crazy, stupid idea, I’m just…ignore me, haha, it’s stupid–”

“Would you?” Aelwyn cuts her off, sounding uncharacteristically soft. Zelda blinks, then nods.

A few days later, all the Bad Kids and all the Maidens are over at the manor for a party. Aelwyn pointedly stays out of the way, spending the afternoon in her garden. She hears the back porch door slide open and looks back to see who’s there. Zelda, and a half-elven girl with flowers braided into her hair. Actually, there’s a third with them: a small silver fox.

“You must be Aelwyn,” the half-elf says.

“You must be Danielle,” Aelwyn returns coolly. Danielle descends the porch steps and wanders through the garden, observing Aelwyn’s work silently. Aelwyn waits, kneeling in the dirt, for any kind of feedback. “You’re a druid, then?” Aelwyn says, breaking the awkward silence. Danielle nods. Her fox wanders between the plants, sniffing them as it goes. “You know what’s wrong here, then? Why they won’t grow?”

“I know more about animals than plants,” Danielle responds neutrally. Aelwyn shuts up and looks down. “But I think I have an idea here,” she continues, finally looking at Aelwyn. She turns around and meets her gaze, hopeful if restrained. “It’s too perfect. You have to step back and let them grow on their own for a bit.”

Aelwyn’s brow furrows, confused. “I’m doing everything the gardening books say to do.”

“Then stop reading books,” Danielle says simply. “Plants are living things. They’ll tell you what they need if you let them grow and listen.” With that, she walks back to the house, her familiar following at her heel.

Aelwyn blinks, dumbfounded and confused, and offers a feeble “thanks” as she goes. Danielle holds up a hand but doesn’t look back.

It feels strange, and foreign, and wrong to sit back, but Aelwyn forces herself to heed the druid’s advice. She returns the gardening manuals to the library. She spends time in her garden still, but without tools in her hands. She lays in the grass and looks at the sky. She drinks tea and reads under the shade of the tree. She keeps the grass in the graveyard plot trimmed.

It does take a few days for her to notice, but her plants do start to grow again. They creep beyond the boundaries she’d so carefully delineated for them, and she fights the urge to trim them back. She watches and listens to them closely, not with the eye or ear of a drill sergeant but of a parent, a real one, a loving one, one like Sandra Lynn who offered her overalls and one like Jawbone who brings her lunch and lemonade and asks her to rest. She finds what the plants ask for, and she gives it to them; plucks insect pests from their stems, prunes diseased leaves, ties them to stakes so they can grow tall, waters them when they’re wilting.

By summer, it is no longer just green. Aelwyn wakes up one morning and looks out the window in the wizards’ tower, and for the first time, she sees pink. The next day, yellows. Soon, there is a rainbow of flowers blooming all over the yard, of a variety and vitality Aelwyn has never seen before. Her old home had a garden, sure, but it was too manicured, too neat, too formal, too artificial, and never was she allowed to tamper with it; that’s what hired landscapers were for. Mordred Manor has no hired hands; Aelwyn has her own.

Jawbone and Sandra Lynn meet her in her garden one day. It’s sunny and hot out, and Aelwyn is watching the bees and butterflies flit from plant to plant, drinking their fill of sweet nectar. They say how beautiful it is, and Aelwyn agrees. They tell her how proud they are of her work, and she agrees. They say they’re proud of how much she’s grown. (At first she thinks they mean the plants, but she realizes after what they really mean.) And they thank her for livening up the manor, and bringing some color out to the yard.

When they go inside, Aelwyn gets up, and grabs her shears. She finds the best blossoms from the best plants and carefully snips them off, tying their stems together in a bouquet with ribbon. And she sends them to Danielle, with an apology and a thank you.

#fantasy high #d20alphabet21 #fantasy high sophomore year #aelwyn abernant #fanfic #dimension 20 live #dimension 20 #danielle barkstock #zelda donovan #let the poet bless this round #remember when these were supposed to be short? lol #no proofreading! we die like men! I have to be on a train ten minutes ago!

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nukenai · 6 months

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Been back in my own home for just over 24 hours after evacuating 11 animals during a natural disaster, and I overhear my roommate complaining to his girlfriend that he doesn't think I'm spending enough time doing work on the house and I should be doing that instead of "Pokémon go raids"

I have a full time job and occasionally go out to play a video game after work. He has been unemployed since the end of January and has spent all his time playing loud video games, watching loud movies, having his girlfriend over to watch loud movies, and going out with his friends multiple times a week.

He apologized but I know it's only because I told him I heard him.

#if he wants to go find an apartment he can do that #there are no places that would charge less than twice what I'm charging him to live in a HOUSE #we talked but I am still a little bit ready to set him the fuck on fire #adult man who has to be reminded to empty dishwasher has some fucking nerve

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leithroidfeoile-archive · 3 years

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Risa Miyamoto

Basics Age: 22 Sexuality: heterosexual Current residence: Japan Height: 5'4" Nationality: Japanese Face Claim: Shion Fujino Occupation: unemployed

Personality Despite being selectively mute on purpose, her expressions say it all- she’s typically a friendly girl who likes to be around her very small circle of friends. She also enjoys having sex, and isn’t embarrassed or ashamed to sleep with more than one guy in a brief period. Risa chooses not to speak, though is fully capable of it, but hates her stammer and refuses to talk because of it. Whenever it’s mentioned or brought up in general, she becomes sad and will shut herself away from others for a while. Besides that, she’s a cheerful and easy-going girl, not easily embarrassed when it comes to many things.

Appearance Short purple hair tied back with a small ribbon tie and light brown eyes. She often wears short skirts and tees with baggy socks and heeled loafers. She enjoys wearing school uniforms most and is somewhat tanned from being outside for extended periods of time. Her form is average and she’s well-endowed for her age.

History -born to mostly absent parents due to them working a lot; when she was old enough to speak, the doctors discovered she had a very bad stammer

-often tried to speak to others, both in and out of school, but was always teased and mocked for her stammer; during her second year of elementary school, Risa chose to stop speaking altogether, not wanting to be made fun of any longer

-takes speech lessons occasionally and is trying to get over her stammer with no luck so far

-during high school, boys began to swarm to her, attracted to the fact that she didn’t speak at all and was quiet, not to mention very sexually open; she even slept with schoolmates who already had girlfriends

-at 18, she continues to have sex but with older men since she’s of legal age to do so, and is still going with her speech therapy, only talking when she deems it necessary to

#risa

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bngtanah · 4 years

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The Difference Between Boys & Girls | o3

summary: Sam & Erin are university students who share a cheap one bedroom apartment above a shitty takeaway restaurant. Due to the limited space, they’ve grown accustomed to sharing just about everything, including the occasional kiss.

pairing: Jung Hoseok (Samuel Park) x Named OC characters: meet the cast.

genre: angst, smut, fluff

chapters: o1| o2| o3| o4| o5| o6| o7| o8| o9| 10| 11| 12| 13| 14

warning: boyfriend!hoseok, jealous!hoseok, friends to lovers trope, college au, angst, sexual themes, slow burn

a/n: still a fool. still reuploading.

"So did he take you home and bang you?"

Erin groaned, knowing that this would be the only thing Kasey would be concerned about when she decided to tell her about what happened between her and Sammy two nights ago. Kasey had always been a straightforward kind of girl and that trait was one of the many things Erin admired about her friend.

She had no problem making her many opinions known and heard by whoever was in earshot, not that she was rude; the girl just appreciated being heard. Erin always wondered how she managed to find a home in a country so strict on ways to manner yourself with everyone you met when the Kasey she knew was not a fan of censoring herself for someone else's benefit. Then again, she had been here for over four years now so clearly something was working for her.

"No, he did not take me home and bang me" Erin answered in a hushed voice, glancing around at the groups of people sat near them in the tiny cafe. They didn't seem like they were eavesdropping, but the second Kasey alluded to sex Erin saw a few nosey Ajumma's slowly turn in their direction.

"We just went home. I took a shower, called Brian then went to bed. I think Sammy fell asleep watching TV."

"So that's just it? You didn't even bring up the fact that he tried to kiss you?" Kasey asked, sounding dumbfounded.

"Not that night. I mean, he was acting weird the entire walk back to our apartment and when we finally did get home, he just kicked off his shoes and laid out on the couch," Erin sighed and leaned forward to take a small sip of her Green Tea Latte "I brought it up the next day though."

"And?" Kasey was as impatient as she opinionated, the two seconds Erin took to clear her throat was just too much for her.

"You need to cool it on the expresso, and he just apologised. His exact words were 'Ah, noona! I'm so sorry I was a little drunk and I shouldn't have tried to take advantage of you, it won't happen again'. Then he did some annoying aegyo, kissed me on the forehead, I went to class and now I'm here with you and honestly I'm just over the entire thing."

Erin sounded confident, but her best friend knew that couldn't be further from the truth.

"Is that so?" Kasey asked with a catlike smirk as she attempted to catch Erin's eyes.

"Yup! totally over it" Erin replied while staring out the window.

"Erin."

"Alright, fine I'm not over it!" She groaned as she crumbled like a house of cards and rested her head against the table. "I can still feel his breath on my skin and every time I look at him I just wanna push against the wall and make him finish what he started." The ajumma's seated a table across from them pursed their lips and got up.

"Then why don't you do that?" Kasey stated like it was the simplest thing in the world.

Erin picked her head up and looked over at her best friend who was currently mutilating the foam cat floating on top of her hot cocoa. "Because.... it's not that easy. We've been friends for so long and we live together and that would just complicate things. There's also the fact that I don't know if he feels the same way."

"Oh c'mon Erin you can't believe that"

"I'm serious, Kas. I don't."

"So you think he was just trying to keep you from getting a cold with his lips the other night?"

"No, but that means nothing. I know that I'm pretty, I know that I was wearing a sexy dress that night and I know that we were both a little tipsy and our inhibitions were lowered. He's my friend, but he's still a guy so I get that he's gonna be attracted to me sometimes. What I don't know is if he wants to be with me the way I want to be with him."

Kasey raised an eyebrow and pushed her mug forward so that she could rest her palms against the table. "I thought you just wanted to screw him."

Erin shrugged and adjusted the beanie on her head, gnawing at her bottom lip between her teeth "I do...I mean. I did, but it's different now. I want to hold his hand and snuggle up on the couch and watch pride prejudice together, go for walks on the beach..."

"So basically, all the shit ya'll do now but with sex?" Kasey pointed out.

"Well. Yeah."

It was Kasey turn to sigh now, and she did. Loudly and dramatically, she loved Erin to bits but there was no way she could be this clueless. "Then why don't you tell him that? What's the worse that could happen, he says nah and you two go back to being weird like you are now"

"I don't wanna risk it" Erin reiterated "Plus now Brian's in the mix and that's throwing me off because one part of me wants to wait for some kind of sign from Sammy but the other part of me really wants to see what could happen with Brian."

"I've been meaning to ask about that, are you really going to go out with him? He doesn't sound like your usual type; unemployed, flirty, short."

"We met for coffee yesterday, actually. He is not unemployed; he's an artist, his flirtations aren't creepy, and he's not short! He's like a full inch taller than me," Erin pouted in Brian's defense.

"Whatever, did you tell him how deep in love you are with your roommate?"

Erin glowered at Kasey and flipped her off "We didn't stay too long because he had an emergency at his studio. He's taking me out tomorrow night though I don't know exactly where but he made it sound nice." She mused with a small smile.

Kasey shrugged gently, choosing to give up the chance to berate her friend again she wasn't going to make any headway until Erin was ready to truly confront what she was feeling for Sammy.

"All jokes aside you really should talk to him about it, E." Erin's mouth opened to refute her, but Kasey held up a hand and continued speaking "You don't have to tell him you're in love with him, even though I know you are. At least tell him that you're attracted to Sam. It wouldn't be fair for you to let him jump headfirst into this without being given the option to back out if he doesn't want to deal with that."

Erin was silent for a few seconds. She knew that Kasey was right in some sense, but that didn't make the idea any easier to swallow. She didn't want to end up hurting Brian in the future, but there was such a slim chance of anything happening between her and Sammy. Would it really be worth it to put her budding relationship to the test over a something that had such a small possibility of being an actual problem?

"I know.."

"I was this close, dude! So close to kissing her, I could taste the tequila on her breath," Sammy exclaimed as she tossed a soft felt basketball into the air.

"So why didn't you?" Du-jin asked, though he wasn't particularly interested since he was currently enthralled with an RPG on his phone.

Samuel sighed heavily and pulled the plush toy close to his chest once it fell back into his hands "That guy she met at the gallery called; ruined the whole mood" He grumbled then turned to look down at his classmate who was seated on the floor in front of the couch Sammy was lying on. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh? Yeah, a gallery shooting ruined the mood" Du-jin replied, his eyes never leaving the screen.

Sammy frowned and reached down to pluck the cellphone from Du-jin's hands before quickly hopping off the couch and running around the to the back before Du-jin had the chance to stand up and catch him. His friend was taller that he was, with much longer arms and legs, but he was nowhere near as coordinated as Sam was. Sammy had seen him stumble and trip over his own two feet too many times to count.

"Just listen to me for two minutes and you can have your phone back." Sam bargained once Du-jin started complaining and demanding his possession back.

"You are so damn needy," Du-jin grumbled but returned to sit on the floor anyway "What is this about? You're making out with your roommate now?"

"Almost," Sam corrected as he hopped over the back of the couch and relaxed again "You know Erin, she came with me when we went out for noraebang a few months ago."

"Oh, the black girl? I thought she was your girlfriend," Du-jin said, as his eye squinted together in confusion "You two barely talked to anyone else the whole night and that duet you sang...."

"We're close" Sammy responded before he had a chance to bring up any more evidence.

"I have close female friends too.... I don't touch any of them," Du-jin rebutted.

"Maybe you're not as close as you think."

"This isn't about me. If you're such close friends why do you want to kiss her?"

This question gave Samuel pause, and he sat up slightly before answering "I don't know... she's cute" He said after a beat "And it wouldn't have been the first time we've kissed."

"So she was your girlfriend."

"No, not like that. Just teenage shit when we were kids, nothing serious. Well, there was that time on the beach..."

"You've got sixty seconds left, so I'd make this quick."

Sam puffed his cheeks out and pouted before explaining himself “When we were kids were snuck out after my graduation and ended up making out. If we hadn't been caught we probably would have done a lot more than that.” The young man sighed wistfully as pleasant memories flooded his mind “I remember being so excited when we got back to my house I thought I would finally get the chance to confess, and she'd be my girlfriend, but she just told me she had to go home then she went back to university and she was so busy we didn't even get to talk for the rest of that week. I don't think we've ever talked about that since it happened.”

"What's stopping you from bringing it up now?" Du-jin asked while peering at his watch.

"I-Well it’s different now," Sammy stammered "She seems happy and I can't just bring up the past and ruin something that could be good for her with these uncertain feelings"

"Wow, sounds like you've got a problem" Du-jin's voice was flat and monotone as he reached for his cellphone and quickly opened the game again.

"Ah, hyung. I'm really frustrated here, give me some useful advice." Sam whined.

"What do you want me to tell you? You waited too long to make up your mind and now you're in an awkward position. You can either ruin her new relationship before it starts and piss her off or stand by and hope that they break up soon." Du-jin advised from the floor.

Sam frowned and began to speak before the sound of the door unlocking made him shut up. Once his roommate was inside and in his eye view Sam rushed from his seat to embrace her.

Erin's knees nearly buckled from the sudden contact but she regained her composure after a few seconds "Hi Sammy" She laughed and wrapped her arms around him to return his hug before quickly stepping away, "Uh-have you eaten? I stopped to get some food before I came home" Erin asked while she sidestepped Sammy and moved toward the kitchen. The boy seated near their couch caught her attention and Erin bowed instinctively "Hello, you're... Doo-jun right? You're in one of Sammy engineering classes."

"Du-jin but you were close enough" Du-jin smiled, the deep dimples in his cheeks becoming more noticeable.

"Ah, I apologise. I'm not very good with names, are you hungry? There's enough food here for all of us," She asked while placing the bag full of containers on the counter.

Du-jin nodded and offered to help, but Erin only waved him off, stating that she could handle a few plates of food as she began preparing everything from the containers.

Samuel had moved from the door and was currently hovering near the entrance of the kitchen, watching Erin from behind with an affectionate smile. The longer he stood in silence and watched her interact with his classmate, the smile that spread across her face when she laughed making his heart swell. Sam realised that his 'uncertain feelings' where Erin was concerned were not as uncertain as he once thought.

In fact, he was certain that he was now in very big trouble.

#hoseok x oc #hoseok x reader #j hope fanfic #j hope smut #jung hoseok #hoseok fanfic #dbbg #bngtanah

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