#partly because my finals are coming up and i've been stressed

[wolfram-but-art]

some recent sketches i did without context

[angelsnkisses]

Birthday Wishes ♡ - Charlie x fem!reader

‼️ NSFW - MDNI ‼️

warnings: sub!charlie, dom!fem!reader, alcohol, intoxication, semi-public sex, creampie

The party was busy, bass thumping through your body and the stench of liquor in the air. Dozens of drunk bodies stumbled around, mingling and enjoying themselves. Charlie's birthday party had a bigger turnout than you expected, and now you couldn't even find him through all the other people.

You had wanted to make his birthday memorable, and your parents were conveniently out of town. What better reason to throw a party? You'd only invited maybe 30 people, but people must have told their friends, because it was packed. You wouldn't be surprised if half the school had shown up.

You located your group of friends, half of them with their boyfriends. 'Jackpot, they probably know where Charlie is,' you thought to yourself, making your way over to them.

"Hey, great party! Didn't know you could pull it off," one of them said, reaching out to pat your shoulder. You scoffed, taking a swig from your drink. "Of course I pulled it off, I'm the shit," you boasted, before looking at Robbie, the only person not holding any booze.

"Have you seen Charlie?" you asked, and he nodded, pointing to the kitchen. "Yeah man, he was just looking for you, actually. He went that way, I think."

You said thanks before heading towards the direction he pointed, finishing off your drink before setting the cup on a random surface. You entered the kitchen, a couple people lingering around. Sure enough, Charlie was in there, leaning against the counter and talking to someone, beer in hand.

"Finally, I've been looking for you," you said, walking up to him and standing at his side. He turned, a grin on his face as he snaked his arm around your waist, pulling you in. "Hey, gorgeous," he beamed, pressing a quick kiss to your cheek. You giggled, eyes flickering to his lips.

Whoever he was talking to gave him a quick 'happy birthday' before leaving you guys be, probably not interested in viewing your little lovefest. Charlie was definitely tipsy, but he seemed sober enough to know what he was doing.

You pulled back, taking his hand in yours and standing close to him. You guys started to walk out of the kitchen, no designated destination in mind.

"Thanks for doing this, by the way. Definitely better than my last birthday," he smiled, bringing his drink up to his lips. Upon discovering it was empty, he tossed the can on the already littered floor. You let it slide, considering he had to help you clean up the next day anyways. You smiled, too, partly because you were proud of yourself, but mostly because he was happy. Which of course, made you happy.

"Anytime. Come on, our friends are waiting," you encouraged, pulling on his hand. To your surprise, he kept his grip on you, not moving. You looked at him with a confused smile, gesturing behind you. "They're over there.. what are we waiting for?"

He pulled you closer, leaning down so only you could hear him.

"I have a better idea.." he mumbled, a hand resting on your lower back. You snorted, pulling your hand from his and gently pushing his chest.

"Charlie, people are watching," you whined, your face turning red. You heard him tut before pulling back, his own face a little pink, too. He had almost forgotten it wasn't just the two of you, you had a way of affecting him like that.

"Well, let's go upstairs, then," he said, taking your hand again when you started to protest. "Come on, please? No one will know. I need you right now," he admitted breathlessly, trying to speak lowly in case anyone was eavesdropping.

You thought about it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons. He didn't seem that drunk, and he was definitely sober enough to be making conscious decisions, but your door didn't have a lock.

"What if someone comes in?" you stressed quietly, and he shook his head, trying to reassure you.

"Nobody's gonna come in, you told everyone to stay downstairs, right? It'll be fine, I promise," he said sincerely. "It is my birthday.." he half joked, making you roll your eyes. Of course he pulled the birthday card.

You were silent for a moment before sighing, finally convinced. "Okay, okay! Fine, but we gotta be quick," you agreed. He grinned wolfishly, smiling like a kid on Christmas.

"Hell yeah, let's go."

**

He held your hand the whole way up the stairs, and he didn't let you go until you were both in the bedroom. He turned to face you, immediately leaning down and pressing his lips to yours feverishly.

He pulled back, stumbling a little as he kicked off his shoes, and you smiled, slipping yours off easily. Nobody else was upstairs, and you were grateful people actually listened to your request to stay on the first floor.

As soon as he got the shoes off he was kissing you again, his hands slipping down to sides of your neck. You laughed quietly at his urgency before kissing him back, your hands grabbing at his shirt.

He helped you unbutton it and push it off his shoulders, breaking the kiss so he could pull your top over your head. You were wearing his shirt, a horror film you hadn't seen displayed on the fabric. It was tossed to the floor, next to your feet.

He released a heavy sigh when he saw your chest, leaning down and lazily kissing you again. "So pretty," he said almost inaudibly against your lips.

He was getting impatient, already working on your jeans while he kissed you. He tugged down the restricting denim, pulling back yet again to look at what he was doing. "Are these new? I love them.." he murmured, a hand reaching down to feel the fabric on your hip.

You hummed, your hand pushing his away. "Yeah, they're new. I had to get a few new pairs, since someone keeps taking mine," you teased. He paused, his face heating up as he looked away, embarrassment filling him. Of course you knew it was him, he was the only other person who was ever in your room.

"Aw, don't be embarrassed, baby.. it's cute," you muttered, reaching a hand up to brush his hair out of his face. He leaned into your hand, eyes on yours as you spoke. "It's your birthday, so tell me what you want," you cooed, watching him try to hide his face again. He got embarrassed so easily, and it never failed to amuse you.

"Y/N.." he whined, not wanting to say it out loud. You tilted your head to the side, an encouraging smile twitching at your lips. "Come on, tell me, Charlie," you whispered.

"I- I want you to ride me," he admitted, his voice quiet. You moved, beginning to push him back towards the bed. "Yeah? Want me to make you feel good?" you purred, tugging him down to sit on the edge of the bed. He nodded frantically, his bottom lip between his teeth as you straddled him.

"Yes, I do. Please," he begged softly, his hands resting on your hips. Usually, you'd make him plead for it a little more, but you were in a time crunch. Plus, you didn't wanna keep him waiting. It was his special day.

You glanced at the alarm clock on your bed, cursing when you realized what time it was. People would be wondering where you were pretty soon, and you didn't wanna risk someone coming to look for you.

"Alright, we have to be quick.." you muttered anxiously, a little bummed that you didn't have much time for foreplay. You would make up for it later. You reached down, beginning to unbuckle his jeans hurriedly.

You pulled him out of his boxers, a shaky breath leaving his swollen lips while he watched. You pumped him in your hand a few times, looking down at him with hooded eyes. A broken moan escaped the back of his throat, his tip already leaking precum.

"Oh, fuck.. I've been thinking about this all day," he confessed, his head falling back. He looked at you with need, his cock twitching in your hand. You squeezed him gently, relishing his whiny moan.

You lifted yourself up to hover over his lap, pulling your underwear to the side. You brushed his tip over your wet cunt, listening to him shudder breathlessly.

A flash of panic filled you when you heard faint voices, sounding like they were coming up the stairs. You covered Charlie's mouth with a shaky hand, squeezing your eyes shut and pushing yourself down on him. He groaned into your hand, his hips jerking at the sudden movement.

You blinked back tears, knowing you didn't have time to really let yourself adjust. You ignored the stinging sensation spreading between your legs, leaning down to speak quietly in your boyfriend's ear.

"You gotta be quiet, baby.." you whispered, beginning to bounce up and down in his lap. He whimpered in response, giving you a tortured gaze as he tried to choke back his moans.

You were struggling a bit with your own noises, but you managed. You could hear quiet footsteps down the upstairs hall, making your curse under your breath. Of course somebody had to go and interrupt you.

You made your movements harsher, chasing your own orgasm while simultaneously trying to push Charlie to his. He gasped when you pulled your hand away, burying his face in your neck to muffle himself instead.

"Oh, fuck. You feel so good, please," he moaned desperately, just loud enough for you to hear. Your walls clenched around him when he said that, his words only tightening the knot in your abdomen.

You continued, trying to speed things up. You jerked to a stop when you heard a soft knock on the door, your heart pounding as you turned to face it.

"F-fuck, busy!" you stammered, started to move very, very slow. Charlie breathed a shaky sigh, his cock twitching inside you as he tried to stop himself from bucking his hips up.

"Y/N? Everyone's looking for you and Charlie!" the voice called, and you recognized it as Robbie's. You felt him bite down on your neck, wrapping his arms around your waist as he started to thrust up into you, unable to stop himself.

"N-no.. fuck," you whispered, feeling his tip brush against a certain spot that had your legs shaking. You tried to halt his movements, pleasure rippling through you.

"Just a mm- ah~ just a minute!" you called back, your nails digging into his shoulders. He started sucking on your neck, the slow, silent pace driving you both nuts.

"Jill is asking for you, and we all-" Robbie started again, before Charlie finally pulled back, looking over your shoulder at the door.

"Robbie, come on man," he called in annoyance, his voice strained. There was a long pause, presumably of realization, behind the door before the footsteps started again, getting fainter as he left.

That was gonna be embarrassing later. You didn't dwell on it, picking up your pace again. Pretty soon you were at the same speed as before, your orgasm rapidly approaching.

"Fuck, I'm gonna cum," Charlie whimpered, his chest heaving and his arms tightening around you. You were just as close, hands cupping his face as you leaned down.

"Good boy, cum for me," you panted, smashing your lips into his. Your teeth clashed a bit as he kissed you back, beginning to moan more consistently. He pulled away when it washed over him, his head falling back and his legs trembling.

"Oh, fuck! Y/N- fuck," he groaned, not caring about being quiet anymore. He pushed his hips up to bury himself as deep as he could, filling you up with ragged, whiny breaths. The feeling triggered your own release, your walls spasming around him and your mind going blank.

When you regained your senses, you breathed a heavy sigh, laying your head on his shoulder. You both just sat there in silence for a minute before he started kissing at your neck, his arms dropping from around you and resting on your hips.

"Jesus.. you think anyone heard us?" he asked quietly, and you shook your head. The music was still loud downstairs. Unless Robbie decided to run his mouth, nobody would even really suspect anything. You could just say you went upstairs to talk or something if anyone asked.

"It's fine, we just gotta hurry back before anyone else decides to poke around," you giggle, slowly lifting yourself off him. He looked down to watch his cum drip out of you, grinning. "That's so hot.. we gotta do that again.. you know, later," he said, looking up at you. You laughed, messing up his hair before climbing off him.

"Trust me, we definitely will."

You guys cleaned up as best as you could before getting dressed and returning to the party. Just like you said, nobody even batted an eye when you came back downstairs. He kept close to you the whole night, though, and made sure to make the most of your alone time when everyone finally went home.

**

A/N: holy shit this got long.. i was gonna write about rory himself, considering it's his birthday, but it just felt wrong, idkidk. so here's charlie for you! also, i just watched welcome to willits! the movie itself was kinda not amazing, but possum was so silly 😭. he had me laughing my ass off the whole time, i can't wait to write about him. hope you enjoyed <3!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA?

Ok so I'm 26NB and my partner is 28M and we've been in a relationship for 4 years now. We have been living together for the past 2 years.

I really enjoy being with him but there's some red flags I kinda dismissed for various reasons. We've been fighting more often and it always turns into him putting all the fault on me for the disagreement and I'm just. Questioning myself I guess. Idk

Just before we moved in together we had a fight over whether I should keep my bed or not. The plan was to move into a two bedroom apartment so we would have more space for our hobbies, so space wasn't an issue. I wanted to keep my bed because 1) I like my bed, it's comfy. And 2) if anything at all were to happen and I had to move out for some reason (not necessarily a breakup, literally any reason like to support a family member, which I have had to do in the past) I didn't want to have to get a new bed. He kept guilting me about it and saying stuff like "well it seems like you're just planning on us breaking up and if you really love me you would just get rid of it" finally he eventually agreed to let me keep it but he still brings up "my weird thing about the bed."

Now we've been living together for a while and I swear it's like. Sometimes I am trying so hard to not start a fight but he will just take something I say out of context and when I try to explain myself he claims I don't care about his feelings, which is infuriating. Everything I do revolves around his feelings. I have to walk on eggshells when he's stressed because if I say the wrong thing or don't emote well enough (I'm autistic) it turns into the "you don't care about me enough" discussion. Every time this comes up he gets so worked up and I can't talk him down. Its so frustrating.

I guess where I'm struggling is when I have an issue. If I bring up something he did that upset me he gets angry at me and ALWAYS Turns it around on me saying "that's what you do to me!" Or "that's how I FEEL right now!" And he cries. And I end up just giving up trying to discuss it because he won't hear me.

I feel bad because i have always been the type of person who believes that men should be allowed to express their emotions and cry openly when they need to but every time he cries it just makes me so mad. I hate it when he cries now. Its made me such a bitter and mean person but idk what to do. it feels like I have to just throw away everything that makes me upset to make room for his emotions. I've tried to tell him this and it always turns into the "that's how I feel about YOU right now" response that just puts all the responsibility back on me.

I guess I partly agree with not caring about his emotions because like I said, it just makes me mad when he cries. And I do feel bad about that.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[call-mi-jinx]

Endless Love (Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw) - Chapter 5

summary - Y/N Y/L/N and Bradley Bradshaw have had a rivalry ever since they both attended the same academy. Every chance they took, they always tried to one up each other. One day, Bradley takes the rivalry too far and Y/N ends up in the hospital with serious injuries. Will it make Y/N want to get him back twice as worse? Or will it make her realise that this rivalry between them is childish?

warnings - swearing, enemies to lovers, mention of serious injury, traumatic episodes, reader traumatised from what happened, smut, slowburn, seizures, flashbacks

Main Masterlist Bradley ”Rooster” Bradshaw Masterlist Series Masterlist

a/n - hi girlies! sorry that i haven't been posting a lot i got writers block 💀💀💀 anyways, enjoy!! xx

I've finally come back to Top Gun, Mav caught me up luckily. Somehow he pulled some strings with Cyclone to let me stay here. I'm glad me and Mav sorted everything out. I still haven't spoken to my mum yet... It's been 3 weeks since she visited me at the hospital.

It's been kinda quiet since me and Bradshaw decided to stop the whole "rivalry" thing. Minus for the arguments between Bradshaw and Bagman. It's been nice in all honesty. Except for when Bradshaw tried to throw a right hook at Bagman. Fanboy stopped him before he could make contact. It didn't end too badly. They just death stared each other then walked separate ways.

Bradshaw was late to the briefing this morning so the only chair left was next to me. Great, although we're civil, I hate having to deal with his fucking manspreading. It's so annoying.

Bradshaw walked up to the table I was at and sat down. I was shocked to feel that his leg wasn't rammed against mine. I looked down and saw that he had stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles. I quickly give him a look then begin to focus on the briefing.

"Shocked to see how little of an annoyance I can be when we're not arguing?" I rolled my eyes with a smirk as I tried to focus on the briefing. "Everyone's going to the Hard Deck tonight, you wanna join?" I turned to look at Bradshaw, my eyes narrowing, smirk still apparent on my face.

"Bradley Bradshaw, is inviting little old me to drink with you and the others?" I place my hand on my chest. Bradshaw is the one to roll his eyes now. "I'd love to. As long as you don't sing Great Balls of Fire."

"Now that is pushing it sweetheart. there must be a compromise we can come to." he has desperation in his voice, with a little bit of humour.

"You can sing it once then. No girl on your lap or at your side cause that is just fucking tacky." I chuckle as I try to multi-task and listen to what Mav is saying. I'm partly failing.

"Is that your way of saying you're jealous? I'm flattered sweetheart, but British isn't my type. Neither is hot-headed." His tone was all but flirtatious. Maybe I should've just continued to argue with him, because the flirty tone he's using is grating. Like, it sounds nice but really weird at the same time because he's never used that tone with me.

"Absolutely not, never. Just because we're civil now does not mean I'm going to have feelings for you. And girls sitting on your lap or basically grinding against you while you sing Great Balls of Fire is the cringiest and most disturbing thing to even look at for a second. So no, I am not jealous. And FYI I don't go for your type either." I cross my arms as I finish the conversation and bring all my focus back onto Mav, who keeps sending me knowing glances which I send away with eye rolls.

｡ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ₊ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ｡˚

Today was stressful. Very stressful. Stressful enough to need a straight double whiskey when I get to the Hard Deck. You wanna know why today was stressful?

Firstly, I was paired with Hangman. Which is annoying as it is but he thought he led the whole thing when it was a team building exercise. And he kept ordering me which got us "killed" by Mav.

Second, my flight suit had a stain on it so I had to try and get it washed after the training exercise. It didn't come out, so I'm going to order a new one.

Third, Bradshaw could not stop with the flirty comments. It was so aggravating. I wish we were still arguing cause he was actually less annoying than this.

And lastly, Mav kept pulling me to the side and asking if me and Bradshaw were a thing. Oh my days! Absolutely not! Never in a million fucking years would I date Bradshaw of all people! I'd date Hangman before Bradshaw. Actually no. I would not. I have too much self respect.

When I got home, I took a hot shower. It was fucking amazing after the day I've had. After I got out of the shower, I dried my hair, did my skincare routine, put some makeup on, and now it's time to decide what to wear. It was between a nice dress Phoenix told me to wear or my tight black shirt with some nice-fitting jeans. I asked Phoenix and she told me to wear the dress, obviously. But only if she wore one too. Not being the only one wearing a dress.

It was a short black dress with criss-crossing straps and a slit on the right leg that goes up to my hip. It was really nice, I've just haven't gotten to wearing it yet.

I quickly put the dress on because I was running late. I grabbed my purse, car keys and vape before going out and locking the door.

The ride to the Hard Deck wasn't too long because I could afford a closer one when I moved here. I parked my car, locked it, then headed to the door of the Hard Deck. Phoenix was outside waiting for me.

When I tell you the whole bar went quiet when they saw me and Phoenix, it would be an understatement. Maybe it was because we were in civvy clothes? But we headed to our group and all the boys eyes were wider than golf balls.

"What's with the eyes? It's not like we're naked is it?" I said, eyes darting between all the lads. They were shocked.

"Y/N, I think it's cause you're wearing that short dress, they've never seen as much skin on you before." Phoenix giggled before dragging me to the bar.

"Hey Penny, two double whiskeys please." Phoenix asks Penny with a smile. As I look around, I see a man. He's tall, blonde hair, greenish-blue eyes, and he's staring at me. I recognise him from somewhere. It's Thomas! I didn't think he'd be here tonight. He said he was going to go home in England for a bit to see his family.

"Thomas?! I thought you went back to England for a few weeks! What yer doing 'ere?" I walked up to him and hugged him, shocked that he was in San Diego but especially in the bar I usually go to.

"Thought yer could use some company, but guess you're already set aren't yer?" He chuckled as he looked to Phoenix then in a different direction, all the lads were death staring Thomas.

"Yeah, guess so. Want a drink? Me and Phoenix just ordered double whiskies." I guided him over to the bar where me and Phoenix originally stood.

"Go on then, one can't hurt." He ordered himself a double whiskey and paid for mine and Phoenix's as well.

｡ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ₊ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ｡˚

We've been at the Hard Deck for a few hours and I'm quite drunk, drunk enough to not be able to drive. Which is great, cause I want to go home.

Phoenix and I have been dancing to The Weeknd, Mac Demarco, ABBA, Jerry Lee Lewis (because Bradshaw sang it, yet again), and some other singers that I'm too drunk to remember.

Me and Phoenix are currently dancing to Great Balls of Fire, as per requested to play again by Bradshaw. Him and that fucking song. It's like he's married to it. Or he can't breathe if it's not playing.

As we're dancing, I feel someone come up behind me. I turned to see who it was and it was just a stranger. He had his hands on my hips and began to basically grind into my arse. the fuck?

"Erm, can you not do that mate?" I stepped away from him, closer to Phoenix. He had this strange look on his face. It made me really uncomfortable.

"Come on babe, just wanna dance with you." His smile was sloppy and sadistic in a way. Gave me the shivers. Not the good kind.

"Well I don't wanna dance with you. So fuck off. Freak." I rolled my eyes then turned to Phoenix with an awkward smile.

"Don't call me a fucking freak you bitch!" He grabbed my arm and yanked me closer to him, his breath stunk of cigarettes and Bourbon. I always hated that smell.

"Get the fuck off of me you prick!" I grabbed his elbow and dug into it with my fingers which made his grip loosen, then I kicked the back of his knee which got him to the floor.

"Touch me again and we will have a serious problem, got it?" He nodded in answer, fear and anger in his face. "Get the fuck out of this bar." He got up and walked straight out, the whole bar giving him death stares as he leaves.

As soon as the door closes Bob comes over to us, weaving through the crowd with a worried look on his face.

"You okay Vandal?" He looked at me with worry and sympathy. I nodded my head yes.

"I'm fine Bob, he was just a prick who should listen to people. Taught him a lesson, hopefully he'll learn from that." I rolled my eyes as I took a sip of my whiskey. "Surprised I can still do that, I'm fucking leathered." I chuckle as I begin to dance again.

Bob nodded with a small smile then went back to the others. Me and Phoenix continued dancing until she had to go home cause her friend said her dog needed to be taken to the vet. So I was left to hang out with the lads.

"Hey Vandal, you alright? You look really bad." I place my hand on my heart and mock offense.

"Wow Bagman, I cannot believe you could say that. To me of all people. I look fucking fabulous you rat." I giggle as Bradshaw laughs. He'd laugh at anything that insulted Hangman so I'm not surprised.

"Seriously though Y/L/N, you look unwell. How much have you had to drink?" Bradshaw had genuine concern in his voice. I also did not know how much I drank.

"Fuck knows, wanted to have a fun time. I was, till Nat had to go home cause her dog is sick. I really hope her dog's okay. Do you think it'll die?" Just as I finished my sentence, Thomas came next to me and placed his hand on my waist.

"Come on Y/N, let's get you home." He began to lead me out until I felt his hand go lower. Last time I checked, he had a fucking girlfriend.

"One, I ain't going home right now. And two, get your hand off my arse cause I specifically remember you have a fucking girlfriend." i poked his chest in annoyance because his girlfriend is super nice, and pretty. Like drop dead gorgeous. And she treats him so fucking well as well.

"Yes you are going home, yer leathered. And she doesn't have to know if anything happens, can just be between you and me babe." That's it. Absolutely not. Not a fucking cat in hells chance.

"Right, you are a piece of shit for that. I ain't going home and I'm moving out. And I'm telling your fucking girlfriend how much of a shit person you are." Thomas laughed, I knew he could be a dick sometimes but this is just too far.

"Come on Y/N. Firstly, where would you even move to? You don't make enough money for even a small shitty apartment. And second, she won't believe you." Shit, she wouldn't. She's literally head over heels in love with him.

"She will." A voice said behind me, I turned to see that it was Bradshaw. I furrowed my brows in confusion.

"And why's that? She's practically wrapped around my little finger." My face contorts to disgust. Jesus, how did it take me this long to realise he is a complete and utter twat?

"Because in Y/N's bag, is my phone, and it's recording. So she will believe Y/N, because there's proof." All the colour drains from Thomas' face.

"So you best fucking leave now. And I'm getting all my shit in the morning." I look at him with anger an disgust, how could he even think about doing that to such a caring and beautiful girl?

Thomas walked out immediately, slammed the door to the bar on his way out. That's when realisation hit me, I'm now homeless.

"Shit... where am I gonna stay? He is right that I can't afford to live anywhere... Maybe Mav could let me stay with him?" I turn to Bradshaw and he looks like he's just got an idea.

"You can stay with me, until you get enough money for an apartment." Although I was very drunk, that sobered me up quite a lot. Bradshaw was offering to let me stay at his place? I mean, we are civil now, but letting me stay at his home? Jesus, he must really mean it about feeling bad about arguing and the crash.

"Are you sure? Because that's a big thing to offer Bradshaw." I looked at him, unsure myself. But why was Bradshaw offering this? Was it out of guilt? Sympathy?

"Yes. You don't have anywhere to stay. Fanboy only has one room and his couch is fucking uncomfortable. Coyote and Hangman most likely don't want to live with you. Payback lives with his girlfriend. And Bob and Phoenix live with Phoenix's mom. And Mav will probably hate you living with him because he won't be able to have any alone time with the ladies he brings home. So I'm the only viable option." Damn. He must have put lot into this for him to just come up with all that.

“Are you 100% sure that you want to do this? Cause I can just find some place to live I don’t wanna intrude init.” I look at him with concern and uncertainty in my voice.

"Yes of course, helping out a friend, init." He faked a British accent as he said "init", I giggled at him as he pulled a face as well.

"Right okay, thank you so much you don't know how much this means to me..." I have a thankful look on my face. "Please could you come with me to pick my stuff up tomorrow? I don't want to go on my own." He nodded yes. "Thank you..."

"Right, let's get you home. You're so fucking drunk." He chuckled as he guided me out of the Hard Deck with his arm round my shoulder.

｡ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ₊ ˚ ︶︶✩︶︶‌ ｡˚

As we got to his house, I began to search the outside. It was quite nice.

We both went inside, Bradshaw helped me as I was stumbling everywhere. He guided me to the spare room and placed me on the bed.

"Goodnight sweetheart." Bradshaw muttered as he got to the door.

"Goodnight Bradshawwwww." I said before quite literally passing out as my head hit the pillow.

[shadowmaat]

Palia, a casual mmorpg review

A friend of mine was hyping a new game she was playing: Palia. Mostly she was hyping her attempts to romance one of the NPCs, but enough other details leaked through that I decided to give it a try. And I liked it.

I'm generally not a fan of the mmorpg genre, partly because I hate being social, and mostly because I hate fighting and my reflexes absolutely suck. Palia, thankfully, is more casual/cozy, and while there is a hunting aspect, they're all prey animals that run away. There's no fighting. Thank the gods.

The basic premise of Palia is that humans died out/disappeared a long time ago, leaving the world to the majiri, who have pointy ears and purple skin. There's also the grimalkin, a race of alien felinoids who arrived a few centuries ago and set up shop. And there are galdur, robots who have been around since the Age of Humans.

For Mysterious Reasons one of Palia's deities, the Phoenix, has started dropping humans back into the world, particularly around the remote village of Kilima. That's where the PC comes in.

A lot of Palia is your standard fare (I think). You get to know the NPCs and build relationships with them through talking and gift-giving (which is an actual mechanic of the game). There are quests and loot piles, and a number of skills you're meant to level up in: Hunting, Fishing, Mining, Cooking, Furniture Crafting, Foraging, Bug Catching, and Gardening.

The mainline quest, of course, is trying to figure out what happened to the humans and why you're suddenly reappearing. The list of items needed in order to complete the first part of the quest was... unpleasant, IMO, and involved a lot of epic-level rarity items that take a hell of a lot of time and resources to gather. That, again, is pretty much par for the course with games like this: allll the grinding. I've posted about that before, but thanks to some advice I did finally manage to get everything I needed. My main source of stress on that score is that I am a completionist, so leaving a task unfinished was stressful for me. Hells, it took me a while to accept that I didn't need to finish all tasks/requests immediately, and those are mostly plot irrelevant.

Once you accept that you don't need to do all the things right now ASAP, it's a lot more fun. Even the main quest only recently unveiled part 2, and while it includes some new (and easier, IMO) tasks to complete, it's also more waiting for the "big" update coming in '25, when a new area will be made available. Or I assume that's what's going to happen.

You get to build and decorate a house, which has been more fun than I expected. Tish, in particular, will make expanding your house easier, and you will get hecktons of furniture from loot boxes, from Tish's store, from recipes you can build yourself, and from the Grimalkin underground market.

I've been enjoying playing, even when all my current quests are filled. Even when there's "nothing to do" there's still stuff to do, and selling off all your excess supplies gets you more money for buying more things.

The NPCs are, for the most part, a lot of fun to interact with, even if every single one of them seems to have some tragic backstory. The only character I don't like is Tamala, and I think it's partly calculated that way. She's the witchy "vamp" type character and flirts outrageously with anything that has a pulse. I understand the narrative purposes of characters like that and I know the majority of the time the attitude is manufactured to keep folks at a distance, but I still find her unpleasant, manipulative, and mean-spirited.

The only real issue I have is that some of the longer-term players are clique-y assholes who like to tear into newbies for not following the unspoken rules of the game. Which are, y'know, unspoken.

Most people are very understanding of newbies and have no problem politely explaining the community-developed courtesy of "wait to chop down the magic trees til everyone can get here," but there's a handful who choose to bitch at each other about it and shame folks for chopping "too soon" and thus "ruining" it for everyone else.

Here's the thing: the grove of "magic trees" appears every in-game midnight, and time moves a hell of a lot faster in Palia, so you can get multiple groves in a single day. There is absolutely no reason to act like an inflamed, pustulating asshole just because you couldn't chop one grove. There's no reason to make newbies feel bad for not knowing something, especially when no one fucking tells them.

Thankfully that group is in the minority. I think I've only seen newbie-bashing bitch-fests twice, but that's still two times too many, IMO. Especially for, and I really can't stress this enough, something that isn't an actual rule of the game. If it was a rule, folks wouldn't be able to chop early. I appreciate the courtesy of people waiting for everyone to gather, but acting as if it's some grievous crime is fucking bullshit. Ugh.

Anyway, the game itself is fun. I love nerdy girl Jina and her helicopter mom galdur friend Hekla. Widower Ashura has Big Dad energy. Uptight librarian Caleri and her conspiracy-loving twin Elouisa. Zeki the grimalkin scoundrel with a heart of gold. Tau, the best pupper. Lots of fun and friendly characters, and very little need to interact with other players. You can also block/mute people or just mute the whole server, which is nice.

I'd recommend it, especially for people who like the idea of an open-world RPG thing but are more interested in stories than fighting. You'll get a lot of stories with Palia.

[unopenablebox]

terrible news for you all i've been kind of stressed out lately and as a result im back to reading about horse crime. so here's a quick review of every dick francis book ive read in the last 2 weeks. [edit actually this is only part 1 because i got tired after typing up four reviews.]

the edge - an extraordinarily wealthy man who doesn't use his wealth instead works as a Racecourse Detective solving horse crime. he goes double undercover first as himself, but Wealthily, and then immediately afterward as an actor pretending to be a waiter, in order to sneak onto a canadian horseracing millionaire murder mystery train and catch a blackmailer who takes people's horses. an excellent read that really delivers on its utterly deranged promises. plot not actually that suspenseful but i was having so much fun i didn't care. 5/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: classic dick francis woman type 1, "older woman with strong character", present as a couple of different people but not nearly as centrally or strongly drawn as usual. meanwhile type 2, "romantic interest", is much more believably career-oriented and on-page competent than usual, having possibly absorbed the older women archetypes' life force. flirtation not actually that interesting though. 3.5/5

straight - jockey's brother he barely knew dies and turns out to have been a genius jeweler with an unfathomable collection of whimsical gadgets. jockey inherits all of brother's worldly goods, which apparently include $1.5 million of secret diamonds no one's ever heard about previously and no one knows how to find. plot resolution vaguely disappointing if you think about it too much but very fun in the moment and i love the cast of the Jewelry World 4/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: strong-minded older woman is the love interest here; she's interesting and fun and has a weapon and i really enjoy how much the book completely endorses all the adultery she's doing. also we get an unusual young non-love-interest here in the person of the puzzle-loving jewelry business secretary who the protagonist helps to self-actualize and learn a new career. loved her. 5/5

hot money - jockey son reconciles with estranged father after possible assassination attempt, forcing him to also come into contact with his estranged stepsiblings and his father's several ex-wives. in the course of investigating all of them for murder he becomes much more engaged with and empathetic about their lives, and also almost gets exploded. good fun. i mostly really enjoy a) protagonist's mean bridge champion mother b) the father's instant adoption of his son's love of horses the second the concept of a horse is presented to him 3.5/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: lots of women, lots of them very interesting and with various sympathetic or unsympathetic things going on. i don't think this one had romance in it but if it did it was too boring to be remembered. various things about the ending make me waver on the rating but i'll settle on 4/5

the danger - professional kidnapping consultant realizes recent kidnappings are connected-- by a single thread. a horse thread. this one was kind of weirdly paced but i actually think it's some of the best suspense/action scenes from francis, partly because this guy has better reason than most dick francis protagonists to think it's a good idea for him to do any of the things he does. final plot contrivance leaving to climatic peril only slightly irritating. loses points for unconvincing Cop Shit which is not francis's strength. also for the romance, see below. 2/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: oh my fucking god uhhh sexual harrassment cw??? kind of???? he rescues a woman from two weeks of captivity with kidnappers, has to dress her because the kidnappers tranquilized her and took her clothes, notes that she looks fragile and physically adolescent even though she's an adult and later thinks about how hot she looked while unconscious and naked. then he follows her around a bunch because she's clearly emotionally dependent on him due to his status as a trained professional in kidnapping recovery, explicitly in a role that is a substitute for a psychiatrist, and it is in this capacity that he starts just suddenly kissing her and shit. the rest of his advice to her and the people around her as she recovers is quite empathetic and thoughtful but it's all kind of undermined by the fact that he thinks pursuing her romantically in this context is fine somehow???? aaaaaaaahhhhhh 0/5 fuck this book

ive actually read many more than this but we can call this post part 1 because it's too long

[nightshiftpodcast]

Hi!

Are there any news regarding season 2? I keep circling back to the asked you answered in June, and just get really curious!

I hope everything goes smoothly on your side, and I look forward to hearing more of this story!

Wishing you a nice day.

Hey, thanks for asking!

I've been meaning to put something out about delays for a few weeks but I've been struggling to find the words and energy. Before I get into it I want to emphasize that these are only delays and I just need more time to complete season 2, which will still be coming as soon as I can get it done. Thank you so much to everyone who has been beautifully patient and remained excited about Season 2 even though I'm a couple of months behind what I predicted!

I won't go too deep into things, but I want to give at least some kind of explanation as to why I'm so behind on everything:

1. Serious illness in my family earlier this year threw off the schedule originally. I lost a good couple of months of productivity through Jan-March because between that and planning my wedding in April, the stress made me sick too. All is well now with both, but I've been struggling to get everything back on track since.

2. I've been promoted twice this year, which is great, but I'm busier and in a pretty intense senior role now that takes up most of my energy and brain power during the week. Last year when I wrote Season 1, I didn't have a full-time job, and I really didn't anticipate the difference.

3. Finally and foremost really, partly because of the points above, I'm struggling with some pretty serious burnout, and I've tried to push through it to finish writing but ultimately I know that's never effective.

Realistically I need to take some time to wind down from creating to recover, although the guilt of trying to get this second season made quickly enough is eating at me.

I'm really super sorry for the delays - it's nothing on the production end, everyone including me is still really enthused to get on with it, it's just that I've hit a huge wall creatively and mentally and the podcast is taking the brunt of it. I really want to get back on track as soon as possible, because I love this show and I want to see Season 2 come to life this year.

Any advice on what to do to get past the burnout and block is greatly appreciated.

And thank you again for everyone's patience, you're all superstars 💚

- J

[pandemichub]

I'd love people to write in in response to this post. I'll share my own story to get things started.

Before the pandemic started I had just started to get on the right track after an apartment fire 3 years ago at the time. Everything was thrown off by that and I developed PTSD from the event. My health and mental health conditions were well managed, including my agoraphobia and I was in good health.

Even as I sheltered in place for approximately 3 years and only did essential activities and went to essential places I still contracted covid. Sadly my carer brought it into my home and I've suffered with long covid immediately subsequent to my acute infection ever since (August 28th 2022).

It's turned my life upside down. I had planned on starting to ride my bike and now it sits in my apartment untouched. I struggle to walk, sit and balance especially for prolonged periods, at the ripe age of 31. An issue I didn't have before remotely.

And yet doctors keep mentioning anxiety, that it's not conclusive despite not studying up to date literature and published research on covid and long covid. I have no purpose for my shoes much either because travel is taxing on my body. In fact I've been at my mom's house for almost a month because I'm not well enough to return home.

Even paid my rent and electric digitally. My patio remains unoccupied, partly because I don't want harassment about wearing a mask outdoors but also would rather not see my neighbors. One of which harassed me and my carer after coming back from a very stressful dentist appointment with appalling covid safety and not having slept that day.

My computer collecting dust, partly due to the winter storm a couple months or so ago that knocked out my power and messed up the boot sequence, but also not being able to sit at and use it without swaying, heart palpations, feeling faint, and for long periods.

My kitchen sink, cooking utensils and ware goes unused most of the time because my new illness has largely robbed me of the energy and focus to prepare and cook meals. And my apartment tends to occupy me or my one support staff because of my fear of a repeat incident of someone bringing disease into my house. A disease that if I catch again well may kill me, or, faster.

My shower usually is dry as a bone, baths and showers leave me flaring and wiped for days. My hair products sit frequently untouched as I'm too exhausted to brush, braid, cover and moisturize my hair. As do my free weights and elastic PT bands. Ever since I got sick I lack stamina, experience shortness of breath (I had asthma but it was well controlled), my heart rate spikes and I can't exercise in any way that would hit targets or be beneficial.

And still my doctor recommends physical therapy despite telling her all this. And worst of all won't give me a long covid diagnosis. She kicked me to specialist.

Specialist who are already booked out, and whose schedules and patient lists keep lengthening because of the sharp and continued rise in long covid. Knowing it could take months for me to get a diagnosis this route and even longer to get new disability aids I need if I even get documents and approvals at all.

That I can't possibly afford because I'm dirt poor. To add pain to injury, I was disabled before this. And I understood the seriousness of covid and long covid. And took every precaution. But in a society that's a threat to life and safety, I was only as safe as everyone else was and is.

Which means I wasn't and still am not. Not only do I have whatever implications and damage short and long term from my first bout of illness, I constantly have the threat of reinfections and death everyday.

And finally, I have no use for many of the chairs in my home as my brain, neck and spine struggle to keep me upright. My body is in some ways new to me and after 3 plus decades in it, I have to learn it all over again.

And am confronted with no longer being able to do what I once did (possibly ever again) with great sadness nor test limits without high risk and unpredictable results. And it is a terrible, deeply off putting, arrogant and cruel insult to hear people write off or outright deny long covid exists and call long covid a cold. It fucking isn't.

Anyway that's my story.

[prismaticstreams]

Building confidence with chronic illness and disability

What does it look like to be empowered and confident with a disability or chronic illness?

I’ve been pondering this lately as I find it’s easy to get into the mindset that when my health improves or if I fully recover, then I’ll finally feel confident, badass and empowered. And yes, that’s partly true. Having more energy and wellbeing definitely gives me a huge boost in my mood and sense of self efficacy. I also think it’s great to work on improving our health as much as possible.

However, what do we do in the mean time? What would it look like to be the best version of myself, right here with my current circumstances? I've been pondering this question recently, and wanted to explore it further.

Unfortunately, many of us get trapped in a downward spiral that feels out of our control. Feeling unwell saps our self esteem, and having to stop jobs, reduce social activities or limit hobbies can be very depressing. It’s a vicious circle that can be tough to escape. Financial and health struggles can create so much anxiety and stress, it can feel crippling not just physically, but mentally, too. It can feel shameful and embarrassing, and often we just want to hide and protect ourselves.

There can also be a lot of self-consciousness about our physical bodies and appearance. For example, many medications can make people put on weight, fatigue can cause dark circles under the eyes, and allergies can make people’s faces look puffy. Surgeries can also leave people with scars and it’s normal to wonder if people will find you attractive, especially in the dating scene.

However, the great thing about working on our health and confidence is that it can also be an upward spiral. Confidence can help motivate and empower us to improve our health and life situation, and in turn the increase in energy and health can boost our confidence. I’ve found that even improving my health by 5% or 10% can make a surprisingly dramatic difference in my overall quality of life. Every little bit counts!

Here is my advice, based on my life experience - in no particular order:

One: Escape the comparison trap.

Stop comparing to others, especially other able bodied people. Even comparing to others with the same condition can be highly problematic, as people have wildly varying symptoms, different levels of severity, as well as different levels of support and financial resources. Many people with the same outward symptoms also have a completely different root cause (or combination of root causes). Not to mention the treatments that work for some may not work for others at all. Some people find a silver bullet solution, but for most people, it’s more complex than just one thing.

Focus on yourself and stay in your lane. Concentrate on your personal achievements and look at how far you’ve come. Being able to walk for five minutes may mean nothing to the average person, but it may be a huge milestone for you. Don’t forget to celebrate your wins! Even the small ones. Also embrace the reality that the journey is going to be up and down. You’re going to have good days and bad days. Don’t let that discourage you from continuing.

Two: Self compassion and self acceptance.

Work on talking to yourself with more love, compassion and acceptance. Acceptance is really important because we need to come to terms with our reality, which is often incredibly frustrating and painful. This often involves a great deal of grief too. It’s okay to feel all the emotions, and hold space for them. I find journalling, therapy and EFT tapping really helpful in this process. I also really like parts work, and the concept of unblending, as it helps me gain perspective on difficult emotions and parts.

Know that it’s okay to feel the sadness and anger. It’s also okay to feel envious and jealous of people who are able bodied and have easier lives. It’s normal. Don’t add insult to injury by beating yourself up over totally normal emotions!! Society encourages us to repress and deny our shadow, but we need safe spaces to talk about the tough stuff.

Being disabled and chronically ill comes with a huge amount of stigma, and often trauma, too. Get the treatment you need for any trauma that’s holding you back and sapping your spirit. I recommend EMDR and somatic therapy, but there’s lots of other modalities out there too.

Three: Own it fully.

This is easier said than done, but when you’re disabled or chronically ill, it’s better to own it and speak about it as confidently as possible. I find this is especially relevant in social or dating situations. I try to be honest, open and frank about my lifestyle and limitations, rather than hiding it or pretending I don’t have any conditions. This is sometimes a tough line to walk as you don’t want to overshare or freak people out, but in general I prefer to be up front with people.

This also includes freely using mobility aids in public settings, social situations or going on dates. I’ve become very comfortable using a mobility scooter to get around, and often take a walking stick with me too. It takes time to get used to this, but the more you do it, the less self-conscious you’ll feel. Some people find it helps to decorate their mobility aids or get a walking stick that looks funky. Canes can be incorporated into a steampunk, dark academia or dapper aesthetic in a fun way! Find a way to own it and make it your own, in a way that suits your personality and style.

Another area that can be challenging is dealing with dietary limitations. Strict diets and allergies can be tricky, but again, it’s better just to own it. I don’t eat at restaurants, but I still go to restaurants and cafes with friends and enjoy hanging out. Yes, it’s a little awkward sometimes, but you have to push through it. The right people won’t care, and will value your presence more than anything else.

Four: Seek supportive connections, friends and community, whether online or off.

Find friends, groups and events that are supportive, uplifting and accessible. Don’t hang around people who judge you or drag you down. Even people who constantly insist on giving annoying unsolicited advice (like "just drink more water!") can drain your precious spoons.

I know this is so much easier said than done, because being disabled or chronically ill can bring with it a great deal of isolation. It’s natural to just hang on to whatever connections you have, and not want to let go or burn a bridge. So be kind to yourself if there’s some people you’re just not ready to let go of right now. But keep looking for better friends who are going to life you up and who fully accept and celebrate you as you are.

Never, ever assume you have to tolerate any abuse or mistreatment because you’re disabled or chronically ill. You are not a burden and never deserve to be treated badly.

The same goes for dates and partners. Don’t settle for people who are toxic, judgemental or just tolerate you – rather than fully accepting and loving you right now, for who you are. Also, find people who respect and cherish you as a person, not for what you can do for them or what you achieve. People who are very focused on things like class, money and status are usually best avoided where possible.

Five: Cultivate a sense of purpose in your life that’s bigger than you.

I find when I’m focused on my purpose and calling, it’s easier to be confident because I’m not so focused on what other people think of me. I recognise that I have a calling that’s a lot more important than that! Obviously, this is easier said than done, especially if you can no longer work – or have had to change jobs, or reduce your work hours. Even volunteering can be surprisingly difficult when you have health limitations.

But purpose, meaning and calling in life are much greater than what we do for money, or even our hobbies. Relationships are a core source of meaning and purpose for many people. Being creative and growing spiritually are also significant. I’ve written more about this in other blog posts, but I find this is a significant piece of building a sense of empowerment in difficult circumstances. Reflecting on your core values can be really powerful and inspiring.

I’d recommend doing an exercise where you select words or phrases that represent your core values in life.

Six: Don’t be afraid to have fun, explore and try new things, as much as you can!

I find singing and dancing at home to positive, empowering songs can really boost my mood and confidence. It can be hard to be as spontaneous and active as I would like, but I still try my best to engage in life to the fullest extent of my capabilities. Sometimes this means asking for help or using mobility aids to get to certain events. It can also mean more planning ahead when travelling.

I really love riding my escooter, as it gives me an adrenaline rush but isn’t too tiring. Think outside the box and be open to new experiences. Brene Brown talks about engaging in laughter, song and dance in her guidelines for wholehearted living, and I think it’s applicable here. Watching hilarious movies and having a laugh with friends can be so uplifting.

Finally, don’t discount celebrating your sexuality. Disabled people are often portrayed as non-sexual, but exploring dating and sex can be a lot of fun and very empowering.

Practical suggestions:

Explore journalling about – what does it mean to live my best and fullest life with my current limitations? What does being empowered and confident look like for me right now? Brainstorm whatever comes to mind.

If you’re feeling rejected or unworthy, put your hand on your heart or your belly, and send love to the parts of you that are holding these emotions. I find self compassion practice can be really powerful.

EFT tapping is a great tool for working through negative core beliefs, like “I’m a burden” or “I’m not enough”.

If people give you a compliment, take a screenshot or write it down and save it into a folder on your computer for whenever you feel down and need a pick me up.

Try writing down your strengths, good qualities and things you like about yourself.

Create a celebration jar where you write down anything you’re proud of or qualities your love about yourself on little bits of paper. Put them in the jar and you can open it whenever you need a reminder. Another option is putting a marble or stone in a jar whenever you do something you’re proud of.

Experiment with visualising yourself as your most confident, empowered self. You could go back to a past memory where you were feeling your best, or imagine yourself in the future. I find doing this while listening to music can be really uplifting.

Use positive affirmations, for example: My worth and value is based on who I am, not on my achievements. I am confident. I am powerful. I deserve to be treated well. If it feels a bit fake or forced, you could try asking yourself, “What if I felt confident?” and see what arises.

Further links and resources:

Chronic Illness and Confidence: How to Rebuild

Facing the World with Confidence and Chronic Illness

How to be Confident While Being Chronically Ill

[eledritch]

hi ele!

i’m a fan of your writing, mostly your voltron fics but i’ve also read your dragon age, critical role, and captive prince stories, they are all so fucking good. where do i go to join your cult? /j

you’re insanely creative in your AUs or plot ideas, from plant porn to beauty in the beast with vampires but also magic schools with magic goddesses and incubi and cambions!

i was just wondering what inspires you when you’re coming up with ideas for fics and what normally comes first to you, the setting or plot or something else? plus, how did you develop such a strong sense of characterization? because across alternate universes and in every different life, your characters are so consistent and recognizable.

another way your creativity shines is the world building in your fics, it is always so fascinating and effortless, it’s a tantalizing background that really hooks me into the world of your stories. i don’t know if you have more notes on world building that didn’t make it into your fics but please know i would sell my soul for a napkin of extra notes for your fics. do you world build as you write or plan it in advance? and do some things you consider fic-canon not make it into the final edit or do you try to work everything you have in?

i know this is a lot, i’m very interested in your writing methods and how you develop so many amazing stories sorry! thanks for your many years of amazing writing and the time it took you to read this ask XD

Hi wow this is all so kind of you to say!! I'm so glad you enjoy my writing <3

so, I would say that usually when I am starting on a new story, I start with the characters and think about what kinds of situations, settings, conflicts, genres, themes, etc I want to write them in. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres because in many ways it feels the most flexible -- I am probably halfway between a pantser and a plotter in terms of story-planning, so I enjoy having space in my plots for them to change if I feel like they need to. I usually know the ending early on in the process tho.

Worldbuilding is one of my favorite aspects of writing and partly why I am so partial to writing AUs. I tend to do more planning for the worldbuilding up front than I do with the plot: my story worlds are scaffolds on which I can build the plot, if that makes sense. I've loved worldbuilding since I was a kid, and I think the best advice I can give for how to build story worlds is to read a lot of books. Books I read as a kid still influence how I worldbuild today (a few that come to mind are the Redwall, Series of Unfortunate Events, Narnia, & May Bird books), as well as videogames (Dragon Age always), places I've actually been, and honestly my academic reading/writing also definitely influences my creative writing, i.e., when thinking about how to write about social conflicts and cultural norms and especially colonization/empire in the worlds I write stories about.

For writing both characters and worldbuilding, I think it's really key to figure out how to suspend your readers' disbelief, and this starts with suspending your own disbelief. You have to believe in the worlds and characters you create. This means being comfortable with writing your characters in all kinds of situations, because people only show a lot of aspects of themselves (and therefore seem like real people, because people & their personalities & motives & backgrounds are complex) if they experience a lot of things. This may be why I gravitate towards writing stories with more dramatic tones and plots, because I find it much more fun to figure out characters by stressing them out. Seriously, I think characters solidify when they're placed in wild situations lol! And these don't necessarily need to be really serious perilous situations, but rather events and conflicts that fundamentally challenge the characters and force you to imagine how they might react in ways that feel true to how you've written them.

For example, one of my favorite character types to write is "kind of a bitch but like, a complicated bitch and kind of justified in their bitchiness because they're going through some stuff." Laurent from Captive Prince definitely falls under this; Keith from VLD, Essek from CR, and Astarion from BG3 also fit into this category (albeit all in really different ways and shades of bitchiness haha). I find these characters fun to write because they're characters who should probably change -- they also have clearly defined flaws and desires, which is great when you have to create a conflict and keep readers engaged/make readers get attached to these characters.

It's tough to root for a character who is consistently a bitch, never feels bad about it, has no reason for being that way, is never critiqued by other characters about it, and is not influenced to change by the narrative at all. It's a lot easier to root for a character who has some kind of inner conflict going on which is complemented by the outer conflict/s of the story. I'm especially fond of characters who have trust issues, because this is a flaw that obviously lends itself well to romance plots, but also can have some very interesting backstory implications and lead to really dynamic yet believable character development, as trust can be built incrementally and also wax and wane in a way that feels natural and builds narrative tension in a compelling way. It also allows you to work on other characters, since trust requires at least two people :)

Thank you for your questions!! I'm sure this is all over the place (it's finals week and dear god grad school finals week is actually hell) but best of luck in your own writing and I hope to share more fic soon~

[runemyth0]

per this, ⭐

I could take the easy way out and just list all the references I've put into my fics, but I think I'll talk about a particular moment that I've come back to almost a year after writing it.

Putting this under a cut because it's a bit longer and heavier than I intended.

As I mentioned in the notes for Chapter 4 of Camila Versus, the original draft of the chapter (and the fic as a whole) did not have the Park family helping out Camila and Vee. So, they would have been homeless for a much greater portion of the story.

What I didn't mention, since I don't usually like to talk about my personal troubles, was that around the time I started writing Camila Versus I suffered a loss in my family. To some degree, we had been expecting it, but I had been dealing with a lot of stuff in 2022 and it hit much harder than I thought it would.

I had been throwing myself into writing to distract myself for a while and that only made it worse.

The answer didn’t come right away, as Camila dove into her memories. She organized them, then reorganized them, then scattered them again. Finally, she thought she had them in a complete enough state to explain, without getting into the most stressful or traumatic parts.

I'll admit I haven't reread Camila Versus in a while, partly out of standard 'old shame disease', but also because I put so much of myself into it and I don't know if I'm able to fully face the things I was going through when I wrote it.

That said, I've come to realize that I had Camila fall into a pit of despair not unlike mine, but at the same time I also ended up giving her exactly the thing I needed.

“If… if we’re not a bother…” Camila said, her voice shaking. She helped Vee to her feet. “No worries, someone in need is never a bother. Please, come in.”

Following this chapter, the outline of the story was reworked to feature Willow more often, ending up with her driving a good portion of the story and letting her hang out with Vee a bunch. The outline for Chapter 16 and onward was mostly unaltered due to the change.

There were a few other moments that I may have put a lot of myself into, such as Hunter's breakdown in the ice cave and the Luz's last memory of Manny sequence.

...

Let's end this with something fun! Something NO ONE has noticed (to my knowledge). And since I doubt I'll get another chance to share this, let's go!

In Chapter 3, there are a pair of St. Epiderm students, one in bard red and another in healing blue, walking along the path to St. Epiderm during the cold open. Camila overhears them, leading to the events of that chapter.

Thirteen chapters later...

One particular couple, dressed in red and blue dresses with mutually complementing details, danced quietly, hand in hand in the corner of the gym.

It's a blink and you'll miss it cameo (hell, there's technically no direct evidence it's the same pair), but I really hoped someone would catch it. Like, I had been planning that since I wrote Ch3.

[mythgrippa-blog]

Day 0 - rebooting

Hello, call me Mythgrippa! Nice to meet you, the name comes from two fascinations I have, myths and Marcus Agrippa (my favorite Roman). I am currently doing my final year of computer science and I've done a lot, I'll list them out in a different blog post but it was a lot a lot and I'm left with only one semester which I'm quite excited about.

However, I think I must have overworked myself to get to this point, like I'm truly exhausted all the time, can't really focus on my work and having constant feelings of stress and anxiety, I used to be a stallion programmer but I can barely write a few lines of code and not feeling mentally overwhelmed.

This morning, like in the night I woke up to go to the bathroom and couldn't go back to sleep so I went online and got a bit too curious and searched up why I'm like this and found an online blog post which explained all the symptoms I've been experiencing with pin point accuracy.

I'm mentally exhausted, it makes sense because I'm always thinking about whatever school work I have and trying to get good grades, sleeping deep into the night trying to get work done. My performance has been declining, I still get work done but my quality isn't what it used to be. I've also been neglecting self care and not going outside, my skin is starting to show, I'm black by the way and my tone has started feeling... spotty? I don't know, I don't like it. My self confidence has kind of diminished because of it so there's that as well.

So, I still have a lot of work to do, like a software project for school that I'm the leader of, so I have to be the technical lead and also the semester hasn't started yet so I've to prepare for that as well. These are my stressors. I've to stop this mental daemon from running all the time.

To accomplish this, the article I read suggested these 11 solutions

Eliminate the stressors

My stressors would be mostly work, I can't just simply eliminate it because I have to finish this semester, and its not something I can set aside, plus my software project with my group isn't going so well so we gotta work our butts off for that

Work-life balance

Alright, this is part I get because I honestly don't have a life. The closet life I have is the friends I hang out with at school when on break and also the tennis games we go to, but I've mostly been a work person. So, for starters I need a life!!! But where to start... maybe I should start. Perhaps restricting myself to working up to 6 hours or less per day?

I could play video games or watch movies, I mean... hm... I'll try out the other games and watch more TV, I haven't been reading any of my novels or play board games. I'm off Twitter and Reddit, I don't like scrolling mindlessly for hours.

Damn it!! I remember that one of my friends has my board games, no matter I'll just play on ipad, hopefully there are good apps in the app store. I'll see what my other friends have to say. Well I'll see what I will do

Clear your space

I suppose this means I should rid of what doesn't kindle joy, I'm in recess at the moment and I'm back home, I don't have a room of my own so I sleep in my little brother's room (which used to be mine before I moved to uni), the spare that I usually sleep in is occupied by one of my older brothers. This room is a mess and I really can't do much about it other than tidy some stuff but the way things are laid out is just so annoying, so much wasted space. But this isn't my room anymore so I can't really do anything major plus my energy is down the drain.

Schedule (and take) regular breaks

I should take breaks when working, I used to study using Pomodoro and it was quite effective I won't lie but I've lost some of my discipline, at least partly attributed to the main reason I'm writing this in the first place.

How did I go so many semesters without taking regular breaks, not even like five minutes, I'm really a mad lad. I'll try to take at least 5 minutes off per hour, that should make it easier, but what constitutes a break? Doing nothing? I suppose that works

Get outside

In terms of this, I try to go outside but the weather is just so cold, but the sun does feel good but I'm the type of person who likes dark and gloomy weather accompanied by rain and thunder storms, I just really like that, the rain drops crashing onto the roof or window, the warm clothing I get to wear!! Oh my goodness, it feels like a mental refresher because I naturally feel easy and relaxed when there's rain. But I'll try to go out, perhaps a jog every now and then?

Do something new

Something new... well I could really try that, I used to go to the gym but school got so hectic I had to cancel my membership but I think I'll go back since I believe the hardest semester has concluded (last semester was the hardest honestly and I'm glad I made it out alive).

I'll try out other types of sports because I want to regain my stamina and activeness, my right leg though... its fine I'll be fine, I'll buy better shoes and sports gear. I'll try to be healthier, eat my fruits daily, and drink plenty of water.

That's a lot of stuff, how will I manage though? I'll figure it out but at least the idea is there

Reduce screen time

I mean... even though its the start of recess and I'm done with my old modules and the new ones haven't started yet, I'm still checking my emails and notifications, I do have the group project, and I'm doing Computer Science, I need a computer to science god damn it, how am I supposed to reduce that. I'll let this one slide. Because I can't really digitally detox... I'm not ready for that or even see the need to, but I can reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone, no phone time between 10PM and 7AM, that worked before in the past. But as for computer time, yeah I can't really reduce that.

Find positive ways to distract yourself

I used to have this bad habit I'm still recovering, I tricked myself into thinking it could help get the "edge off", I regret it and I'm glad I'm not that person, incase you're wondering its not drugs or weed or alcohol or any bad substances... I've never done any of that, and NO I DON'T VAPE. I'm as a clean as they get, but there's always been something I've been struggling with for almost four years now but I think I've finally learnt to let it go for the better.

You could say it was a negative distraction for myself, but no more of that I just need a positive way to distract myself, perhaps calling up an old friend? I haven't spoken to a number of people, I am messaging someone but they're not a regular person I talk to because of odd response times but I'm one of those people who'll reply as soon as they see your message no matter how long you take because I get people have stuff to do or don't feel like replying at times, its completely normal.

Perhaps I'll start playing games again? But that can get out of hand pretty quickly, actually... having coffee with my best friend can work? Yeah, there are plenty, I'll just ask her (oh yeah, a bit of a rant but I'm a guy, my best friend is a girl so yeah that can be a thing, why don't people get it! Guys and Girls don't have to date to have fun, goodness I hate my class mates, for CS nerds they're sure talkative, they're nice people but JEEEEZ). I'll ask her if I want to be distracted, or my other friends as well

Take care of yourself 

I need to eat nourishing food, I ate a lot of KFC and boy it ain't good for ya, but it helps fill me up but I'll try to be better than that and eat better. I'll start eating from this restaurant I frequent they sell some delicious and nourishing food. I'll also try to sleep by 10 and wake by 7, that should be plenty of rest yeah? I will drink water every day, trust me I'm a water freak.

Focus on what you can control

I can't really do everything, so I should be able to tell others what to do, I am group leader after all. I'll see what I can do and what should be done, I'll delegate and try to organize more. So, that the objective is very clear. I'm not a stallion anymore, I can't code for hours on end like I used to, but luckily there's capable members in my group so I'll delegate the work to them and do my group leader duties.

Talk to a coach or therapist

NO

Well that lists everything, I wrote so much without realizing it, this was all in one sitting so I'm impressed with myself. I always did enjoy writing stories, I'm not as creative anymore but when it comes to stuff like this, I have like 3 filled up diaries.

If you made it this far, I'm so impressed with you, thank you for taking an interest and reading my first public blog (I've written so many private ones that I'll never release because I'm so embarrassed plus its useless and uninteresting, like unfinished stories, other diary attempts, blah blah)

Well thanks again you and I'll see you in the next one

[truly-morgan]

[JZX coming home to his wife after a party (18+)]

XuanLi | Mo Dao Zu Shi Modern AU + Sub/Dom dynamic 12-02-2022

[#xuanli modern nsfw-ish]

Jin Zixuan who has to attend one of his father's parties and is just wanting to go back home. It's all people linked to Jin Corp in some way, be it shareholders, partners or people interested in the company.

It's also mostly all older men like his father.

Jzx has never been good with social gatherings, not when he was younger, and not today either. It seems even worse when his wife is not by his side tonight, since it's a "man-only party".

He can't wait to go home partly because he doesn't know how to deal with the old men who keep commenting on his married life, making inappropriate hypotheses about them.

Truly he was never good with them, not when he was young and still not interested in his fiance, Even less now that he was married.

They kept talking about him as if he was someone very manly and dominant, who already had a mistress like the many his father had.

As if he could have anyone else than his wife!!

But he did not respond to any of them, keeping to the facade he had created over the years. Looking disinterested and giving short and vague answers was usually enough o drive some away because he "was no fun".

The night was going by way too slowly for him and he made his escape when the people left were all a bit too drunk and now around his father. He was not needed anymore and just wanted to go home.

He went out, calling for his driver. The ride was quiet, but this was all he needed after being at such a noisy place for so long. Still feeling tense from the prolonged unwanted social interaction. The alcohol in him not helping at all.

Yet, all this built-up stress quickly melted away once he got home and was greeted by jyl.

He followed along when he was dragged to the living room, jyl making him sit nearly on her, hugging him close to her, helping him relax. "How was it?" She asked.

"Tiring, and it's always the same ild1men coming to me to see if I am finally following in my father's steps" he replied, jyl understanding what he meant due to jzx having already complained about it before. She had also witnessed how they could be.

"They even asked if I had already found a mistress," he snorted "as if cheating was such a prideful thing to do and brag about".

There was a moment of silence as he simply leaned on his wife, letting her pat his hair.

"They even asked me if I was being dominant in bed like him" he added, a mocking chuckle escaping his lips.

"Did they?" Jyl asked with a rather amused tone, "yet you are a very dominant man" she chuckled.

This made jzx chuckle quietly against her, shaking his head at her remark.

"I am sure their idea of dominant sucks too" he ended up saying after their little fit of chuckles.

🔞

jyl then shifted around a little bit, bringing her husband's legs over her lap, keeping him close to her.

"Then should we show them what a good dom is?" she asked, hands gently going from his hair to his neck, caressing his skin.

"To have you all tied up on a chair, exposed to everyone in the room, taking your favourite toy just for me while you moan sweetly~" she started.

"Or maybe I could have you parade around while wearing your prettiest lingerie? I am sure they will find you more pretty than any woman they had, my A-Xuan is the prettiest after all" she continued, smiling when she felt him shift around a bit, his breath starting to be heavy.

"I would also take that pretty chair of yours at the end of the table, sitting in it while you kneel between my legs, using that pretty and skillful mouth of yours to pleasure me until I've had enough. Of course, I would bind your arm behind you so you cannot touch yourself unless you beg correctly for it".

jyl couldn't help her chuckle when she noticed the tent that had created itself in her husband's tailored pants, teasing the erection through the clothing.

"look at you, getting so excited at the idea of all these people seeing how cute of a submissive you are for your beautiful wife, I am sure no one would see you as the dominant man in bed they think you are"

jzx couldn't help the moan that escaped his mouth when she teased him, bucking his hips up a little bit.

All her idea were only riling him up, craving for her touch. It would be terrifying to do for real (although if jyl was here he could probably do it), but the idea was still pretty exciting. so many eyes on him seeing how much of a good boy he was for his perfect wife.

"Why don't you go and put on your pretty outfit for me?" jyl whispered against his eyes, smirking when she felt him shiver in her arms, nodding obediently.

He managed to get out of her embrace, his erection now even more visible to her.

jzx made his way to their room, changing out of his formal wear to find the leather harness he has, enjoying the feeling of it hugging him around his torso and waist. He found some pretty underwear to match it.

He was patiently waiting for his wife, erection tenting his pretty underwear. He looked up the moment he heard the door open, eye curious on the box jyl was holding.

"look at you, so eagerly waiting for me~" she teased, walking over and gently stroking his chest.

her eyes landed on his nipples, looking pleased "You even wore the pretty jewel I gave you" she noticed, looking up when she didn't receive a comment on it.

"I... I was already wearing them" jzx said, blushing.

this surprised her, yet made her smile even more. What better than to hear her husband was wearing piercings while at a formal event? This made her really happy. "What a naught boy you are, wearing such lewd thing at your father's party" she commented, enjoying the shiver she felt under her fingers. "your nipple must be sensitive after rubbing against your dress shirt all night, it's a surprised no one noticed them" she smirk, "Let me kiss them better".

all jzx could do was moan and whimper at her kissing and sucking at his nipples, making them even more sensitive than they already were from the night of rubbing. It's only made him harder, hand gripping at himself to not touch himself.

When jyl had enough of teasing his nipple and kissing his chest she instead went to kiss him, making him bend over a little to do so.

"I have a surprise for you" she whispered against his lips, clearly catching his full attention again. She took the box again, opening it to reveal a new collar.

It was a leather one with a golden trip accent to it. what caught his attention though was the tag.

It was a golden dog tag with his name on it. this made him blush even more. They had other collars, but somehow this one was really special.

It was /his/ collar with /his/ name on it.

something in him was even more pleased when he noticed the lotus emblem of the jiang family carved on the other side of the other side of the tag. The symbol his wife very much still used.

This meant one thing: he was /hers/.

He bent down again without being asked to, letting her fasten the collar around his neck, a spark of excitement passing him when he felt the tag touch his skin.

"This looks perfect on you" she commented, making him even more excited about wearing it.

He was then gently dragged towards the bed after she hooked a finger on the ring holding the tag, smiling at him. "Now, why don't you show me how much of a good boy you are?".

====

that's it >:3 I love my xuanli dynamic, but it's even better if we have femdom!jyl and sub!jzx, this man will do anything for his wife and will love it

also here are some references pic of the accessory I had in mind, if anyone is curious

ofc, make the piercing gold since it jzx 😌 

[reference picture for what he's wearing]

with this kind of collar, but add some golden details to the thinner leather parts (maybe I could doddle it later when I am home 👀)

[entering the collar idea + maybe the fanart I did]

Original

[afineprivateplace]

Search Party

Recovery has been a challenge for me. After feeling like I was making a little progress, the last couple of weeks have trended downwards again. Some pretty heavy depression, and more of those fits of anger that I thought I'd finally moved past. There have certainly been other factors that have contributed: a big project I'm working on with a friend, which has been fun but also challenging, and a recent heatwave have both been stressing me out. I feel like I'm very much still in survival mode, getting through each day and not much more.

That said, something I've been focussing on that has helped has been trying to find again the person I was before Anagram. It's only in the last few months I've properly come to realise how much I'd flattened or even erased certain aspects of myself to try and be the person that they would tolerate. Particularly, a lot of the interests I had before I met Anagram just fell by the wayside, and I hadn't even noticed. So I've begun to carve out more time for myself to follow these interests again, to see if, in the process, I can rediscover my identity.

Music has been a big one. It's not that Anagram and I didn't listen to music, that happened fairly often. But it always seemed to be to their schedule, and by agreement. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's a specific pleasure to listening to your own choices of music, by yourself, singing as off-key as you like. It feels good to have music around as a background, or as something to exercise my voice. I'm also making sure to still play songs that I listened to with Anagram, so I can hear them in a new way, without them being locked to old associations.

I'm writing more, particularly poetry. There were a couple of occasions where Anagram read stuff I'd written without my permission, telling me only later, sometimes as a way to accuse me of having negative attitudes. Even when I shared stuff I had written, they could be very critical. I don't think they meant this in a bad way - it was their attempt to be constructive - but when combined with the other ways they would criticise me it just ended up feeling like a continuous attack. The writing I do now is looser, more stream of consciousness in style than what I used to do, partly out of a desire to just get things on the page. Some of my poems are about my time with Anagram, but there are other, more hopeful pieces as well. I've transcribed a few onto my computer, but to start I always like to write with pen and paper; the motion in itself is quite soothing.

One that I've made less progress with is reading, and it's also the one it took me the longest to connect to my relationship. For a while I thought I'd been reading less because it was harder for me to get comfortable and concentrate since I had gotten sick, and there is some truth in that, I think. But ultimately, the reason I was doing this less was the same reason I stopped doing a lot of things I liked, such as playing video games or being out with friends or drawing: I had come to feel guilty giving my time to anything other than Anagram. They made it very clear I should make them my top priority, and that failing to pay enough attention was basically neglect. I think this is why they felt justified reading anything I wrote, or deleting apps off my phone, or anything along those lines. My attention belonged to them first and foremost. So I read less and less, and got out of the habit. I still struggle to read a book for any length of time without the nagging feeling that my focus should be elsewhere. (The only times I've been able to get lost in a book recently have been when I was in hospital, where I really didn't have anything else to do.)

I definitely have a lot more work to do on this, especially as the guilt I had for not paying attention to Anagram has been replaced with the guilt of not working on more serious self-care things. But I can't deny the process feels rewarding. I think if I keep searching, I'll find something even better than just the old me: I'll find a me that's even stronger.

[getittogetherk]

January 20, 2025

A week and a half ago we had some terrible seasonal Santa Ana's, but they were worse than usual. On Tuesday night I was vaguely alarmed at how much wind there was, how much the trees were swaying, and the roar, thinking about how many branches and how much debris would be sprawled out in the morning.

In the morning, after a shower, I was getting ready to head out to the office when I saw a text from my neighbor warning me about a nearby fire and some evacuation warnings. Within moments, I ran outside, saw the scary black plume of smoke, looked into maps of evacuation areas, texted joyce, learned she had already evacuated, and was advised to stay put in case my evacuation alert came out as well. We were in an "Evacuation Ready" area, just left of the "Go" area, and so I ran around, throwing things into bags, trying to assess what was most important, and then finally texting my mom in hawaii to ask where her valuables were so i could pack those too. It was a fraught day, two Wednesdays ago.

Intermittently I would attend meetings and check emails, but there was much anxiety. People had out of office messages or weren't able to attend meetings because of the fires/evacuations. Telework emails from HR kept being updated and sent out. In the next few days, we'd learn of how bad the devastation would be. The most affected areas were Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the latter of which had much more significance. Lana's friend Kyle lost his family/childhood home, her friend Christine lost her entire home, and her friend Monique lost her grand aunt's home, as well as her grand aunt herself. Grace K was evacuated, went to her parents', but when they were also evacuated, all escaped to Long Beach. it was a hectic, frazzled time, and i just don't recall the danger ever having felt that close to so many communities. We'd had fires up in Sylmar, but we were a nothing community, up in the hills, backing fire hazard areas, next to mobile home parts, and nobody cared about us. The prospect of a fire coming into densely populated residential neighborhoods was otherwise unheard of.

That crisis passed (for my at least). We were not evacuated, although new warnings of strong winds came up for today, MLKJ day, a holiday, and I plan to go with Danielle and Snicks to Rosie's so Snicks can play. It's a little unsettling, knowing how near danger is. The whole city is mourning. My mom and I went to Lake Ave. the Sunday after, and the mood was somber, and attendance was much lighter than usual. There were many tears, and much beseeching of God to be with his children. Yesterday I went to New Abbey and the mood was similar. A sort of quiet shock. Every ig account has "Ways to Help" and GoFundMe's.

For the first time I am considering moving out of LA County once I retire. I think Lana has mentioned that as well, and without Lana, my parents, and my job, there will be very little incentive to stay here and I'd prefer a place with natural water sources, cleaner air, and more green foliage.

I've also made another conviction to lose weight. I'm pretty sure I'm diabetic or at least very close to it. the past week i have been stress-eating, back to pasta and ben and jerry's, and just handfuls of Trader Joe's milk chocolate, which is usually way too sweet for me.

I also met with Caroline a few days ago for breakfast and emphasizing the importance of health, especially gut health, partly attributing to her recent illnesses to weaknesses brought on post-birth. She encouraged me to sign up for Class Pass and try to work out and meet physically active people instead of ... going to bars lol.

Since it's MLKJ day holiday, a Monday, I'm off, and so uncharacteristically able to sit and write and drink my very good Chemex coffee. However the angle of the laptop is cutting into my wrist and in general this is not an ergonomic set up, but I enjoy the sun and looking out.

For my health, I'm going to try to make some changes that I think are more concrete and sustainable. At least 1 healthy meal and 1 healthy snack per day.

Yesterday for breakfast I had greek yogurt, fruit, and nuts, and for dinner I had air fried chicken thighs, rich, and an arugula/beet/burrata salad. Lunch was a less healthy heaping of nengmyun with two boiled eggs, but I got in the two healthy portions.

Today I plan on drinking minimally and only bringing non alcoholic drinks and a couple sweet potatoes to snack. Also my sleep has been awful. I'm sleepy all day and last night I had a record 1% of REM which is a new low. I need to get these things back to healthy modes.

[elizabethplaid]

a drafted note - Jan 19, 2025

I drafted this post before noon, but I felt really emotional when writing it on my phone. When I get like that, I save it as a draft, so I can read it again later, after I've calmed down.

The rest of my day has been napping and hot compresses on my eye. I'm taking it easy. =======

I forgot to bring a dosage cup upstairs, so I didn't take zzzquil last night. I was pretty tired, thankfully, and slept okay without it. Something like 9:45pm until 2am (bathroom break), then again til maybe 6 or 7am.

Unfortunately, I had a nightmare, and it took a very long time to move after waking from that. Partly from being so deep in sleep, partly from shaking with anxiety, partly paralyzed with despair. (I finally got out of bed after 9am, then came back upstairs near 11am.)

Most of the long dream was fine, but near the end, I was looking for Moscow and Wampus. They were missing, and I was searching through a shelter that was very unhelpful. It was dark, and the cats would look very similar, until I held them in my arms. I kept thinking I found them, only to be wrong.

Amid my search, I was near a parking lot and saw the brother of my old bully. He recognized me, despite being covered in a hoodie and trying to hide. I denied it was me, but he grabbed my arm and pulled off my hood. He was jovial and didn't understand my panic, asking why I was hiding. He brought up how friendly we had been as classmates, in the 6th grade. Really, I think he knew I had a crush on him, so by being nice, I'd let him look at my paper during tests.

In the dream, I flung off his hand and said, "What am I to you? After all this time, why do you care about me?" He seemed startled, speechless. Then his wife came up to him and said hi to me. She could see I was distressed. The guy played it cool, introduced me as an old classmate. I could see she had their 3 small kids with her, so I said I needed to go, that I was looking for my cats. He offered to help, but the wife said they needed to get the kids home first, that he could come back later.

He went to put the kids in their car, and I pulled the wife aside. "You should ask him why it's so important to him to talk with me. I don't have time to deal with him and his brother. I need to find my cats," I told her, or something to that effect. We parted ways, and I guess I went back to my search. I never found my cats though.

=======

Amid the couple hours it took to fully wake up, I tried to envision a "better" course of plot for that part of the dream. I had been in my current, tense state while in the dream, so I figured I might've collapsed, if I hadn't been able to escape that guy. I'd be taken to the hospital, and my phone-friend would be called as next of kin, emergency contact. I focused on imagining phone-friend's stern voice, calmly telling the old classmate to leave and not contact me again. "She's been through enough stress and pain. Enough is enough," they'd say.

Because it's a dream and just my inner fears, I know this guy doesn't give two shits about me. But, like every other time I dream of this guy and his brother (the bully), I can't help but feel weary and wonder when it will end. Then again, I was just telling phone-friend last night how weary I feel from the anxiety and sensory nonsense. So yeah, the guy is just a metaphor for this pain. I'm tired, just so tired.