#same goes for calling good moods high frequencies

[dempaboya]

leave me alone ill call sleeping "charging" if i want to! ⚡

[themedicalstate]

Can Zapping Our Brains Really Cure Depression?

New research suggests that stimulating neurons in the brain can address psychological issues with surprising speed and precision.

The brain is an electrical organ. Everything that goes on in there is a result of millivolts zipping from one neuron to another in particular patterns. This raises the tantalizing possibility that, should we ever decode those patterns, we could electrically adjust them to treat neurological dysfunction — from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia — or even optimize desirable qualities like intelligence and resilience.

Of course, the brain is so complex, and so difficult to access, that this is much easier to imagine than to do. A pair of studies published in January in the journal Nature Medicine, however, demonstrate that electrical stimulation can address obsessive-compulsive urges and symptoms of depression with surprising speed and precision. Mapping participants’ brain activity when they experienced certain sensations allowed researchers to personalize the stimulation and modify moods and habits far more directly than is possible through therapy or medication. The results also showed the degree to which symptoms that we tend to categorize as a single disorder — depression, for example — may involve electrical processes that are unique to each person.

In the first study, a team from the University of California, San Francisco, surgically implanted electrodes in the brain of a woman whose severe depression had proved resistant to other treatments. For 10 days, they delivered pulses through the electrodes to different areas of the brain at various frequencies and had the patient record her level of depression, anxiety and energy on an iPad. The impact of certain pulses was significant and nuanced. “Within a minute, she would say, ‘I feel like I’m reading a good book,’” says Katherine W. Scangos, a psychiatrist and the study’s lead author. The patient described the effect of another pulse as “less cobwebs and cotton.”

The researchers also recorded what type of unmediated brain activity coincided with periods of low mood or energy. The aim was to use those responses to guide the placement of another set of electrodes that would deliver what is known as deep-brain stimulation — a technique that can restore lost function to neurons by zapping them with a consistent, high-frequency electrical pulse. To date, it has been employed most commonly to treat movement disorders, like Parkinson’s. It has also shown promise for depression. “But because depression presents differently in different people, it likely involves multiple neural circuits,” Scangos says. She and her colleagues wondered if a “more personalized approach” might make the treatment more effective. Based on their mapping of the patient’s brain activity, they programmed the electrodes to detect her depressed states and deliver stimulation in response, much the way a pacemaker acts on the heart. That experimental treatment will continue long term as the patient goes about her daily life.

Deep-brain stimulation is too invasive to use except in extreme circumstances. But in the second study, researchers used a noninvasive technique called transcranial alternating current stimulation to deliver electrical pulses through electrodes placed on participants’ scalps. The goal was to try to curb obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Past studies have suggested that the orbital frontal cortex, an area in the brain’s reward network, might play a role in reinforcing such behaviors, by regarding them as beneficial. So the researchers attached the electrodes to 64 volunteers and recorded the frequency in hertz at which their orbital frontal cortex fired when they won a monetary reward in a game.

Crucially, it was noted, the frequency varied slightly by individual. Using that personal frequency, the researchers next stimulated the same area in each participant for 30 minutes a day for five days in a row. Doing so, they found, reduced the number of obsessive-compulsive behaviors in the volunteers by an average of nearly 30 percent over the following three months. (None of the volunteers had an obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis. All of them, however, reported varying degrees of repetitive tendencies, and those whose symptoms were most intense got the most relief.) The researchers hypothesize that the stimulation helped the orbital frontal cortex maintain its optimal rhythm, thereby improving its coordination with other areas in the reward network.

The findings reinforced the idea that personalized brain stimulation requires determining not just the right area to target but also the right rhythm at which to do so. “The neural code — it’s frequency-specific,” says Robert M.G. Reinhart, one of the study’s authors and the director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston University. “The channel of information-processing in the brain is just like a channel you might tune in to on the radio.” The study also illustrated that traits like compulsivity exist on a spectrum. Currently, a person for whom those traits are bothersome but not disabling might not seek treatment, particularly if it comes with side effects, as medications often do. Brain stimulation, though, could one day remedy all kinds of conditions we now target inexactly with drugs, Reinhart says. “If you want to get futuristic, you can imagine someone giving themselves a zap to get over a trans-Atlantic flight. What people use coffee for today.”

Psychiatrists won’t be prescribing brain stimulation to the masses anytime soon. But by identifying the neural circuits that give rise to particular symptoms, and by showing that alterations to the timing of their firing can change those symptoms, they offer new ways to think about what psychiatric disorders are. “There’s still a lot of stigma around depression that a lot of patients feel,” Scangos says. The subject of her study was no exception: “The fact that there was such an immediate response when we stimulated made her feel like, It’s not something I’m doing wrong; it’s something in my brain that can be addressed.”

Giving a collection of symptoms a diagnostic label like “depression” is useful because it helps doctors more efficiently find a successful treatment, currently a lengthy process of trial and error. “The million-dollar question is how to match the best treatment to the patient and how to avoid treatments that won’t work,” says Helen Mayberg, a neurologist and director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; she was co-author of a commentary on the two studies. As neuroscientists map the brain activity of more and more patients, they’re getting closer to being able to offer a battery of tests that show, Scangos says, “you have this type of depression, you’ll respond best to this medication.”

Ultimately, if we could address those symptoms directly, we might be able to get rid of diagnostic categories altogether, says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, medical director of the Wolk Center for Memory Health at Hebrew SeniorLife and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Rather than applying a default label of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, Pascual-Leone says, doctors could instead ask, “What is the disabling symptom that this person presents?” And then treat it specifically.

For now, what these studies offer everyone is additional evidence that “our brains are plastic,” says Shrey Grover, a graduate student and a co-author of the Boston University study. “And we can rewire the brain in different ways.” Those include psychotherapy and pharmacology. Our neural activity also changes as we learn; it changes as we age. This means we can improve how our minds work at any point in our lives, even without advanced technology.

But the brain’s plasticity makes it all the more puzzling that certain psychological states can be so hard to dispel. Research into personalized brain stimulation also probes at the larger question of why moods or habits that are mild or circumstantial in some people — carefully rechecking a tax form, say, or feeling deep sadness at the death of a loved one — are chronic and debilitating in others. “There’s nothing that gets right at the cause,” Reinhart says. “It’s like the water in the sink is running, and you can mop up the floor, but no one’s turning off the faucet.”

By Kim Tingley (The New York Times). Illustration by Ori Toor.

[bellasweetwriting]

Only The Brave

spencer reid x f.reader

not my gif

masterlist

plot; when the BAU goes to New York for a possible murder case, Spencer Reid gets to meet the captain of the 23rd Precinct of the NYPD, whom he immediately feels attracted to

warnings: fluff, angst, nervous Spencer, typical criminal minds stuff,

word count: 3.3k

Spencer arrived late to work that day.

"Woah... stop right there, pretty boy, " said Morgan as he interrupted him. Reid was trying to walk quickly to his desk and avoid any kind of interaction, but clearly, the curious FBI agents had other plans. "You look like if a train just ran you over."

"Not in the mood for your insults right now, Morgan, " defended Spencer as he sat on his chair.

"I'm not insulting you, I'm describing you."

"Well let me get you a Miss Congeniality award because you are just so darn delightful."

"What on Earth is going on with you, Doc? You never arrive late and even less with a sarcastic tone. What happened last night?"

Spencer couldn't hide it anymore. His pulse was unsteady and he was trembling. He had to tell someone.

"I had a bad date, " he murmured. Derek stepped closer.

"You what?" Derek asked, leaning in closer to Spencer. The doctor exhaled, looking around to Emily and JJ who were minding their own business before looking at Morgan.

"I had a bad date, " he repeated a little bit louder. Spencer sighed before continuing. "She was incredibly beautiful and the universe had to screw it up. Her name was Athena so I obviously started referencing the Greek Goddess which apparently she hated when that happened. And then, I started talking to her about organic chemistry, and guess what? She says "Oh! I took organic chemistry last year." so I obviously questioned if she was in college. Turns out, she's in senior year of high school... and I messed up the girl. She was waiting for a Sam, not a Spencer, and the girl I was supposed to meet had left an hour before because I never showed up. And Athena said that if I happened to actually be Sam, she wouldn't want a second date." Morgan raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to say. His problem was even worst than he imagined and he was kinda regretting asking in the first place. "So yeah, that's why I look like a zombie in The Walking Dead. How was your weekend, Morgan? Huh?"

"Oh my God! Spencer!" Exclaimed JJ as she approached them. Morgan started making signals with his hands to stop her from talking but she didn't look at him. "How was the date last night? Did you like my friend Amy?"

"Do you hate me JJ?" She looked at him confused. "Do you fancy awkward social engagements as a way of torture? Because if you have a problem with me then cry me a river and then drown yourself in it."

And with that, Spencer stood up and walked towards the coffee machine, leaving JJ really confused.

"Years of catching criminals and you don't understand simple hand signals, " critiqued Morgan.

"What on Earth happened on that date?"

"It is worse than you could possibly imagine. Probably will traumatize him and won't date for the next five years."

"Oh my..." whispered JJ while Morgan nodded.

"Guys!" Exclaimed Rossi, catching everyone's attention. "We got a case. A very important one."

"Do you know what case he's babbling about?"

"Nothing has come to my desk, " said JJ to Morgan. "That is weird."

Everyone entered the conference room and Spencer immediately walked towards JJ with a cup of coffee for her.

"Sorry for yelling at you, " he apologized. "I've just had a really bad night and took it out with you. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Spence, everyone has the right to be in a bad mood. I'm glad you apologized, and thanks for the coffee."

"You're welcome." Both sat next to the other, waiting for Rossi to announce the new case. "Do you know what this is about?"

"I have no idea, " she replied, soon enough to receive Rossi, who started presenting the images of four women.

"Four women have gone missing in the same neighborhood of New York City, no bodies have been found. The detectives on the case called me personally with the suspicion that this is no longer a missing person case and it's rather a murder case, drawn to the fact that the victims have comparable face structure, hair color, body type, skin tone, and social status."

"The detectives called you?" Asked JJ. "Are they the higher command or?"

"No, uhm, their boss didn't think it was a murder case but they seemed so sure over the phone so I decided to take the case and help them out. I mean is their case, they can do whatever they think it's appropriate and ask for help if they need to."

"So we have no corpses, and this hasn't been officially named as a murder case by the higher authority of these New York detectives. Am I getting everything or did I miss something?" Questioned ironically Derek and Spencer decided to answer anyway.

"And, they called Rossi personally instead of presenting the case to JJ's office or calling Hotch."

"Yeah, that too, " said Morgan. "Rossi is there another explanation as to why we are taking this case?"

"Fine, " Rossi broke, inhaling deeply, "I want to meet their captain. And also save these women, of course."

"What are you talking about? Who's their captain?"

"The youngest female police captain in the entire country, " replied Hotch. "She's younger than Reid."

"Woah, " whispered Spencer, "but didn't you say she doesn't know that we are coming and that she doesn't think this is a murder case?"

"We'll try to convince her, " assured Rossi.

"Wheels up in 30," said Hotch, even though he wasn't convinced.

•••

The team arrived at the precinct, receiving bad looks from part of the detectives and cops. Nobody knew that the FBI was supposed to come.

"SSA Rossi, " someone called Rossi. A detective in his mid-30s walked towards the team with a smile. "I'm Detective Garrido, we spoke on the phone."

"Pleasure to meet you, detective, is your partner here?"

"Yes, here, Detective Smith." A young man raised his eyes from the file in his hands and walked towards the team, greeting everyone with a nervous smile. "We are both on the case."

In the second, Hotchner interrupted. He wasn't feeling alright with this case, something was bothering him.

"Gentlemen, I'm SSA Hotchner, may we speak with your supervisor?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask that, " whispered Garrido.

"I'll go find her, " told Smith before walking towards their boss's office, not so sure about if it was a good idea.

Spencer looked at the case files next to Emily. Indeed, the victims were similar to one another, also neighbors. But also, they were similar ages, probably they go to the same school, probably even friends. There was something more about this case that Rossi wasn't sharing.

"What does your boss thinks about this case, Detective?" Asked Hotch, looking at the file Spencer was holding.

"Well, there is the fact that the girls are friends and she thinks they ran away, but we don't. We think there's something else going on."

"So you called us, " finished Emily. "Yeah, definitely there's something going on."

"You did what!?" The team heard someone screaming from the captain's office. Everyone glanced at each other, not knowing what to do or how to proceed.

"God..." mumbled Garrido before looking at the BAU. "Ready to meet the witch of the west?" He turned around. "She's a pain in the ass."

In that, the door opened. A young woman walked out of the office. You could see how the officers were scared of her, and how nobody looked at her directly in the eyes.

She was beautiful, she spread confidence at every step, and kind of made you step back a little. She was indeed scary, and she didn't seem upset about that. She knew that she wasn't liked, yet still, that didn't let that bother her.

"Agents, " Y/N said, looking at the team. "My name is Captain Y/L/N, NYPD. I'm aware that detectives Garrido and Smith called you about the missing girls' case, behind my back. Let me tell you that you are welcome to work the case here in the conference room, but you would work hard to prove to me that these girls are actually missing. Also, detectives Garrido and Smith are at your disposition since this is their case, and also, their last case." The captain turned around to look at the detectives. "We will talk about your suspension and transfer another day."

The captain looked again at the team with a pretended smile.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, captain. I'm Agent Rossi, these are Agents Hotchner, Morgan, Prentiss, Jareau, and Doctor Reid."

When Y/N reached Reid's hand, he felt electricity around his body. His eyes were fully focused on the captain. He couldn't help but smile. She was beautiful, her eyes shined as she greeted him.

"Did you know that being in love reduces headaches frequency in half?" He quickly said, surprising everyone. "When researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine gave subjects with chronic headaches a nasal spray with a dose of oxytocin, or the "love hormone," in it, they found that 50 percent of participants reported their head pain to be cut in half after four hours, with an addition 27 percent reporting no pain at all in the same timeframe."

Y/N nodded before letting go of his hand, looking at the team with a tiny smile.

"Call me if you need anything. I'll be in my office." She turned around and walked towards her office, avoiding the detectives that tried to talk to her.

Morgan and Emily turned around quickly to look at Spencer, who was blushing and staring at the floor.

"Don't say a thing, " mumbled the doctor. "Don't even— no."

"You have the hots for the captain!" Morgan exclaimed, making Spencer stand up and walk away. "Wait! Reid!"

"Leave me alone!"

While Morgan and Emily were teasing Reid, Hotch and Rossi entered Y/N's office, finding her sitting on her chair, looking around case files.

"Captain, " called her Rossi, making her look at them, "about the detectives..."

"Don't try to tell me that they were doing the right thing and that I shouldn't transfer them or suspend them. They didn't follow my orders."

"But they said that you didn't think it was a murder case."

"A murder case? Do they think there is murder involved? They never approached me about their suspicion. Actually, I remember they took their case on their own hands, never consult me about anything around it. If you want me to be honest, four teenage best friends go missing the same day, no bodies found... I see that as a teenage rebellion, not a missing case. And now they think there's a killer involved?"

"Captain, they are just asking for our help, nothing more, " replied Rossi. "I promise you that this is nothing personal. I'm actually a big fan."

"Agent, what would you think if your team talked bad behind your back until the point that they don't even consult you on things like asking the help of the FBI. It is insulting. I can tolerate being called witch, not being completely ignored and taken for granted by two sexist detectives who think I'm not able to do my job. Now if you excuse me, Agents, I'll continue working while you find out who kidnapped these girls."

And with that, Y/N returned to work while Rossi and Hotch left the office.

"What did the Captain say?" Asked JJ, catching Spencer's attention.

"She's going to let us work, " replied Hotch, "but she's going to suspend the detectives."

"For not thinking like her?" Assumed Morgan. "That's stupid."

"No, because apparently they never shared the details of the case with her. They didn't even tell her that they suspected that the girls were kidnapped and not that they left and were missing. And she's right."

"Let's just find these girls, " told Hotch as he sighed. "What do we got?"

•••

After the parents of the girls received a mysterious call from part of the kidnapper and Garcia wasn't able to identify the caller, Y/N started to believe that this was the work of a kidnapper, and after a few hours, the BAU was able to present the profile to the officers and the Captain.

"We are looking for a white man, between his late-30s and mid-40s, shy, probably works in the school of the girls as a janitor."

"He was able to track the girls' routine, by knowing exactly when they leave school and when they arrive home, also, knowing that the girls were going to be together on Friday, " said Emily.

"We think that we are not dealing with a killer for now. It's most unlikely that the stalker would kill his victim in the first 48 hours. He wants to spend time with them, complete the fantasy that he has made up in his mind with these girls as it leads, " announced Spencer."

"He was probably raised with sisters that weren't nice to him. He was probably bullied by his siblings and now he's trying to seek revenge with girls that look like his sisters, that's why he picked girls who are close to one another and also, that look alike."

"How are you certain about that?" Asked one of the officers.

"In the message that the Unsub left to the parents, he said "They are going to pay. They are going to pay for what they did.", clearly talking about his own personal experience that he now portrayed in the four girls. It's most likely that the stalker brought the girls to his own family house to complete the fantasy."

"We are looking for people that worked on the high school the girls attended. A shy employee with a low position, trying not to upset any of his superiors, with a job that makes him able to watch the girls. He's had this plan on his head for a long time."

"Give this profile to the workers at school and the parents, see if someone like that has done work in their houses. It's possible that he has stepped outside his comfort zone before and has actually interacted with the girls previously."

At the end of the profile, the BAU looked over the captain, waiting for her approval. She nodded before standing in front of the officers.

"You heard the FBI. Catch this guy and bring these girls home. Dismissed."

The officers stood up and left the conference room, leaving the Agents, the two detectives, and the captain. Y/N turned around, nodding slowly.

"Thanks for your help, Agents. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Actually, " said Morgan, making Spencer even more nervous than he already was. "You can join the doctor as he looks for records about the employees in the girls' high school."

"Absolutely. After you Doctor Reid." Spencer nodded nervously before walking towards the door, promising to himself that he was going to kill Morgan when the case ends.

•••

"Could you remind me what are we looking for?" Questioned Y/N as she looked over the files of the employees in the Dean's office.

"White male, late-30s to mid-40s, no complaints in his job, probably a janitor, PE coach, counselor or a teacher, something that gives him the opportunity to be close to the girls."

"You said that he probably did some work in one of the girls' houses, " Y/N pointed and Spencer nodded. "Don't know about you but I would be able to tell if my teacher is fixing my kitchen."

"It's very hard to predict when and how the unsub stepped out of his comfort zone. This kind of stalker is unlikely to have criminal records or even complaints against him. They are a ghost, dreaming about his mission for a long time. They are cautious, organized, intelligent. Probably new to the job. Look for people that started working at most two years ago."

The captain nodded. Both reached for the same file, making their hands touch one another. The doctor looked at her quickly before she softly looked at him. Both moved their hands, pretending as if nothing happened.

Y/N wasn't able to say when she felt Spencer's hand touching hers. It was like an electric current traveling her body.

"How do you remember all of this stuff?" Interrogated the captain and Spencer smiled.

"I have an eidetic memory, " he replied. "I remember a lot of stuff all the time." He glanced at her. Y/N was smiling. "Did you know that being married and in love makes you live longer? According to a study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, married individuals were 58 percent less likely to die over an eight-year period compared to those who had never made it to the altar."

"That's something good to know, " Y/N said with a smile before looking at the records again. "Hey, I think we got our guy."

Y/N gave the curriculum to Spencer, who read it. Immediately, he called Garcia so she could look into the guy.

•••

Michael Wood had the four girls in the basement of his family house just as Reid said. Garcia was able to look into Michael’s life and turns out his month died about two weeks ago and left the family heritage to his sisters and not him, acting as his trigger.

"Detectives, " the captain called, "you were right. Next time, try to talk to me instead of acting on your own."

"So, are we suspended?"

"Yeah, you are. Two weeks. That would let you learn to not disrespect your superior again. But... you will still work at the precinct after your suspension." Both nodded. "Now, leave your gun and badge in my office. See you in two weeks with a new case. Dismissed."

The captain turned around to look at Spencer, who was nervously waiting next to his black SUV. When she saw him, she slowly walked towards him with a tiny smile threatening to appear in her face.

"Good case, captain, " he said to her. "We brought the girls back home and you earned more respect, it appears."

"It appears that way, " Y/N whispered. "You know the worst part of being a police captain?" He shook his head while she exhaled slowly. "I miss the field. Catching bad guys, rescuing people. I missed it."

"Well, you are great at it." Y/N chuckled.

"Being a captain has been my dream forever, but sometimes I tend to forget how good it is to be a detective, solve cases, and interrogate suspects. That's maybe why I was so pissed at Garrido and Smith. They have nerve, they follow their instincts. If they hadn't disobeyed my orders, God knows what would’ve happened to those girls. Being the youngest captain in the country has his downsides. I'm always focused on doing the right thing and following procedure that I tend to forget why we are doing this in the first place you know. I'm always focused on gaining my peers' respect than, I forget that the best way to do that, is to be good at my job."

Spencer nodded. He had some experience in trying hard to prove that you belong with the rest.

"You are excellent on your job, Y/N. You are where you belong and you just need to get in the field more often, remember why you do what you do and why you deserve what you have."

Y/N nodded before kissing softly his cheek. She turned around and started walking away. But before she entered the precinct, she turned around quickly, giving Spencer a simple smile.

"If you are ever in New York again, give me a call." And with that, she finished entering the building.

Morgan approached Spencer with a tiny smile as he saw him still looking at where the captain was just standing.

“Appears that the universe compensated you for that terrible date.”

“It appears that way, doesn't it?”

[wangxiandecoded]

Episode 9

Previous Episode | Next Episode

(Spoilers for the whole show ahead!)

Lan Zhan remembers what Wei Ying had mentioned about the puppets the first night at Cloud Recesses showing he remembers quite a lot about him, he just doesn’t let on.

NHS is a big mood in this scene, an absolutely useless gay depending on two warrior gays to save his life. But he’s hindering their flawless team work so Lan Zhan uses the silencing spell on him.

This dialogue is so uncalled for and delivered in a way that makes you think Wei Ying just wants to see Lan Zhan have an outburst, kick back and admire how hot that is.

Wei Ying’s “you can go ahead and blame me for everything that is wrong with this world but my man has done nothing wrong in his life ever” smile.

You didn’t have to expose him like that but thank you, Jiang Cheng.

Wei Ying’s “sorry I accidentally did a hetero thing, let us please not remember this for the sake of my clean conscience” smile.

Yet Another Plot Device To Show Off Wangxian’s Chemistry

The Dire Owl subplot is one of the dreamiest scenes on the show and a fight sequence that proves Wangxian own the patent for words like soulmates, symmetry, equilibrium, balance, yin and yang, mirrors and their derivatives.

Here’s something that’s bothered me : Wei Ying calls for Lan Zhan twice and he doesn’t answer him the first time even though he looks searchingly in his direction. It is only when they knock into each other the second time that he explains the fog is a hallucination caused by the Dire Owl. (But of course Lan Zhan doesn’t need to answer him, the red string of fate will inevitably help them find the other.) 

Clear-headed as he is, did he for a second believe that the Dire Owl was making him hallucinate Wei Ying’s voice the first time, and is that why he ignored him? Because Lan Zhan’s mind could be the spotless sea of tranquillity it is, but Wei Ying has now become the shrillest thought that breaks through and demands his attention. He doesn’t respond though, so he must have been sure Wei Ying is safe.

For Lan Zhan, Wei Ying will do even the impossible. He’ll try his best to seal off all his senses and mute his head that’s forever brimming with thoughts. 

Ok, pause. I cried when I watched this for the first time and let me tell you why. The implications of this fight scene are astounding. We all know Wangxian are soulmates who can confront anything together but did we know that they could feel and find their way to each other even when their senses are completely shut? I mean, how attuned to someone’s existence do you have to be to achieve that? They are hyper focusing on nothing but the Dire Owl and yet moving perfectly with eyes closed in an outrageously impressive synchrony. They can feel the other’s presence and have utmost trust in each other to shield their direction. They move as if they’ve spent infinite lifetimes by the other’s side mastering this skill; they leap, spin and swerve like they think with the same mind. The way they fit together is to die for, nearly impossible and the legendary stuff from stories that we all wish we could have with someone in this existence. If I was whatever that stood in Wangxian’s way, I’d be terrified and call it a day. They are not just soulmates, they are The Original Formidable Soulmates™. 

Wangxian Are Here To Kick Queerbaiters In The Ass

This fantastic display of battle prowess by the two heroes fighting back-to-back is one of the many things that convinced me The Untamed is not like the other stories out there. Simply because every stop of their journey is too romantic and the others don’t come close enough. It is an injustice to compare or group their relationship with the ‘dude bro, no homo’ chemistry that bromances usually sell. Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are two people who are so passionately devoted to and absolutely belong with each other, they are soulmates not just in the minds of the audience or because the creators were afraid to make them something more, but soulmates by their own admission. There are other factors that strengthen their already supergay case like the absence of a female love interest in their lives and their flirty interactions being genuinely adorable as heck, as opposed to just isolated instances of b(romance). And it really, really, helps our case that the novel is canonically gay but it is also remarkable that a show that’s teeming with gay subtext can exist at all and go on to become one that is widely embraced by everyone, casual watchers and shippers alike. 

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying's chemistry gives all the Western superheroes a run for their money. We no longer have to wonder what it looks like when two queer heroes who are in love get to kick ass together. See, this is what happens when you have the guts to invest in a gay romance. This show looked censorship in the eye and said gay rights anyway. (I’m going to digress from this show for a sec and just plainly weep for all the queer pairings on mainstream media that we shipped but couldn’t see the light of day because of the homophobic people behind them. It is great that the truth still lives in our hearts and the millions of words on ao3. But life feels a lot sweeter to know with certainty that our heroes are in love this time and celebrate the fact that the people who made this show knew and honoured that very well, that they honoured the audience. In my eyes, CQL is the unparalleled forefather of gay romance from now on. Because reading these epic queer stories is one thing but watching Wangxian’s story unfold along with the entire world means believing in the power of gay love. And seeing our favorite heroes in action makes the characters we look up to so much more real.)

Lan Zhan comes flying like the Prince Charming he is to break the shackles of heteronormativity trying to kill his soulmate! Hell yeah, king! Save us from that straight trope that’s been choking us since time immemorial.

We did not just see Wei Ying pretend to be dead so he can outsmart the bird and simultaneously get Lan Zhan to save him just because he likes that sort of thing. Nope, totally didn’t happen. 

Oh, hello Ah Yuan! Details like this prove the show is well worth multiple rewatches.

There is nothing more uniquely Wangxian than the million thoughts they share with each other through mere glances, the frequency of which steadily increases. Who knew you could speak with zero articulation? Not having a soulmate sure sucks for the rest of us mortals. I doubt the audience can truly grasp the depth of their communication but I’m pretty sure it goes like this most of the time. 

Wei Ying teasing Lan Zhan that the Goddess Statue tried to kill him because she had a crush on him is all kinds of hilarious. Lan Zhan looks somewhere in between “Wei Ying, we’re talking about the fate of the universe, stop being gay for 2 seconds please,” and "STFU, just because I can find my way to you blind doesn't mean I will hesitate to Silence you again."

Wei Ying Is Crumbling All Of Lan Zhan’s Walls

Most people maintain their distance from Hanguang-Jun, the Noblest Of Them All, he whose robes command respect and inspire fear. There is hence something very sweetly domestic about Wei Ying latching on to his silk tassel while subtext-whining, "Where are you going Lan Zhan, I refuse to live without you", and "Ugh Lan Zhan, you're so lost without me, ok fine, I'll help you.” It’s like he granted himself the lifetime entitlement of being Lan Zhan’s nuisance-companion the night they met, and thank goodness for that because Lan Zhan wasn’t going to let anyone into his life. Wei Ying is the exception who managed to charm his way into his heart and dissolve his barriers.

Notice Wei Ying even turns down free alcohol for Lan Zhan. And the sheer undisguised panic on his face that Lan Zhan is going to leave him alone after all the bonding activities he made sure they went through is endearing comedy at its peak. 

We see Lan Zhan no longer believes resolutely in His Ways and lets Wei Ying persuade him to believe there is a better one. This is a great 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 for them because they’re communicating.

Lan Zhan doesn’t fight him anymore, period. 

The Yin Iron starts acting up and Wei Ying is immediately there for Lan Zhan, gently grounding him. He can feel the horror and pain Lan Zhan has seen in the vision because of course he can. But does Lan Zhan see how much Wei Ying loves him and hurts for him? He has to. In moments like this, Wei Ying’s presence shows how wrong Lan Zhan is in wanting to do everything alone. We all need a friend in life. And it was destiny that led them to each other because their lives would’ve evidently been a lot lonelier without the other in it. 

Episode 9 shows Lan Zhan warming up to Wei Ying some more : he has stopped being antagonistic altogether, lets Wei Ying pull him around, freely accepts his help, shares many glances with him and is ready to blast anything that lays a finger on Wei Ying sky high. (Of course we see that Wei Ying exaggerates needing his help most of the time. He plays the “I’m a frail man desperately in need of Hanguang-Jun’s protection” card because swooning into the arms of his lover is one of his favorite things. And not even Lan Zhan calls him out for it. They’re just so whipped for each other.)

[dirty-urie]

Date Night

Third Person

Brendon x Sara (OC kinda)

College AU

PWP Oneshot

NC-17

5.4k Words

Disclaimer: This is a fictional story using the names and/or likeness of at least one real person. This is intended for entertainment purposes ONLY. Please do not share or bring up my work with anyone other than fellow fans. Any similarity to real-life events involving these characters that have not been shared with the general public is only coincidence. Just because I’ve included something in my fics does NOT mean I condone, support, or encourage that behavior, language, or action in real life. Please practice safe and consensual sex practices, and just be a good person.

Warnings in Order of Appearance: Real Person Fic, Crude and Vulgar Language Throughout, Mentions of Alcohol, Brief Joke About Forgoing Contraception, Talk and Consumption of Pornography, Unprotected Oral Sex, Female Receiving Oral, Intercourse, Male Receiving Oral, Female Masturbation, Use of a Non-Sex Toy as a Sex Toy, Minor Social Anxiety

Author's Notes:

1. I spelled Sarah's name wrong on purpose because I felt bad writing porn about her. Brendon's technically permitted to write about him, so I'll do that without guilt (okay, with some guilt, but I feel guilty about everything. I have anxiety), but I respect Sarah too much to do that to her. That being said, I didn't want to use a random name, so I decided on a middle ground. Here's Sara, who is both not a real person and also not not married to Brendon Urie in real life. Schrodinger's OC. Okay, thank you for putting up with me.

2. I don’t know if I’m going to write any more third-person fics. I know they’re not really that popular, but for some reason, this spoke to me in third, so I embraced that. Anyway, give it a chance, and if you don’t like it, give whatever I publish next a chance.

3. This used to be split into two parts because I uploaded it on mobile, but I have since condensed the two parts, and now the whole thing is on this post.

Brendon fumbles with his keys as he unlocks the door to his apartment. Sara won't be there for another little while, but he's anxious to get inside anyway. His roommate is away visiting his family for the first time in nearly two months, and he hasn’t gotten any real alone time with his girlfriend since then. It’s hard, and Brendon knows Sara’s been struggling too because she spent their whole coffee shop study-date the day before whispering to him about how she's been practically crawling out of her skin. Brendon shivers at the memory of her hot breath against his ear as he slams his front door shut and hurries to his bedroom.

He's thinking about all the nasty ways he wants to get back at her for getting him so worked up in public when, speak of the devil, his phone buzzes, and Sara's name pops up in the caller ID. Actually, "Brunette from Creative Writing" pops up, but he swears he'll change it one day. Sara jokes that they'll be married with a whole flock of adult children, and she'll be calling him from the bingo hall as "Brunette from Creative Writing." God, he fucking loves her.

"Hey, babe, I just got home," he says after he hits the answer button.

"Okay, I just got out of my lecture, but I'm stopping by my dorm to grab my duffel bag, then I'm going to the drugstore to get condoms that aren't the shitty university clinic ones, so I won't be there for almost another hour," she tells him.

"Noooo, just come straight here. You can just wear my clothes all weekend. And condoms are so unnecessary; I'll just pull out," Brendon whines.

Sara laughs into the phone, knowing he doesn't mean any of that. "Oh sure, in that case, I'll come right over. Did you want to pay me $400,000 to raise a child in cash or check?"

"Uh, check, but you're gonna have to wait a bit to cash it," he replies.

He can practically see her rolling her eyes, even through the phone, "I'll be there in an hour, but I'll bring you something fun from the drugstore," she says.

"Fun like sex fun or fun like gum from the checkout stand fun?"

"You'll just have to wait and see, love you, bye!" she tells him through the phone before hanging up.

"Love you too, babe," he says sarcastically to no one. He walks into his bedroom and makes sure it's spotless. He doesn't want anything whatsoever to get in the way of fun, sexy times once Sara gets here.

His apartment is clean; he has wine and groceries in the fridge, enough money saved up to rent a movie and order dinner later, and no homework, so once Sara shows up with the condoms, he’ll be good to spend the entire weekend at home with her. With nothing else to do, he climbs onto his bed and grabs his laptop. No harm in a little pre-gaming, he figures, pulling up his favorite porn website while he waits.

He clicks on the first video without too much thought. It’s a girl, one Brendon recognizes, wearing a tiny thong and nothing else, and playing with a small bullet vibe while her boyfriend watches. She’s wet, probably just with lube and not actual bodily fluid, he realizes, but at least they bothered to make her look physically aroused at all.

He gets invested in the video, in the new toys that the boyfriend hands her, in the way both of their arousal grows as time goes on. He gets so engrossed that he’s beyond startled when Sara interrupts with, “Starting without me?” eyeing the erection already straining through his jeans.

Brendon laughs with glee now that she’s finally here, “No, no, no, just passing the time while I wait for you. No touching yet, see," he says, holding up his hands and waving them around before pausing his video.

"Well, don't stop on my account," Sara scoffs. "I don't mind you starting without me as long as I'm there when you finish," she murmurs.

They both moan, Brendon in response to her words, Sara in response seeing Brendon's cock twitch in his pants, “Ah fuck, babe, that’ll be sooner than I’d like if you keep talking like that.”

Sara climbs in next to him and snuggles against him so that she can see his computer screen, “Ooo, she’s hot,” she says, pointing to the girl now getting eaten out by the guy who, coincidentally enough, doesn’t look dissimilar to B.

“Yeah, I like a lot of her work,” Brendon says back, disinterested in the video playing on the laptop now that Sara’s actually there in the flesh “hey, you should take your pants off,” he suggests, totally smooth and subtly.

“You’re such a guy, B. No ‘how was your day? Are you hungry? Can I get you something to drink?” she teases.

Under normal circumstances, Brendon would object to such slander on his impeccable moral character. But, well, there’s not a lot of blood in his brain right now, and he knows that she would just respond with more teasing, further delaying the Fun Sexy Times, so he rolls to his side and kisses behind her ear, pressing his cock against her leg in an attempt to tease her into pliability. It works; she melts, whimpering a little bit as heat pools deep in her stomach when she feels just how turned on Brendon is. “You feel so nice, B. Bet you’d feel nicer without this layer of denim between us. Can you help me?”

Brendon unbuttons her pants and moves down to slide them off her body, moving his mouth along the newly revealed skin as he works them off. He’s paying so much attention to the warm flush of her thighs that he almost misses her panties: dark red lace, even darker where she’s soaked through them, and so delicate that they’re nearly see-through.

“Oh fuck, babe, that’s gorgeous. Are you wearing a matching bra?” he asks.

She answers by sitting up and pulling off her t-shirt, revealing the same thin lace. Her nipples are hard, practically poking through the delicate material.

Brendon settles back on his heels to fully take his girlfriend in, now stripped down to just her matching bra and panties set.

Sarah grins down at him, “Why do I get the sense that I can expect this set in every color for my birthday? Although, I know for a fact that I can get the same reaction from you wearing full-coverage high-waisted granny panties,” she thinks aloud after seeing Brendon’s wide-eyed awe.

Brendon isn’t paying attention, though. His mindset shifted from the fun and playful sex they usually have to lust-fueled passion as soon as Sara took her shirt off. Don’t get him wrong, they have great sex, but they normally have to do it fast and quietly and spontaneously, so they’ve gotten good at not taking themselves too seriously, at laughing at Brendon’s old superhero boxers, and then getting to business. Now that he has the chance to really take his time to appreciate, no, worship her as she deserves, he wants to do it right.

He moves off his heels and crawls over her body, supporting himself with one muscled arm as he moves in to kiss her. She picks up on the change in mood immediately, grasping the back of his head to deepen the kiss. He’s throbbing against her thigh now, even through his jeans, and she’s worried that she might come just from feeling him.

She, too, loves their normal sex, but even though it’s fun, it can’t always be as intimate as either of them would like. And it’s a shame too because as good at Brendon is at fucking, banging, screwing, whatever, he’s damn good at making love. At making sure she’s safe and supported and in absolute bliss, even when they’re hooking up in someone’s bedroom at a party, but especially like this when they’ve got hours and total privacy.

When her moans increase in pitch and frequency, Brendon crawls back down on the bed and settles between her thighs. “Darling, these panties are a gift to humanity, but I’m afraid they’re going to get in the way of some things I have planned. You don’t mind if I take them off, do you?” he says, voice deep and gravelly. He mouths against the soaked fabric while he waits for her response.

After taking a moment to collect herself and catch her breath, “God, Brendon, please, I need your mouth, fingers, cock, something,” she whines.

Now that he has her permission, he moves his mouth from her core to the waistband against her hip and bites it, just letting his teeth scrape her skin as he pulls down. Whether intentionally or not, Sara arches her back up, making it easy to slide them all the way down her legs. He kisses her way back up her legs, but instead of stopping between her thighs, he keeps going up. He licks up across the flat planes of her stomach all the way until he reaches her bra. Just like with her panties, he mouths over the fabric first, inching up slowly before sucking on one of her nipples through the lace.

As much as he loves how her breathing gets faster and heavier just from that, he can’t resist the actual mouth-on-skin that the low cut of the bra allows. He sucks a pink mark on each breast and then moves to lick and suckle gently on her neck. They’ve both agreed that they’re not middle schoolers and visible hickeys are beyond tacky, but they both go so wild from neck stimulation that it can be hard to resist spending a few minutes sucking a licking at the rapidly-beating pulse points.

As much as Brendon wants to keep teasing, Sara’s squirming like crazy, and he’s worried that if he kept going in the same way, she’d come before he got to touch her for real. He finally settles between her thighs for real this time, kissing and sucking gently on her vulva for just a second or two. Sara is quivering by the time he moves down to suck on her clit. As soon as he finally makes contact with the sensitive hood, she screams out in ecstasy, taking full advantage of Brendon’s roommate’s absence. He sucks around her clit just like her nipple, a few short staccato bursts followed by long, drawn-out pulls. He moves his tongue gently the whole time to stimulate her further.

Both of her hands are tangled in his hair, tugging hard when he moves from sucking on her clit to licking across her entrance. He licks across the opening in broad strokes before his tongue enters her, rubbing her clit with his thumb the whole time. He waits until her thighs are clenched tight around his head, and she’s bucking up against his mouth before he slips two fingers inside to rub over her g-spot.

“B, stop, I’m gonna fucking come!” She shrieks.

He lifts his head without slowing his fingers, “You don’t wanna come?”

“Want you to be inside me when I do. Inside me for real, not just fingers,” Sara pants, trying hard to distract herself from her building arousal.

As much as Brendon’s disappointed that Sara won’t come on his face, after all, he’s been hard for over an hour now, and he would love to get out of his restrictive jeans and get a little more stimulation than rubbing himself against the bed.

He crawls out of bed and peels his shirt off. Now it’s Sarah’s turn to marvel at her lover. His cheeks and chest are flushed a deep pink from the exertion and arousal, his face is shiny with spit and her juices, and his cock is tenting the material of his pants.

Sara strokes over herself lazily, it’s not nearly as good as Brendon, but it’s something to take the edge off while she watches Brendon unbuckle his belt to strip his pants off. He’s moving slowly on purpose. He always did love to put on a show.

Once he’s down to his black boxer-briefs, he asks Sara where she put the condoms when she came in.

“B, I love that you’re so distracted by me, but the bag is right next to you on the nightstand,” she answers.

“Hey, I’m not wearing my glasses. That’s not fair,” Brendon replies softly. He turns and opens the plastic bag with the drugstore logo on the front. Sara laughs when his eyes visibly widen. “Should I be scared?” He asks, holding up a large vibrating dildo.

Sara laughs. “No, love, I just wanted to get some toys I could leave at your place,” she answers as he pulls out a bullet vibe, two different types of lube, a cock ring, massage oils, whipped cream, a multi-pack of condoms, and yes, gum from the checkout stand.

“...I may have gotten a little carried away in the sexual wellness aisle,” she admits.

Brendon’s eyes are still the size of saucers, “God, no kidding, babe, this is all incredible,” he says, stripping off his boxers and opening the box of condoms to tear a packet open with his teeth. It’s a bad habit, and usually, Sara would scold him, but she’s so worked up that she spreads her legs in anticipation anyway. Her mouth goes dry while he strokes himself with lube before he rolls the condom on.

He finally, finally, finally settles over her. “Is this position okay?” he asks.

“It’s perfect, baby; I love getting to see your face when you push into me,” she answers, whining as he drags his cock across her opening.

That’s good enough for Brendon. He rocks forward into her slowly, partly because he’s a tease but partly because he wants this to last as long as possible. After pushing in deep to rub back and forth across her g-spot, he starts thrusting in earnest, relishing her moans and pants.

“Oh B, you feel so good,” she cries out.

“You feel even better, love. Squeezing so nicely around me. So tight and wet,” he says.

Sara scratches down his back in sheer bliss. Brendon’s rhythm is steady, but he’s moving just slowly enough that they can both relish every thrust without feeling overly needy or impatient. She pushes her thighs together to feel him even better inside her.

His thrusts falter for a second, and he chokes out a gasp. “Love you, love feeling you,” he groans, “but it’s been nearly a month since we last had sex, babygirl. If you keep that up, I am going to come.”

She relaxes her thighs just a little bit. “God, I love how sensitive you are right now, babe, responding to my every touch so much. I love you collected and composed too, but it’s such a treat having you so weak for me,” she marvels, stroking the back of his neck.

A shiver goes down his whole spine, and he devotes all of his energy to not coming. “I haven’t touched myself since we last had sex,” he admits, “I figured if my sweet girl couldn’t get off, I couldn’t either. It’s been such a challenge, but fuck, it was worth it. I’m so on edge for you.”

She tightens around him, moving her hand to touch her clit. “Shit, Brendon, that’s so fucking hot. I’m just thinking about you late at night, hard and aching thinking about me, but controlling yourself so it could be all the better when we finally reunited. Did you ever cheat? Did you ever jack yourself but force yourself to pull away right before you came to roll over and go to sleep? God, I bet you had so many dirty dreams. Bet you woke up humping a pillow because your body needed to get off so bad. Bet you’d struggle to hide your hard-on in public when your mind wandered even just a little. Such a dirty needy boy, but so so good for me, aren’t you?” she pants out, squeezing tighter as she talks.

He laughs, “You know me so well, sweetheart, all of the above is true. My roommate was thrilled to have all the hot water for himself this month because… I took a lot of cold showers. I’ll leave it at that. Now, if you don’t mind, I believe you’ve taken my job,” he says, replacing her hand on her clit with his own.

Sara falls back and goes rigid, crying out. He circles his thumb faster as the pace of his thrusts picks up. “I’m gonna come!” She shouts.

“Do it, come on me,” Brendon whispers.

Sara contracts around him, shrieking and convulsing as she comes on him before melting back onto the bed.

Brendon leans down to nip at her shoulder and then kiss her lips. “Good, baby?”

She nods, eyes closed and still panting hard.

“I’ll give you a second,” he murmurs, mostly to himself before pulling out and collapsing down next to her. He strokes over himself while he waits for her to come back down to earth, still rock hard.

“Shit, B, you still haven’t come,” she finally realizes, “do you want me to blow you?”

His cock twitches at the thought.

“Or I could ride you? Let you watch my tits bounce as I fuck you?” She suggests.

“That one wanna be back in that perfect cunt.”

Sara moves to straddle him, rubbing her clit against his tummy and kissing him before moving back to settle on him for real. She lets him thrust up into her a couple of times before moving herself, relishing the way his muscles tense under his flushed skin.

Brendon loves being ridden. He wouldn’t say it’s his favorite position, but it’s up there. It’s even better when Sara takes her bra off, as pretty as it is, and he gets to see her entire naked body. She gets herself at the perfect angle and rides him as hard as she can.

“I’m really not going to last long,�� he warns.

Sara tangles her hands back in his hair just like he loves. She’s pulling out all the stops to get him to come. “God, B, me neither, I didn’t think I had it in me, but I’m right back on the edge. Just rub my clit, and I’ll come.”

He moves his hands from her ass to touch her clit.

She shudders, “B, I’m gonna come!”

“Me too,” he grunts out, “do you want me to pull out?”

“No, wanna feel your hot come inside me, even with the condom,” she answers before coming again. Even harder this time as waves of pleasure roll through her entire body.

The rapid contractions around his cock trigger his own orgasm, and his entire head goes blank as he gets lost in the sensation. Sara collapses and situates herself in his arms just as they’re both starting to come down.

He moves, but she stops him. “Honey, I’ve gotta,” he starts, but she whines and shakes her head, knowing exactly where he’s going, “I’ve gotta pull out so we can clean up and eat dinner. Round two after Italian?”

She finally nods but wraps her legs tighter against him anyway, “just two more minutes. Then we can go be romantic.”

***

“Sara, sweetheart, food’s almost here,” he whispers thirty minutes later. He’s wearing pajama pants with no shirt, and his torso’s still wet from the shower he took to rinse off. “Do you wanna go get yourself cleaned up while I set up the coffee table to eat?” He asks.

Sara shakes her head, “I get clingy and needy after sex-”

Brendon cracks a grin because he knows this, of course.

“So you’re stuck with me for the next couple of hours,” she finishes.

“Mm, that’s fine with me, babe. I just want you to be comfortable,” he responds, kissing her forehead.

She moves up into the kiss and realizes that a shower might be nice after all, “Actually, I am a little sticky. Come into the bathroom with me?”

“Anything you want, love,” he says, scooping her up and carrying her to the shower.

He turns the water on for her and then goes to sit on the counter while she rubs off the sweat under the spray. “B?” She calls.

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s nothing fancy, but when you rubbed my clit in little circles, I nearly died on the spot. Normally when I’m alone, I just stroke back and forth, but god, it felt so good to feel something new,” she says. Brendon doesn’t respond immediately. “B?” She calls back timidly, shy now. “B?”

She’s getting worried that he left without her hearing, so she pulls back the shower curtain and has to choke back a moan. Brendon’s still sitting on the counter, his head tipped back on the mirror, palming over himself through his PJ pants.

“God, Sara, sorry, I just love hearing how I make you feel, and I couldn’t help it,” he tells her.

Sara shuts the water off and walks across the bathroom to Brendon, paying no mind to how she’s dripping all over the tile. She yanks him up to his feet and drops to her knees on the padded bathmat in front of the sink. She pulls his pants down just enough- no underwear, she observes without surprise- and takes him in her mouth, getting him slick enough that she can stroke him to total hardness with her hand. Once he’s fully hard, she takes him back in her mouth and sucks hard, making his knees tremble. She bobs her head up and down, stroking him with her hand when she doesn’t have his whole length in her mouth.

He’s bracing himself against the counter to stay upright and not buck into her mouth. She moves down to just stimulate the tip while quickly stroking over the rest of him.

“Can you come for me? Food is going to be here any minute,” she says, looking up at him with big eyes.

“You playing with yourself down there, baby? Getting all wet from sucking me off?” He asks, the dirty talk getting him closer to the edge.

“Oh, you know it, gets me so hot, making you feel good. I wish I had one of my new toys, though,” she pouts before licking his dick again.

Brendon gropes behind himself blindly, trying to find… well. It’s not a vibrator, but it does, well, vibrate, he thinks, hitting the button on his electric toothbrush. He hands it to Sara, who puts it between her legs without hesitation, pressing it against her clit.

She goes weak, moaning a buzzy hum over his cock while she sucks. She knows he’s close by the way his balls are drawing into his body, so she goes ahead and lets herself go. Tightening the pressure around his cock.

“Shit, babe, I’m gonna come,” he warns, hips bucking. “Can I come in your mouth or…?”

She holds up a thumbs up, and he comes, most of it staying in her mouth, but some ends up dripping down her chin. She swallows, and Brendon hands her a wad of toilet paper to wipe off the rest with.

He tucks himself back into his pants and then helps her back to her feet.

“Can I have my toothbrush back, love?” He requests softly.

Sara blushes and takes the still-vibrating toothbrush out from between her legs, “Sorry, I forgot I still had that.”

“No worries,” he responds with a soft chuckle, kissing her forehead. He takes the toothbrush and turns it off before rinsing it off under the sink. “Gosh, you did a number on this thing. It’s soaked,” he marvels, “My perfect messy girl.”

Just then, there’s a knock at the door. “Perfect timing, must be the food. I’ll deal with that while you get dressed?” He suggests, and she nods, still a little dazed from the orgasm. Well, orgasms, plural.

She goes back to his room, where she stashed her bag and rummages through it for her pink silk slip nightgown. It’s super simple, just spaghetti straps with a straight-across neckline and then deep pink fabric straight down to just below her ass, but Brendon loves it. She suspects it’s just because she can’t move very much without flashing her butt, but he insists that the slip itself is gorgeous.

As she’s getting dressed, she hears the door open and Brendon apologizing for his relative state of undress, saying he just got out of the shower. Brendon’s naked more often than he’s clothed, so Sara just shrugs it off until she hears a giggle and flirting coming from the delivery girl.

Brendon stammers out that he has a girlfriend, but he’s flattered, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring the delivery girl, who makes an extra point to linger her hand on Brendon’s as she hands him the food. Sara strides out of his bedroom, “Hey, B, have you seen my panties? I can’t find them in your bed or your bathroom or the kitchen or the sofa, so I wonder if I left them in your pocket during our multiple rounds of lovemaking,” She calls before pretending to spot him and the girl for the first time by the door. She scootches in next to him and kisses him on the cheek, plastering a sickly-sweet smile on her face. “My apologies, didn’t know you had a guest,” she lies, shooting death beams at the delivery girl whose hand is on Brendon’s bicep. The girl retracts her hand, and Sara grabs a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet on the doorside table to tip her. Sara knows Brendon would’ve already tipped her on the website, but this more of a ‘please don’t touch my boyfriend without his consent tip’ than a ‘thank you for your work tip.’ “Have a nice day, ma’am,” Sara tells her, shutting the door.

Brendon smirks, but there’s a weariness behind it, “Way to save the day, baby. Getting possessive?”

“No, I love it when others check you out. Just validates how hot I am for you. You just sounded like you do when you get overwhelmed at the grocery store, and I figured you were feeling a little claustrophobic,” she explains.

Brendon nods. “I don’t mind a flirt, but she was getting way too handsy. And even then, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world; I just felt a little vulnerable being shirtless and all. She probably just wanted a big tip. I bet that works for her a lot. And y’know, I probably shouldn’t have been shirtless at all. If I was in a restaurant, they’d have every right to kick me out, so really, I’m lucky she didn’t blacklist my address,” he rambles, turning to get plates and silverware from the kitchen.

Sara touches his shoulder and grabs the bags of food from him. “Hey, B, you don’t need to justify your feelings, okay? I get it; she was in your space. Both your personal space by touching you and your physical area by being near your home. But it’s sweet of you to give her the benefit of the doubt. You’re probably right, I would guess that works with nine out of ten guys; she was cute. And hey, I gave her a nice tip to get her to go away, so it worked on us too.”

“And you got to brag to a stranger about our hot sex life, so it really did all work out in the end,” Brendon half-jokes, and she’s happy to observe that any panic seems to have left his body.

“Mhm, my favorite hobby. Maybe we should order dessert, and I can change into something even more slutty. This shows my ass so nicely, but my chest is totally covered,” she suggests, and he cracks a real smile for her. “Seriously though, you’re totally good?”

“Yes, ma’am, everything’s perfect,” he responds, and he’s telling the truth.

“Good, let me set up dinner then. You go relax on the sofa,” she orders.

Brendon goes to sit on the couch, knowing better than to deny a direct request. Sara plates the food and brings it to the now dim living room, where Brendon’s lit three candles in the center of the table.

“Awww, how romantic,” she praises, settling against Brendon with their food.

“I had more romance planned, I promise, I just weighed my options, and I cared more about snuggling with my girl than trying to overdo it on decorating the living room,” Brendon responds. “I do still have wine in the fridge if you want that?”

She twists around to kiss him. “The romance level is perfect. Consider me totally romanced. I think I’ll wait on the wine until later if that’s okay? It’ll make me sleepy, and I’m still interested in a round two,” she says, resting her hand against Brendon’s thigh.

“Whatever you want is fine with me, love,” he says, sighing contentedly.

***

“You’re falling asleep, babygirl.”

“Am not.”

“Your eyes are closed.”

“Your eyes are closed.”

Brendon smiles, “Do you wanna keep watching the movie, or do you wanna go to bed? If you’re sleepy, that’s fine, but we’ve gotta move to the bedroom then,” he murmurs.

Sara moves off the couch and stretches, turning on the light. “I’m not even tired; I took a nap earlier. It’s just the dim lighting and carb surplus. C’mon, let’s keep watching, it’s only 10 and we’re not even to the, ‘paint me like one of your French girls’ scene.”

“Okay, if you insist, then we’ll soldier on. I’ll get dessert,” he agrees, getting up to head to the kitchen.

“Ooo what’s for dessert?” she asks.

“Cannoli and coffee,” he responds.

Sara moans playfully. “God, Brendon, I’m so turned on right now.”

Brendon rolls his eyes. “I’ll try not to take offense that you’re more attracted to sweets than me.”

Sara wraps her arms around his waist from behind him. “I’d choose you over cannoli any day. Someone could offer me a thousand cannoli and I’d scoff in their face and then go kiss all over you. I love you, babe. Thank you for a great date night,” she says before spinning him around to kiss him.

“I love you too,” Brendon whispers against her lips. “Tonight was wonderful, and I owe it all to you.”

[radramblog]

Radiohead Retrospective Part 8: Slowly we unfurl

Last week I compared The King of Limbs to Kid A, a reference I find completely natural. Both albums use significant electronic and ambient instrumentation, especially compared to the albums preceding them, and both feature stark, surreal imagery and lyricism. Kid A is a response to the band’s discomfort at getting huge, while The King of Limbs is a response to them deliberately getting much smaller after cutting ties with EMI/Parlophone.

I’m also pretty sure that comparison really pisses off a bunch of people who really like Kid A and really don’t care for The King of Limbs. And they’re entitled to their opinion, but they’re wrong. Album’s great.

Aside from potentially the spookiest cover of any Radiohead album, TKOL as it’s so abbreviated happens to be the shortest Radiohead album, clocking in at 8 songs and under 38 minutes (for reference, the longest one is Hail to the Thief at 14 songs/~57 minutes). It does not, however, seek to be wasting any of those minutes, despite the often looping nature of its songs, each drizzled in enough Stuff Going On that it feels much deeper than that short timeframe makes it seem.

That, or I just get lost in the groove.

While the comparison to Kid A is probably getting a bit old at this point, I think I’d like to reiterate it by comparing the opening seconds of Everything in its Right Place to that of TKOL’s opener, Bloom. EIIRP opens with this ultimately simple electronic line that feels cold and robotic, and while Bloom’s opening moments are still obviously electronic, they’re clearly made of something more lifelike. And by that, I mean it sounds a lot like a heavily edited, chopped, and looped piano line, one that folds itself into the very genuine percussion loops that follow. It’s a difference of tone, this life against the coldness of silica, even though the two are obviously both computer-made.

I don’t think Bloom truly comes into its own until that bassline comes in. Fortunately, it only takes like a minute for that to happen, with the incredibly ethereal and reverb-y vocals soon to follow. The bass is ultimately incredibly simple, but it adds such a grounding to the other instrumentation, those rapid, looping, high-pitched tracks that go on and on et cetera. And then you get about a two-thirds of the way in and the brass and strings come in that I had entirely forgotten about, but are so pretty, during the bridge (?), it’s genuinely quite lovely.

I wouldn’t call Bloom a banger, because it’s not that type of song. But at the same time, Bloom is a banger, basically.

By comparison, Morning Mr Magpie feels much more organic, in that more of the instrumentation being looped is acoustic/”real”. There’s a very delicate and deliberate guitar strum that the song is built around, with a similar but looser bassline meandering around in the background as it goes. MMM is much more built around the vocals than Bloom was (apparently the bass and vocals were the last things to be added to that track), more concrete images developed, and an actual verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure which feels a little strange on an album like this.

The instrumentation on this track feels anxious, the guitar and percussion reminding me of drumming my fingers on the table in impatience or nerves, but it’s so uncomfortable that it can’t get it perfectly rhythmic.

And frankly, this song does make me uncomfortable. You see, magpies in the UK have an association with thievery, collecting, and having an eye for shiny things. In Australia, magpies are associated with pecking people’s eyeballs out. So there’s a bit of a disconnect between countries and species is what I’m saying.

At some point I had decided that Little by Little was my favourite song on TKOL, and while I can’t really justify that, but I will (for now) stand by it. It’s got some excellent instrumentation- jingly background loops sounding like a machine, or even a bicycle, giving the track a sense of motion. Meanwhile, the bass is just absolutely killer, somehow both intricate and simple-sounding, notes that sound almost the same but aren’t quite. The lyrics are nursery-esque, with rhyming pairs and idioms aplenty. “Little by little by hook or by crook/I’m such a tease and you’re such a flirt” is a really fun couple of lines, even if they really don’t have the same meaning outside of context as they do inside.

Every time I think I’ve heard everything there is to hear in this song, there’s more to surprise me. The different guitar lines, the background noises, rising instrumental and sinking vocals. Underrated, methinks.

Track 4 is the shortest song of the shortest album, Feral. Not so much lyrics in this, as snippets of heavily edited vocalisations- they might say something, but you’re sure as hell not going to figure that out listening to it. The song is heavily percussion-driven, to the point where there are long spans of it where the looping drums are the only instrumentation actually present. More electronic white noise comes in later, getting louder and harsher, as the vocal snippets increase in frequency and variability, but there’s always those drums, keeping on keeping on.

Feral is kind of in an odd spot, frankly, because it is one of hose tracks that’s fine, it’s good¸ but I genuinely cannot imagine being in the mood to listen to it. It’s tightly wound, almost stressful, but what little is added on doesn’t especially cater to that mood. I think there’s some comparison to be made to The Gloaming, of all things, though I think I like that track better than this one.

The one single from the album is Lotus Flower, and if you haven’t watched that music video…fucking, do it? Thom is just iconic in this one, channeling memetic levels of weirdo-dance. Lotus Flower makes the best choice for single on this record, being both the most past-Radiohead-y, and the most traditional song-y track on the record, somehow. Thom’s falsetto is at its peak here, utterly gorgeous in performance and presentation, with loops on some of the held notes that in some cases only just reveal themselves as artificial.

This is not to discredit the instrumental, with the best Radiohead use of handclaps since 15 Step (to my knowledge, the previous iteration of this), an electronic instrumental that would probably make a much sadder song were it not for the vocals and the groovy bassline. Seriously, the bass makes this piece genuinely danceable, it’s incredible.

…man, look at him go.

Every time I hear Codex I think it’s the last song on the album, and I always have to remind myself, no, it’s not that short, come on. This slow, sad, piano ballad (?) echoes previous album closers while still feeling incredibly TKOL, its piano being reminiscent of Videotape, brass coming in like Life in a Glasshouse, and utterly down vocals akin to any number of Radiohead’s finest. Some of the lyrics are actually very reminiscent of Pyramid Song, imagery of, well, jumping into bodies of water, but as that track’s river was full of tragedy and memory, Codex’s clear lake is, apparently, clear and innocent.

I was thinking about that album-closer comment before I heard the section of the track that comes in at 3:35, with wavering strings that feel incredibly like Kid A, like Motion Picture Soundtrack and How to Disappear Completely.

I should probably stop comparing Codex to other Radiohead songs, though. It does stand on its own without those, a beautiful, melancholic song. It is incredibly chill, muted even, the kind of song to float in the water to, staring up at the stars. It’s down, but it’s not in pain, if that makes sense? Like, the vibe I get from it is of acceptance, and of moving past what’s holding one down- something you repeat in your head while you’re deep in the shit.

Wait that’s just How to Disappear Completely again, fuck.

Moving on, Give up the Ghost opens with, of all things, birdsongs. It’s actually an acoustic guitar ballad to pair with Codex’s piano ballad, multiple iterations of the instrument layered over each other in a natural but artificial soundscape. The vocals do the same, with the lead harmonising with a backing refrain of “don’t haunt me” to give this relatively gentle track a sense of desperation, almost (I’ve seen it written as “don’t hurt me” in some places but…come on, listen to it, also it is Give up the Ghost after all).

Give up the Ghost is another very chill track that you can just lean into and relax by. Even as it gets more complex and layered as it goes, with another background vocal layer edited in the background steadily getting fuzzed and less comprehendible, the song doesn’t stop being what it is. That acoustic line doesn’t stop vibing, the tempo doesn’t pick up, it is more than content to stay right where it is. And it’s a comfortable stop.

The album’s final track is Separator, and it is frankly one that I always forget. Despite being the actual track closer (sorry again, Codex), it doesn’t have that impact that tracks like Street Spirit (Fade Out) or A Wolf at the Door do. Ironically, this might make it the most fitting closer for The King of Limbs, considering the largely relaxed, ambient nature of the album.

There isn’t honestly that much to divulge about Separator that you wouldn’t have guessed from the album that precedes it. It’s got looping tracks, layered vocals, and this one really satisfying electronic note that hits every couple seconds that I quite like. About halfway through, a patently lovely guitar line comes in, one of the few I can definitively think of that are relatively downtempo but that I could still describe as “bright”. With all the stuff going on at once, the song does end up a bit of a mess at times, as these different elements that have been present in different pieces of the song blend together for a bit of an echoey jumble, but it does resolve itself before long. After that, the song and album’s final minute or so is surprisingly simple, with the track effectively picking the handful of lines it wants to hang on to, one of the vocal tracks and one of the ambient effects and one of the percussion lines, and lets them run their course, the album ending on an echo of the track that once was.

That completes The King of Limbs, an album named after a tree in England, by the way. It always bugs me when I see this one near the bottom of people’s tier lists, because it really just doesn’t miss. It’s the product of a band that’s been working and experimenting for two decades, and it really shows the fruits of that labour. It’s quite the band that can put out something like Bloom immediately after an album with tracks like Bodysnatchers and Jigsaw Falling Into Place, and have both work.

The King of Limbs was the last album that came out before I got into Radiohead, so naturally, I basically didn’t listen to it for several years. I kinda went piece by piece into their discography, and I hadn’t had it as heavily recommended to me as others. But it easily stands just as tall as those other albums, even if it’s technically a little shorter.

For the record, I haven’t decided if I’m going to cover TKOL RMX 1234567 yet. It is listed next to all the rest of them on any collection of their albums, and it’s a perfectly respectable piece of Radiohead canon, and I did want to cover all the non-main-album stuff at some point. On the other hand, it is just a remix album, I’ve kinda been going through the main stuff chronologically, and also I’ve never listened to it.

So basically, we’ll see! And you’ll see, next week, whether we go straight to A Moon Shaped Pool or deviate a bit for some capitalised numerical action.

[positivlyfocused]

What a difference mood makes

From my journal - Sunday, Aug 16 2020

I'm creating a new series called "journal entries" for when I experience something I write about in my journal I think others might benefit from reading. This is a continuation of that series. They are edited for clarity...

Two nights ago I went to bed feeling eager, happy, alive. I relished the ending day and anticipated lovely dreams, which happened. They included translucent beauties, experiences of pleasure, joy, confidence and clarity about All That Is. I woke expressing joy and wonder. 

Last night I went to bed not feeling that. I felt slight annoyance and a little worry, not the night before’s high flying emotions. Dreams this morning matched that. They expressed worry and regret trepidation, slight fear and a sense of not belonging. 

I want to consistently experience what I had two nights ago. 

The thing is I know now everything happening in nonphysical is to my advantage. Same goes with physical reality. I also know my brain doesn’t follow me into sleep state. I also know I prep my experiences by how I feel going into the experience I’m about to experience, including my nightly sojourns into sleep state. 

I remember reading Enders Game in bed last night. It was the last thing I did before falling asleep.  The main character felt ostracized, out of place, not belonging. He felt fear and worry, regret about going to Battle School, loneliness among his cadre and wanting to feel better.

I experienced similar competitive notions and themes last night while dreaming!

Interesting.

I want to go to bed, and wake the next morning, feeling as I did two nights ago. I also want to carry that into the days more. This is what I’m learning and this desire was born from this morning.

That knowing feels great. I know when I prepare my experience ahead of time, whether it’s going into dream state or coming into a segment of experience while awake, life feels really good. The better I feel, the better the ensuing experience.

I also know it’s all going great all the time everywhere. My interpretation of what’s happening, whether in dream state or wake state shapes to my core frequency, which I can measure detect and alter using my emotions.

Preparing for the next life experience then, whether in waking reality or in sleep state, by preparing a better feeling place from which to go into it creates better experiences. It’s true in wake state and true in dreams. I want to get back to that. Practicing that so I interpret life consistent with positive feelings rather than something other than that.

I love how consistent the Universe is. I love how consistent and recursive and basic it is. I love what I’m learning.

This means dreams last night didn’t portend negative future experience, instead they indicated the lens I took into and looked thorough while experiencing nonphysical. That’s great news. Dream experience always represents the mood I’m using to color dream experience. It doesn’t change what’s actually happening in nonphysical in other words, only my interpretation of it. 

How fulfilling and exciting knowing life experiences gets experienced through the lens I choose. Another way: life experience whether in nonphysical or physical reality always is ecstatic. But how I experience either depends on the my receiver, the way I choose to view it. I know which way I’m choosing by how I feel. 

Put in new age language, the vibration I choose shapes how I interpret, see and translate what’s happening both in dream state and reality. What’s happening always is delicious, wondrous, full of ecstasy and joy, but unless I’m at that vibrational level I miss out on that experience and instead get something else.

Making sure my mood is consistently high guarantees I experience interpretations consistent with the high flying nature of All That Is. What a revelation!

How I love life experience!

[wistfulcynic]

On What They Fall 2/4

So let me start by saying how much I hate @thisonesatellite. I mean obviously I don't hate her, I love her even though she has been HOGGING THE BRAIN, but I hate that EVERY TIME she says I’m going to need more chapters to tell my story I DO. I DO NEED THEM. Curse her. 

The upside of her eerie genius is that there are now three chapters in this fic. ONLY THREE, DAMMIT. 

I’d like to say that this one is less angsty than the first but that would be a LIE. 

The first angsty chapter can be found here on Tumblr or here on AO3. 

SUMMARY: Killian Jones is an angry young man. He has no family and few friends, and he’s stuck in a small town where everyone views him with fear and suspicion.

Everyone but Emma Swan.

She’s everything he wants in life and everything he can’t have. What he doesn’t know is that she wants him too.

Part 9 of Secret Things.

Rated: T

On AO3

Tagging some folks who might enjoy it: @kmomof4, @stahlop, @mariakov81, @teamhook, @resident-of-storybrooke, @darkcolinodonorgasm, @shireness-says, @thejollyroger-writer, @ohmightydevviepuu @jennjenn615 @superchocovian (Give me a shout if you’d like a tag for Chapter 3 THE REALLY VERY FINAL CHAPTER I MEAN IT THIS TIME)

Chapter 2: 

Killian doesn’t write and he doesn’t call. He doesn’t contact anyone except Belle, and she gets nothing but the odd text message sent at irregular intervals. She never tells anyone what the messages say and Emma can’t bear to ask. 

She googles him, though, in moments of weakness— when Graham pushes a bit too hard or when her parents smile at him too fondly, when Emma’s had a drink or two too many she gives in to the longing that is never not a part of her and searches for any scrap of information about him that she can find. 

Her searches come up empty, at first. She expects little else —he’s off on a boat after all— but then one day about a year after he left she searches for his name and finds an Instagram account. She holds her breath as she clicks on it, wondering if after so long it could possibly, actually be him. All the pictures are of landscapes and cityscapes and food and people— so many people, and though none of them are him she knows instinctively that this account is his. These are photographs he’s taken of his travels. 

She makes a second account for herself with a meaningless username and follows him. She checks his page daily, marking off all the places he visits on a globe she buys expressly for the purpose, charting his progress as he travels around the world. His photographs are gorgeous, full of colour and life, and they capture the spirit and the essence of each location. He’s a fantastic photographer, and it turns out an even better writer. 

One day when she checks his Instagram she sees a link to a blog. With shaking hands she clicks on it and finds a single post—a story, complete with pictures, of a day he spent in Vietnam. It was a hot day, he recounted, edging towards 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit, Emma learns from Google, and her jaw drops) and Killian spent it in a place called Hoi An, visiting an elderly couple who breed silkworms for the local trade and taking photographs in their un-air-conditioned house. By the late afternoon he was bathed in sweat, thirsty and grumpy and wanting nothing more than to get back to his boat and have a beer, sail out to sea to catch a cool breeze. When he returned to where he’d moored her, however, he discovered that some local children had cut his line and set his boat adrift off the coast. The children thought this was a hilarious joke, and Killian, despite his mood and the sweat pouring off him, found himself laughing along with them. With no other practical options available, he put his camera bag on his head, secured the strap under his chin, and carefully swam out to his boat. The water was warm, he wrote, like a tepid bath, bright blue and gentle, and it washed the sweat away and refreshed him. When he reached the boat he tossed the camera bag aboard along with the wet clothes he simply stripped off and then floated in the water, watching a thunderstorm roll in over the mountains behind the town. 

Emma devours the story eagerly, then goes back to the beginning and reads it again. His writing style is eloquent and engaging, his descriptions of the locations and people vivid and funny, and she feels like she’s there with him. She feels a pang at that realisation. If only she were there with him. 

The story ends with a final photograph, clearly taken from the deck of his boat. A stormy grey sky lit up by a flash of lighting arcing down over the tops of lush green mountains. The brown roofs of houses dotted around the lower elevations and down to the white sandy beach fronted by clear azure water. The caption reads: I had never known such contentment or such peace.

That he had to go to the other side of the world to find those things breaks her heart. 

She checks his blog daily and he updates it often, and soon she is only one of his regular readers. He gets dozens, then hundreds of comments on each post and he replies to them with charm and humour, and before too long advertisers begin to take notice. As do editors. 

His first professional article appears in Wanderlust about two and a half years after his departure from Storybrooke. More soon follow, and his blog is updated with less and less frequency. And then, four years after he left, he makes the cover of National Geographic. 

Emma cries as she reads it, huge, silent tears that leave tracks down her face, and with her fingertip she traces the small picture of him next to the article. His beard is thicker, she thinks, though he still hasn’t learned how to use a comb. 

Six months later he announces that he’s shutting down his blog because he’s written a book, a novel that will be published the following year. Emma is thrilled, and so proud of him. He always was good with words, as his impressive career in travel journalism proves, and she’s delighted he’s found an even more creative way to use that talent. But then she thinks about how, once, he would have given her this news himself, and her tears fall again. 

She thinks about how things were between them, so long ago now. How from the very beginning he fascinated her, that sullen, beautiful boy with his soft accent and his furious pain, the wary disbelief in his eyes when she brought him a blanket and the shock of intense connection when she shook his hand. Her persistent campaign to break through the bastion of his anger and discover the person beneath, her joy when she succeeded. The long, hot days of his first summer in Storybrooke, walking in the woods or sitting by the docks together, reading, listening to music, talking about everything. How in love with him she was and how she thought, in odd moments and snatches of glances that he might feel the same. 

Then autumn came and Killian turned eighteen. The morning of his birthday he dropped out of school, telling Emma without looking at her that with the chaos of his parents’ deaths and the struggle to find someone to take custody of him he missed his exams in England and here in the US everything was too different. He wouldn’t be able to graduate in the spring and he didn’t see the point of staying in school when he should be earning money. Now that there were no more funds from the state to support him, he said, he couldn’t be a burden on Belle. 

He got a job at the docks, working such long hours she barely ever saw him. When she did he was exhausted, worn in a way that worried her, though he always had a smile for her and a new book he discovered for her to read. His mind was so active, so curious, but when she tried to talk him into going back to school he refused to listen, withdrawing into himself if she even brought it up. 

Emma thinks about how he began to pull away from her, subtly at first, allowing the circumstances of their lives to do most of the work. She thinks of the gossip she began to hear about him, stories of sleeping with older women who would buy him alcohol, drinking until he passed out. She confronted him about it and he stonewalled her, telling her to go back to her high school boys and leave him in peace.  

Man whore, she hissed at him. 

Princess, he snarled back, turning the word into an insult.  

Emma cried herself to sleep that night, and the next day agreed to go to her senior prom with Neal Cassidy. 

--

 When word of Killian’s book gets out Storybrooke goes insane. Everyone seems to have forgotten the way they once treated him, the suspicion and distrust, the whispering behind his back, always waiting for him to explode in violence or do something that would get him locked up for good. All they remember now is that he’s a ‘local boy’—one born on a different continent, but that is also forgotten— and there is pride in their voices when they speak of him. There is speculation on when he’s going to ‘come home.’ 

Emma wants nothing more than for him to come home, but not like this, not into the clutches of these vultures, she thinks viciously, these people who made him feel like less than nothing and who now just want to trade on his acclaim. Yet she wants so badly to see him, to hear his voice again. He’s been gone five years and the wound is still open, still gaping and raw. By now she knows it will never heal, and if she lives to be a hundred she will never stop missing him. 

Graham knows it too. They’re still dating, sort of, in the sense that they go out together sometimes and they sleep together sometimes but Emma has never been able to fully commit to the relationship. She loves Graham but she’s not in love with him, as the cliché goes, and when Killian becomes the focus of eager conversation throughout the town Graham thinks he may finally know the reason why. 

“It’s Killian, isn’t it?” he asks her out of nowhere one day. They’re in the sheriff’s station where Emma now works alongside him, having graduated with her criminal justice degree and joined the force as a deputy. “You’re in love with him.” 

“What? How do you know?” She stares at him, too astonished to dissemble. 

“Emma, you should see your face whenever anyone mentions his name.” Graham smiles sadly. “I didn’t notice at first because— well, no one talked about him, but now his name’s getting thrown around all over the place and every time you hear it you look like your heart is breaking.” 

“Graham.” She has no idea what to say to him. 

“At least now I know why you couldn’t ever fall for me.”

“I’m so sorry.” Emma feels terrible. “I probably shouldn’t have— It’s just my dad was so—” 

“I know. I probably shouldn’t have pushed so hard. With hindsight it’s always been pretty obvious your heart wasn’t in it.” 

“I wish it could have been,” she says with a flare of anger. “Killian never wanted me, he left without even saying goodbye. I haven’t heard a word from him in five years, so why can’t I stop loving him?”

“What is it they say? True love never dies?” 

“I’ll have to find a way to kill it then, because I can’t live the rest of my life like this.” 

Graham stares at his hands for a long moment, and then he speaks. “You might not have to.” 

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t think— I don’t think Killian didn’t want you.” 

“What?” Emma glares at him but he doesn’t look up. 

“It’s not something we ever spoke of, but looking back.. hindsight and all, I see some things now that I didn’t want to see back then. He was always so tense when you were around, and his face when anyone said your name— well, it was a lot like yours is now when someone says his.”

She shakes her head. “You’re imagining things, Graham. Projecting—” 

“No, I don’t think I am,” he interrupts firmly, finally looking at her. “I think Killian loved you but thought he couldn’t give you what you needed and that’s why he left.” 

“And what exactly did he think I needed?” 

“Maybe you should ask him that.” 

Emma throws up her hands. “I just told you he hasn’t spoken to me in half a decade. I’ve got no idea where he even is.” 

“You’re a cop,” says Graham. “You have resources.” 

“Graham Humbert, are you suggesting I misappropriate—” 

“I’m not suggesting anything, Emma, other than that it seems you and Killian have a conversation that’s at least five years overdue, and maybe it’s time you finally had it.”

--

Two weeks later Killian’s book comes out. It’s an instant sensation, shooting to the top of the bestseller lists. All his Instagram followers and blog readers and travel magazine subscribers buy it and so do their friends and family. Emma buys a copy and stares for a long time at his name on the cover before she begins to read. 

The book is not a love story. It’s a story of love frustrated by life. It’s the story of a boy and a girl, the classic star-crossed lovers, who end up not dying in each other’s arms or living happily ever after but just… living. Ever after. 

It’s the story of bad timing and bad choices and circumstances that grind away at love until nothing remains but the ghost of it, and of two people who would once have done anything for each other but by the end barely speak. It’s beautifully written and it’s heartbreaking, and for Emma it hits her straight in her soul. Because she is the girl, and Killian is the boy, and she doesn’t even have to read the interview he gives to the New York Times Book Review, confessing that the woman he wrote about is based on a real person, to know that this is them. This is how Killian imagined the path their lives would take, if they got together all those years ago. This is why he left. 

Emma takes the book with her everywhere, rereading it in every spare moment, searching for something to convince her she’s wrong, that she’s imagining what isn’t there. She forgets to eat and barely sleeps, and finally she goes to see Belle, knocking on her door with the book clutched tightly to her chest. Belle hugs her, the minute she opens it. She’s read the book too. 

“He’s never coming back, is he?” Emma whispers. 

Belle shakes her head. “No.” 

She ushers Emma inside, sits her down on the sofa. Waits. 

Emma stares at the book, ruffling its pages and toying with its dust jacket. “Isn’t there anything that might make him— any reason he might want to— to come to Storybrooke again? Doesn’t he at least want to see you?”

Belle chooses her words carefully. “I visited him last Christmas,” she says gently. “In his new place, at his request. He doesn’t want to come back here. I— believe there are some things he thinks would hurt too much to revisit.” 

“The woman in his book.” 

“Yes.” 

Emma takes a deep breath, looks Belle straight in the eye. “Is it me?” She holds up the book. “Is she— me?”

Belle sighs, but there’s no point in lying. The woman in the book is so obviously Emma. She’s kept Killian’s secret as long as she could, but if he’s going to put his heart on display in the pages of an international bestseller there’s only so much that she can do to protect it for him. 

“Yes,” she says. “It’s you.” 

“Then he… he loved me?” 

Belle nods, and Emma’s fingers grip the book tightly. “Did he leave town because of me?”

“He did. He loved you deeply, Emma, but he never acted on it because he believed you didn’t feel the same, and even if you did he couldn’t give you the life you deserved. Then you started dating Graham and couldn’t bear to watch you fall in love with someone else.” 

“He’s such an idiot,” hisses Emma, and Belle does rather agree. Yet she’s not sorry Killian left Storybrooke; he’d never have made anything of himself had he stayed. He’s got the life he deserves now, and he’s stable, if not quite happy. He’s been seeing a therapist and working through the scars from his past. For the first time in all the years she’s known him anger isn’t his defining feature, and while she does think his book takes rather too pessimistic a view of the life they might have had together, she’s certain none of the progress he’s made would have been possible if he’d remained here in this town with Emma, however much he loved her. 

“Tell me something, Emma,” she says. “If Killian had told you he loved you before he left, what would you have done?” 

“Gone with him,” says Emma, without a second’s hesitation. 

Belle gives her a hard look. “You would have given up everything —your education, your family, your home— to live with him on a boat, scraping by on his savings?” 

“Yes.” Emma thinks about the picture from his first blog post, the calm and contentment he’d found floating off the coast of Vietnam. She would have given up anything to experience that with him. Just to be with him. “All I’ve ever really wanted is to have a life with him. The details of that life don’t really matter. I mean, they do, but— we could have worked them out together.”

Belle smiles and gives her head a little shake. One of these days, she thinks, she’ll stop underestimating Emma Swan. “He’s living in New York now,” she says casually. “In a neighbourhood called the Bowery. Bought himself a nice little flat there. Apparently the advance on his next book was a generous one.” 

Emma swallows hard before she speaks. “Is he planning to stay there?” she asks. 

“I think so,” says Belle. “I think he’s ready to stop wandering and find his place.” 

--

Emma has been with the sheriff’s department for three years and she’s never once abused the power that comes with her position. She doesn’t speed or park where she shouldn’t, or even cut in line at Granny’s as even Graham has been known to do. She’s never even jaywalked. But when she learns where Killian lives, his very neighbourhood in fact, she busts out every cop trick she knows to find his address. 

When she has it she sits for a long time, thinking. Then she opens Google Street View. She feels a bit like a stalker, looking online at the very building where he lives, but she can’t help herself. And if she goes through with her plan then she will quite literally be stalking him and via not-quite-legal means as well. 

But she can’t get Graham’s words out of her head. A conversation at least five years overdue. She wants to know why he left, why he pushed her away even before that, why he didn’t trust her to love him enough to make everything else irrelevant. She needs to hear it from his own mouth, not from Graham’s or Belle’s or anyone else’s. She needs to know.  

She doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going or what she intends to do. Her dad is surprised when she asks for two weeks off work— she’s not had so much as a sick day since she started— but when he and her mother ask about her plans she tells them she just needs some time away after her breakup with Graham. Her father’s mouth goes grim; he’s not happy about that breakup. But he says nothing and her mother hugs her and tells her to take all the time she needs. 

--

The next morning finds her at Killian’s door, trying to calm her racing heartbeat as she stares at the number on it, gathers her courage, and rings the bell. When he appears her breath stops. Her world stops. He looks good, is all she can think. Older, of course, filled out and more solid, with thick scruff along his jaw and his hair neatly trimmed if less than neatly combed. He’s always been good looking, but in the past the anger and defiance that so often marred his features made it hard to see. But now… now the anger is nowhere to be seen and he is beautiful, his smile shining as brilliantly as she remembers until he recognises her and it fades away. 

“Swan,” he gasps, staring at her with wide eyes. “What— why are you—” 

“I read your book,” she says breathlessly. 

“Ah.” 

“I loved it. You’re an incredible writer.” 

He drops his eyes and rubs his neck, a pink flush spreading over his cheekbones. Some things haven’t changed, she thinks. He never could handle praise.

“Erm, well, yes. Thank you,” he says. “Um. Come in, Swan.” 

He steps back to allow her entrance and she feels breathless again as she takes in his apartment. It’s plainly furnished but everywhere there are things, all manner of them, clearly souvenirs of his travels. Sculptures and paintings and knickknacks and other little touches of the life he’s lived without her. She spins slowly around, wide-eyed. 

“This is amazing.” 

“Aye, well, I’ve done some travelling.” 

“I know. I read your blog too, and your Instagram.” 

“You— really?” 

She turns to look at him. “Yeah. I’ve been following you for a while. On the internet at least.” 

“That’s— well, I don’t really know. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think you—” I didn’t think you cared. She hears the words he doesn’t say. 

The urge to touch him is so strong she digs her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from reaching out, wrapping him in her arms and never letting go. She notices that he seems to be doing the same, one hand stuffed deep in his pocket and the other a tight fist at his side. The tension Graham spoke of is there as well. It radiates from him, belying his casual posture. He was always tense around her in those later years, she remembers. Now she has some new ideas about why. 

She doesn’t know what to say, though, how to start the conversation she needs them to have. 

He starts it for her. “Why are you here, Swan?” he asks. 

“Belle told me where you live.” 

“That’s a how, not a why,” he says, with a small smile.  

“I just wanted to see you.” 

“Why?”

She tries to sort through all the reasons: because she still loves him and always will, because she missed him every second he was gone and she’s so angry at him for leaving without even a goodbye but also she’s proud of him for what he’s accomplished, for pulling himself out of the life he hated and finding success through his talent and hard work and sheer stubbornness. She tries to sort through the chaos of her thoughts but before she can the door opens and a woman rushes in. 

“Sorry I’m late, I— oh. I didn’t know you were expecting any visitors.” 

“I wasn’t.” Killian smiles at the woman as she approaches them. She’s tall and elegant with dark hair that tumbles in wild curls down her back. Emma feels small and dowdy next to her, and when she kisses Killian in greeting Emma can’t suppress a flinch. 

“This is Emma,” says Killian. “A friend from Storybrooke.” 

The woman looks at her with sharp interest. “I thought you didn’t have any friends there.” 

“I believe I said I didn’t have many,” Killian replies with a grin. “She’s one.” He turns back to Emma and the smile slips away. “This is Milah, my agent,” he tells her. “And, ah, my girlfriend.” 

Emma doesn’t flinch this time, she’s frozen by the stab of pain through her heart, though she knew this was coming from the moment the woman came through his door. Of course he has a girlfriend, she thinks, he’s moved on with his life. He’s been moving on, for the past five years. She’s the one who can’t let go. 

She feels like she’s watching herself from outside her body as she summons a smile from God knows where and shakes Milah’s hand. She says all the right things— nice to meet you and yes, here on vacation and just in the neighbourhood, thought I’d look him up. From the expression in Milah’s pale eyes she doesn’t believe a word of it. 

“Well, I’m sorry to cut your reunion short, Emma, but I’m afraid Killian has an appointment and we’re already running late,” she says briskly. 

“Yes, of course,” Emma, replies, leaping to her feet and grabbing her things. “I’ll just… it was nice to meet you Milah, and to see you Killian. I’ll, uh, find my way out.” She forces herself not to run. 

Killian catches up to her as she’s waiting at the elevator. “Swan!” he calls, and Emma wills the elevator to come faster, wishes she’d just taken the stairs. She tries not to turn around, but he calls her name again she can’t resist the entreaty in his voice. 

“Where are you staying?” he asks, all in a rush. “For how long? Can I— can we—” he takes a deep breath and tries again. “I’d love to see you before you go. If you like, that is. Can I take you for coffee or something?” 

The elevator doors open and she steps inside, turns to look at him almost against her will.

“Swan,” he says again, and his voice is so soft. 

She gives him the name of her hotel, forces herself not to be thrilled by the warmth of his smile. The first smile he’s directed at her in five years. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning,” he says, and she nods as the doors slide shut. It’s just a platitude, she tells herself, just something people say. She won’t get her hopes up. 

She won’t. 

--

Killian returns to his apartment where Milah is waiting, actually tapping her toe on the floor as she stares at her phone with a stony expression. He ignores her mood, grabs his jacket and his satchel and holds open the door. 

“Are you coming?” he asks. 

She sweeps by him without a word and he follows her downstairs to where a town car is waiting. There is no sign of Emma in the street.

They sit in silence as the car navigates the heavy traffic. Killian is lost in his thoughts, unnerved by the way his skin is tingling, his blood pounding hot in his veins. This reaction is insane, he thinks, they didn’t even touch. Just seeing Emma again has shaken him to his core and he can’t work out how he feels about it. He never expected to see her anywhere but in his dreams. 

“That was her, wasn’t it?” says Milah, interrupting his reverie. “The woman from your book.” 

“Aye.” He regrets Emma’s presence in his book, resents it a bit. He tried to write the woman differently but no matter what he did she refused to be anyone but Emma. In the end he gave in, hoping that writing about her might excise her from his heart. It didn’t. Nothing ever could. 

Milah is silent for several streets. When she speaks again her voice is carefully neutral. “Are you going to tell her you’re still in love with her?” she asks. “That you’ve never stopped?”

“Milah—” he begins, but she cuts him off with a short, sharp gesture of her hand.

“It’s okay, Killian. Well, it’s not okay, but I’ve always known you didn’t love me the way you love her.” She gives a wry smile. “I just never imagined she’d show up at your door.” 

“No, nor I.” 

“What are you going to do about it?”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know.” 

Milah pauses again, chooses her words carefully. “You know you’ll never be completely happy without her, right?” 

He nods. “I know. But—” He hesitates, and she steps in.

“But you don’t think you deserve to be.” She gives him a probing look. “You do, you know.”

Killian stares at his hands, fighting against the memories that are starting to engulf him, things he hasn’t allowed himself to think about for years. Emma’s laugh, the way she smiled at him, the sunlight in her hair. Her father’s face whenever he saw them together. The way people in Storybrooke used to watch them, resentfully, as though his mere presence in her orbit would despoil their princess. 

He shakes his head.“You don’t understand. Emma, she’s perfect—” 

“She’s not,” snorts Milah, and meets his glare with a calm stare of her own. “She’s just a woman. A lovely one, yes, and by your account a remarkable one. But still just a woman. One who loves you.” 

His heart squeezes at that thought, one his brain refuses to entertain. “She doesn’t,” he insists, “she’s just being—” 

“Oh, stop it!” snaps Milah. “Stop making excuses. It’s fucking obvious to anyone with eyes. She’s as bad at hiding her feelings as you are. That woman is crazy in love with you and the only reason you can’t see it is because you think you don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve her,” insists Killian, his jaw set stubbornly. 

Milah rolls her eyes, huffs out a breath. “You know what, maybe this is for the best,” she says. “Your moods were driving me crazy anyway.” 

“What, are you breaking up with me?”

“Yes. Yes I am. I can do better than a self-loathing nomad who’s in love with someone else.” 

They glare at each other. “You probably can,” says Killian. 

“Damn straight,” says Milah. 

“You will still be my agent, right?” 

“Of course I will. You’re my fucking cash cow, love.” 

Their glares fade into grins and they laugh. “Maybe it is for the best,” he concedes. “I like you too much to impose myself on you.” 

“Stop that,” says Milah. “That self deprecation gets really bloody tiresome. Just tell Blondie you love her, the rest will sort itself out. And quit holding her up in your mind like some sort of goddess. She’s just a woman.” 

Killian doesn’t reply. 

--

He calls Belle late that night. She answers after many rings with a sleepy “Hello?” He’s woken her up. He expects he should be sorry for that but he isn’t; he’s too mad at her for telling Emma where to find him. For destroying the peace he’s worked so hard to achieve. 

“Why,” he chokes out. He’s been sitting alone for hours fighting the urge to drink, unable to sleep, thinking about Emma and remembering and trying not to tumble back into feelings he thought he’d escaped. “Why would you tell her where I was?”

“What?” says Belle, and there is genuine confusion in her voice. “Killian? Who did I tell what to?” She must be tired, thinks Killian, if she’s dangling prepositions. 

“Emma,” he snarls. “You told her where I live. Why? Why, when you know how I—” 

“Hold on,” Belle is awake now, and there’s a snap in her tone. “I told Emma you live in New York but I didn’t give her your address. Why? Is she there?” 

“Aye.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “She appeared at my door this afternoon.” 

“Ah.” Belle sounds satisfied. 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

“Killian. Please think about this. She tracked you down. She went to a lot of trouble to find you. Why do you think she would do that?” 

“I’ve no bloody clue.” 

“You do,” says Belle sharply. “You’re just being obtuse. What did she say?” 

“Not much. The timing was complicated.” 

“Well, talk to her. Just talk. See what comes out.” There’s a pause as Belle sighs. “You’ve spent so long thinking you can’t have good things, Killian, I suppose it must be difficult to change that mindset. But you have to. You can have the things you want. You are allowed to be happy.” 

“I—” He doesn’t know what to say. 

“Get some sleep,” Belle tells him. “Talk to Emma in the morning. And keep me informed.” 

“Aye.” 

He hangs up the phone and drops onto his sofa, letting his head fall into his hands. Belle’s words ring in his ears. 

You are allowed to be happy. 

[selfshipstuff]

💡 give me all the fandoms ~Audrey

SBDJSJS ALL OF THEM???? I MEAN I GUESS IF YOU'RE SURE??

@tsundere-doods

ARROWVERSE (The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl)

In all Arrowverse AUs, my SI is a metahuman from Earth-1 with energy-based powers. I primarily exercise control over electricity, movement, and gravity, but with practice I could probably expand my repertoire to include light, heat, elasticity, radioactivity, sound-- all sorts of things. During my time on Teams Flash and Arrow, I go by the moniker Switchboard, and then in my Team Arson AU, Lonnie and Astra (@astralshipper) call me Sparks. 

In The Flash, my primary f/o is Cisco Ramon, and we have that best friends to lovers thing going on. I also love Becky Sharpe, although I don’t talk about her much! She’s girlfren, and I’m poly with the two of them in my Flash-centric Arrowverse AU-- she’s not dead, hush, I save her life and canon can eat my entire ass tbh.

I don’t have a romantic f/o on Arrow, but John Diggle is like a brother to me. I don’t have an AU that focuses solely on Team Arrow, because it’s not a primary thing for me, but when I’m on the team, it’s because I’m taking a break from Team Flash.

In my Supergirl-centric AU, instead of joining Team Arrow after leaving Team Flash, I actually use some of Cisco’s tech to hop on over to Earth-38 to make a new life for myself. Eventually, I end up helping out Team Supergirl, because once you start superheroing it’s not really something that has an off switch, and that’s how I meet Winn Schott. He and I click almost immediately and we have a best friends to lovers type thing similar to what Cisco and I had. I also have a small crush on both Lena Luthor and Mon-El, but I haven’t decided if I’m gonna do anything about it yet.

Finally, there’s the Team Arson AU, which isn’t really based on any of the shows in particular, but rather on one of the villains of Arrow: specifically, Lonnie Machin. This AU starts after I leave Team Arrow because of Oliver, John, and Felicity’s actions toward the newer team members; incensed by the hypocrisy of my fellow heroes, I run into Astra (@astralshipper) and Lonnie, who have turned into sort of an anti-hero team, and I join forces with them. This sometimes leads to problems when my ex-teammates come after us, but we handle it.

And last but not least, I actually forgot to mention, but there is an offshoot AU of the Team Arson storyline; it doesn’t have a catchy name, so I just call it the Team Arson and Michael AU, because it’s essentially the same thing as the regular Team Arson one except it incorporates Michael Collins from The Uniques as a new hero. In this AU, I eventually leave Team Arson to form a power-couple duo with Michael and go back to being a hero, mostly.

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER (A:TLA)

Not totally sure what my whole deal is going to be here, but I’m definitely an airbender. I know in canon they’re wiped out, but I’m just saying, there could definitely be a few in hiding; who’s to say all of them were at the air temples when the Fire Nation attacked? The air nomads were a highly mobile people, so yeah, while those were the hubs of activity, I don’t see it being where every single one of them would’ve been. 

Anyway, I don’t have a romantic f/o in this series, but the Gaang in general is just a little family I’d like to be a part of. In particular, Aang has little brother vibes, and I’m definitely gonna take him under my wing; I think it would be good for him to have another airbender around, and it would be cool to see how a traditional air nomad would interact with one whose views and values have been shaped by a century of other cultures dominating the world. It’s definitely sad, because cultural loss is a huge part of genocide, but it would be neat to see how the surviving families passed down that culture and mixed it with that of the world around them. Like, it would be a little bit of home for Aang, but also sort of like... a hope for something new, I guess? I dunno, I’m spitballing here

CRIMINAL MINDS

My SI timeline isn't the most well-defined for this one yet, but one thing I've decided on is that I pretty much end up adopting, fostering, and taking in kids that need help. Currently, it's sort of just... been the kids that are victimized during the team's cases, but that's a byproduct of the source material rather than a conscious decision.

In Criminal Minds, I ship with Spencer Reid and Emily Prentiss, who are my boyfriend and girlfriend, respectively; we’re poly, but they’re not dating each other. They are queerplatonic, though! Fun fact, I’ve adopted Hotch and Rossi as my dads; Hotch is the primary father figure, and Rossi was kind of like, uncle vibes? Until I realized how much romantic tension there is between the two of them, and now he’s like, stepdad. Hotch already sees Spencer as a son, and he’s close with Emily, so this works out really well.  

EVER AFTER HIGH

In EAH, I’m the eldest child of the White Rabbit-- yes, the one you know from the story of Alice in Wonderland. (Don’t ask how that works, because I don’t know.) Anyway, I was born and raised in Wonderland, along with my younger sister, Bunny. (Yes, her name is Bunny Rabbit.) Things were alright until sometime in my early teens when the Evil Queen tried to basically destroy the world of wonder; it was crazy and chaotic, and very few Wonderland folk managed to escape to Ever After before the Brothers Grimm closed the portals between the two worlds. I was among the handful that escaped: my sister, father, and friends were not. I was all alone in an unfamiliar world, and man, was that scary. Luckily, I was still school-aged, so it was easy enough to get a place to stay at the Grimms’ school-- Ever After High. 

I’ve got crushes on Raven Queen, Alistair Wonderland, Dexter Charming, Chase Redford, Northwind, and Cedar Wood, but no established romance.

HARRY POTTER

Okay, so there are a few different timelines and AUs for this franchise. We’ll start with the most established one. Obviously, I’ve got the obligatory AU where I’m there for everything from the very beginning, but there’s also one I thought of back in middle school which goes something like this: I’m newly orphaned, so I’ve been sent to live with a relative in the UK. It’s the year of the Quidditch World Cup, not that I know anything about it, because my parents were Muggles and so is the great-aunt-twice-removed or whomever it is I now live with. I’m out for a walk, trying to clear my head and familiarize myself with the new neighborhood; out the back of the house, there’s a forest in the distance, hills, and marshland which seem suitably spooky and melancholy for my mood, so I head out exploring that way. After a while, I hear noise, like celebration and shouting, so I head over to check it out and stumble across the tent-grounds for the World Cup. 

Obviously, it’s a lot to take in at once, because it’s clearly magic-- but I’ve always believed in magic, in a sense. So I just grin and start exploring, getting friendly with the kids my age in the area, lie to the adults when they ask where my parents are (”oh, our tent is over there”) and nobody even thinks twice about my accent because people from all over the world are here for the event. Of course, I’m only 15, and eventually I run into one of the people who actually coordinates the grounds, so I’m found out fairly easily; cut to me being interrogated and scared half to death by the magical authorities before who else but Dumbledore swoops in and quietly talks to them. It’s a lot, and it’s too quiet for me to hear all of it, but I manage to take away something about me obviously being magic if I found the place-- and then suddenly, this old man is offering his hand and escorting me out, telling me about a whole other world I didn’t know I could be a part of. 

I do go to Hogwarts, and I have to do a LOT of remedial studying to catch up to the other students, but it helps that I love to read about magic and studying over the summer isn’t a problem. 

In some AUs, I’m poly with Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley; in others, I’m with Fred and George Weasley. Sirius Black ends up taking me under his wing along with Harry, and he doesn’t die in my canon-- neither does Fred, Remus Lupin, or Tonks.

I also have a pretty big crush on Newt Scamander from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but I haven’t got my AU timeline figured out for him yet.

MCU

Agents of SHIELD: This show is a separate AU from my other Marvel stories, but I have the same energy powers as usual. Basically, I’m an Inhuman on SHIELD’s watchlist for a long time, even before they know what Inhumans are; unlike some of the other individuals on the list, I’m friendly, cooperative. I consult on cases from time to time, mostly as needed until Phil Coulson starts putting together his dream team: that’s when he reaches out to me, asks me to be a permanent consultant to his team. I’m sort of hesitant, because permanence is restrictive when it comes to organizations like his, but I agree on my own terms. I find myself fitting in and warming up to the team more than I thought I would, and I even find myself crushing on Fitz and-- to a lesser extent-- Skye. When she gets her powers, it’s frickin’ neat as hell, but I end up fighting with the team for treating her so poorly afterward. 

Spider-Man (Tom Holland): Originally, I’m not even in New York, but rent in our area is going up, and the frequency with which certain areas in NY get destroyed leads to their rent actually being more appealing in an attempt to get people to move back. So, with everything going on, my family weighs their options and we move. It’s the end of summer when we get there, and it’s a different school district, so they make me take all sorts of tests to see where I’ll best fit in-- eventually, they put me into some prestigious school my parents are thrilled about and which I’ve never heard of. Of course, I’m much more thrilled after the first week or so: the classes are more engaging, and the students seem to know their stuff. Other than the classist rich kids, it’s paradise for nerds! And that’s before I develop a crush on a classmate (Peter Parker) and start paying attention to news about a local superhero. Around this time is when my powers start to show themselves; sparks fly, literally, and I find myself getting done with things faster than anyone else. It all comes to a head when, on my way home from school, someone falls from the upper floor of a building and I somehow manage to slow their fall so they land safely. Thoroughly freaked out, I start experimenting with my powers, seeing what I can do-- eventually, I put together my own suit and start helping out the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. (We end up dating out of costume.)

MIRACULOUS LADYBUG

So, in the ML universe, I’m an American exchange student in Paris, and I end up figuring out the identities of the local heroes fairly quickly, which leads me to help out in the crises a lot more. After a while of this, Master Fu decides to gift me with the Mouse Miraculous, which has a different power than in canon, because I developed this before the debut of Kwami Buster and honestly I kind of think Multimouse has a stupid power? Anyway, as Souris Gris, I have the power of stealth. I realize pretty quickly that my accent is gonna be an easy identifier, so I take up Langue des Signes (French Sign Language, or LSF) to use while transformed-- as a bonus, it adds to the stealth thing. Meanwhile, as my civilian self, I’m still adjusting to using conversational and situational French 24/7.

Adrien Agreste (also known as Chat Noir) is my primary f/o from this, but there’s also an AU where we’re poly with Marinette Dupain-Cheng (also known as Ladybug), who we’re both dating. 

OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB (OHSHC)

Okay, in the past with this one I’ve 100% focused on the romance, so I’m gonna make something up on the spot. I still would’ve been born to a lower middle-class family in Midwestern America-- flyover country-- but at some point in my youth, a family member wins the lottery-- literally, and not just as a figure of speech. It’s a big one, and instead of spending it, they invest; as I grow up, things start to look up for us. I’m a creative kid, and I’m bugging my parents to let me design and make my own books, games, and toys. Eventually, they cave, and that’s the story of how I become a “self-made” millionaire. 

At first, the products only really sell in North America, until a knock-off line comes out in Japan, and we release them there to curb the competition. The sales skyrocket in the Japanese isles and surrounding countries, so sometime in my preteens, my family moves to Japan to better oversee the majority of the business. After a lot of private tutoring and language classes, I beg my parents to let me go to a real school. Now, my parents, who are quickly becoming the snooty rich folks they used to curse, take some convincing, but we finally agree as long as they choose the school, which is how I end up enrolled at Ouran Academy. 

I eventually find myself meeting the host club and befriending them, which... also leads to me dating Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, the notorious twins. We’re all lowkey crushing on Haruhi, but none of us do anything about it. 

THE UNIQUES

I still haven’t decided how I end up on the team to begin with, but I do know that my powers are pretty much the same in The Uniques as they are in the Arrowverse. (This is mostly because that’s my default when it comes to superpowers. Energy powers are frickin’ neat, okay?) Again, they primarily cover electricity, movement, and gravity, but in this universe I also have a little more experience bending light and manipulating heat. 

One of my f/os from this is also mentioned in the Arrowverse section because of an AU, and that’s Michael Collins. He and Scout are my boyfriends, and they’re best buds. The rest of the team (the New Guard) are our best friends, so they’re platonic f/os.

WALKYVERSE (It’s Walky!, Shortpacked!)

Technically, the Walkyverse also includes Roomies!, which comes before It’s Walky! sequentially, but I don’t even really think about that part of the comic tbh. Basically, I’m an alien abductee, so I have powers-- neat!-- and I’m an agent of SEMME-- less neat. We’re a secret government agency fighting a hostile race of aliens known only as “aliens”, which I guess are separate from other extraterrestrial races because Martians are specified as a separate race within the comic...? Anyway. I’m a SEMME agent, and I have enhanced abilities like super-strength due to my status as an abductee. Originally, I was a part of a different squad, but a mission went south, leaving me as the only surviving member. 

By the time the retrieval unit showed up, most of my teammates were already dead, and I was just barely holding up a fallen building which would have crushed me had I let go. Upon my return to SEMME HQ, I was asked to wait outside an office for a moment while the Big Boss and some poor agent tasked with debriefing him duked it out behind the closed doors. There were whispers about me, being the sole survivor of my unit and having held up a building, and people had their suspicions, but it didn’t matter. The fact was that I was the only agent that had made it through a suicide mission, which is a feat in and of itself, disregarding the valuable intel I had gathered; Big Boss eventually reassigned me to Squad 128, the most infamously effective team on payroll, and sent me off to get checked out by medical. 

My main f/o in Walkyverse is Mike Warner, a fellow SEMME agent and abductee. I’m also FWB with the titular character before he gets married-- David Walkerton (Walky)-- and Marcie. 

[bbjmikki172414-blog]

There Will Not Be A Reason For Women To Be Motivated By An Orgasm At All

The concern here is you are probably less looking into sex than others. Research has shown that most long-married couples have sex once or twice a week, if either with them does cant you create any illness, is pregnant or is bothered by other matters that get a new mood for lovemaking. For newly married couples, sex happens often but does decrease in frequency period. The libido can go up or down and won't always end up being the same. You going end up being times each and Cialix Male Enhancement every woman feels lethargic. Every women goes through this very normal stage at a thing in their lives. Lowered sex drive can result in serious problems. An underactive female libido is not always a issue. And yet, many of the so-called problems about libido have concerning an over-active libido. Simple fact that of the mater is really a Men Libido is normal and a great deal more serious in the problem than the usual hyperactive sex passion. However, couple of different methods likely umpteen things you can have to indirectly influence his feelings. Practical experience . to this is to home in across the root factors behind his perceived lack of desire a person. Unless his problem is physical in nature (see above), it is probably emotional. Besides the above, some will find high quality libido supplements that may help increase your sex drive and also ensure rock solid and longer lasting erections. Libido tips Penis Cialix Male Enhancement enlargement has come a long way and there are some simple and ways to raise the size your penis. Simple exercises natural pills and patches traction devices are highly good at increasing the magnitude of your penis at building. Having two strong hands is really the minimum along with the maximum criteria required which you should try out natural penis exercises. These exercises have been around for some centuries now yet their importance just has been realized over the last two decades if not earlier. Refer to it plain ignorance of these natural penis exercises or extra-arrogance on techniques which have half the same as this technique people have neglected natural penis exercises for a long time. Stressor # 5: Connected with sleep - whether span of financial from worry, insomnia, or sleep apnea, sleep deprivation creates body fatigue. And Cialix Male Enhancement Pills Male Enhancement Reviews fatigue zaps the energy you requirement of sex - interfering collectively sex send. Boost blood circulation- Since reduced blood flow to your penis is one of the most basic associated with erectile dysfunction, you must try and boost your blood circulation. This requires making certain adjustments towards diet. Stop having greasy or foods that are high in cholesterol. They tend to build plaque with your arteries lessen blood number. Foods that are containing more fiber are so good for boosting blood flow in the body. Excessive work can also affect libido by leaving you with little energy to perform ion platform. Good sex is all about energy and connected with energy leads to a drop in sexual aspire. Alcohol abuse makes you drop all inhibitions however in the years to come it is likely to affect your libido. Specialists largely this is because it tends boost estrogen level which lowers testosterone film.

[whitestonetherapy]

Negativity... (2.9.19)

If you're anything like me, you'll know that sometimes your mind can be your own worst enemy.  

Most of us have times that our mind can't settle - times when we're prone to making just about every 'thinking error' in the book.  Catastrophising, jumping to worst conclusions, making generalisations that are unhelpful, being highly self-critical etc.  We might find ourselves increasingly focusing on the negative side of life and feeling pessimistic.  

When this happens we'll often give more thought to negative situations in our lives.  We might think of all the things that could go wrong at work next month, or dwell on the times we've been treated badly in the past.  Then it's easy to get stuck in a loop of unhelpful thinking.  Roughly speaking, when you focus on the negative, your mood becomes lower, and so you focus more on the negative things. Boom...

The human brain has an inbuilt bias that tends to veer towards focusing on 'negatives', and this is just part of how the human brain seems to work.  We also have a tendency to notice the bits of information that support our state of mind (and so 'the way we see the world').  This means, for example, that if we are in a bad mood we're more likely to remember any unfriendly interactions when we visit our local town.  Dwelling on these unfriendly interactions will reinforce our low mood and may reinforce an idea that "other people are rude to me", and over time this becomes a fixed prediction for how people are likely to treat me in future.  (And so our negative predictions begin to colour future interactions).  

In scenarios like this, friendly social interactions are more likely to be ignored, and we'll assign more focus and attention to the negative experiences we have.  These become 'proof' of our theory about others.

This kind of inbuilt cognitive bias plays a big part in therapy too.  In therapy sessions sometimes people will say "I want to be happy" - something I can definitely understand.  But it is a fact that our brains are not evolved to produce happiness but to focus on survival.  Problem-solving has been the chief concern of the human brain for all of our evolutionary history.  The main goal of the brain is to solve potential problems, to automate tasks and take the need for conscious thinking out of as many of our daily tasks as possible, and to make 'predictions' to ensure we survive.  

This means we have natural default settings in our minds that ensure we allocate much more attention to problems than we do to situations which go according to plan.  It is because of this tendency to focus on solving problems (above, say, counting our blessings), that our perceptions of the world can become quite skewed, often to the pessimistic side of things.  

Hans Rosling (a Swedish researcher) quite famously demonstrated this tendency in a piece of research in 2013.  His research asked the question:  " Has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty almost doubled, almost halved or stayed the same over the past 20 years?"   Only 5% of respondents correctly answered that poverty has actually halved.  Our bias towards pessimism or a negative appraisal of situations sometimes means we can be really, really wrong...  In fact, this is the case with almost every quality-of-life metric.  Things have improved so much in the last fifty years, and yet the sense of pessimism remains high.

Like moths to a flame, we seem to be particularly drawn to 'problems' in all forms.  In 2014 a study at McGill University examined people's consumption of written news media and looked at the stories participants chose to read in what they thought was an eye-tracking experiment.  What the results showed was that even the participants who said they wanted more good news stories were much more drawn to 'negative news content'.  And in the absence of any sizeable problems, our minds will often work overtime to create some new ones - to find some new angle, some new (hitherto unimportant) issue on which to rest our attention and focus our concerns.  

This is partly due to "prevalence-induced concept change", a theory that suggests that as the prevalence of a problem is reduced, humans are naturally inclined to redefine and broaden the nature of 'problems' themselves.   This means that as things improve all around us, our definition of 'bad news' is just widened to find new things that are bad to report on.  We recast our 'problems' and simply discover a load more of them.  I suppose this is far more common in the developed, capitalist, liberal West  (where to some extent the 'problems' that have made life miserable for countless generations before the last several have now been solved) than in developing nations.  And so we see a recasting of 'problems' in new and unresolvable directions, one example being the current obsessional focus on 'identity politics'. Closer to home, I recently spent many hours looking at YouTube reviews for a new iPhone, obsessing about a choice between LCD or OLED screens as though something serious depended on my choice (both screens are far better than anything remotely possible even five years ago - and both are effectively identical to the normal eye).  Perhaps it fills the time in the absence of survival-critical problems...

We are also subject to something called "availability bias".  This bias was noted in a study by Tversky and Kahneman in the 1970's, whereby respondents seriously overestimated the frequency of crime, due to the overwhelming reporting of crime on the news.  Random violence or sudden, explosive bad things make the news because they shock and happen suddenly.  Good news - such as acts of kindness - are common and tend to form part of the clement background conditions in which life unfolds.  The good news doesn't have the power to make a sudden splash that changes perceptions that, say, warfare, accidents or disasters have.  Bad news is sudden and explosive, and so is exaggerated in our minds.  Real tragedies are thankfully rare, but never in history has each tragedy had such global coverage.

So, bad news arrives in ways that are far more eye-catching than good news. Then our mind focuses on problem-solving in ways that exclude more positive appraisals of the situation.  In evolutionary terms, it simply makes sense for us to dwell more on risks.

Add to this that people tend to think in relative and not absolute terms.  It matters how you are doing compared to others around you, far more than it matters how you are doing in a general sense.  This is why, whatever goal we reach, we experience a short burst of euphoria before quickly resetting and then taking for granted our new situations. It's why, for example, acquiring a new car only brings temporary satisfaction, before the problem becomes, say, a small scratch we've noticed on the rear bumper.  It's why a big promotion and pay rise quickly leads to wondering whether the person next to you was given an even bigger pay rise.  When things get better in our lives, this relativizing behaviour means we quickly reset our expectations and focus on the next set of problems.

During my years trading derivatives, I remember we would leave the trading floor and go to one of the pubs in Leadenhall Market after the close of the trading day.  One topic always came up - "losing trades".  You'll always find traders talking at great length about losing trades.  In fact, many traders remember their losing trades and losing days for far longer than they remember profitable days.  It's the days that everything goes against you that stick in your mind.

This is a long way round of saying that it's actually very hard to overcome your tendency to dwell on the negative side of things!  People often say "I don't want to feel so negative about everything", and it's useful to understand that your brain is doing what it is evolved to do.  

But this can be debilitating if it runs unchecked.  We can try and counter this tendency and bring some balance to our inner-lives, and it is possible to take steps in this direction.   There's lots of way of approaching this, but here are some questions you can ask yourself if you find yourself stuck in a cycle of negative thinking.  You can check your thinking by asking:

Where is the evidence for my belief(s)?

What impact is this way of thinking having on me?

Am I jumping to conclusions?

Is there any evidence to disprove my belief?

Am I concentrating on my weaknesses, and neglecting my strengths?

Am I taking things too personally?

Am I thinking in all-or-nothing terms?

Am I overstating the chances of something bad happening?

Am I predicting the outcome instead of experimenting with it?

Am I expecting total perfection?

Am I being open to evidence that 'disproves' my worst fears?

If I had to come up with a more balanced/helpful belief, what would this belief be?

If you have a problem situation in your life, you can try sitting down somewhere and taking twenty minutes to write out answers to these questions.  Really explore your own style of thinking.  If you spend some time doing this, you'll begin to condition yourself to avoid getting stuck in a spiral of negative thinking and hopefully more able to take a balanced view of your life.

www.whitestonetherapy.com

[1-1snailxd-art]

Sides of a Hero

Chapter index ---------- Chapter 12

Chapter 13: Under the influence 

Summary:  How will Virgil cope in a high anxiety situation without Thomas’ usual supports? The sides have a plan; hopefully everything goes according to it.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warning: Possible triggers in the chapter. Be safe and review chapter index page for full warning list. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virgil sat at the bottom of the stream, watching Thomas muck around in his hotel room for an Instagram vlog. The waters current slowly pushed him back to the surface and Virgil happily took the air back into his lungs.

"ReMeMbEr"

The word was carried through the forest by its usual breeze and Virgil groaned outwardly.

"That really isn't helping anymore. What else is there to remember?"

"ReMeMbEr"

"What?" Virgil looked around the area, taking in the water falling from the mountain, the surrounding forest and the rock formation that led back to his room. "I don't have anything else TOO remember. If you want me to do something so bad, then tell me what to actually do."

"ReMeMbEr"

"Fuck it! I'm out."

 The breeze blew harder and louder as he stomped back to his room, but Virgil was sick and tired of the cryptic breeze. He didn't know what it wanted him to do and the darkness was creeping back into the trees that he had cleared by talking to Patton. Depression remained silent, but the voices in his territory had increased in frequency.

Summoning his desk, Virgil sat down to start reviewing his concerns for the influencer event. Logan had previously taught him to write down his concerns and then Logan would add his rebuttal. It often worked for new situations and helped Virgil deal with the increase in shadows because his mind was already focused. Looking over his and Logan's notes caused the time to pass by easily.

**************************************************************************************** 

Depression sat at the edge of his cage, arms reaching out between the bars, letting his fingers dance in a black puddle that had formed at the base of the cage. A shadow sat on the other side of the puddle, it's face had a shine that Depression could almost see his reflection in.

“Tomorrow is set to be a busy day, my little friend.”

The shadow responded by moving closer and Depression stroked its head with a wet hand; increasing the gloss on its face so he could just make out the reflection of his grey eyes.

“Such a good-looking little shadow. I know Anxiety is just going to LOVE you.”

 *******************************************************************************************

 The event was for invited influencer groups only and encouraged people from different social media platforms to come together. After entering the building, Thomas looked in his welcome pack and reviewed the various pamphlets and free samples.

They had all prepared themselves. Virgil had remained in balance enough to give Thomas a good night sleep. Logan had planned out Thomas' day to ensure he would take breaks away from the crowd and attend only the most beneficial panels and information sessions. Roman and Patton were overflowing with excitement and anticipation. Together they worked to hype Thomas up despite Virgil's increasing anxiousness.

 Virgil sat in his territory, watching Thomas' ghostly form join a small crowd of people to watch a camera demonstration. He processed the shadows as they formed in his room; wanting to stay on top and in control. He was prepared for the shadows, but not the voices.

"ReMeMbEr"

"ReMeMbEr"

Thomas started talking to a new group and the shadows increased. Virgil concentrated and kept himself as calm as possible.

"ReMeMbEr"

"Why don't you remember to shut up."

"ReMeMbEr"

"ReMeMbEr"

 Relief flooded Virgil as Thomas answered a call from Terrance and found a secluded area to talk.  

"ReMeMbEr"

"ReMeMbEr"

"ReMeMbEr AnD AcCePt"

"Well that was new." Virgil looked around and waited. “What do I need to accept?”

Thankful that the breeze had something new to say, Virgil hoped the mindscape would finally provide a less cryptic response.

"ReMeMbEr"

"Oh, come on! If you haven’t got anything new to tell me, would you just shut up!"

 His moment of social reprieve was short lived, as Thomas quickly ended his phone call and headed back into the heart of the event.

"ReMeMbEr"

"For fucks sake! I'd rather deal with the shadows than this shit."

The ghostly scene vanished as Virgil headed back into his room; he could deal with the shadows without watching Thomas the whole time, sensing would be enough.

 ****************************************************************************************** 

Rage and Deceit walked through the caves that led to Virgil's territory, pausing at the mouth of the cave.

"Is he out there?" Deceit questioned, watching as Rage closed his eyes to sense the side.

"Nah, he just stormed off into his room. The coast is clear."

 Deceit led the way through the forest towards the clearing and stream.

"This place is certainly brighter than normal. It suits it."

Rage raised his eyebrow, "I'm guessing that is a sign that Anxiety is weaker. Have to admit, I am surprised."

"And you never doubted me."

 The two impulses reached the clearing and sat in the cave behind the waterfall. The wall of water hid them from view while they remained close enough to the doorway to be able to sense the anxious side in the room.

"I know I've asked this enough, but..." Rage looked at the familiar water scene in front of him. "Are you sure this won't release Depression, or harm Thomas in any way?"

"Keep on asking, Rage; the answer always changes."

Rage sighed and leaned back against the cool rock, closing his eyes and opening his senses to his surroundings. He trusted Deceit; had done so for a long time. Taking back his seal was going to be like taking back control of his life and would hopefully fill the void inside of him. At least that was what he hoped to achieve; revenge was only a small part of his motivation.

 ******************************************************************************************

 The shadows were now constantly surrounding Virgil, and the day seemed to be dragging on forever. Sitting in the centre of his room, Virgil's heart rate began to increase as he realised just how many shadows were still occupying the room and the clock ticked slower.

Virgil was so distracted that he didn't sense Deceit enter the room until the hairs on the back of his neck raised at his subconscious awareness of a new presence. Deceit's eyes glowed yellow and he grabbed Virgil's shoulder. Virgil's eyes glazed over as Deceit flooded his mind with the idea that he was drowning under the shadows and he lost all sense of reality.

"Take your time, Rage! I have got all day!" Deceit called out and Rage entered the room, pushing shadows aside so he could kneel next to the anxious side.

Choked sounds escaped Virgil's mouth as Rage pushed his sleeve up to reveal the seal; the shadows crowded around and pushed against the side and impulses.  Rage placed a sharpened nail against his scar on Virgil's arm; pausing to look at Lust and Ego's faded marks.

"That doesn't look right, Deceit. Maybe we shouldn't do this. These seals don't look very strong after all."

"Fine," Deceit scrunched up his face and concealed one of his arms from Rage's vision. In a split second, his glove was gone, and his own nail sliced through his seal on Virgil's arm. The shadows pushed against the impulses with increased force as they were pulled into Virgil's body; knocking Rage enough to cut into his seal in the process.

 Virgil screeched in pain as a blast of energy escaped him, pushing Deceit and Rage away. Cracks started running up the walls of the room, paint chips littered the floor and floated along an unfelt breeze. Virgil sat up and wrapped his arms around his middle in agony; the whole room appeared to shake in response.

Rage looked around in fear before locking eyes with Deceit, just as the impulse disappeared. The room steadied and Virgil groaned, bracing a hand on the ground while the other cupped his face.

Rage remained frozen; unsure of what had happened or what would happen next.

Virgil slowly raised his head and looked around, taking in the damaged room and Rage’s frozen figure.

"GET OUT!" Virgil's voice was distorted and echoed around the room. Rage vanished immediately; just as the wardrobe to Depression's door cracked and the door hung at an uncertain angle.

*****************************************************************************************

 The crowd of people cheered as the influencers event was officially closed and Thomas started to make his exit before the rest of the crowd moved. As he reached the door he was hit with a wave of light-headedness and had to brace himself against the door frame until the feeling passed. Shrugging off the feeling of unease, Thomas headed back to his hotel room without giving the moment any further thought.

.

.

.

Roman and Patton burst into the hall of the common area, beaming with excitement, and immediately started reviewing the day’s highlights by talking over each other. Upon opening his door, Logan groaned and massaged his temples as Roman and Patton’s voices echoed loudly through the hall.

“Must you two be so loud, we all just experienced the same thing.”

“Oh, sorry Logan.” Patton covered his mouth and giggled, “guess I’m still a little excited.”

“Well, I’m not sorry at all.” A smug smile spread across the creative sides face as he looked at the other; a hint of mischief in his eyes.

Logan sighed, “of course you’re not. Why would you be considerate about the feeling of others, your selfish ego would never allow that.”

“Whatever, I am in too good of a mood to take any offence to that.” Roman grinned at Logan, knowing the other side would be fuming that he had taken the higher ground.

“I’m proud of you, Roman.” Patton gave the creative side a pat on the back. “Logan, maybe you could learn something here.”

“Yes. Well…” feeling flustered, Logan steered the conversation on. “We should check on Virgil. That was actually what I came out here to do.”

“Oh! Great point, Logan.” Patton skipped over to Virgil’s door, did his usual rhythmic knock and looked around with eager anticipation.

Logan folded his arms and grinned sideways at Roman, who mimicked the action with a scowl. Their rivalry was truly an unending cycle that they both secretly enjoyed.

 “Hey, Virgil! You ok in there, buddy?”

Patton looked at Virgil’s door in concern. After his initial knock, the anxious side hadn’t appeared in the hallway or even called out a reply. Past experience had proven that this wasn’t a good sign and Patton worried that the side was paralysed with panic or had cut himself off again. He looked between Logan and Roman, eyes begging them for help.

“What should we do? Virgil could be having another panic attack. He could be in trouble!”

“Calm yourself, Patton. If that were to be the case, nothing good would come from having two panicked sides.” Logan knocked on the door and wiggled the door handle; hoping he may have been lucky in the door opening. “Virgil? What is happening?”

 “Go. Away.” Virgil’s distorted voice was slightly muffled through the door, but the sides could immediately tell that something was amiss.

“Oh, absolutely. That makes us all feel so much better.” Roman leant against the wall between his and Virgil’s door, voice laced with sarcasm. It wasn’t that Roman didn’t care or feel concern; he just didn’t think Virgil would have wanted all three of them fretting at his door.

“Is Deceit in your room, Roman? I don’t feel any better right now.“ Patton pulled his hands close to his chest. “Virgil, what is going on?”

“I’m. Fine.”

“The evidence suggests otherwise. Did something happen, Virgil?”

 “No.” Virgil’s distorted, deep voice came from behind them.

Patton and Logan turned in shock, and Roman quickly stood to attention at the sight of their dishevelled friend. Virgil’s hair was a mess, his face appearing paler with the intense, dark shadowing under his eyes; not the usual Virgil style they were used to. His fists were clenched as he stared at the sides with greying-brown eyes.

“Happy?!” he growled through a stiff jaw. “Can I go now?”

Patton’s eyes glistened with tears, “Virgil, what hap..”

“LIFE HAPPENED, PATTON!” Virgil through his hands in the air; he had no patience to consider Patton’s feelings in that moment. “THIS IS NOTHING NEW! HAPPENS A LOT WHEN YOU GUYS DRAG ME ALONG TO SOMETHING NEW! YOU’VE NEVER CARED BEFORE! SO, STOP CARING NOW! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Virgil vanished, leaving the three sides standing in the hall completely stunned into silence.

 Virgil’s final words echoed through the hallway, which now seemed like a vast and unsettling place. A few silent tears ran down Patton’s cheeks and fell to the floor, where Logan watched them slowly evaporate. Even Roman was utterly lost for words, so the three sides stood in complete silence.

The hard truth was, Virgil was right. Over recent years, they had never questioned the Side’s absence following an event or activity. When Thomas experienced anxiety’s effects in the past, they had always either dispersed the associated impulses or overpowered ‘anxiety’ with their own impulses and worked with Thomas. Even after getting to know Virgil they had always accepted his reclusiveness after certain situations.

Guilt gripped at their throats as each of them came to their own conclusions:

“I was too selfish to consider his needs.”

“I never cared enough when he needed me the most.”

“I should have known.”

 After a while, without a single exchange, the three sides headed to their rooms. The hallway was left completely empty, except for one drop of black and red that had stained the hallway floor. A single drop on the white floor, clearly visible and yet easily overlooked.

.

.

.

Thomas kept a swift pace all the way back to his hotel room; overpowered by the need to be alone. After pushing the door closed, he quickly threw himself onto the awaiting bed and pulled the covers over his head. He had planned on vlogging upon his return to the room, but now he was not motivated to progress with the task. Sleeping was the only thing his mind and body desired, and he gave into that impulse easily.

  ****************************************************************************************

 The air was sweet and cool when Deceit appeared at a park in Patton’s territory; hands trembling with adrenaline. A squeak broke the silence as the breeze moved the old play equipment of Thomas’ childhood, causing Deceit to jump and rapidly search the area in fear.

“P-P-Patton?” He stammered, looking around for a sign that the side or another impulse was present.

Deceit walked around the park nervously; eyes searching, hands pulling at his clothes, skin burning with new energy.

 He had known that there would have been consequences for removing the seals, but he never expected this. In his head he imagined the returned power would have filled the void within him; instead it made him feel sick all the way to his very core.

Seeking shelter and safety, Deceit crawled through a tunnel in the playground and entered an imagined cubby from Thomas' childhood. The ground was soft and spongy like a mattress; Deceit threw his hat to the side before laying down on his back. Holding his hands in front of his face, he made his gloves vanish and stared at his hands. The hands that had trapped Anxiety. The hands that tricked Rage. The hands that had destroyed the seal, despite Rage's doubts.

"I am better than Anxiety."

Deceit closed his eyes and rolled onto his side; full of pain and shame.

 ******************************************************************************************

 Rage appeared in front of a small wooden cottage at the edge of the imagination kingdom. The surrounding trees cast a dark shadow over Rage and the house; even the flowers in the window box seemed to have had their colour sapped away by the shadowing canopy.

Rage was shell-shocked; taking small careful steps towards the cottage door and letting himself inside. A well-worn couch greeted him, but the soft fabric provided Rage with very little comfort. Everything felt...wrong.

His body ached with his returned power; unsure of what to do with all the excess energy after years without it. Rage could no longer sense Anxiety or Deceit. He never realised how much of a comfort it had been to know that the other impulses were still around. Loosing that connection had left him truly alone for the first time in many years.

Rage looked down at his trembling hands. Red stained one of his nails; concrete proof that he had cut his former friend.

"What did I do?... What did I do?"

Cupping his face in his hands, Rage laid down on the couch and sobbed to himself. Overwhelmed with his returned power and new-found loneliness.

 A breeze blew through the trees, collecting leaves and casting them out into the mindscape. A bird flew to sit on one of the planter boxes, looking in through the window at the lonely impulse. The breeze picked up again and the flowers rubbed against the bird’s white feathers, slowly turning them a dull grey. The creature did not move, no longer interested in continuing its journey around the mindscape.  

****************************************************************************************

How long can you keep this up, Anxiety? Stop prolonging the inevitable and just let me out. Save yourself the pain.

Chapter index ------------- next chapter

[clarasxii]

mermaids, theft, and the sight of you in emergency lighting, doctor/master

I don’t know what this is. I was up all night trying to meet a deadline, and I sort of didn’t remember my own name anymore. So then I thought, you know who else should be a blabbering mess, unable to make sense of reality right now? The Master. Hence, this.

Also, I really wanted Thirteen to call him ‘darling’, and I believe in indulging myself. 

You can also read this on ao3, here.

The lights in the sky are not stars.

In fact, the sky isn’t the sky, either. A chemical reaction is occurring in the Master’s brain, as a result of a head trauma or possibly of a sudden lack of oxygen.

Despite this, the stars in the sky are of great comfort. Theta once said, back before they’d broken all their vows, that they’d see all of them together.

Every star in the universe. Past, present and future, every timeline, every outcome, every tiny beacon of light.

The Master supposes, if suppositions are something his fevered mind is still capable of, that these stars wouldn't count, seeing as they’re not stars, and they’re not real.

And yet.

“Oi. If you’re done tripping on whatever it is you took and looking at the pretty colors, I’d very much like some help with the not dying.”

Huh.

He bats his eyes, slowly.

Everything is spinning, and an emergency protocol has been activated. The room is being hit with red flashes at intervals of approximately two seconds and a half, and the flashes are paired with highly unpleasant sound aids, supposedly meant to convey the gravity of the situation, unless they’re just there to be annoying.

Also, he’s staring out a window. The stars are… stars.

Bloody hell.

“Doctor,” he manages, “what the hell is going on?”

The Doctor— she's a petite blonde with a thick accent and a stupid looking coat today, and he’s pretty sure the change is fairly recent, he’d remember a coat like that— shakes a hand in front of his face, and he can’t quite figure out if she’s annoyed or amused at him.

“You’re high as a kite is what’s going on. Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”

“I haven’t seen you in at least a decade.”

“No, I didn’t mean a literal minute— blimey, what did you take?”

The flashes are getting more frequent now, it’s not a good sign. Her hair looks pretty when the red light hits it.

“How should I know? I thought I was dead and my brain was hallucinating stars until forty five seconds ago, and it turns out I’m just looking out a window—”

“A window? Darling, that’s a fish tank.”

“What?”

“Right— okay, yeah, don’t worry about it, we’re just going to—"

“What’s a fish tank?”

He doesn’t get an answer, but she does take him by the shoulders and redirects him away from the window-tank-whatever and towards a menacing hallway flashing red at all sorts of unpredictable speeds.

Someone calls out for the Doctor, yells at her about artron energy and mermaids and a bomb made out of pearls, and she yells back something about a beach on Valencia —the planet, not the city— a blue statue and a stolen necklace, and he has quite a hard time following along.

About a minute later, he’s watching her sonic something— her sonic’s acting up, and he’d tell her that she’s got the frequency defaults all wrong and that it'll never adapt to the timezone if she doesn’t rewrite the scanning protocol, but all he can think about is—

“No, seriously, what’s a fish tank?”

The Doctor fiddles with her screwdriver with one hand and reaches for his shoulder with the other in a universal gesture for don’t wander off, then she starts pressing random buttons on the door's interface screen, and the Master can tell just how frustrated she’s getting.

“It’s a tank with fish in it. Like where they put the lobsters, in restaurants.”

The humans are still screaming about mermaids. And pearls— oh, pearls! It wasn’t stars, it was pearls—

“You know your sonic doesn’t know what timezone we’re in, right?”

“What?”

“It’s not opening the door because it doesn’t know where we are in time. It’s opening random doors closest to this point in space at random moments in time— also, there were no fish in that tank.”

“Oh, blimey, you’re right. I hate it when you’re right.”

He hopes she doesn’t say blimey on a regular basis now. It’s a terrible word, as far as human slang goes.

“Yeah. So it really shouldn’t be called a fish tank.”

“No, not the tank, the sonic. But I don’t have time to calibrate it now.”

“Yes the tank. Also, just use my laser.”

The Doctor unceremoniously reaches inside his blazer pocket and fishes out his screwdriver, lasers the door, ushers the screaming humans through it, then she grabs him by the hand, and before he knows it, they’re running.

Her palms are clammy, which they haven’t been in a long time, but her grip is just the same as always, all follow me, follow me, follow me—

“Where are we going?”

“Tardis. If we can get to it before this whole planet blows up— or turns into a pearl. I’m not sure what their plan is, really.”

“The mermaids’ plan?”

They’re still running down the hallway. It might have been a hundred and thirty seconds, or possibly forty three minutes. The oldest of the humans is complaining about shortage of breath, and the alarm has started counting down from thirty out loud.

“No, they’re not mermaids, they’re aliens. Actually, they’re both. Well, they’re mostly aliens—”

“I barely remember my name right now, do you mind not confusing me even more?”

“No. Yes. Sorry. You just think—”

Twenty six, twenty five—

“—about your fish tank, yeah? Oh— oh. You’re brilliant. The fish tank. Absolutely brilliant, a right genius, you’re—“

Twenty fou—

He’s either hallucinating again, or she’s just kissed him. On the mouth.

“No, you’re not hallucinating, I’m just in a good mood. The fish tank. Of course! How did I not see it?”

One of the humans tells her it’s not cool to kiss inebriated blokes. He’s vaguely insulted.

Fourteen, thirteen—

He’s too busy trying to catalogue the sensation of her lips on his before it’s forever gone from his brain, but he vaguely registers her yelling about how the pearls are already out of the main tank.

“That’s all nice and dandy,” he hears the third human say, “but we’ve got about ten seconds before we all blow up.”

“No, not blow up, never blow up. Pearls don’t blow people up, do they? Can I borrow your laser again, darling?”

He gives her the laser, and she thankfully turns the bloody alarm off.

“Right,” she announces, “We can all calm down, nothing is going to explode. This is just a bank robbery.”

“Doctor, this is an aquarium,” says the sensible human, the one who was getting tired running down the hallway.

“Yes, of course. But why an aquarium? Why on Valencia?”

“We got lost. You were trying to take us to Barcelona. The city, not the planet.”

“See, it’s not even a nice aquarium. Well. The one in the city of Valencia is very nice. But this one, it’s just a glorified oyster farm. And then, why is this idiot here?”

The idiot she’s pointing at is, unsurprisingly, him.

“The stoner you just snogged? I don’t know, can you get to the part about how we’re not dying?”

If the Master hadn’t lost track of which human is saying what, and what their names are, he’d remind himself to be annoyed at this last one.

“No, see, that’s the thing, he’s not a stoner. Real disaster, this one, known him all my life. But he’s not really one for drugs, and he only goes places where there’s something to take over.”

The earthlings are starting to see where she’s going with her ramble, but he’s still pretty much in the dark.

“So the alien mermaids are stealing pearls then?” asks the tall one, and the Doctor nods at him.

“Think so. And my guess is the Master here got in the middle of it somehow, so they gave him a nice stun.”

Oh. Wait.

“You know, I think I remember that, actually. I think a weird lady who wasn’t you kissed me today.”

The Doctor makes a face, composes herself, makes a face again. He gets the sense that she’s having a hard time deciding whether to be disgusted or offended, and that she’s going to settle on both.

“She what? And then I kissed you— are you saying I indirectly kissed an alien mermaid, because that’s gross.”

Yeah, both it is.

“Doctor,” interjects one of the humans, “could you maybe have this row with your ex boyfriend later, do you think?”

The Doctor makes a face again, scrunches her nose a bit at the thought, and it’s still a perfect combination of offended and disgusted. And— and something else. She’s got great facial expressions, this time ‘round.

“No, he’s not my ex boyfriend—” she stops, considers it, “Well. In a way. Ex girlfriend, more like. Of course, not yet.”

He’s about to protest that he has no memory of breaking up with her, thankyouverymuch, but they get interrupted by the smallest of the humans, who’s sporting a weird hairdo, and is apparently very hard to distract.

“Okay, so. Mermaid thieves. What do we do about it?”

“Oh, nothing. Fixed point. Well, not quite, but the changeable bits have all gone by already. There’s going to be a shortage of pearls for a couple of centuries in this corner of the galaxy, but seeing as they’re pearls, no one dies of it. Plus, the mermaids kind of deserve them.”

“So do we just... leave?”

“Yeah. Before that, do you guys wanna pop to the gift shop? They might have snow globes.”

He picks that moment to perk up.

“Do you think we could steal the snow globes? Seeing as there’s a robbery going on and all?”

“Sure, darling. You can steal a snow globe.”

Later, in the Tardis, after he’s slept off his mermaid kiss hangover, a thought strikes him.

“You know you’ve basically caused that fixed point, right? When you used your broken sonic on the door, and it opened all over the timeline. That’s how the mermaids got in.”

She takes a sip of her tea, shrugs a little.

“Huh. Whoops.”

Even later, after she’s dropped the humans home for the night:

“What were you even doing on the planet of Valencia, anyway? Did you want to steal the pearls, too?”

“No, I got lost. I figured I’d at least stop by the gift shop.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

[mr880]

Healthy lifestyle and Healthy Eating

Three main principles of a healthy life:

GENETICS, MEDICINE, ECOLOGY ... LIFESTYLE! What do you think: what plays the most important role in our health? In 1994, the interdepartmental commission of the Russian Security Council for the protection of public health. Based on international scientific and medical data, compiled a rating of factors that affect well-being, morbidity or resistance to disease, and ultimately, human life expectancy. The main contribution is made by: - genetic factors - 15 - 20%; - the state of the environment - 20 - 25%; - medical support - 10 - 15%; - conditions and way of life of people - 50 - 55%. In a word, doctors, scientists, and analysts have confirmed: first of all, our health is in our own hands and more than half depends on how consciously and responsibly we behave in our daily life. PRINCIPLE NUMBER 1:  A GOOD DIET for LIFE “The main rule of a healthy lifestyle is proper nutrition,” explains Oksana Drapkina, Chief Freelance Therapist of the Russian Ministry of Health, Director of the National Medical Research Center for Preventive Medicine. Alas, today more and more obese people appear both in Russia and in the world. Moreover, according to the sample from 1993 to 2013, there were three times more obese men in our country. But the number of obese women has increased slightly. It is important to understand that being overweight is not only an aesthetic problem, but doctors also emphasize. Obesity leads to hypertension, contributes to the development of coronary heart disease, and increases the risk of myocardial infarction. Just imagine: every extra 4 kilograms leads to an increase in systolic (upper) pressure by 4.5 mm Hg! Also, with obesity, the joints suffer: it is difficult for them and the spine to "carry" extra pounds. And another dangerous consequence of being overweight is that an obese person is a springboard for systemic inflammation of the body, warns Oksana Drapkina. Because adipose tissue contains cytokine substances that support inflammation in the body. And chronic systemic inflammation, in turn, is the path to cancer. BTW Liver cirrhosis without alcohol Obese people often develop non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, when fat is stored in this organ even though the person does not abuse alcohol. This is a "silent" disease that practically does not manifest itself, but at some point can very quickly progress to cirrhosis of the liver, the expert explains. QUESTION? With a rib eat less or move more? How to get rid of dangerous excess weight? “Obesity is an imbalance between the energy we consume and the energy we expend. It is important to understand that what we eat plays a big role in weight gain. Physical activity, oddly enough, affects the position of the balance arrow to a lesser extent, ”says Oksana Drapkina. According to the expert, the main thing that needs to be done to get rid of excess weight is to limit the intake of carbohydrates: sweet and starchy foods. It is because of them that people grow by leaps and bounds. The latest international PURE study found that a diet that consumes 60% of the energy consumed in carbohydrates negatively affects overall mortality. But the fat in a reasonable amount is needed by the body: for example, you can afford a little butter for bread in the morning, the oil contains valuable vitamin A, the expert explains. But vegetable oils are especially useful - primarily olive and flaxseed, which contain a large amount of unsaturated fatty acids. PRINCIPLE NUMBER TWO: SMART EXERCISE for LIFE The older we get, the less energy we need, which means that the need for food decreases. But this does not mean that you need to move less - on the contrary, more, experts urge. Because the metabolism is being rebuilt, and with age, it becomes much more difficult to give energy. And unused energy from food, as you know, goes into body fat. - Physical activity is not only a barrier to obesity but also cardio training, the role of which is increasing, since over the years, to one degree or another, in most cases, people have problems with the heart and blood vessels, adds Oksana Drapkin. - A person who already has diseases of the cardiovascular system should categorically not be allowed a sedentary lifestyle. The chief physician of the Moscow Regional Center for Medical Prevention, chief specialist in medical prevention of the Central Federal District of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Health of the Moscow Region, professor of the Department of Medical Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy, supports his colleague MONIKI. M.F. Vladimirsky Ekaterina Ivanova. – At the same time, it is very important to remember that depending on the pathology - cardiovascular or other - there are restrictions on the types and intensity of physical activity. ON A NOTE - If there is pathological damage to the joints (it almost always accompanies obesity, see above), be sure to contact the instructors or doctors of exercise therapy, who will tell you which movements are useful, based on the localization of the damage to the joints. - Patients with serious cardiac pathology are contraindicated to exercise in the water with the full immersion of the heart area because this dangerously increases pressure. Such people are recommended lighter aerobic activity, for example, regular walking at an average pace, cycling on flat terrain. UNEXPECTED FACT The older, the more active “Our latest study, Essay-RF, showed that people after 40 years of age move more than 25-year-olds,” says Oksana Drapkina, Chief Freelance Therapist of the Russian Ministry of Health. Experts associate such a seemingly unexpected fact with the fact that people of a more mature age think more about their health and take it more responsibly. Alas, for young people sometimes it all comes down to photographs from the fitness room, where young people drop in a couple of times a month with one of the main goals of making selfies for social networks. “It is important for a generation to grow up that believes that being healthy is fashionable,” emphasizes Drapkina. “And for this, first of all, we need long-term and large-scale social advertising, campaigning for a reasonable and healthy lifestyle on TV, radio, in the Internet media, and social networks.” PRINCIPLE NUMBER 3: POSITIVE ATTITUDE for LIFE Yes, a good mood is very important for health, this is not a myth or an exaggeration. A positive attitude can, through a series of specific biochemical reactions, trigger the production of immune agents, doctors say. “I advise every morning, waking up, to thank for one more day of life. And no matter what it will be, sunny, rainy, snowy - this is another day of your life. Remember, thoughts are material, and it is very important to force yourself to be positive and energetic, ”urges Oksana Drapkina. Sentenced products The Federal Research Center for Nutrition (FRC) has published a list of unhealthy foods that need to be limited. This list includes breads, cakes, mayonnaise, ketchup, sausages, and canned foods as they are high in salt, sugar, or trans fats. According to WHO, the amount of salt in the diet per day should not exceed 5-6 g, sugar - 50 g, trans fats - 2 g. Back to butter Trans fats are fats that are not found in nature. They are obtained by passing hydrogen through vegetable oil. This process is called partial hydrogenation, as a result of which vegetable oils become hard and look like butter. However, unlike butter, margarines and spreads are cheaper and are stored almost forever, for which they are highly valued in the food industry. They are widely used for the manufacture of baked goods, confectionery, semi-finished products, mayonnaise, ice cream, chocolate, sweets, processed cheeses, and dairy products. Trans fats are used by both foodservice and households as an affordable alternative to butter. Trans fats have long been a cheap and healthy alternative to animal fats. They must protect the cardiovascular system from the harmful effects of saturated fats, from which, as the medical community at that time believed, cholesterol is formed. Today, animal fats have already been rehabilitated in the US and some EU countries, while trans fats, on the contrary, are recognized as extremely harmful to health. It has been proven that they have a carcinogenic effect, lead to the development of diseases of the cardiovascular system and disrupt metabolism. Moreover, there is evidence that trans fats are associated with Alzheimer's disease, fatty liver (non-alcoholic cirrhosis), depression, and infertility. In 2009, WHO recommended that such fats be eliminated from the diet, as well as the products for which they are used. Today, in some European countries and several US states, the use of spenders is completely banned, which has allowed them to significantly reduce the frequency of heart attacks and strokes. According to the director of the National Research Center "Healthy Nutrition", professor at Moscow State University, Oleg Medvedev, the adoption of a law prohibiting the use of spenders in food throughout the country will save the lives of 60 thousand Russians a year. So far, we are not talking about the prohibition of trans fats in the food industry at the legislative level: butter is too expensive, which will affect the increase in the final cost of products for the population. Therefore, the Federal Research Center of Nutrition suggests at least red labeling products containing trans fats so that Russians know what they are eating. The same labeling will be for products containing a large amount of sugar or salt. A spoonful of salt According to epidemiological studies by the Federal Statistics Service, approximately 60% of the adult population exceeds the permissible salt standards by almost 2 times and consumes 11 g of salt per day. However, this figure is very approximate, since it does not take into account the "hidden" salt from industrial food products and the amount of salt that Russians add to ready-made dishes to taste. "Additional salting is one of the main mechanisms of excess salt intake," says Sergei Boytsov, chief freelance specialist of the Russian Ministry of Health on preventive medicine. Russians underestimate the danger of salt, although scientists have proven the link between dietary salt and the prevalence of hypertension. It is known that salt retains fluid in the body. Sugar or life According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, sugar consumption per capita in Russia is 39.4 kg per year, while the norm should be no more than 24 kg. “A significant increase in the prevalence of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases in developed countries is associated with excessive consumption of sugar and sugar-containing foods,” explains Elena Dorodneva, chief freelance nutritionist of the Tyumen Region Health Department. Experts recommend limiting the consumption of very sweet and salty foods, carefully reading their composition on the packaging, and calculating the amount of salt and sugar consumed. As for trans fats, many manufacturers of domestic products are slyly silent about their content in the product and simply write “vegetable fats”. Perhaps the draft Strategy for the formation of a healthy lifestyle of the population, which was developed by the Ministry of Health, will change the situation in the country for the better. Among other measures, this document provides for the development of scientifically based recommendations for manufacturers to reduce sugar, salt, and trans fats in food products. QUESTION-ANSWER What does the day of a person leading a healthy life look like? I often hear that one of the main principles of a healthy lifestyle is proper nutrition. Could you give an example - what such a diet might look like, how many times a day you need to eat, etc. Thank you. Olga Meets Head Specialist therapist Russian Ministry of Health, Director of the National Medical Research Center of Preventive Medicine Oksana Drapkina: - First: in the morning after getting up, drink a glass of water at room temperature. Second: breakfast is required and must be hearty. It should be enough for the next meal. Soup is a must for lunch. If you want to be slim and healthy, then love soups. Soup is a product that will fight obesity. In general, lunch should be complete, contain proteins and fats. But dinner should not be as dense as breakfast and lunch. And be sure to have dinner at least 3 hours before bedtime. By the way, it is known that substances that prevent weight gain in sleep are synthesized mainly in the first half of the night. Therefore, it would be ideal to go to bed at 10 - 11. And you need to sleep at least 7 hours, at least 6 hours. TO THIS TOPIC And add water “It is very important for a person who wants to reduce body weight to consume a sufficient amount of fluid,” says the chief physician of the Moscow Regional Center for Medical Prevention, the chief specialist in medical prevention of the Central Federal District of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Health of the Moscow Region, professor of the Department of Medical Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy at the Moscow Regional Research and Clinical Institute. M.F. Vladimirsky Ekaterina Ivanova. - There is a food pyramid, and there is a drinking pyramid. Not everyone knows that most of all you need to drink pure water without impurities. Less in quantity - tea and coffee. Next comes low-fat milk, then freshly squeezed fruit juices. The consumption of drinks with sweeteners (including sugary sodas) should be minimized, or better avoided altogether. It has already been proven that one of the main causes of the obesity pandemic around the world and in our country is just sugary drinks. Their consumption in recent years has grown tens and hundreds of times. And first of all, they cause enormous harm to children's health - look how obesity is increasing in children and adolescents. At the same time, the principles of healthy eating should be laid down in the family, this plays a decisive role. Therefore, parents need to avoid using sugary drinks, sweets, and baked goods as incentives for their children. Remember that by rewarding your child with sweets, you are developing a type of behavior in him that, in later life, is likely to lead to obesity and related serious illnesses. How to calculate the safe rate of sweet and salty in the daily menu? I am constantly “drawn to sweets”: either a cookie, or a jam, or a candy or a chocolate bar, I must eat several times a day. I have even been tested for "sugar", but all tests are normal. I feel that I need to somehow limit the sweets, but when I go to the store, I will buy something. In general, I am constantly nervous because of this, but maybe there is nothing critical about being a sweet tooth? " Elena. Elena Dorodneva, a chief freelance nutritionist of the Tyumen Region Healthcare Department, answers: - Sugar itself is not toxic or harmful, its negative effect is manifested in excessive, excessive use. It is important to understand that sweet is not food, but a delicacy, a dessert. Paradoxically, the pleasure of sweets does not depend on the amount eaten, but on the time it stays in the mouth: all taste buds are not in the esophagus and stomach, but in the mouth, and the slower we eat a portion of sweets, the fewer calories and energy is enough for us. In order not to deny yourself the pleasure, try switching to canapes, small portions. And never substitute sweets for your regular meal. And also keep in mind that the biochemical processes in the body are such that it can synthesize glucose itself - it is not necessary to constantly eat chocolate to improve mood and performance. By the way, my retired parents constantly oversalt all the food - both while they are cooking, and at the table: salads, potatoes, meat. I try to explain that it is unhealthy, but they say that otherwise they "don't taste it." Maybe they do not have enough salt in the body? What do you advise? Vladimir. The chief freelance specialist of the Ministry of Health of Russia for preventive medicine Sergey Boytsov answers: - After 35 years, you need to be especially careful about salt intake. If, after eating salty food in the morning, for example, your parents develop swelling in the face, fingers, and hands, this is a reason to worry. These signs indicate that the body does not cope well with excess salt intake, and it is highly likely that such nutrition will provoke the development of arterial hypertension. I, try asking them to add a little pepper or herbs and lemon to their dishes How to start healthy life, tips to start healthy lifestyle, start living a healthy lifestyle #healthyliving #healthiswealth tips for healthy living, tips for healthy living ...

https://mr880shealthwealthandlife.network/boost-your-immune-system/

Read the full article

[siriuschaostribe]

The Social Artist

Love transforms the way we see, think, dream, act, engage the world, serve others and even transcend our local selves. Love is the source of much creative endeavor: songs, poetry, writing, dreaming, folly and glory. It is what wakes us up and keeps us going. As we love more, we honor more, we see and accept more. We honor pain and beauty. We honor each other’s paths. This is where the social artist as loving evocateur makes fertile the fields of action in which his or her co-workers farm. With love we become more intelligent and creative because we are open to the patterns of the whole network of life. We glimpse the wonder in its infinite forms and that wonder is within us. With love we are able to exceed our local conditions and evolve. The role of the social artist is to be able to open himself or herself to a loving resonance. A social artist of love discovers strategies that become daily practices. Committing to the choice of love is the highest teaching of them all, offering the greatest good for life on this planet. The highest teaching, universal love, goes beyond innate, unconscious or restricted loving according to the demands of culture or family.

The universe is alive and loving. As you move towards the loving universe, it moves towards you. A loving leader magnetizes events and people by virtue of their spiritual eros. A leader aware of the lure of becoming is a powerful attractor. The universe grows by its connections and its attractions, atoms to atoms, molecules to molecules, bodies to bodies, groups to groups, nations to nations and finally the world. Attraction is an operating principle of the Godbeing, finding relationships through love that move the sun and stars. Those who enter into the primordial relationship to Godspirit as Beloved, find love spilling over to all things.

Consider how much we love our gardens, giving them attention and devotion. Consequently, they love us back by producing. The same is true of our pets. If we received the same quality of loving regard and empowerment that we give to our dogs and cats, there is no telling how evolved our lives would be. With our animals and our gardens we are wise enough to know that we must give attention, devotion and awareness in order to get a loving response. With human relationships we expect far less of ourselves. A loving leader gives the quality of attention and devotion to others that makes a well-tended garden bloom abundantly.

The leader as social artist is a romancer, an inciter of spiritual eros. He or she calls others to a remembrance of their own beloved soul. Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama represent people of a high spiritual eros, drawing others into engagement with their own souls and the unfolding of their soul’s code because they themselves have so deep and constant a relationship to their own beloved. The social artist must embody the mystery of the Great Lure, the possibility of loving partnership with the Divine, the Beloved of the Soul. In giving energy and commitment to this spiritual partnership, a social artist leader emanates love to all realms of existence, even the subtle or invisible realms.

Here is a practice for becoming a loving creative leader. Each morning before arising, join your Togethermind with the Beloved Divine and review the day ahead. The Beloved can nuance the best actions for a particular day. Each evening before sleep, join your Togethermind with the Beloved Divine and review the day gone by. The Beloved would praise your accomplishments.

Setting aside a period each day for reflection, prayer and co-creative meditation on your projects, you give the Beloved your time as the Beloved helps you gain answers. It is essential that you think of the Beloved as your guiding Essence. These relationships grow only by conscious use. Place yourself within the Beloved’s field, sit quietly with your mind at rest and let the field carry you to the Essence place. Enjoy the connection and wait for the insights that drop into your mind.

Don’t dwell on obstacles. Focus on the connection that diminishes obstacles. There is a fuller picture to be known and then applied.Where you build the house of the spirit, the spirit will always enter.  

To receive ultimate knowledge, create a mind of vast emptiness that perfectly mirrors the universe. That would mean dropping all categories, habits, all feelings other than love. Otherwise, this Universe is strained through the lens of your needs and expectations. That said, the lens accomplishes much, for it gives form and shape to the infinite treasures in the creative universe. Allow into your being a state of openness and resonance to God, the All, the One, Mind-at-Large, Cosmic Consciousness and connect with the most perfect Frequency that includes all others. The Beloved joining forces with you in the Togethermind seek qualities and structures to evolve your life and culture. In your together-heightened-frequency, you open the lens to create patterns of a social enterprise, an ecology of cultural and social designers.

When your dislikes color your mood and perception and you hear your mind rehearsing your dislike, immediately, get out of automatic pilot and turn to the Beloved. Together you will work things out. Whenever you have a deep concern, reach toward the concern of the Beloved. Then, from their place of creative wishes and loving intention, send this Higher Order of Design and well being to that concern.

The social artist has a quality of attunement and attraction. They are condensers for the ley lines of love. They maintain a state of mutuality even facing the most difficult obstacle. Being in a state of constant darshan, the most attuned see the Beloved Divine in others regardless of behavior. How do we generate such energy of loving? Hindus and Buddhists describe four beautiful qualities:

(1) Loving kindness (2) Heart compassion (3) The willingness to allow yourself to be or become happy because someone else is happy, no matter what levels of unhappiness you experience. (4) the hardest one for most of us: allowing yourself to maintain a state of loving equanimity when others behave like wretches. The general method of practice recommended for reaching these estimable goals involves ever deepening forms of meditation.

From here the real work of a loving creative community begins.

Dr. Jean Houston, scholar, philosopher and researcher in Human Capacities, is one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time. She is long regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. In 1965, with her late husband Dr. Robert Masters, Dr. Houston co-founded The Foundation for Mind Research. She founded of the Mystery School, now in its 25th year, a program of human development, mythic and spiritual studies. A prolific writer and author of 25 books, Houston has been advisor to Fortune 500 corporations, to the Dalai Lama, to President and Mrs. Clinton, and earlier to Eleanor Roosevelt.

[orbemnews]

Can Zapping Our Brains Really Cure Depression? The brain is an electrical organ. Everything that goes on in there is a result of millivolts zipping from one neuron to another in particular patterns. This raises the tantalizing possibility that, should we ever decode those patterns, we could electrically adjust them to treat neurological dysfunction — from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia — or even optimize desirable qualities like intelligence and resilience. Of course, the brain is so complex, and so difficult to access, that this is much easier to imagine than to do. A pair of studies published in January in the journal Nature Medicine, however, demonstrate that electrical stimulation can address obsessive-compulsive urges and symptoms of depression with surprising speed and precision. Mapping participants’ brain activity when they experienced certain sensations allowed researchers to personalize the stimulation and modify moods and habits far more directly than is possible through therapy or medication. The results also showed the degree to which symptoms that we tend to categorize as a single disorder — depression, for example — may involve electrical processes that are unique to each person. In the first study, a team from the University of California, San Francisco, surgically implanted electrodes in the brain of a woman whose severe depression had proved resistant to other treatments. For 10 days, they delivered pulses through the electrodes to different areas of the brain at various frequencies and had the patient record her level of depression, anxiety and energy on an iPad. The impact of certain pulses was significant and nuanced. “Within a minute, she would say, ‘I feel like I’m reading a good book,’” says Katherine W. Scangos, a psychiatrist and the study’s lead author. The patient described the effect of another pulse as “less cobwebs and cotton.” The researchers also recorded what type of unmediated brain activity coincided with periods of low mood or energy. The aim was to use those responses to guide the placement of another set of electrodes that would deliver what is known as deep-brain stimulation — a technique that can restore lost function to neurons by zapping them with a consistent, high-frequency electrical pulse. To date, it has been employed most commonly to treat movement disorders, like Parkinson’s. It has also shown promise for depression. “But because depression presents differently in different people, it likely involves multiple neural circuits,” Scangos says. She and her colleagues wondered if a “more personalized approach” might make the treatment more effective. Based on their mapping of the patient’s brain activity, they programmed the electrodes to detect her depressed states and deliver stimulation in response, much the way a pacemaker acts on the heart. That experimental treatment will continue long term as the patient goes about her daily life. Deep-brain stimulation is too invasive to use except in extreme circumstances. But in the second study, researchers used a noninvasive technique called transcranial alternating current stimulation to deliver electrical pulses through electrodes placed on participants’ scalps. The goal was to try to curb obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Past studies have suggested that the orbital frontal cortex, an area in the brain’s reward network, might play a role in reinforcing such behaviors, by regarding them as beneficial. So the researchers attached the electrodes to 64 volunteers and recorded the frequency in hertz at which their orbital frontal cortex fired when they won a monetary reward in a game. Crucially, it was noted, the frequency varied slightly by individual. Using that personal frequency, the researchers next stimulated the same area in each participant for 30 minutes a day for five days in a row. Doing so, they found, reduced the number of obsessive-compulsive behaviors in the volunteers by an average of nearly 30 percent over the following three months. (None of the volunteers had an obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis. All of them, however, reported varying degrees of repetitive tendencies, and those whose symptoms were most intense got the most relief.) The researchers hypothesize that the stimulation helped the orbital frontal cortex maintain its optimal rhythm, thereby improving its coordination with other areas in the reward network. The findings reinforced the idea that personalized brain stimulation requires determining not just the right area to target but also the right rhythm at which to do so. “The neural code — it’s frequency-specific,” says Robert M.G. Reinhart, one of the study’s authors and the director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory at Boston University. “The channel of information-processing in the brain is just like a channel you might tune in to on the radio.” The study also illustrated that traits like compulsivity exist on a spectrum. Currently, a person for whom those traits are bothersome but not disabling might not seek treatment, particularly if it comes with side effects, as medications often do. Brain stimulation, though, could one day remedy all kinds of conditions we now target inexactly with drugs, Reinhart says. “If you want to get futuristic, you can imagine someone giving themselves a zap to get over a trans-Atlantic flight. What people use coffee for today.” Psychiatrists won’t be prescribing brain stimulation to the masses anytime soon. But by identifying the neural circuits that give rise to particular symptoms, and by showing that alterations to the timing of their firing can change those symptoms, they offer new ways to think about what psychiatric disorders are. “There’s still a lot of stigma around depression that a lot of patients feel,” Scangos says. The subject of her study was no exception: “The fact that there was such an immediate response when we stimulated made her feel like, It’s not something I’m doing wrong; it’s something in my brain that can be addressed.” Giving a collection of symptoms a diagnostic label like “depression” is useful because it helps doctors more efficiently find a successful treatment, currently a lengthy process of trial and error. “The million-dollar question is how to match the best treatment to the patient and how to avoid treatments that won’t work,” says Helen Mayberg, a neurologist and director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; she was co-author of a commentary on the two studies. As neuroscientists map the brain activity of more and more patients, they’re getting closer to being able to offer a battery of tests that show, Scangos says, “you have this type of depression, you’ll respond best to this medication.” Ultimately, if we could address those symptoms directly, we might be able to get rid of diagnostic categories altogether, says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, medical director of the Wolk Center for Memory Health at Hebrew SeniorLife and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Rather than applying a default label of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, Pascual-Leone says, doctors could instead ask, “What is the disabling symptom that this person presents?” And then treat it specifically. For now, what these studies offer everyone is additional evidence that “our brains are plastic,” says Shrey Grover, a graduate student and a co-author of the Boston University study. “And we can rewire the brain in different ways.” Those include psychotherapy and pharmacology. Our neural activity also changes as we learn; it changes as we age. This means we can improve how our minds work at any point in our lives, even without advanced technology. But the brain’s plasticity makes it all the more puzzling that certain psychological states can be so hard to dispel. Research into personalized brain stimulation also probes at the larger question of why moods or habits that are mild or circumstantial in some people — carefully rechecking a tax form, say, or feeling deep sadness at the death of a loved one — are chronic and debilitating in others. “There’s nothing that gets right at the cause,” Reinhart says. “It’s like the water in the sink is running, and you can mop up the floor, but no one’s turning off the faucet.” Kim Tingley is a contributing writer for the magazine. Source link Orbem News #brains #Cure #depression #Zapping