#so what if my job is a bit unpredictable financially

[drtyelvisfantasy]

SAVE YOUR LOVE

LINEMAN!RAFE X STRIPPER!READER AU

note: Thank you to all who sent in questions about my au. I really appreciated it🩷 if any of you have any more questions, feel free to send them in 😊 I promise to write some more happy stuff for this au soon lol

summary: You and Rafe finally have a baby together, but things don't go as planned

warnings: childbirth, pregnancy, toxic relationship, yelling, feelings of abandonment, swearing,

The physical changes of the pregnancy took a toll on me, leaving me feeling exhausted and drained every minute of the day. I eventually had to stop working at the strip club when my bump became more noticeable. Rafe promised he would help me find a new job. He said he knew some people down here in Vegas, and he managed to secure me a position at a construction company, creating schedules for the workers. Although the work was boring and the pay was much lower than what I was used to as a stripper, it provided enough income to support myself and the baby. The hours were manageable, and I found some sense of stability in this new job.

Instead of meeting at the hotel like in the past, Rafe started coming by my apartment. His visits were less secretive, yet a sense of unease and tension still hung in the air.

“Are you staying the night?” I asked, my voice laced with a mix of hope and hesitation.

Rafe walked over where I was sitting on the couch, his expression unreadable as he considered my request. “Yeah, I’ll stay for the night.”

“Do you think you’ll be here for the birth?” I pressed, trying to remain calm. “I think it would be good for both of us if you came to the hospital with me.”

Rafe didn’t seem happy, his voice flat. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I can’t make any promises. Things are complicated right now.”

I felt a pang of disappointment. I thought this pregnancy would make things better between us, would force him to become more invested, but clearly, I was wrong. He seemed so uninterested, almost detached from the whole thing.

“I mean, would you at least try to make an effort to be there?” I asked, desperately seeking something from him.

Rafe sighed, avoiding eye contact. His voice remained neutral, but I could hear the reluctance in his words. “I just told you, I don’t know. I’ve got a lot going on. But... I’ll try my best to be there, if I can.”

Even though Rafe didn’t know if he’d be around for the birth of our baby, at least he did his part when it came to the nursery, leaving the decorating to me. He made it clear that it was “a woman’s job.” He might’ve pitched in with some of the more physical tasks, like putting together the crib, or perhaps offering some financial contributions, but the creative aspect of the nursery was entirely mine to handle.

A few months back, when the doctor revealed that the baby’s gender was going to be a girl, I was excited. I had always told Rafe that if we were to ever have a baby, I wanted the firstborn to be a girl, and now that dream had come true. However, Rafe didn’t seem nearly as excited. His tone remained indifferent as he stated that he didn’t care about the gender as long as the baby was healthy.

-

The months of pregnancy were emotionally draining. Rafe’s unpredictability and inconsistency only added to the stress. Sometimes he’d show up, but his presence felt more distant than comforting. Most of the time, I faced doctor’s appointments and navigated the challenges of pregnancy alone.

“I have one last doctor’s appointment before my due date,” I told him.

Rafe nodded, his expression remaining unbothered. “Oh yeah, right. That’s next week, right?”

“Yeah… will you come?” I asked, hoping for some show of support.

Rafe hesitated for a moment, then gave an indifferent shrug. “Sure, I’ll come.”

“I was thinking we could do a bit of shopping before the baby gets here, you know? We can buy her some cute little dresses.”

Rafe’s expression started off indifferent, but a small sigh escaped him. His shoulders sagged slightly as he replied, “Yeah, I guess we can do some shopping. But forget it, I don’t care for all that pink stuff. You know I like the more natural colors.”

“Oh, come on, pink is essential,” I teased him, trying to lighten the mood.

Rafe rolled his eyes, a slight hint of annoyance in his voice. “Essential? You’re going to make our baby look like a walking cotton candy or something?”

“Yes, and she’ll be the cutest cotton candy to ever exist,” I replied playfully.

After the doctor’s appointment, Rafe and I went to a few stores to pick up some last-minute necessities. He followed me around, slightly frustrated, bearing with the shopping trip. He picked up some items with a hint of annoyance, mostly focusing on the practical things.

“Oh, Rafe, look at this! Isn’t it adorable?” I gushed, holding up a tiny Hello Kitty onesie for him to see.

I held up the onesie, but he barely spared it a glance. “Yeah, it’s cute,” he mumbled, his tone flat and uninterested.

“I’m going to get it,” I said while walking to the checkout line.

Rafe nodded, his expression betraying his lack of enthusiasm.

-

The birth went smoothly, thanks to the epidural. Rafe had come down to Vegas a week before the due date to make sure everything went smoothly. And while he wasn’t exactly bursting with excitement, there was a hint of anticipation in his eyes when he saw his baby girl for the first time.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” I said, my voice calm but full of affection.

As Rafe looked down at our newborn daughter, a flicker of admiration sparked in his eyes. His voice, softer than usual, added, “Yeah, she is. And she’s ours.”

“I’m going to name her Margaret. A beautiful name for a beautiful baby,” I said, my heart swelling with love for her.

As Rafe heard the name I chose, he nodded, his expression neutral. But there was something in his voice, a subtle approval. “Margaret, huh? That’s a nice name. Definitely better than some of the other ones you had thrown around earlier.”

“Oh, stop it,” I laughed, rolling my eyes playfully.

Rafe smirked, a hint of teasing in his tone. “Hey, I’m just being honest. Some of those names you suggested were ridiculous.”

“Do you want to hold her?” I asked, wanting him to have a moment with our daughter.

He hesitated for a moment, his usual confident demeanor faltering. “Uh, sure. I guess I can hold her. Just for a minute.” As Rafe held the tiny baby in his arms, his expression softened. The usual boldness melted away, giving him a tender tone. He spoke to her in a sweet voice, his words filled with awe. “Hey there, little one… You’re just a tiny little thing, aren’t you?”

-

Initially, it seemed like things might improve after the baby’s birth, especially when I came home from the hospital. However, over time, Rafe’s behavior changed back to his usual, uncaring demeanor. The brief baby bliss he displayed in the hospital quickly faded.

The phone rang for a few moments before Rafe picked up, his voice slightly irritated as his usual nonchalance seeped through. “What’s up?”

“You promised you’d be here a week ago. Where the hell are you?” I asked, frustration lacing my words.

Rafe sighed, clearly annoyed by the question. His voice remained apathetic as he responded. “I told you, I’ve been busy. I’ve got things to deal with, you know?”

“You have a daughter now. I know you’ve got a wife and two kids back home, but you can’t just abandon us like this,” I said, my voice shaky but firm.

Rafe grumbled, his irritation sharpening his voice. “Abandon? I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m just handling things with my family. I can’t drop everything just because we have a kid now.”

I stayed silent for a moment, processing his words. Does he not think before he speaks? Does he not realize how much his words sting? “Okay, Rafe. Well, make sure you come by... please.”

His tone softened slightly, but his voice remained neutral. “Alright. I’ll swing by in a few days, okay? Don’t keep nagging me about it.”

Six months have passed since Margaret’s birth, and she’s growing cuter and bigger each day. Yet Rafe’s behavior remains unchanged. He continues to act distant, rarely showing any real interest in me or the baby. Rafe is at the apartment again. I thought it would be a calm visit, just the two of us, so he could spend some time with his daughter. But it seems like we can never be around each other without arguing.

“Seriously, can you just relax? You’re being overdramatic about everything,” Rafe says dismissively.

“I’m not being overdramatic! You’re barely here, it’s like we don’t even exist to you,” I snap, unable to hold back the frustration anymore.

Rafe rolls his eyes as he gets up from the floor, where he was playing with Margaret. His voice laced with anger. “Oh please, just because I’m not here 24/7 doesn’t mean you don’t exist to me. I’ve got another family back home. I can’t just ditch them for you.”

“That’s not the point!” I shout, hurt and angry. “At least make an effort to show you actually care. If you don’t want to be with me, that’s fine, but at least try to be in your daughter’s life.”

He groans in frustration, clearly annoyed by my point. “I do show I care, alright? I provide for you, don’t I? And I’ve been over here plenty of times to see her. What more do you want from me?”

“I want you to be a man,” I yell, my voice shaking with anger. “I don’t even know how you can call yourself a father!”

Rafe’s irritation boils over as Margaret starts to cry from the shouting. He shoots me a glare before shouting back in an authoritarian tone, “For Christ’s sake, stop yelling! You’re scaring her!”

“You should blame yourself for this,” I snap, my voice cold. “If it wasn’t for you, this argument wouldn’t have started.”

Rafe’s patience snaps. His frustration morphs into full-blown anger. He steps closer, his voice low and dangerous. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to. I’m the one paying your rent, so you better watch your fucking tone. ”

“Or what?” I challenge him, my heart racing.

His eyes narrow, his voice more menacing. “Or you’ll regret it. I’m warning you, don’t test me, not when I’ve got you living under my dollar.”

Rafe walks past me and storms out of the apartment, and the moment the door slams shut, I let the tears fall down my cheeks. I try to hold back my sobs, attempting to stay strong for Margaret’s sake, but the weight of the argument makes it impossible. The situation has reached a breaking point, and I can’t help but wonder how things have gotten so out of control between us.

[starfilmz]

THERE SHE GOES — DEAN F.

⤷ Just tooth-rotting fluff of you talking to Dean Forrester for the first time. ᡣ𐭩

cw: fem!reader, so much fluff and sweetness, just reader being a girl, this is s1 dean since he’s the only i’ve seen, no rory au lmao, unbeta’d so grammar and spelling mistakes are probably there, english is not my first language :,) banner || gif

“Here are the keys, darlin’.” The item jingled in between Ms. Patty’s fingers as it landed on your palms, barely catching it from falling on the piles of snow on the ground. You were never really the graceful one. It took you about a year of living in Stars Hallow to get used to Ms. Patty’s natural whimsicalness and spontaneous energy—you’re not getting any smoother by the days.

You shoved the keys down your pocket, watching as she walked down the small set of stairs. “You’re closing a bit earlier today. Something happened?”

“Tomorrow’s Bid on a Basket, honey! I gotta make my own set for the wonderful event—maybe I’ll be able to enjoy some of my fresh cakes with a fine man,” Ms. Patty winked, giggling to herself. “A lot of people are joinin', I heard. Are you not participating?”

Your mouth contorted into a mixture of a smile and a frown—if that was even possible—as you awkwardly chuckled. “Probably not this time, Ms. Patty.”

As much as you wished to join the fundraiser, most of your free time in the morning was consumed with homework and your jobs. Your mom’s decision to switch jobs last month caused a bit of a financial strain in the family, resulting in you taking on more jobs as she adjusted to her new work.

“I’m working a shift at Luke’s tomorrow. I won’t have the time to make the food and hang out with the lucky bidder.” Your lips formed into a straight line as you looked at her. “Who’s always been my mom, anyway.”

“Don’t be so down, honey. I’m sure there’s a special boy who’s willing to pay for your basket.”

“That’s not—”

“I heard the new boy in your school started working in the grocery store a few weeks ago. Maybe he had some paychecks to spare.”

You snorted at her words. “Ms. Patty, c’mon.”

She had a proud expression as she finally took off, leaving you by yourself at the studio. “See you tomorrow, honey.” You waved goodbye as she left. She was truly an unpredictable woman—you would be lying if you said you didn’t wish to have at least a quarter of her confidence.

You knew of this ‘new boy’ she was talking about. Stars Hallow High School was not big enough for mystery; everyone knows each other if not by name, face, or by being their parents’ friend’s kid. Dean Forester joined a month into the semester, and you were surprised he wasn’t as popular as you expected him to be. But, at the same time, if it weren’t your shared classes with him, you barely saw the boy outside the building.

Lane, one of your childhood friends, was particularly fond of Dean’s friend, Todd. There were moments where you wished you could join on in your friend’s excitement, but—as Lane had commented several times—you were too busy making money to even notice the boys around you. But one single afternoon in between classes, you caught yourself staring far too intensely at Dean when he passed by the hallway when he suddenly met your eyes. You couldn’t recall what you did when it happened, just that it resulted in a startled Lane and a booming sound of your locker closing.

Have you been purposely avoiding him ever since? Yes. It’s not like the two of you talked anyway. Though it didn’t help when you began noticing him in Doose’s market more often than you liked.

You sighed, shaking your head at the one-sided chaos you’ve managed to create in the midst of the boy’s arrival. You weren’t exactly “boy crazy” as Lane’s mom would call the girls in your school, but you’re literally just a girl.

“God forbid I find a guy attractive.” You mumbled to yourself as you began to close the doors of Ms. Patty’s studio. The children had ballet today, so there were twice the amount of tutus inside; an array of pinks, blues, and whites decorated the wooden floors.

As you cleaned up the rest of the clutter, closing boxes and stacking them in the same way you saw them last night, you noticed one particular box was by the door, the heaviest one.

Inside were miscellaneous items (you’re sure some of them were lost as well) and you’ve experienced several aging moments after carrying them all the way to where they should be in the studio—the opposite side of the room.

You stifled a sigh, rolling up the sleeves of your sweater as you crouched down. Whatever was inside the box, new or not, doubled the weight you carried yesterday, and you prayed this wouldn’t be the reason you’ll hurt your back.

Just as you were about to put your hands on the bottom of the box, you heard footsteps on the wooden stairs; one of the hinges on the doors creaked. You had no time to look up and see who it was before you heard the unfamiliar voice.

“Need any help?” Without warning, a face you’ve been dreading to see came into view. His hair fell on both sides of his head as he lowered himself in front of you and the large box.

Dean grinned, his pearly whites showing themselves, and God, why did he have such eye-catching dimples?

You were sure something in your head was short-circuited because of how much you stumbled on your reply. “I- yes, I guess, if you want to- it’s totally up to you, if you want… to help.”

He chuckled at your response, and you can’t really blame him for that, but you decided to ignore the gnawing embarrassment you felt as you laughed along with him. It was the first you’ve ever heard his laugh—his voice in general, actually—and somehow, with your logic, you thought it fitted him perfectly.

You saw his arm move around behind the box in between the two of you, as if looking for something underneath. Dean still had a smile on his face as he readjusted himself on the floor, mimicking your crouched position. It took you by surprise to feel his hand on yours, and you had to fight back the urge to flinch.

“Here, take both of your hands under these corners, and I’ll take the opposite,” Dean instructed, moving your hands into position. You brushed off the thought of how his hands consumed yours. “then we’ll stand up on three.”

You nodded, feeling the weight of the box shift as he adjusted his grip. “One… two… three.” The two of you rose together, the box hovering between you, expectedly heavy but manageable as you moved in sync.

The two of you placed the box on the ground with a huff. You had to stretch your back as you stood up. Dean was doing the same thing, though his expression seemingly filled with amusement. He doesn’t say anything and you raised an eyebrow at this.

“What?” You said, pulling down your sleeves.

Dean shook his head. “It’s nothing. I, um, wasn’t expecting to see you here. Do you work for Ms. Patty?”

You caught the way he changed the subject, but decided to leave it alone for now. “Aren’t we all?”

This caused a chuckle from him as he scratched the back of his neck. “That’s true. I still haven’t thanked her for getting me a job at Doose’s.”

Dean followed you around the studio as you continued to pick up props and tutus off of the floor. He would grab what looked out of place and parroted where you’d place them. You didn’t protest at his presence—as much as you wanted to for the sake of your own mental health—and allowed him to help along. Besides, you didn’t have the heart to kick him out, and while your brain protested, your heart wasn’t exactly against Dean.

“The best thank you you could give her is probably keeping the job she gave you,” you joked and followed up with, “and bid on her basket.”

As you chucked the last baton inside with the others, you turned around and almost bumped into Dean with how close he was.

“Wish I could, but I was told to go do a quick morning shift just in case people would do their last minute baking.” He tilted his head slightly, his voice filled with humor.

“Sounds great. Let me know if you need a morning boost; I’ll be at Luke’s serving the best coffee around.”

Dean nodded, a grin making its way to his face, and said, “I’ll make sure to visit.” There was a few seconds of silence before he picked up his eyes to look at you. “You’re not going to do a basket?”

“No, not this year. Life’s been busting my tail lately, so I don’t really have the time.” You shrugged, putting your hands behind your back as you awkwardly leaned against one of the wooden boxes.

“That’s a shame,” Dean replied, walking over to your side to rest his back on one of the boxes as well. Your shoulders touched—specifically your shoulder against the side of his upper arm—and it all dawned on you at how tall he was.

You turned your head to look at him, failing to hide your surprise when he was already looking over at you.

“A shame? How so?”

“I’d bid the highest, for sure. Just hanging out with your famous cupcakes Lane talked about.”

You’ve recalled several instances in your life when you were physically stunned at a person, but none of them could compare to what’s happening. Dean’s eyes were still on you, waiting for a reaction, a response, literally anything, and yet you just stood there like a flustered child receiving your first love letter.

It’s a lot more important to remember that you’ve never spoken to this boy before. You knew one day your worlds would collide eventually in the small town of Stars Hollow, but you’ve never realized it was happening right under your nose.

And since when Dean and Lane talked?

You and her were always attached to the hip, telling each other every single little detail about the in-between moment of the day when the two of you weren’t together. She’s never mentioned talking to Dean about you.

“You don’t need to spend money to hang out with me.” was the next best thing of a response you could think of. “I mean, you’re doing it right now.”

Dean chuckled, nodding. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“And if you wanted to try my cookies, try visiting Luke’s,” you added, having a little bit more confidence in your tone this time. “But you have to buy them at the exact time we opened; there’s a reason why Lane calls it famous.”

A grin was on your face as soon as you heard his laugh. Your previous panic seemed to die down as a calm silence washed over you two. The doors to the studio were still wide open, letting in the cold breeze of the night brush past you and Dean.

The sweater you wore didn’t help your spine from shivering. You wore whatever you saw first in your closet when Ms. Patty called, and you weren’t exactly planning to stay for this long.

The sound of rustling made you look over at Dean. “What are you doing?”

He took his leather jacket off of him, that boyish smile on his face again, as he placed it on your shoulder. “I heard it’s going to be especially cold tonight.”

You made no effort to protest as his hands gently tucked the jacket on your shoulders, brushing some of your hair on the back of your ears. The freezing temperature inside the studio only made the heat on your cheeks twice as noticeable.

Dean patted you down, in attempt to warm you up, before retracting his hands to his side. “Better?”

You snuggled further into the leather jacket, taking in the familiar musk you’ve been smelling since the boy got here. “Yeah. Thank you, Dean.”

Maybe skipping one shift at Luke’s wouldn’t hurt.

[moleshow]

honest to god, what should i read to better understand economics? last time i seriously studied it was when i was 16, and my major had nothing to do with it. sorry if it’s a bit dumb but it seems you know a lot, and i of course don’t

(economically illiterate anon, LOL): I forgot to say, but it’d be best if it was somewhat targeted towards US policies, particularly those that Trump adopts, because I keep seeing many experts, and you, claim he is going to crash the economy, but I live in a red state, so I haven’t met any other local IRL who thinks so… Everyone praises Reagan and talks of how he “saved us” and all the “progress” and etc, and I know it’s bullshit, because I do know history, but I still don’t understand the economic policies themselves, and why they are irredeemable, for lack of a better word.

not dumb! i do have a post to this effect (sort of) right here with books that i will also link here. i've elaborated on which of those works might be useful to you after the cut down below.

the predictions of a crash have to do with a couple of different elements. some of the Big Ones, in my view, are as follows (not taking into account industry-specific problems or we would be here all day):

there are not enough private sector jobs to make up for the mass layoffs in the federal government. cuts to federal spending in other forms (e.g., NIH research grants) reduce employment in industries that money was funding. both of these factors drive unemployment up and aggregate demand down. people who don't have money coming in spend less, so there's likely going to be a ripple effect on employment from that as businesses dependent upon that spending close. we get the february jobs numbers on friday, folks, so keep an eye out. furthermore, the DOGE business is at least partly contributing to weakening consumer confidence so you'll likely see people holding back on big purchases.

the way this administration conducts itself is erratic, unpredictable, and generally unsound. companies do not like this. it is difficult to make purchasing decisions when you can't be sure whether an import is going to cost 25% more tomorrow than it did today. for firms exporting to countries hitting us with reciprocal tariffs, their costs just went up. because some goods bounce across borders a few times before they're finished products, they're getting dinged multiple times. additionally, there's real hesitancy when it comes to any business dealing with federal dollars now because it's not guaranteed that funds promised will actually go out. you can click here and hear (read) most of this stuff straight from the horse's mouth.

when you have a sustained period of high unemployment and stagnant or negative economic growth, what you end up with is a problem--one that tax cuts cannot fix.

of these works i think the frieden, stein, and rivoli are probably going to be the most useful for you, as well as the reinert section on international trade but especially the chapters on the political economy of trade (ch. 5), trade policy analysis (ch. 6), and on crises and responses (ch. 18).

none of these works are specifically about trump's policies but i will explain their relevance. the reinert is good to give you a foundation in thinking and talking about international trade--that'll give you the background to understand what's sort of at play.

the frieden will give you a historical view on the development of our current financial system and how previous recessions/depressions occurred, and the section at the end on the "trilemma" outlines how monetary policy involves a lot of tradeoffs. but this stuff matters for illustrating how the US is economically load-bearing and how it became that way

the stein is useful for looking at steel because that is an industry which trump has paid a good deal of lip service to, so it's worth getting a sense of what exactly happened to the industry in the US and what it takes to actually incentivize domestic production (spoiler: you need government spending and finely tuned trade policies). this is something also addressed in stein's lecture on c-span, which also touches on the economic situation leading up to reagan's election (particularly from 1:27:00 onward)

finally, the rivoli book helps illustrate (using garment production as an example) how supply chains operate on an international scale.

[ceasarslegion]

By the wishes of a few people, here's my advice post about living alone. Keep in mind I'm speaking from the perspective of a canadian urbanite, so this will not apply to absolutely everybody in every kind of culture, economy, living situation, those in rural areas, etc. This also is not assuming wealth disparities are a matter of personal attitude, i KNOW it's complicated. Get back with that shit right now, you know damn well this advice assumes you are able to achieve the financial means to live on your own and is not disparaging anyone who legitimately can't.

Let's cover the basics first.

Source of income:

This seems rather obvious, but your income should be regular and reliably the same or similar on a monthly basis. The most obvious way to achieve this is with a job, and I'm sorry but minimum wage is not going to cut it on your own anymore, which means you're going to have to swallow your pride and accept that you'll likely have to work for some industry or corporation with a dodgy moral record. Get used to it. There is no point in self-flagellation, the world is complicated, just take the 50-60k a year office job, no one actually expects you not to and nobody will hold it against you when the "moral" option is soul-crushing retail. The real world really doesn't give a shit what you have to do to afford a comfortable lifestyle as long as you do what good you can within your abilities, no one in the real world expects you to sacrifice your own wellbeing for a cause.

Salaried positions are your most reliable because you'll always pull the same amount, while hourly pay comes with the ability to pull overtime pay in exchange for more shifts, but if you run out of sick days you'll have to spend the rest of the year taking unpaid time off when you need to call in. Whichever one you choose depends on what's available to you and what's right for you physically and mentally, I can't make that call for you.

You also need a credit card. That is non-negotiable. If you don't have a credit score, you can't sign a lease. Bad credit is better than no credit. We can argue until the cows come home whether or not credit scores are good or bad, but it's just reality that you're going to need one. The good news is it's fairly easy to build credit from no credit: you just have to pay off your credit card in full on time every time. The bad news is it's equally as easy to tank your credit score, you just have to miss one or pay it too late, and it's very hard to build good credit back from bad credit. So don't see it as free money, only spend as much as you can pay back, and if you don't have credit right now, start with small things like lunch and little treats that you immediately pay off.

Looking for a place to live:

Once you have your regular and reliable source of income, you can start looking for your place. There's a few things you should keep in mind:

-Draw up a budget for how much you can spend on rent and bills. That includes all basic living expenses: rent, utilities, food, internet, phone, hygiene. Compare how much you make per month to what you can spend. 1/3 to 1/2 of your salary is a bit more realistic to expect to spend on rent alone nowadays, so work within that range when you apartment hunt. Think of everything when you're budgeting, like how much do you spend on haircuts per month? You probably didn't think of that, because I didn't either at first.

-Apartment buildings with some/all utilities included often have higher base rents. You have to keep in mind that this is so the landlord can balance out the utility bills of the whole building, which are unpredictable expenses and on them to pay every month. If you don't know how to budget yet or don't know how to do so with unpredictable bills, I highly recommend trying to find a place with utilities included so you know EXACTLY how much you'll need to pay every month and can plan in advance

-Older buildings tend to be both cheaper and more likely to have centralized utility systems, which means they have to include it in the price of rent because there's no way to tell who used how much of something. If it's your first place alone, you'll probably be tempted to get the brand new, expensive building down the road, but it won't actually make much of a difference when you move in. You will love it regardless.

-Never ever sign a lease until you've either seen THE unit you're considering, or one of the show units that is exactly the same layout. The last thing you want is to go off online photos only to move in and find out the building has a mold problem. You can arrange personal tours by contacting the building manager or the landlord directly. Phone calls are the best way to do this.

-If you want the unit after seeing it, you know you can afford it, there's nothing funny about the place, apply IMMEDIATELY. Places are usually on the market for a few days before they're snapped up by a new tenant, you have to strike while the iron's hot.

-If you've decided on the place you want and had your application accepted, read the lease carefully before you sign. Many places require tenant insurance that meet specific policy requirements, have registration rules about long-term guests, outline how the parking works, quiet hours, smoking rules, mail, laundry, all the way down to what kind of barbecues are allowed on your deck in the case of mine (I am in a wildfire danger zone, so any types that produce embers are strictly prohibited for fire safety reasons). Ask any question that comes to mind about the lease. Not everything in a lease is some human rights violation just because you don't like landlords, keep in mind you're living in the same building as dozens of other people, so there has to be ground rules established for everyone's sanity.

-Internet is often not considered a utility so you'll have a hard time finding any place that includes it. You can arrange to have your wifi set up in advance of a moving date on a specific time and date, do this right after you sign a lease so you don't forget. They won't charge you until you're actually hooked up to the network.

-If your utilities are NOT included, get those set up in advance too. The main ones are HVAC, water, and electricity. The companies that do this vary depending on where you live and what's available, so shop around online once you've signed your lease and sign up as soon as possible. The last thing you want is to forget this and then move into a dark freezing apartment with no water.

Budgeting:

After your living expenses are covered, you should have a comfortable amount of financial wiggle room leftover. If you wouldn't, the place you're looking at is either too expensive, or you're being overcharged elsewhere. It's completely normal for living expenses to take up most of your budget these days, you're doing just fine in the same boat as everybody else if that's the case, so don't panic yet. If you have absolutely NOTHING leftover though, then you're out of your price range.

You also need to set money aside for fun and saving. Do not forego fun money, your brain will try to kill you with hammers and knives if you never get or do things for yourself. And if you're on your own, you're the only one providing that for yourself now. And a solid building base of savings will only help you in the future, whether you lose your job, have an emergency, or even need a down payment on a house later in life. Don't be a doomer about your circumstances or the socioeconomic and generational cards that were dealt to you, chip away at it a little at a time. And don't fall for social media's insistence that anybody with anything at all is some bourgeois degenerate or that being fortunate enough to be able to have upward mobility makes you some ultra wealthy shithead, working towards a comfortable standard of living for yourself does not make you a rich elite or a bad person. You're working towards the standard we should all live as, not exploiting the poor or being a class traitor. I feel the need to add that last part since we're on the website of "struggling art students in NYC are bourgeois that are just bad with money and having a gaming computer makes you upper middle class." Don't listen to a word any of those people say, I know it comes from a place of very real hurt and pain for them but that doesn't make it grounded in absolute reality for absolutely everybody.

Social needs:

If you're by yourself, there's gonna be a lot more work you have to put in for your social and entertainment needs. I can not stress enough how important it is to give this the time and work it needs, do not neglect this.

Lots of libraries have clubs you can join that will get you out of the house and meeting new people regularly. They're either free or very inexpensive. This is a great place to start.

Take advantage of technology we have now. Hop on discord calls more frequently, make sure you're talking to your friends on the regular and try to make plans as much as you can.

Also, I advise finding lots of things you can do by yourself. You will be spending way more time alone than you ever have before, so find single-person hobbies. Go thrifting, get into knitting, go explore the city, read lots of books, do puzzles, just don't lock yourself inside all day in your free time. Even if you're doing it alone, going out and seeing that the world is bigger than your apartment and your workplace is very good for you.

Misc advice:

You don't need a conventional coffee pot maker. Single serving will suit you just fine.

Cleaning is easier when you have a routine. It doesn't all have to be done on the same day of the week, but having a regular schedule of what gets cleaned when for non-daily chores will help you keep on top of it. And please, god, don't neglect your cleaning and hygiene just because no one lives with you to see it. On that note, spray bottle all purpose cleaners are your best friend for daily spot cleaning and you should deep clean your washroom around every 2 weeks in my experience since that's where you'll be doing most of your personal hygiene. Also make your damn bed, yes you'll just get back into it at the end of the day but having a major part of your space neat and tidy will do wonders for your mental health.

Don't buy the cheap garbage bags. Some things you really do want the expensive shit for.

If you don't have a car, delivery service/rideshare subscriptions ARE worth it and legitimately economical in the long run. I do wanna circle back to square one and say that yes, most of them like prime and uber do have dodgy moral records, but sometimes you just gotta swallow your pride and accept that. Once again, no one in the real world expects you to spend your entire day on public transit looking for toilet paper that isnt 30 dollars a pack or lugging 50 pounds of groceries back on a bus just for a cause. It's not the fault of someone who needs these services for their quality of life that they do the things they do, don't put that responsibility on your or other's shoulders when the fault lies at the top of the corporate ladder.

When you're budgeting for living expenses, expect your income to be at the lowest and your expenses to be at the highest. I expect 2 call ins per month and to need to spend the max amount i have on groceries every time, that way I never fall short and never have to cut into my savings that I've dubbed my "oh shit, I'm broke" money. Your emergency reserve may look tempting to you, but as someone who has been in a position where they had to drain it to nothing in the past because of an unforeseen financial emergency, you REALLY are gonna want that untouched if and when shit hits the fan. Life is unpredictable, prepare to roll with the punches so they don't knock you out.

A few people wanted to be tagged in this, so here you go @lilsnatch and @kisstheashes <3

[ocrpsearch]

Hello! I am a 22+ NB looking for someone 21+ to do a historically set oc mxm rp! Time period and setting are negotiable. Please only interact if you are an enthusiastic brainstormer and enjoy ooc chatter/sharing art/making playlists together. I'd love to make new friends through writing :)

I have this hard working, middle-aged, blue-collar oc (former occupation malleable for setting and plot) who has gone into semi-retirement by settling down and running a small gardening shop. He just desires the simplicity of his quiet life as it is now. This is where your oc comes in!

I'm looking for someone to write a married aristocrat, businessman, judge, banker— basically just someone of high social/financial standing. Your oc is unhappy in his marriage and is truly only with his wife out of social obligation, and one way or another, he finds himself frequenting this little garden shop in the shabbier, more common area of town for the sole purpose of (pestering) flirting with the man behind the counter. Your character doesn't seem too receptive to the fact that my oc is clearly awkward and stand-offish to his advances, until he eventually offers him a position as the official grounds-keeper for his extravagant estate. Though your oc is a bit eccentric, the difference in money my oc would make is far too great to ignore, so he eventually accepts the offer.

I would also probably end up writing your oc's wife as well, as I think it could be really funny to explore the dynamic of her having suspicions about her husband and this new grounds-keeper as they grow closer. But those details are open for discussion when we collaborate!

I write in the third person, generally at least 2 paragraphs, but I can also write much more, and it can fluctuate depending on what's currently taking place in the plot. I am starting a new job, but I am also very creatively understimulated atp, so I will be regularly active. Expect a minimum of 1 to 2 replies a day, but I definitely enjoy a more quickfire writing pace. I am welcoming of smut, but I don't want it to be the main focus of the writing. I also make all of my characters switches, so do not come to me with your soft, helpless bottoms. I'm fine with this including an age gap, but I also don't want ocs that are just sweet and naive. This plot will be dealing with subjects of internalized homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality, perceptions of masculinity and slight religious guilt.

PLEASE do not interact if you have a habit of ghosting. I get life is unpredictable, but please just lmk if you have a period of time you'll be inactive for, or if you need a break, and I can guarantee you the same!

Interact with this ad or reach out to me directly through dms !!

interact or dm: gloomydisco

[flockofdoves]

bc of it being one of the places where my HS is my mom has unprompted been telling me i need to make sure to get a breast reduction before i go off her insurance in a couple years

and thats kinda wild to hear from her considering how weird shes been in the past about me saying i wanted top surgery for trans related reasons. and soooo weird to think about like. is that even crossing her mind mind rn or does she just think that all went away with time for me now that i dont bother correcting when she misgenders me anymore (its weird bc i use feminine terms and she pronouns in other contexts nowadays but in no context where she is aware of that and really because of how frustrating all that has been with family i want them to just use they pronouns and neutral terms for me but simultaneous to that sort of contrarian desire i just dont have the energy to correct them ever)

but like i cant complain. i think i could even get legit top surgery and not just a reduction out of it and doing it with her insurance and sdditional financial support makes it soooooooo much more feasible than it could ever be otherwise

but god also thats such a short time frame. and like ive been actively wanting it for almost 15 years anf i guess no time is ever going to be ideal if any change even good always feels overwhelming but theres just already so much i really need to handle over the next couple years.

and theres also the other thing of that while i know it could never be a long term thing for me because of the balance of what i need from transition and how my health problems work that would be even fuethwr exacerbated by it, i always thought i could look cool with my chest as it is now but hairier and i would love to be able to have at least a brief period in my life where i could experience that together. but that would mean startinf T like . Right Now. and while i think id like to at least do that a little bit throughout my life, if i struggle with being overwhelmed with change, the unpredictability of hormones on top of another change maybe is a bit too much for me rn. like im fine with any of the common effects of it even that arent part of my goal but things like how hormonal shifts can effect emotions and sex drive and stuff is still just a lot to have to figure out and manage on top of an already busy year. and even stuff i want like a deeper voice or fuller mustache ive always wanted to do phonetic experiments throughout transition and i just objectively will not have time for that this year. and if i want to have well groomed facial hair thats another thing to have to fit into my daily routine in the middle of whats to be the most packed year of my life so far. so that basically means for me that the only reasonable solution is to get top surgery in the next year and wait for hormones later but its just kinda sad to me i cant have it all

i really wish i lived in a world where i could reliably have better healthcare into the futurw and where i wouldnt have to be pushing myself as hard as ill need to the next couple years wirh school and job stuff. and fuck it i really wish i could shapeshift while im at it lol

[soulsdivinity]

PAC: What Do You Find Romantic? ✨💜✨

Choose a pic to discover what you find romantic in a relationship 💜 Remember that time is fluid. Take a deep breath before choosing your pile, choose a photo with your intuition (the one you can’t look a way from)💜✨

Disclaimers

✨Hi ! This is a general reading!! If something doesn’t resonate, that’s okay!! It’s a message for another viewer. Nothing resonated? Feel free to choose another reading💜

These readings are not to be seen as legal, professional or medical advice✨ You are responsible for your actions

Please do not plagiarize my work, or post it elsewhere 💜

© all rights reserved, soulsdivinity, 2021-

enjoy your reading

feedback is appreciated

book a reading w us!

Sorry I lost the pic of the cards in my photos 😭 it’s too far back I can’t find the right ones. 💜✨🥲

Pile 1

Lol random but I heard a Megan the Stallion lyric “money make me C**” and the first card to flip was the king of pentacles. So you enjoy being spoiled with money or a man/partner with financial stability. You also find sexiness romantic. You appreciate sensuality outside of sex. You find lips to be attractive. At times you can become hypnotized by someone’s lips, it makes them look dreamy. You find soft, tender, touches, caressing to be very sweet.

The idea of a one true love lives in your heart. It could be that you are waiting for the right person to have sex with. For you that level passion is reserved for someone you love. You find it romantic when a masculine person courts you instead of diving right into sex. You love the fantasies of being wined and dined. I think overall you find security to be romantic. Mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially.

No chaos, no drama. You love healthy compromise and wish to grow with a special someone. You want to be vulnerable, you want to be openly expressive and grow a healthy ego. You want a partner who is like your best friend. You want someone who loves you for who you are. You imagine picnics in the park, soft kissing, gently holding hands, soft sunlight. You enjoy someone making time for you and carving you into their day. You believe a little healthy competition is cute. You would like to race your lover, play basketball, be more playful. You also find site seeing and exploring to be romantic! Romance is tied to your self expression. The more open you are to giving and receiving, the healthier, stronger, and better the relationship will be in every aspect. You’re pretty well rounded! Good job pile 1! This is mindset people want to achieve! 💗

-a

book a reading?

Pile 2

This pile is more about attraction. It’s like “the type of person I could fall for.” You like someone who is like yourself. They have an ambitious attitude, they are physically healthy or considered fit. Idk why I’m getting the vibe that you already like someone. This reading feels like it’s about the present or upcoming situation. You like someone who is strong but they don’t know it. You attract beautiful people or you’re attracted to soft beautiful people who have angelic faces. Maybe even a strong body and a cute face. Like Wonho from Monsta X. Like a soft beefcake, but only you get to see their tender side.

You also like someone a little dangerous, unpredictable, mysterious and maybe a bit androgynous. I feel like you’re a curious person and that means you like to think outside the box. You want someone who’s not afraid to look deeper within themselves. You like people who can help you out of your mental fog. Someone who can help you see situations, thoughts and emotions clearly. They give you a different perspective. Not 18+ read but I’m just gonna say it. You like someone who’s good in bed and has a large sexual appetite. They’re strong but have a gentle hand. You both will nurture each other. You want someone to stick up for you or help you make better decisions based on what’s best for you. You have each others backs.

Coming home to someone you love is very romantic. The perfect lover who belongs to you. Someone who is reliable, strong, innocent minded, someone who can raise your kids and turn a house into a home. You like someone who is good at managing their finances, it proves they know how to care for themselves. This way you can keep doing your own thing. I’m also seeing that you find petite or soft bodies to be graceful, youthful and heartwarming.

I think you’re interested in worship as well. Your partner worshipping you is romantic bc it completes your fantasy. You’re a “king”and you have your “queen” to rule with, to love and also serve you. It could be vise versa (queen has her king / divine masc has their divine fem ). You or this person loves to be worshipped. Kind of traditional don’t you say ? Lol 😂 careful tho, at times you just want someone to control!

Some cards were left in the box by accident so I think there’s more to you that people don’t quite understand yet.

I forgot to take a photo of your cards pile 2 !! I used Angel Tarot by Travis McHenry 😯

-a

book a reading?

Pile 3

You find obsession romantic. You want someone who can’t live without you. You want someone who’s constantly in their head about you. Deadass, like you want them to be stuck on you, CLINGY. You want someone who is open to group sex or someone who has options but they choose you.

It could also be that you want a “leader of the pack”, someone who is powerful in their own right but trusts you to lead with them. You want someone loyal to you, someone you can trust, someone prideful as well. Chivalry is romantic to you. You may be attracted to gentleness as well, or a calm, mysterious, sensual vibe.

You’re attracted to the shadow side. You feel like the more concerned they are with you the more passion there is. And I’m certain you attract these types. You could also be a homewrecker… no, more like a seducer? Like a mermaid calling men to the sea to claim them or an imagined image of a woman in a hypnotic fire.

You find chaotic love romantic. You find the fear of losing someone romantic, that’s why this energy is so anxious. You kinda like having someone on their toes. You want someone crazy but also someone sane with good intentions behind their feelings. You want someone to WANT you, earn you. You want someone to think of you as royalty. You find it romantic when someone comes running back to you no matter how much you hurt them.

You also find it romantic when someone gives you everything. I think your love language is gift giving and receiving and acts of service. You want someone to worship you like a god? I’m getting a feeling of awe, like the overwhelming feeling you get when you feel divine energies. It’s unbelievable. You find it romantic when someone is jealous over you. You want someone so possessive and jealous they size up the people around you. You want someone who watches you. You like them super possessive but still gentle and subtle? Very quiet about it. You like them having a flip side. Not gonna lie tho sometimes you like when they get a bit crazy and it turns you on!

You find it romantic when someone understands your ways. You like relating to your person as well. You want to be an all powerful couple. You find it romantic when someone surrenders to you even though they are top dog. They will always come back for you, they can’t stay away from you.

-a

book a reading?

LUCKY YOU! You get $5 off any @angelguides reading that’s $20 and up! Just book with the code ANGEL5 - expires January 20th 2023

[anexperimentallife]

Most of you already know the deal, but a few people have asked why we don't go back to the states now that El can finally travel.

And it's like... fam, we appreciate the concern, but even ignoring all the other factors and focusing on finances alone, we can't. I thought we had been clear about that every step of the way, but perhaps not clear enough. We could not afford to go back to the states even if we wanted to.

One of the reasons I moved to the Philippines is that I'm disabled, and trying to live off of the pittance that the US pays for disability. The cost of living here is about 1/5 what it is in the US on the average, so it's actually possible for a family of three to live here on an amount that wouldn't support ONE person in the US.

The unplanned, unpredictable, and unlikely to recur expenses were what got us. The bureaucratic/legal snafu with our daughter's status, in conjunction with lockdown, that kept us paying huge visa overstay fees (because the way travel restrictions have at times changed literally overnight, if Zoey and I had left for a day to reset our visas, there was no guarantee we'd be able to come back to our daughter--who was not allowed to travel until her status was sorted, which we had to be here for) and medical bills.

If there had been no errors on El's birth certificate (which is what led to all the bureaucratic hassle that took over a year to resolve), and if I hadn't nearly died from COVID (twice), had to be on oxygen for a month, required surgery, if Zoey amd I hadn't both had to be hospitalized, if there'd been no complications with El's birth, etc., and if there had been no national lockdown, we'd have been fine financially. Instead of enduring nearly two years of nightmare, I'd have paid a few months of overstay fees while we waited for El's paperwork, Zoey amd El wouldn't have had to pay anything but normal visa fees, and we'd have traveled out and back as a family to reset.

But as it is, we're over 14K in debt due to El's situation and medical costs, which is going to be difficult to pay off even with the low cost of living here, and moving back to the US would put us thousands more in debt.

Then there's trying to survive in the US with our situation.

Say we went back anyway, that by some miracle we got all our current debt paid off and got set up in a modest little 2br, and that @thesurestthing got a job working outside the home; I'm on disability because I'm--you guessed it--disabled.

Some days I'm able to care for myself and El just fine, but other days I will wreck myself if I try to do too much, especially now that long covid has screwed my health so much, so Zoey does far more than her share. If she had to be gone for nine hours a day, we'd need on-call home help, which would likely cost most of what Zoey would be able to earn anyway.

When I talk about the cost of living, here are some examples: A doctor's visit here, without insurance, costs around ten bucks. We can have fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to our door from the wet market for less than half of the US supermarket price (and the delivery fee is less than what it would cost us to go there in person). A three-bedroom apartment (with admittedly fewer amenities than US apartments) in a gated complex can be had for under 400 dollars a month in a tourist city like Baguio. A taxi ride from one side of Baguio to the other is about two dollars. The bus is less than a quarter. I bought roughly nine months of my pain, heart, eye, allergy, and all my other meds, for around eighty bucks. The oxygen machine cost around a thousand bucks for a whole month.

Now, if someone knows of a stable, secure fiction writing job (because writing fiction is something I'm starting to be able to do again now that me eye is healing at least a little bit) that pays enough for a family of three to live on in the US, would let me work on the basis of when I can deliver (because I might go a couple of days not being able to write and make it up in one long marathon session), provides full medical, dental, and vision coverage with low copays, low deductibles, with a low limit in our if pocket expensss and no upper limit to what they'll pay, please let me know.

Even then, though, even if we could relocate, we've made a home for ourselves here. The Philippines has its problems, yes, and we may relocate eventually, but overall we feel like staying out of the US is the best for all three of us, so even if we left the Philippines, we'd try to stay out of the US. (I don't want my daughter to die in a school shooting, for one thing.)

[warningsine]

The best-selling Korean writer Kim Hye-jin’s first novel to be translated into English, “Concerning My Daughter,” begins with an awkward question. Eating udon noodles with her mother, a 30-year-old daughter asks if she and her girlfriend, Lane, can move into the mother’s house. The daughter (who is only ever referred to by Lane’s nickname for her, “Green”) can’t afford a flat of her own because of her unpredictable work as an “itinerant” university lecturer. The mother — our narrator, also unnamed — agrees reluctantly, needing extra income to supplement what she earns caring for dementia patients. She also recognizes that her only daughter needs help, even if that means helping Lane too, whom the mother despises on principle because she is not a man. The mother wrestles with her disapproval of her daughter’s life choices both in private and with her patient Jen, a successful and well-traveled woman who never had children, and now has no family to care for her.

A middle-aged woman with an unglamorous job, the narrator is both scrutinizing (of her daughter) and scrutinized by a society that has not fulfilled its duty to support her. Kim plays close attention to the precariousness — bodily, financial, social — of not only the mother, but also her daughter and Jen. The lesbian daughter has been born into a generation with few job prospects; and Jen’s mind and body have deteriorated too much for her to take care of herself.

This is an admirably nuanced portrait of prejudice. The mother’s greatest anxiety is how other people will perceive her daughter, not only because she is socially conservative, but also because she fears her daughter will not have children, and will end up in old age in the same situation as Jen, with no one to visit or tend to her. Jamie Chang’s precise, pared-back translation conveys the mother’s internal struggle between her biases and her love for her daughter in a careful, balanced way, so that the reader is able to understand her position without being asked to endorse it. The mother understands that her outbursts are unacceptable (“How can you do this unless you’re out to make me suffer,” she asks her daughter, “you don’t care even the tiniest bit what your old mother thinks, now, do you?”), but she cannot prevent them. “My emotions carry me away to a place of no return,” she thinks. Wisely, Kim chooses to report rather than directly quote the mother’s worst homophobic tirade, against Lane. We learn only that the mother “let the words burn in the flames of disgust, resentment and hate.”

As the novel goes on, the daughter is badly injured at a protest against the firing of her university colleagues for their sexuality; and budget constraints at the nursing home lead the mother to bring Jen into her own home to see out the end of her life. The daughter’s vulnerability, combined with Lane’s tender care and the proximity of death, helps the mother start to see the errors in her thinking; but no promises are made. This is not a redemption story, nor does it aspire to be. The mother wants to be able to tell her daughter that she doesn’t care whether she likes men or women, that she believes her daughter and Lane should be treated with equal respect by society — but she doesn’t tell her these things. “Will the time come when I will be able to say these things out loud?” she wonders.

There is the occasional tendency to lay on too thickly the resonances between the mother’s relationships with Jen and with her daughter. “Am I seeing myself in her because I’ve given up hope of depending on my daughter in old age?” she asks herself about Jen. But it’s generally a tightly conceived and executed work, and one that boldly takes on the daunting task of humanizing someone whose prejudice has made her cruel.

[everythingthemoontouches]

💙Hi there! , First of all i want to tell you that i love your blog! And i love how your posts are so accurate!💙 If its okay with you could you please do me a favor by describing how others see me,my appearance or more specifically the vibe I radiate to others! It would mean alot to me if you you do that💙I'm a cancer sun,leo rising,Lilith sextile asc, Pluto trine asc, Uranus opposition asc, Moon opposition asc, mars sextile venus, mars opposition neptune, asteroid lilith conjunct mc and jupiter in the 1st house!💙

Hola!

Thank you that's really kind of you 💛💕

You know that quote that says Cinderella never asked for a prince. All she wanted was a night out and a dress. You kind of exude a similar vibe but with respect to leadership positions. 'I never asked to be Queen/King, but the people have spoken' kind of an energy. You would be equally happy to be by yourself, learning about the subconscious mind, higher realms and other esoteric science.

For more on Jupiter in LEO I'd recommend watching Astrofinesse.

For jupiter in the first there's KRS.

🌻As a Leo rising you come across as someone outgoing, with a playful energy but you're also somehow someone people would expect to see in a position of authority. You're drawn to people who stimulate you intellectually and love to exchange ideas.

😬If you have an Aquarius saturn you could be having some challenges in your relationships since December 2020 as saturn transits your 7th house. I'd suggest practicing discernment in this area as well as signing contracts with people until it passes( early 2023) ..

😇12th house sun could take on other people's energy. I feel like you need some time away, by yourself, preferably at the beach / pool/ shower to declutter, clear your head and replenish your sense of Self. You could be highly intuitive. If this resonates, I'd urge you to look up empath drain and how to protect yourself from energy vampires.

Ruler of the ascendant in the 12th :

spirituality could be a huge part of your life. For some people this could show a father (figure) who was convicted or worked in a prison / asylum. They could also have a really remote job. Since the sun is also your own personal identity, you could profit off these themes. Working in a mental health facility, overseas, in esoteric crafts.

🌛With your moon in the 7th house, you probably attract a lot of older women, (queen of swords) nurturing energies . Your mom could have a major influence on any business partnerships that you enter.

In relationships you could have a here today gone tomorrow kind of a presence. This is because as the moon waxes and wanes so does your attraction / attachment to specific people?

♒Aquarius moon : it could be really hard for you to express your feelings. So Instead of asking for a hug there could be a tendency to say something like ' ew imagine asking for one?' you leave a place better than you found it. If you watch hindi movies, 3 Idiots could be a movie you really resonate with. ( I pretty much spent the day looking up the lead actor, who has major aquarius placements and his films have always been disruptive with a really nice social message that left people talking for years after they were released. I tell you this because he shares 2 of your big 3 - aquarius and cancer.)

Going off on this tangent you could be a well respected teacher / writer / entertainer. Jupiter in LEO could help with this.

I do feel like you need a certain amount of inventiveness in your relationships. The people you're with are people who introduce you to new hobbies / ideas / technologies. You need to feel like you guys learn something new or create something that matters together. This is enhanced by uranus in the 7th house. You could come across really cold because you always give people the naked honest truth when asked. You do this from a place of love. I'm reminded of the Queen of Swords card in the rider Waite tarot. Not everyone has the maturity to take it. Or maybe they've just had a bad day. It is what it is. Perhaps try to not be so incisive if this is something you struggle with.

In the same vein, if I asked you to write down how you were feeling how long would it take for you to identify the right emotion. How honest are you with yourself?

Moon and Uranus being in the same house could show that stagnation could really hurt your mental health / happiness / satisfaction levels.

With a saturn ruled moon I feel like I need to remind you to not be so hard on yourself. Like. The world won't crumble to dust if you allow yourself to take care of you once in a while.there's only so much you can do.

All those coffee mugs will catch up. There's no such thing as extra hours in the day. A lack of sleep manifests as early signs of aging. No hate for the elderly but arthritis is not a fun ailment to have. Do you wanna be 60 with 80 year old nervous system problems? I rest my case.

Uranus and moon aspect your ascendant so you could have a slightly plump look?

Jupiter in the first house people usually have prominent thighs. I had a friend with this placement and when we were growing up she used to complain of chafed thighs a lot?

Mars sextile venus you could be your own type? The way you act and the way you want your future partners to express love could be quite similar which is good for healthy relationships.

There could be a tendency to spend impulsively.

With Mars sextiling venus you could be someone who earns more the more active their lifestyle is? Like, you may need to be an agile learner to keep money flowing in .

Jupiter in LEO in a woman's chart usually shows they'd have a financially well off spouse so money may not be a huge concern. He could be a sailor or earn via exports/ navy. It's hard to say without knowing where your Saturn is.

The image you project to the world could be a lot more outgoing than how you actually feel. You're more private than people think.

With a fire rising, water sun and air moon you could either be a really balanced person or just have a number of clashing ideas on who to be, what to do and achieve.

Descendant : The people that hate on you could attack your need to stand out /try to dim your time in the spotlight. Think aquarius themes of standing out to improve community clashing with Leo's need to stand out solely because it helps their ego. Like your confidence could trigger the part if them that felt judged negatively for expressing their individuality.

Do you feel like you thrive in chaos? I'm guessing you're atleast in your late 20s if not older, so you might have gotten better at dealing with people acting unexpectedly. Your mom could have been unpredictable. Really intelligent, but forgets to eat ..

🥤🦀As a cancer sun, you could be the friend your friends come to for advice. There could be a tendency to be a little too selfless. I think your aqua moon really serves as a shield to those who try to take advantage of your caring nature. Have you considered a career in psychic medium ship? Or any spiritual art/ past life regression / you get the drift..

Is there a family craft or hobby that you could monetize? Jupiter in LEO could signify ancestral gains.

Lilith and Pluto aspects to ascendant can make you come across really sexy / a bit unapproachable because people feel like you have some kind of power that places you above them?

Due to this, people with Pluto / Lilith aspects can feel some kind of hurt around people clearing up the path around them if that makes sense.

Jupiter opposite moon : there could be a clash between you want to do VS what you feel you should be doing.

Jupiter in the first house : you could have been born rich? Or people just perceive you that way. They also see you as someone wordly wise and lucky in general. You could know a lot about a wide variety of things. Specially on topics related to appearance, personal development, image consciousness etc. Since the ruler of the first is in the 12th I feel like some of your wisdom comes from a divine source. Like you're tapping into some kind of a collective reservoir of knowledge. In starseed terminology we would refer to this as downloads.

Jupiter rules the 8th house and 5th house.

So love, romance, games, early education may have been a bit of a breeze for you.

Jupiter is usually a bit of a celibate spiritual person. So, while it may make you really wise with respect to things like the occult / tarot / other 8th house themes, I'm not sure how it would impact your sex life with a spouse. Sex could be either a deeply spiritual experience for you or take on more neptunian traits. Addiction / alcoholism / drug use the works. Jupiter expands the themes of the house it rules so a word of caution there.

Travelling could bring you luck. Or even love.

Did I hear Mars opposite Neptune?

This could be a literal battlefield. You could feel like you need to work for love.if Neptune is unconditional love and Mars is your drive, then you could literally match to get to taht elusive unconditional sense of belonging /love / acceptance. But what are you marching towards really? A mirage? With this aspect I'd really be on the guard against addiction of any kind. Neptune is enticing, alluring, mocking Mars for its need to conquer. It could lend a really nice swagger to your walk. A runway model could benefit from thus placement. At uts best this aspect imbues you with creativity, inspiration, otherworldly imagination and the energy required to turn your abstract ideas of art into something tangible.

Here's a source for more on this placement. Sometimes I find that the comments really help me make sense of my own placements

Toodles

Before I sign off, I just have to say this :please try to restrict asks to 2-3 placements. You can send in multiple asks if you'd like, but answering them all in one ask can get a bit cluttered and I'd hate to miss out on something 😊

Hope this helped 💕as always, I'd really appreciate your feedback on this take on how these placements affect you.

[narrators-journal]

Life after the fact

CW: mentions of some nasty stuff related to kids.

First part: Here

For the next few days you were a mess. Between the morning sickness and the guilt of having murdered someone, you were throwing up every bit of food or water you tried to digest, every shadow and small noise in your crappy, dirt cheap apartment at night sent you into a break down, sickened more with fear and the force of your sobs when you got overwhelmed. You never felt like you could relax, everything was nerve-wracking, and especially when you went outside. However, as the weeks passed, you got a handle on your fears. You weren't exactly okay, but you forced yourself to adjust and move on as best you could. As if the paranoia wasn't enough, you also had to deal with being pregnant on your own now. Oh god, I should've just stayed with Illumi! What the hell am I supposed to do about this whole thing?! You thought one night as you sat in your windowless bathroom, curled around the toilet, vomitting from the nerves, nausea, and violent sobbing, I wish I could just go back...apologize and just go back to the way things were. you lamented as you sucked in shakey, cold breaths that burnt your throat. It wasn't like you'd planned this far ahead, your escape attempt was a heat of the moment thing, fuelled by the fear of what might happen after you gave birth and the gut feeling that your partner would doom your child to a life akin to his own, which was definitely not a normal, healthy, or happy one. So, now you were left to suffer the last, stubborn thrashes of winter alone, in a crappy little apartment with walls so thin you could feel the last icy wind of winter when it blew, struggling with pregnancy symptoms and relentless paranoia of what will happen if or when Illumi finds you. After that night, you decided it was best to do what you could to lessen your stress, but that was easier said then done. For one, no matter the steps you took to ensure your safety, taking jobs great distances from where you live, whipping up a fake identity to use for work, limiting how often you went out, you could never fully convince yourself that you were safe from the Zoldyck family. Another thing that stopped you was your financial situation. You managed to nab a bit of cash from the car you'd stolen from the butler, using most of it on a cheap car, but, while a reasonable amount still, you still ended up taking up a job as a maid-for-hire of sorts, and usually your employers would tip you terrifically when they figured out you were pregnant, but with the gas bill, food, and the sketchy amount of rent you had to pay, you had little to nothing left to save for a better place or the baby. Finally, you realized after looking into it at one of your employer's homes during your break, that you were too far along in your pregnancy for termination, since at that point you were somewhere in your fourth month, so that left you with almost no other option than to find a way to give birth. After that, you just settled for having the child at home to avoid the paper trail a doctor's office would need and than leaving the baby at a church. They'll take the kid in and put it into foster care, which is a safer gamble than the Zoldycks. You thought, wiping the beginnings of tears from your eyes as you drove to the day's job. For the remainder of the day, you focused on your work, cleaning up toys, doing and folding laundry, making beds, the usual duties for this particular household, and did your best to not think about your past. That is, until you heard someone knock on the door while you were upstairs mopping the bathroom. The sound instantly sent ice down your spine. It felt as if the world skipped a beat in time with your heart, but at another knock, you took a deep breath and inched towards the distant door. Your heart thundered in your chest so hard that it hurt, but you picked your way down, staying away from the windows and doing your best to move stealthily with the slowly growing bump of your stomach until you could look out of the front door's peep hole. Thank the heavens it was simply your employer, a neatly dressed, glasses clad woman who you'd heard was a lawyer or CEO of some sort, not an assassin. So, just as she gave a third, more impatient knock, you opened the door,             "I'm so sorry ma'am! I couldn't move too quickly to get to the door sooner," you said, not meaning to sound near hysterics, but at least that made you sound super apologetic as the woman huffed in annoyance,             "It's fine, I just had my entire day upheaved." she said, walking in and you swiftly shut the door, not thinking much of the figure you saw standing at the roadside from the corner of your eye, she commonly had other helpers here when you were, it was likely just a gardener or someone to bring in her bags. "First, I burn myself with coffee at 6 am this morning, than I have to drive three damned hours to the airport just to find out my business trip was cancelled because the client decided to cut ties with my work! Ugh, don't get me started on tr-" The woman paused her ranting and hair adjustments suddenly, looking at you with concern and confusion on her dark-skinned face, "Are you alright, dear? Why are you crying?" Her voice was gentle, all annoyance gone when she'd realized you were upset, but it still made you jump and feel a small spark of guilt at the show of vulnerability, something you'd been fighting to repress. But your emotions had been so unpredictable recently, it only made sense that you failed.            "I-I'm sorry, I don't know what's come over me," you sniffed, scrubbing at your tears as she put a reassuring hand on your back and led you to a chair, letting you sit down,            "Don't worry about it, I just thought I was the one to upset you. Are you sure you're alright?" You nodded as she looked you over, looking so parental and compassionate, it made your heart hurt. And just like that, even more tears were falling onto your clothes as a sharp knife of loneliness cut through you. You did your best to at least slow the streams of tears, but seeing this woman you hardly knew be so motherly and understanding reminded you of your own mother, or maybe those times Kikyo had helped you through the beginnings of morning sickness or nausea. Either way, your boss' actions hit a chord and now you were trying not to bawl while she offered you tissues and talked you down from the hormonal extreme.          "I see now, must be the pregnancy talking." she laughed a little, "when I was expecting my eldest, the mood swings never really left, and just about anything would set me off. I remember one time, my husband had made me breakfast and I ended up sobbing over it for a good five minutes while he was just mortified." she said, giving you a comforting smile when you weakly laughed. Finally, when you were past the violent sobs, your boss helped you up and led you to the kitchen so you could splash some water on your face and she could get you some tea to help you relax. Once you were settled down at the table, warm cup of tea between your hands, your boss sat at the table with you and let you take a few sips before asking,           "So, do you have any plans set for the baby?" she asked, and you felt her warm eyes drawing out all of your issues. You started out pretty vague, admitting you weren't really sure of what to do, but that soon led to you going into detail about how you didn't think you'd be keeping the child and probably putting them up for adoption since you couldn't afford them. You told her that you felt so bad for the decision, but you didn't want to raise your child in poverty or worsen their quality of life in general, which your boss understood, laying her dark hand on yours soothingly as you spoke. For the next hour or so, you sat with the woman and she helped you through all of your options. You told her that the father of the child wasn't the best, so she explained good ways to limit contact and how to keep track of every instance of neglect, abuse, or anything of the sort just in case things required lawyers and courts. By the time you'd left her home for the day, you were feeling much better about your situation, and while your plans to put the baby up for adoption hadn't changed, you were much more confident in the steps to go about it. You kept that job for two or three more trips, telling your boss of your plans to stop after that. She understood perfectly and made sure your pay was doubled,           "Pretty soon you'll come up on being six months, you won't be able to do a lot in your third trimester." she pointed out after you refused to accept her money, but that wasn't the only kind thing she did for you. No, on your second to last job with her family she had basically spun you around at the door and herded you out to her car. "I understand you're trying to keep as low a profile as possible, but I can't in good conscious not have that child checked on." she told you as she drove you to a check up, patting your hand and just letting you bawl, but she refused to let you apologize for her helping. In fact, when you thought back on the drive after the appointment, she seemed somewhat sad, but you couldn't exactly place why and on the drive back you didn't want to ask and open an old wound. So, you simply didn't say anything about it and went home that night with knowledge that so far your baby seemed fine, and a tip from your boss to find some time to relax more, "Make sure to destress as best you can, it's good for your mental health and the baby." she advised, as motherly as ever. So, you decided on your drive home to give that advice a shot. At least once. So, after your last job with that family, while spring time was beginning to really settle in outside, leaving a crisp but fresh feeling night in the wake of a lukewarm day, you had borrowed a book from a neighbor and ran yourself a warm bath to hopefully relax in, even if you likely wouldn't be able to get out of it super easily when bedtime rolled around. Despite that fact, sinking into the warm water felt like heaven to your aching back, breasts, and hips. So, you relaxed in the water for a long while, two hours or so, just reading the book and occasionally putting your hand on your belly to feel the baby kick. The only thing that could've made the night better was if you had some scented candles and maybe a shoulder rub, but you were content with settling for this. All around, the night was near perfect, and that was somewhat because you refused to let your anxiety at the little creaks of your floor or the sounds of your neighbors opening their own doors in the ratty old hall destroy your good time. Eventually, you did get out of the cooled water with some work and got dressed in your comfiest clothes before going to bed, feeling rather happy and relaxed, and thus falling asleep rather quickly. That night, you had quite the weird dream. You weren't a stranger to nightmares about Illumi or the Zoldycks, but this dream was much more melancholy. At the start, it was pretty normal, a nonsensical flurry of dream-logic-fuelled, stream of consciousness, but than things got a bit easier to follow, and the dream took a turn from non-sense, to a bittersweet dream of laying in bed with Illumi again, letting him feel your belly and generally being happy with an undertone of 'something's off' to it. When you woke up the next day you were hit with a tsunami of yearning for that scenario, or any scenario that meant you got cuddled and comforted, and didn't feel so crushingly alone. For the twentieth time since the beginning of the month, you thought of returning to the Zoldyck estate, or at least making it easier for your fiance to find you, but than your common sense kicked in to stomp out that fantasy. No! If I go back my life will be more than just miserable boredom and restrictions. It'll become worse than hell! Illumi will be pissed beyond belief and will probably do something extreme to me! Your fearful inner voice had a point, Illumi had already threatened you when you'd asked to go out without him that day, he'd undoubtedly do worse to you for not only trying to run, but staying gone for so long and putting your baby under so much stress. Oh god, what would he do if I miscarry? The mere thought of his reaction was enough to settle the debate. You'd stay gone. You'd put up with the apartment that smelled of wet dogs and smoke, the paper thin walls, the exorbitant rent, you'd leave your baby at a church once they were born, and you'd go off the grid. If you could help it, you'd never go back to face Illumi and his family.

[wsjeonghwa]

what’s POPPIN i’m demi (pst, she/they) and this is kim jeonghwa, problem child, wildcard, and the human embodiment of the cherry emoji. she’s the visual and sub-vocal of etoile, apparently the leader too, but jeonghwa never got the message. you can read more about her in her bio, profile, and career pages, or for the visual learners, pinterest. if you’d like to plot, feel free to hit up my ims or leave a like here! i’ll leave a tldr under the cut about her

personality

her mbti being enfp says so much about her tbh

she loves meeting new people, hanging out with friends, having a large circle of friends. she’ll be just as happy to hold a stranger’s hair back late at a party and never speak to them again as she is to go on a road trip with a decade old friend

empathetic, can be a good shoulder to cry on. she’s the type to listen to you cry, then say let’s get some ice cream, some shots, and go throw ass at a club to feel better

and she loves anything new. routine bores her, so she’s always trying to think up ways to make the things that feel tedious more interesting

libra who says she doesn’t like confrontation, but can be quite fiery

she can be set off over a tiny thing like a flip of a switch with no discernible reason, but usually feels quite bad when that Does happen, because her anger can be ruthless. she’ll drag up ur trauma n flick it in ur face

BUT save for those unpredictable moments, she puts up with a lot of bullshit from people, probably more than she should. tends to only have issues with people when they have one with her first

very passionate, adventurous, impulsive, hedonistic, wants to live her life to the fullest every day

usually quite easy to get along with if you don’t mind her seemingly boundless energy

background

she’s the middle child who was treated like the spoiled youngest

has a shite immune system, so her parents have worried over her a lot since birth n coddled her as well as tried to shelter her

until she was 15 she played the perfect daughter role, worked rly hard to succeed in school bc it’s Not natural to her, kept her thoughts to herself, all that

then decided suddenly she didn’t wanna live to the decisions of others

started figuring out what made her happy. tried out loads of different hobbies, focused on friends more than school

career

when she was scouted at 17 it was an easy decision bc she’d also developed an interest in music and performance in the last two years

almost as soon as she joined they tossed her into crescent’s “this is war” mv

when she graduated hs her parents wanted her to stop training, they got into a fight, they cut her off financially

jeonghwa got a job as a barista for a hot minute but when yuseong offered her a cf job she was like wait i’m around a bunch of ppl w money all the time why am i not using this to my own gain

so she quit n just bat her eyelashes for staff to pay for her meals until her parents gave up and let her use their money again

debuted 99% because of her charisma, which works great for her. she’s got the puthy parts of the songs xx

since then, her solo schedules have focused a lot on modelling and variety to capitalize off of her charm that’s snagged her a couple of viral moments as well

plots

jeonghwa loves knowing a variety of people, but gets on best with those similar to her

anyone who loves a good thrill, willing to jet off to an amusement park with an hour’s notice, try out a new class with her, go clubbing, anything like that

alternatively, people that could use a bit of a push to get out of their shell, jeonghwa is Great for that

connections based on hobbies could be great too. almost anything you can think of, jeonghwa participates in sometimes. painting, knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, pottery, photography, hiking, rock climbing, thrill seeking, geocaching, glassblowing, anything active and productive. maybe they meet during a class, or because jeonghwa saw a creation of theirs and liked it/disliked it, or vice versa

still loves being spoiled, so anyone who will pay for things for her would get a little star in her eyes (the laff is she likes spending her money on others too)

someone who is well trained in music production,, jeonghwa wants to write, but yuseong is yuseong and she knows next to nothing, so she could use a helping hand

alternatively someone to tell her she’s a shit songwriter lol

she’s free love type, so hook ups. casual, hate hook ups, between friends, between exes, whatever

Or, people she’s dated where she kinda,, kept them on the hook? she’s terrible in some relationships in that she’ll treat them like they’re dating, be super romantic with them, but when it comes to defining the relationship, she skirts around it, and ends up ghosting/cheating

someone she’s hurt with one of her out of place verbal smackdowns

and for one career focused one, someone (or a few people) she gets shipped with a lot

[f0rever15elf]

How would the guys help you deal with someone that can’t take no for an answer/harassing you? It’s unfortunate that there are people who enjoy making others uncomfortable and see how far they can push boundaries. And hopefully that’s all it is because this type of situation can get scary quickly. I had a neighbor who bothered me so much I started having nightmares of him breaking into my home but thankfully he left one day and I never saw him again. Thank you for taking the time to write all these headcannons. You’re such a good writer. 😁

It’s always a scary situation to find yourself in. I’m glad you’re ok and I hope the nightmares don’t plague you anymore. And thank you so much my darling, I’m so glad you’re enjoying these! 

Head Canon Masterlist

When Someone is Harassing You:

Whiskey: Whiskey bristles if he’s with you when it happens. He knows you like having your own agency, so he lets you deal with it at first, staying quiet beside you as he keeps an eye on you. If the person keeps egging you on after you say no, he’ll repeat your statement to the person. If the person still doesn’t get the hint, he’ll wrap his arm around you, pulling you to him as he tells the fool to “get ta steppin’. Door’s that way.” If the person STILL keeps trying his luck, well, you remember that scene in Golden Circle? Say hello to Mr. Tornado in a Trailer Park. He will tussle, and leave the guy tied up in his lasso before paying the bill and taking your hand to lead you home. You never need to worry at home, because Whiskey has a top of the line security system. Misappropriated Statesman funds to install it? You betcha. 

Javi: Javi simply will not have this, especially given the dangerous shit he’s involved in, and that you are therefor exposed to by proxy. If anyone even begins to make you uncomfortable, he steps in, physically putting himself between you and the person making you uncomfortable. He’s not afraid to flash the badge to get someone to back off. He’s not as likely to start a bar fight. At least, he won’t throw the first punch. If someone puts their hands on you though? He will not hesitate to start throwing punches to get them off of you. Oh, and if you’re not already living with him? Well, you’re gonna be staying at his place for a few days. This is more for his own sanity than yours, just so he can make sure you’re ok. 

Frankie: Frankie postures over you. He’s not big on verbal confrontation (which is why 80% of the things that happened in TF, happened). But he knows how to carry himself. He’s ex-military, ex-spec ops. The man can make himself look intimidating when he wants to. Someone saddles up to you and it’s clear you’re uncomfortable, Frankie acts like your shadow, hovering and staring down the person making plays at you. If that’s not enough to get them to back off, Frankie is the type to just get up, pay the tab, and wrap his arm around you so he’s between you and the person pursuing you. Now, lets say this person is dumb enough to follow you out of the bar. Frankie will see you to the truck before turning and grabbing your harrasser by the collar. He’ll whisper a few things them, you’ll see the person’s face look like they’ve seen a ghost, and they bolt away. You never ask what he says, and you’re pretty sure you don’t wanna know, but you’re not bothered by that person ever again. As for at home, his side arm is in the night stand, and he makes sure you know how to use it. 

Ezra: The words that pour from his lips when he interrupts your harasser are said with the most sickeningly sweet voice he can muster. it kinda scares the bar tender, some of the things Ezra says he’ll do your harasser if said harasser doesn’t leave his precious gemstone alone. It’s all said with a smile that could turn water to ice and you know that he’s deathly serious. Any individual stupid enough to keep trying to go at you, Ezra will escort outside, asking you to please wait for him. He comes back a bit later flexing his fingers and shaking out his hand, but the person is gone and Ezra was let back in the bar, so you don’t ask questions as to what happened. As for keeping you safe at home, Ezra puts in for a decent security system. Whenever you’re feeling uncomfortable, he does his best to keep you with him, or to stay around with you in the house until both of you are sure you’re safe. But after the broken nose and double black eye the other guy got...well...let’s say Ezra and you have a reputation to not be played with . 

Oberyn: He will NOT have this.  Not in his court, not in his land, not with anyone who shares his bed. 0 tolerance policy. If he finds the person making you uncomfortable, that person’s life is about to become miserable. That’s assuming Oberyn doesn’t just toss that knife he always keeps on him at the harasser. The Red Viper is exactly as his namesake, waiting to strike, wild and unpredictable. But he’s fiercely loyal and protective. He’d probably make and example of this first harasser, letting it be known what will happen to anyone who ever even thinks of committing such an act against any of those whom he favors ever again. 

Din: Din lets you take care of yourself at first two. He knows you can, but he’ll be there in case anything goes wrong. Your harasser keeps trying, he says, “They said leave them alone.” he doesn’t look up from his spot next to you, and he’s still as a statue. That counts as their one and only warning from him. If this person keeps trying...well...hitting on someone who is clearly taken or not interested are some pretty crappy last words. Din doesn’t miss. Not at this close of range. You’ll stare at him wide eyed and he’ll just shrug, dropping some extra credits on the bar for the trouble to the bartender. Not many people try to harass you with a Mandalorian posturing over you with his hand on his blaster. Those stupid enough to try don’t last long. 

Pero: When someone hits on you or makes you uncomfortable and he’s there, you learn that Pero has some really creative ideas when it comes to cutting out tongues to keep creeps from talking. Another posturer. He’s always beside you, looming to protect you and with his fearsome visage, not many people dare to approach. Even fewer after he drove a dagger through the hand of someone reaching out to touch you. Word travels fast in a small community. Knowing you live with this mercenary, no one even tries to harass you at you home, knowing that your Spaniard won’t hesitate to come out with swords swinging to put a stop to the matter. Pero is the type to whisper his promises of protecting you to you when he’s holding you at night. And that’s all the reassurance you need, because you believe him. 

Max: Anyone dumb enough to try and flirt with or harass the one out with a vampire has made their last mistake. They become dinner. Max doesn’t make a show out of it, just standing with that businessman smile before compelling them outside. He comes back in wiping his mouth and a little bit warmer. At home, you know you never need to worry if Max is home. having a vampire is better than any guard dog. When Max is away, he makes sure his security system is top of the line. His policy with you is also that if you call and ever need him to come home, he will, no questions asked. 

Maxwell: No one will ever get close enough to you to flirt with you or harass you. You’re almost constantly on his arm, and his security detail is always nearby when you’re not with him. On the off chance someone does manage to make you uncomfortable, Maxwell ruins them. A financial break they will never recover from. Not to mention blacklisted on every job site his has access to. At home, the likelyhood of anyone getting close to the property, and therefor to you, is slim. He also has a top of the line security system, and you have a guard dog as well (who is your baby, no matter how much Maxwell insists the dog is for protection, not for a pet.) If he’s not home, there’s usually a member of the security detail somewhere around, making themselves scarce. If he ever hears about a case of you being uncomfortable, Maxwell isn’t really one to...physically correct the situation, he doesn’t really like touching, but he’ll wrap his arm around your waist instead of your arm as he normally does for a while when you go out, until he sees you’re more relaxed in public again. 

Marcus: Marcus is level headed with this kinda thing. He carries his badge with the FBI everywhere, so if you telling the person hitting on you to go away doesn’t work, and him telling the person your taken doesn’t work, he’ll flash the badge and say some big words about the consequences of harassment from a legal perspective. That usually scares lowlifes like that off. I can’t see Marcus starting a fight, he’d be more likely to just take you and leave if things were getting hot. He has his concealed carry though, and he does always have it on him, so you’re never unsafe while he’s by your side, though he’d much rather you any other method of calming the situation before he even thinks about reaching for the firearm. At home, he has his side arm, and like Frankie, he teaches you how to use it. best to be informed and not need to use the information than the other way around. He has a pretty decent security system. If you’re ever worried about someone coming to your house, he maaayyyyyy pull some strings in his position to have some coworkers stake out for a bit to keep an eye on things, especially if he’s not home to do so. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Strength in numbers

Accountancy is more likely to be mocked than celebrated (or condemned), but accountants, far more than poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Though "bean counters" are employed by firms, they are notionally bound by a professional code of ethics every bit as serious as the Hippocratic Oath: "count things honestly." Without an accurate accounting of quantities, you can't make good decisions on quality.

Though accountancy concerns itself with counting things, it is inextricably bound up with the realm of ideas, and accounting conventions (how you account for things) are philosophical matters, not empirical ones.

It's no coincidence that Modern Monetary Theory owes more to accountancy than it does to economics. Economic accounts of the economy have an unfortunate tendency to proceed from first principles, creating models based on pure reason, without checking in on the actual world.

For example, neoclassical econ's "homo economicus," the rational value-maximizing actor who populated so many models; or economists' insistence on targeting inflation with interest rates; or treating national "debts" like they were household debts.

It's telling that the greatest economics revolution of my lifetime was "behavioral economics," which could also be called "checking to see whether real people act like we've assumed they acted."

If it seems weird that economists would spend generations operating on the incorrect assumption that people behave in a certain way without ever checking, consider that Aristotle assumed women had fewer teeth than men, - and never bothered to count.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/aristotles-error/

Accountants check, and what they find is…gnarly. In "An Accounting Model of the UK Exchequer," Andrew Berkeley, Richard Tye & Neil Wilson offer a mindbending account (heh) of where money comes from (hint: not taxes), and where it goes ("poof").

https://gimms.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/An-Accounting-Model-of-the-UK-Exchequer-Google-Docs.pdf

The authors did a two-part MMT Podcast interview describing the paper's findings, and it is the most extraordinary 2.5h audio you're likely to find: not just the realities of money, but the deliberate obfuscation thereof.

https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/84-andrew-berkeley-richard-tye-neil-wilson-an-accounting-model-of-the-uk-exchequer-part-1

https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/86-andrew-berkeley-richard-tye-neil-wilson-an-accounting-model-of-the-uk-exchequer-part-2

One thing the Exchequer paper reveals is that accountants bat for both teams: team clarity and team obscurity. As many finance scandals and finance dramas have reminded us, accounting can be turned to obscuring and dazzling rather than revelation.

After all, somewhere in HM Exchequer is a team of accountants who know *exactly* how money works - and know that it's nothing like the account produced by economists or politicians. They know it because they are in charge of it. They do money, all day long.

When accountants go rogue, things get bad. And thanks to neoclassical economics - and its emphasis on the "efficiency" of monopolies - we are living through a golden age of ghastly accounting fraud.

Just four companies - EY, KPMG, PWC and Deloitte - audit the books of 97% of the 350 largest UK companies; but they make far more selling these companies consulting services, and have made a habit of lying about those books in order to boost their consulting income.

Accountancy is meant to be a profession that understands that conflicts of interest are a moral hazard. But just as doctors convince themselves they won't get addicted to their own painkillers, accountants talk themselves into believing that conflicts won't corrupt them.

That's how the Big Four accounting companies came to sign off Carillion's fraudulent books. The company hid £7b worth of debts, took on management of vital government services up and down the country, then collapsed, leaving the nation stranded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carillion#Financial_difficulties

For the Big Four, Carillion's collapse was a feature, not a bug. After all, the only accounting firms large enough to oversee its bankruptcy were...the Big Four, who billed millions for cleaning up the mess left behind by their own fraud.

Accounting fraud is a fascinating potential fracture line in economic reform. After all, fraudulent accountants may help *some* plutes get rich - like, say Bernie Madoff, or Donald Trump - but they often do so at the expense of *other* plutes.

Like Exxon, which lied to its investors for 11 years about the value of its shale-gas holdings, which it purchased at the peak of the fracking bubble and whose revenues and liabilities it has buried in its financial statements ever since.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/02/02/whistleblower-sec-complaint-alleges-exxon-fraud-overvalue-fracking-assets

The company is finally writing down $19.3b worth of those assets, but the true figure is more like $50b. And yes, Exxon's big investors include a lot of passive funds that invest pension savings, meaning this hurts Main Street as well as Wall Street.

But as ever, those pension-savers are the Lucky Duckies here, because - joke's on us - Americans have basically no pension savings, thanks to the wage stagnation and asset inflation that left almost all working Americans facing penury in old age.

Hey, at least they're not getting ripped off by Exxon! The real victims of this decade-long, multibillion-dollar fraud are the same people who got snookered into buying into shitty Trump casinos and luxury buildings: rich people.

By definition, rich people deal in quantities that exceed their ability to personally count so they are especially vulnerable to scam accounting. It's only when the frauds tank a company we all suffer, as jobs and businesses disappear, screwing workers  and cities.

The absence of a neutral ref and scorekeeper is a really big deal in online business and policy circles. The ad-tech duopoly isn't merely content to price-gouge advertisers - they also lie about what those sky-high prices are paying for:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

But each member of the duopoly has a different scam. Google's frauds are complex, behind-the-scenes market manipulations, an abstruse, mathematical grift that leverages complexity and monopoly to fleece its customers.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3500919

Facebook is much more straightforward. It just lies. Back in 2016, FB lied about how many people were watching videos, and encouraged hundreds of media company to beggar themselves to chase fraudulent video dollars:

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-lawsuit-pivot-to-video-mistake/

Accounting fraud is in Facebook's DNA. After all, this is a company whose primary sales-pitch is, "We will count everything you do and then charge people to help them sell you stuff."

This proposition is intrinsically hard to evaluate. How can a customer know if their FB ad generated a sale, or whether it was an ad elsewhere, or random chance, or even that elusive beast, customer loyalty?

The main source for the belief in Facebook's efficacy is...Facebook. It's not a neutral party, and the accountants who sign off on its books have repeatedly shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

Here's the latest scandal: since 2018, FB's been defending a class-action suit brought by its customers who claim that FB lied about "potential reach" - that is, how many users would see their ads.

https://www.ft.com/content/c144b3e0-a502-440b-8565-53a4ce5470a5

And while FB strenuously denies that the inaccuracies in "potential reach" metrics were just normal, unpredictable variations in user behaviors, a whistleblowing FB product manager has produced emails in which they warn execs that they're committing fraud.

The execs who got these memos rejected them, telling the product manager that acting on them would have "significant revenue impact" - that is, "Our customers wouldn't buy our products if we were truthful about them."

The fraudulent reach figures begat fraudulent revenues, and those revenues were fraudulently reported to investors. Those investors will now take a haircut if FB loses in court.

Accounting fraud's pathology is bimodal: it abets the wage-theft and austerity that harms the poorest and most vulnerable - but also the reporting scams that harpoon finance's biggest whales.

It's a curious alliance of interests. For now, it seems like Big Tech is going to be antitrust and anti-corruption's harbinger, but I wouldn't count accountancy out - it's got exactly the right kinds of enemies to fire sustained political will.

[purvishraick]

A TALE OF ALWAYS AND FOREVER

CHAPTER 7

Fanfiction : Bloodbound (Choices)

Pairing : Adrian Raines x Amy Richard Parker (MC)

Warning : none

Rating: Teen

TAG LIST : @otherworldlypresents ​  , @evelynistic ​   , @silma-words ​ , @fireycookie , @lauren-raines-x , @nala-raines

If anyone wanna be tagged in future do let me know….

read previous chapter here ….. Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Chapter 4 , Chapter 5 , Chapter 6

So here i promised this last night but sorry it got delayed ...got stuck in some important work .... now here i am .... i hope u like it

Amy had to forcefully cut the call, in order to shut her brother and she new that this will make him angry. But she didn’t need a pep talk for not getting wasted in the club before her interview. She could handle her brother afterwards and the interview was important. She wandered here and there and settled on the bench. She felt like she is being watched from behind but didn’t find someone. Just then a stunning woman with an icy demeanor came towards her.

“Amy?” stern woman said .

“ yes that’s me “ she replied .

“I am Nicole Anderson, VP of operations at Raines Corp. I will interview you . “ she said .

Amy was surprised to see that she was going to be interviewed by someone so high at post but her queries were eased when she reminded her that they take their hiring process very seriously and she followed her in the conference room keeping her confident look .

“ now then. The Raines Corporation is a global leader in technology and innovation . Why exactly are you interested in being the executive assistant to our CEO ? “

“well…” Amy took a deep breath and continued , “ I’d love to help make the world a better place . what I admire most about the Raines Corporation is your dedication to global innovation and improvement. The clean – water initiative …the vaccine for the cerella virus …the green energy project… you guys aren’t just getting rich. You’re trying to help people, to make technology that’ll save the planet. I can’t think of anything better than being a part of that.”

“hmm……a good answer. A bit cloying , perhaps, but Adrian might actually like that “ Nicole said with an appreciative look.

Just as she was going to speak the next thing , the door at the back of the room swings open , and a handsome man in a perfectly – tailored suit strolls in.

Intelligence sparks through his eyes . He was extremely charming , with his black obsidian eyes assessing her , her already killer nervousness now peaked a whole new level.

“ Adrian I wasn’t expecting you…” Nicole asked unable to hide the surprise in her voice .

Adrian as in Adrian Raines …well all escalated very quickly for her .

“ I had a free minute. Is this the candidate ?” he asked taking the authority in his hands as he decided.

Professionalism and seriousness reflected in his voice .

“ yes …but I’ve just started the interview and—“ Nicole asked stammering .

“ I’ll take over from here “ he cut her off not wanting to take any excuses .

“……of course sir , go right ahead “ she surrendered .

Adrian sat across Amy , eyes burning right through her . He has never seen such a beautiful person in his entire existence , god knows how would she be as a person .

Amy’s nervousness grew even more when his eyes bore through her but she remembered once more , she is Amy Richard Parker and nothing in this world ever scares her , she remembered her brothers’ advices on professionality and confidence and recalled her dad’s proud thought about her and her mother’s loving smile . Now that was enough to calm her down , so she put on the brave and fearless smile again on her face and straightened her back.

“ Amy , is it ? “ Adrian looked at her and saw her hazel brown eyes which her so hypnotizing , with all his strength he prevented himself from being lost in them .

“ that’s right “ she said interrupting his thoughts .

“ tell me Amy , what do you desire ? “ he asked her and she was surprised at the question .

Amy was already so mesmerized from him that this question surprised her.

“ You mean ……why do I want this job ? Because I – “ but was interrupted by Adrian .

“ I didn’t ask why you want this job. I asked what do you desire . “ he asked seriously and professionally.

“ I desire ……PASSION “ she answered after thinking fir a while .

“ oh , really ? “ he asked , his brows raising , he was in true sense intrigued by her answer .

“Sorry , if that is too personal but I am just being honest . I want to feel deeply. I want to experience life , live every moment like my last. We never know when is our last moment , it is better to live our life to the fullest than to regret it afterwards . That’s what I desire “ she answered honestly and it was the true answer she saw what happened to her family everything was good and happy then suddenly they lost everything , she do not want to regret anything .

“ I can relate“ Adrian was impressed internally but didn’t expressed it. He supressed a smile to reach his face. He was truly impressed by her desire to live and feel and experience. He now looked at her resume .

“ lets see here … graduated college 3 years ago …masters in communication …interned at Mannon financial…volunteered in San Torbida and France abroad for a year “ he read out and again was impressed from her but wondered why it took her an extra year to sign up for this interview or for that matter any other one .

“ yep that’s right “ she said .

“ well , how was that tell me in three words “ he asked .

“ difficult. Enlighting. Rewarding. “ she replied easily .

“ good , this job can be challenging and unpredictable , are you comfortable running unusual errands ?”

“Absolutely “

I have been doing them since a long time now , she thought to herself , smiling .

“ Handling confidential information ? “

“ I can keep a secret “

You wont even realise how many I am keeping right now too , she thought again and smirked .

“ Working nights ? “

“ Always been a night owl “

Okay , I atleast told him one thing fully without strings attached , she smiled while thinking .

“ Good , Anything else I should know about you ? “

“ Hmmmm …… I have got WORLD CLASS people skills “ , she said with a proud smile .

“ Oh , really ? “ he asked with questioning eyes .

“ I was voted ‘ most likable ‘ in my high school class . Also ‘ most popular ‘ and ‘ best smile ‘ . Technichally you are not supposed to win in multiple categories , but I was able to persuade them . And also the cherry on the top I was the PROM QUEEN “ , she stated out all of her achievements proudly and remembered how happy and proud her father was to see her that day . She and her brothers has always been the brightest in the whole family , anyways. Suddenly feeling nostalgic and tears building in her eyes she averted her gaze on the floor.

“ Thus proving your point “ said a grinning and impressed Adrian , but he saw a glint of sadness in her eyes and he doubted that he saw tears too , and was unable to understand why counting her proud moments made her sad .

“ exactly” Amy said after controlling her emotions and forcing a smile.

“ one more question “ Adrian leaned forward hands folded on the table and with an intense expression , told her the story of a man who got a genie lamp and destroyed everything , and then finally asked her about what should his final wish should be .

“I think his final wish should be to undo his first two wishes “ she said after thinking for a while .

“because ?” Adrian asked curious to know her theory .

“ because he already had everything he could ask for a family and many friends …what could he ask for more it was more than enough …all he wanted or ever needed was right there in front of him …this is a story of temptation and greed …he should have never played this game …all now he can do is making things as they were before “

Her answer was something totally honest … Adrian glanced at her and then noticed how true each and every word was . she was not only beautiful but also quite intelligent …in true sense beauty with brains.

She was quite interesting too …Adrian personally never saw such a person in his entire life … and he needed to know her …he knew that it is a huge risk and a mistake but he already did that when he decided to interview her himself …now he couldn’t resist her … so then he does the only thing he could do …he knew that Nicole will be a big trouble after this but guess he was okay with that if it was what would keep this girl around .

Then he grins brightly at Amy and says

“ You’re hired “

“wait what ? …seriously “ Amy asked with wide eyes , she was surprised , how in world is it possible that someone gets hired so fast …this was weird to her … but of course she was happy .

Adrian left an inside giggle watching her surprised reaction …she looked adorable with those wide eyes …his smile grew even wider … and he extends his hand …which obviously she took .

‘ oh my god …his skin is impossibly smooth…and hold so firm …wow he is really handso-……no no no …stop brain stop thinking …no eyes …don’t look in his eyes for too long … fuck …, I am a disaster …stop cheeks don’t turn red …god please ‘ she thought .

Good god if god wanted to kill her please kill her in this exact moment …someone save her from this embarrassment …she was a disaster with wide eyes blushing cheeks …FUCK.

Adrian saw her flustered reaction which was by far the cutest thing he saw in his life … his vampire senses made her blushing cheeks clearly visible …the dark pink tint on her cheek made her impossibly adorable.

“welcome to Raines Corporation “ , he said with a bright smile

They made eye contact for just moment but everything stood still for that particular moment …it was mesmerising .

In that moment Adrian didn’t knew about Amy but he knew that they were going to go a long way .

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