#The lack of privacy; using up so much resources to run; using other people's work without permission or compensation...

[monstergili]

Me every time I see ads for AI:

No, app on my phone, I don't want to edit it with AI. I don't want to generate with AI. I don't want to ask the AI. I don't want to make AI wallpapers. I don't want to rewrite with AI. I don't want t-

[netwatchpro]

How to Monitor Employee Computer Usage: Balancing Productivity, Privacy, and Ethics

In today’s digital workplace, where screens dominate desks and remote work blurs the lines between personal and professional life, keeping tabs on how employees use their computers has become a hot topic. For managers, the question of how to monitor employee computer usage isn’t just about technology—it’s about trust, efficiency, and navigating a minefield of ethical dilemmas. Done right, monitoring can boost productivity and safeguard company resources. Done poorly, it can tank morale and invite legal headaches. So, how do you strike the balance? Let’s dive into the nuances, explore some tools like OsMonitor and others, and unpack the bigger picture to spark some real thinking about what this practice means for businesses and their people.

Why Monitor Employee Computer Usage?

Picture this: you’re running a team of 20, and deadlines are looming. You notice some folks are churning out work, while others seem… distracted. Are they stuck on a tough task, or are they scrolling social media? This is where how to monitor employee computer usage becomes a practical concern. Monitoring tools can reveal patterns—time spent on non-work apps, excessive bandwidth usage, or even risky behavior like downloading unapproved software. The data can help optimize workflows, protect sensitive information, and ensure resources are used wisely.

But let’s be real: it’s not just about catching people slacking. Companies have a vested interest in security. A single employee clicking a phishing link can unleash chaos, from data breaches to ransomware. Monitoring can flag suspicious activity early. Plus, in industries with strict compliance rules—think finance or healthcare—tracking computer usage isn’t optional; it’s a regulatory must. Still, the question lingers: is it worth the cost to trust and morale?

Tools for Monitoring Employee Computer Usage

Several software solutions make it easier to track what’s happening on company devices. Let’s look at four well-known options, each with its own flavor, to give you a sense of what’s out there. (No sales pitch here—just the facts to help you think through what fits your needs.)

OsMonitor: This lightweight Windows-based tool is a favorite for its simplicity. It tracks screen activity, website visits, app usage, and even file transfers in real-time. You can block non-work sites or USB drives, and its reports are clear enough for non-techy managers to digest. Its one-time purchase model is budget-friendly, but it’s Windows-only, which might limit its appeal.

Teramind: Known for its robust analytics, Teramind goes deep. It monitors keystrokes, emails, social media, and more, with real-time alerts for policy violations. Its strength lies in insider threat detection, making it popular in high-security industries. However, its feature-heavy approach can feel overwhelming for smaller teams.

ActivTrak: This cloud-based solution emphasizes user-friendliness and behavior analytics. It tracks productivity trends rather than micromanaging every click, offering insights into how teams spend their time. It’s great for remote work but might lack the granular control some businesses crave.

Hubstaff: While often marketed as a time-tracking tool, Hubstaff also monitors computer usage through screenshots, app tracking, and URL logs. Its focus on freelancers and remote teams makes it flexible, though its subscription model can add up over time.

Each tool has its niche, but they all raise the same question: how much monitoring is too much? The answer depends on your goals, team culture, and how you communicate the “why” behind it.

A Real-World Example: The Good, the Bad, and the Awkward

Let me share a story from a friend who runs a small design firm. (No names or places—let’s keep it universal.) She noticed projects were dragging, so she installed a monitoring tool—not OsMonitor, but something similar. At first, it was a revelation. She saw one designer spending hours on gaming sites, while another was juggling multiple client chats efficiently. Armed with data, she coached the gamer to focus and praised the multitasker.

But then things got messy. Word got out about the monitoring, and the team felt betrayed. “Why didn’t you trust us?” one designer asked. My friend hadn’t explained the tool upfront, assuming it was just a “management thing.” Morale dipped, and a top performer quit, citing “Big Brother vibes.” She eventually turned things around by being transparent—explaining the tool was about optimizing workflows, not spying. But the damage was done, and it took months to rebuild trust.

This story highlights a key lesson: how to monitor employee computer usage isn’t just about picking software. It’s about communication and culture. Transparency can turn a tool from a trust-killer into a team enhancer, but only if you handle it with care.

The Ethical Tightrope: Privacy vs. Productivity

Here’s where things get thorny. Employees aren’t robots—they’re humans with a right to privacy. Monitoring their every keystroke can feel like reading their diary, even if it’s on company time. Some argue it’s justified: if you’re paid to work, your computer activity is fair game. Others see it as a slippery slope to micromanagement or worse—legal trouble.

Laws vary, but many jurisdictions require employers to inform workers about monitoring and get their consent. Ignoring this can lead to lawsuits or fines, especially if personal data (like private emails sent on company devices) gets swept up. Even where it’s legal, overzealous monitoring can breed resentment. Studies show that employees who feel watched are less creative and more stressed, which hurts long-term productivity—the very thing you’re trying to boost.

On the flip side, unchecked computer usage can lead to real risks. A 2023 report (no specific source, just industry chatter) found that 60% of data breaches start with employee error or misconduct. Monitoring can catch these issues early, saving millions in damages. So, businesses face a dilemma: protect yourself, but don’t alienate your people. What’s the right call?

Best Practices for Monitoring Employee Computer Usage

If you decide monitoring is necessary, here’s how to do it without burning bridges:

Be Transparent: Tell your team what’s being tracked and why. Frame it as a tool for fairness and security, not punishment. My friend’s mistake was skipping this step.

Set Clear Policies: Define what’s acceptable on company devices. Can employees check personal email during breaks? What sites are off-limits? A clear policy prevents surprises.

Limit Scope: Monitor only what’s relevant. Tracking work apps and websites makes sense; reading personal messages doesn’t. Tools like ActivTrak focus on trends, not invasive details.

Use Data Wisely: Focus on patterns, not individual slip-ups. If someone’s spending 10% of their day on social media, talk about time management, don’t slap them with a warning.

Check Legal Boxes: Consult a lawyer to ensure compliance with local laws. Consent forms and clear notices can save you from trouble.

These steps can make how to monitor employee computer usage a constructive process, not a divisive one. But they require effort and empathy—there’s no shortcut.

Questions to Leave You Thinking

As we wrap up, I want to toss out some questions to chew on. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to how to monitor employee computer usage, and the best solutions come from honest reflection:

Is monitoring a sign of distrust, or a practical necessity in a risky digital world?

How would you feel if your every click was tracked? Would it change how you work?

Can businesses boost productivity without monitoring, through better training or incentives?

Where’s the line between protecting company interests and respecting personal space?

These aren’t just management questions—they’re human ones. Whether you’re a CEO, a team lead, or an employee, your perspective shapes how this tech gets used. Tools like OsMonitor, Teramind, ActivTrak, and Hubstaff are just that: tools. They don’t decide your values or your culture. That’s on you.

So, what do you think? Is monitoring a game-changer or a trust-breaker? Drop your thoughts below—I’d love to hear how others are navigating this tricky terrain. Let’s keep the conversation going.

[flickeringart]

Short natal chart reading

You asked specifically about your communication style, so I’ll cut to the chase.

Mercury is in Scorpio, which makes your quite impactful, purposeful and potent – you are likely very observant and able to read between the lines. You know the value of information and the impact it can have if revealed at the wrong time or presented in the wrong context or in the wrong way. You’re likely to want to keep your thoughts to yourself and only reveal selected parts to selected people – even if you do reveal yourself it is never the whole picture. You enjoy ambiguity to an extent, although there’s unease relative to what people might keep from you. You reserve your rights to be suspicious at all times - nothing is what it seems. The common stereotype for having Mercury in Scorpio is the “detective”. You might not want to leave any stone left unturned in your thinking process – which can take you into quite complex and intricate trains of thought on a daily basis.  Since Mercury is conjunct the Sun, you derive a sense of self from your thinking – which can be both good and bad. Good because you feel that you are standing behind every word and thought that occupy your mind, bad because you might have a hard time differentiating yourself from your thinking. You might feel that your way of communicating is very much a reflection of who you are. This is not the case for everyone. Your Sun and Mercury are in the 1st house of Self, which means that you show up as your authentic self – people see you in your outward projected persona and what you think is a big part of who you are.

Your Sun-Mercury conjunction forms a strong square to Jupiter in the 11th. It might be that you find yourself blocked from accessing the freedom and optimism that you crave because it seems to contradict your way of communicating – even your sense of self. It would seem that, you have to spread yourself thin in order to socialize and be involved with a lot of people and causes, it would seem that you have to exaggerate to the detriment of your own innate caution and need for privacy which is natural to Scorpio individuals. Perhaps you feel that in order to have some chance of luck when interacting with people, you can’t be yourself all the way. You can’t display your true self with your friends and your network because in that sphere, you would feel the need to be purely optimistic open to experience. In your life, there’s expectance of good things to come, perhaps to the point of it being unreasonable – you might exaggerate your optimism in order to compensate for your innate caution and awareness of the impermanence of life. You put your faith in collective aspirations and although you might reap the benefits on one level, on another level you might feel frustrated that you’ve lost yourself to the group – in other words, what you gain from associating with people and forming connections is not allowing you to be yourself and communicate your opinions and thoughts in the way you would want to. Chiron in your 3rd house emphasizes the fact that you have to take a philosophical approach to cope with non-redeemable difficulties in communicating. What these difficulties and issues are exactly is impossible for me to say, possibly it has to do with the ignorance and lack of awareness of people around you – too much discipline or lack thereof in school, too much strictness and demands on how to interact, behave and think. Chiron is in Capricorn, which suggests that you would’ve felt debilitated in your ability to apply yourself effectively in your studies, feeling judged and inferior because of regrettable yet inevitable circumstances.

Saturn is in Gemini in the 9th house. It is also the ruler of your 4thhouse. It would seem that education and knowledge were promoted in your home growing up, not necessarily for the purpose of your own interest and self-fulfillment, but for the purpose of succeeding in society and developing your intellect. Saturn is in retrograde, which usually means that the native is hard pressed to personally undertake challenges for the sake of growth because they might not come on their own – and if they do, they are rarely conducive to goal of being responsible and self-reliant. In other words, you would need to push yourself and put yourself in situations that require effort, consciously. Since your question was specifically about communication, I should say that Saturn in Gemini points to insecurity and a sense of lack in mental abilities that might lead you to put on a charade of wit in order to not reveal your struggles. This is not beneficial although it’s understandable that there’s a hesitant attitude to be open an accepting of one’s insufficiencies. It’s fine to hide behind a coping mechanism as long as one is working on developing oneself from the ground up at the same time. Be honest and real with yourself in your struggle. There’s no shame in admitting to where one’s at and working toward betterment. Getting over the fear of intellectual failure is hard, yet you should keep in mind that you’re only ever truly accountable to yourself despite external authority trying to instill feelings of guilt or shame. Humility is the best antidote to prideful concealment of lack.

Your Moon in the 4th house in Capricorn points to a home with an emphasis on discipline instead of softness. The natural ruler of the 4th house is the opposite sign of Cancer, which has to do with mutual dependence and emotional nurturing within the home. Capricorn as the 4th house ruler is tough because you probably had to work to get your needs met. With your Moon in this sign and in this house, you might’ve adopted the attitude that nothing is for free and that you had to put aside your feelings in order to have a chance of stability and security in the long run. In any case, your home environment growing up was certainly serious. Neptune also sits in this house, squaring your Sun-Mercury conjunction. Perhaps it’s not too presumptuous of me to suggest that you had to blend in to the detriment of your own sense of self and your own mental assessments and opinions. With Neptune in the 4th there’s usually intense idealization as well as sensitivity to the environment and a need to blur the edges in order to cope with the less refined aspects of reality. You seek and sought complete merging within your family home, yet your yearning probably made you feel frustrated with yourself because you could never quite attain the love (Neptune square Venus) or the recognition of yourself that you hoped for (Neptune square Sun-Mercury). Your Venus in Scorpio is also in retrograde which means that external socializing, displays of love and affection was “lost on you” since you have a hard time with real understanding of what underlies social interaction. You might struggle with general unhappiness because of this, but your task is to cultivate the inner experience of satisfaction rather than seeking it in the external. Since you’re a Libra Rising, Venus is your chart ruler and it’s in its detriment in the sign of Scorpio. Your idea of beauty is tainted with themes of passion and intensity; you might enjoy reveling in the darker undercurrents, the things that are shocking, a bit taboo and forbidden.

Your Mars in in Libra, conjunct your Ascendant on the 12th house side. Mars is in the sign of its detriment, quite diplomatic and socially accommodating. Your way of asserting yourself is always aimed at being reasonable in light of the social setting and circumstance you’re in. Since Mars is in the 12th, you assert the will based on universal emotional longings that are common to every human being. You might never fight or argue on behalf of selfish agenda, it’s always in favor of trying to restore equilibrium and an experience of being emotional fused. You probably feel that anger is abstract energy and available for use, but it’s not to be employed on behalf of your separate self. Planets in the 12th can sometimes point to passed down familial issues, in the case of Mars here, personal drive and anger is “stuck in the ether”, unconscious and/or given up to live its own life “back stage”. Aries, the sign ruled by Mars, is in the 7th house, pointing out that you probably encounter your “shadow” (disowned qualities) of anger, selfishness and self-motivated action in other people. In addition, Lilith sits right on the Descendant in Aries, which suggests that you find other people irrationally independent and overly attached to getting their own way. You might even find that you compulsively display these traits in interaction with other people because you feel that you are going to be deprived of your chance to do what you want. You’re likely to feel deprived of your individual potency with these placements and you might come off as obsessively independent in relationships with other people for this reason. The whole dynamic stems from a feeling having to sacrifice personal interest and it often backfires in radical self-absorption and self-motivated action.

Let’s take a look at Pluto, your Sun ruler. It’s in your 2nd house, trine Jupiter and sextile Mars. You’re likely to be quite possessive fearfully protective of your material resources, which includes money and finances. You might be quietly and covertly acquiring your material necessities, or avoiding it all together because of the constant paranoia and threat of the rug being pulled out from underneath you. You don’t trust that you’re going to have enough for yourself to be content, ever, so you might be quite powerful and persevering in your quest for value. Pluto and Scorpio have a lot to do with impermanence and expecting crises to envelop without a moments notice so you’re always “on your toes” internally, scanning for potential chaos to break lose, especially as it relates to loosing what you value on a purely material level. This is especially true since Scorpio rules your 2nd house and Pluto is placed here. The Pluto-Jupiter trine would denote a strong sense of faith and confidence in your ability to survive ordeals, perhaps due to your sense of being part of something larger than yourself (Jupiter in the 11th house).  You might be concerned with how to regenerate faith and find value in seemingly “dead matter”, metaphorically or literally speaking. Your Part of Fortune is conjunct Jupiter, which pints to your prosperity coming through the broadening and expanding of your understanding of life through involvement in groups or causes. It’s quite possibly even linked to your career. You might take on the role of the inspiring and visionary teacher that transforms people’s lives (Pluto trine Jupiter). Or, put in other terms, your teaching and sharing of yourself will make you feel powerful and impactful in the world of ideas as well as that of form (Jupiter in 11th trine Pluto in the 2nd). Your South Node conjuncts your Pluto, so it’s easy for you to wield subtle power and take control. Pluto sextile Mars gives you a relentless will; you do fight dirty even if it’s below the surface and through quiet coercing and strategic manipulation that is barely noticed. Guilt seems to be a popular tool for Scorpio Mars in attempt to control matters, and the same could be said for Pluto-Mars aspects. Mars in the 12th easily lends itself to acting out the role of the martyr or victim of circumstances and when aspecting Pluto, this can be used strategically. You can probably be a little ambiguous and subtly threatening in your actions in order to get what you want.

Finally, let’s look at Uranus. It’s in its domicile in Aquarius in the 5thhouse, trine Saturn. The 5th house has to do with activities of self-expression and it would seem that you find an outlet for breaking out of the societal bars of convention within this sphere. You might have fun exploring new collective trends and ways of expressing yourself that challenges the status quo. It would seem that you incorporate your offbeat ways nicely with the necessity to conform and succeed within society, since Uranus trines Saturn. However, seeing as Saturn is in retrograde, you are not particularly in touch with the limits and boundaries of society – they don’t make sense to you. You might set high goals for yourself and work diligently to reach them, yet you don’t experience a correlation between your effort and the payoff. Looking to what is wrong with authority, rebelling against it and pushing new, more progressive thought systems might come easily to you for this reason. You might be inclined to hop on a collective thought trend and identify with it, embody it in your own unique way. You’re likely to express alternative ideas and conceptual framework through your creativity and spontaneity.

---

If you’re interested a general chart reading similar to this one feel free to message me. I do a Basic Natal Chart Reading without the use of astrological language for 13.44 USD (6-7 pages), but if you want a more casual overview of your chart or have any specific question you would like me to go into, I charge 10 USD for about 4 pages.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 9 - ao3 -

Lan Qiren was groggy with lack of sleep the next morning, but an evening’s contemplation of the Lan sect’s rules had put him back into the right mindset.

As a disciple of the Lan sect, he was entitled under the rules for his elders to remember do not disrespect your juniors just as he was required to respect and obey your elders. Pursuant to the rules, he should have the protection of his sect and their support, and if what he had was imperfect, it was at least something; for every Lan Ganhui that mocked him, there was a Lan Yueheng that encouraged him, and there were plenty of teachers that preferred him over all the others.

As for his brother – Lan Qiren should not hold his anger against him. He had been acting in the best interest of the sect, seeking to obtain benefits for what had been lost; he had thought throughout the trip that Lan Qiren had given up more than just his word of honor, but had refrained from punishing him accordingly. In the end, even his father had assigned him only to kneel, which was a milder punishment by far than he deserved for all his mistakes and insolence.

More than that, his brother was right: Wen Ruohan would be bound by his own word of honor and public reputation to treat Lan Qiren with dignity, and by endorsing the relationship rather than rejecting it, his sect was indicating that they would hold Wen Ruohan to his word. His father had appropriately expressed concern on Lan Qiren’s behalf, his brother had refuted those concerns with well-reasoned logic; it was inappropriate for Lan Qiren to take such an intellectual discussion to heart.

That he had – and that he had forgotten, even temporarily and in the privacy of his own head, the rule do not argue with family for it does not matter who wins – was merely evidence once again that Lan Qiren was inferior to his brother, who through keeping a cool head had enabled their sect to turn what could have been an embarrassment into a victory.

As for his father…Lan Qiren shouldn’t have been surprised, that’s all. Hadn’t years and years taught him that fathers only gave what they chose to give and no more? He had long ago learned that his father was kind and noble and equitable, concerned with all the Lan sect disciples (but for his dearly beloved eldest) in the same way and the same manner; being disappointed to receive that and nothing more was only his own foolishness.

(He only wondered, in passing, why it had been his father’s glacial voice that had scared him so, compared to the familiar warmth of his brother’s anger.)

So fortified and reassured, Lan Qiren returned to the regular flow of daily life at the Cloud Recesses.

It was not easy. As his brother had predicted, rumors about his sworn brotherhood with Wen Ruohan sprang up at once, and many of his fellow disciples were prone to staring at him when they thought he wouldn’t notice. The teachers handed out many punishments for breaking the prohibition about talking behind people’s backs, although with a certain leniency that made Lan Qiren suspect that they themselves toed the line of that particular rule behind closed doors.

The rumors themselves were split between those that theorized that Wen Ruohan had used nefarious means to entrap Lan Qiren and force him to agree to brotherhood – the Fire Palace was mentioned often, as were various theoretical misapplications of cultivation techniques of dark and unsavory natures – and those that skipped over the how of brotherhood and went straight to speculating as to the why, which typically also involved a variety of references to misapplied cultivation techniques, this time of the sort most often found exclusively in certain types of low-brow spring books.

Someone even suggested that Wen Ruohan intended on taking Lan Qiren to bed as a cauldron, which was the stupidest idea out of the whole lot.

“Of course that can’t be true,” Lan Qiren patiently explained to Lan Yueheng, who had come to collect his geometry book. As a gesture of thanks for his support, Lan Qiren had read the whole thing and sent an annotated list of questions and comments; Lan Yueheng had practically turned pink with excitement when he’d seen it and then secluded himself for two days to write a response. Lan Qiren still didn’t see the appeal of geometry, but he’d managed to coax Lan Yueheng into a discussion of the mathematics of music theory, an area in which their particular interests overlapped, and he had hope of a fruitful dialogue continuing into the future. “At least traditionally, cauldrons are individuals with high cultivation potential that has yet to be developed – raw natural talent, in other words, which can then be refined into strength for another. My inborn talent is only moderate, even low, and my progress is primarily due to good resources and hard work. So even if someone put in the work to make me a cauldron, they wouldn’t get much out of me.”

Lan Yueheng nodded, his brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “So your brother would’ve been a better cauldron than you.”

“���that is correct, but please don’t say it.” Lan Qiren quietly pitied Lan Yueheng’s etiquette teachers, and spared a thought to hope that his cousin’s children, should he have them, would take more after whoever he married than him. Even if only because Lan Qiren hoped to become a teacher himself one day, and he was sure that Lan Yueheng’s particularly brash and un-Lan-like bluntness would make for a terrible future student. “Perhaps it would be more helpful for you to think of it in the sense of energy transfers of heat? I’m already cold, so to speak, so he wouldn’t be able to draw out much heat from me.”

“Wait, if you’re cold and Sect Leader Wen is hot, would that make him the cauldron? Assuming you ever did dual cultivate.”

Lan Qiren pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s...not how that works, Yueheng-xiong. At all. I was merely attempting to use a metaphor to clarify the issue. Clearly I failed and only confused things further.”

Lan Yueheng shrugged. “At least you try,” he remarked. “And when you fail, you try again, doing something different. It’s better than the teachers who just do the same thing every time and blame you for being as bemused on the seventh repetition as you were on the first.”

Lan Qiren felt his ears go red at the compliment. “You’ve been here too long,” he reminded his cousin. “Your parents won’t be happy to see you spending too much time with me.”

“My parents don’t care. It’s my aunt and uncle who don’t like it. They say that people might start asking if I cultivate as a cauldron too –”

“Your parents listen to your aunt and uncle, so if they don’t like it, you shouldn’t disobey them. The rules say Be a filial child.”

“They also say Do not form cliques to exclude others, but that isn’t stopping the other disciples from playing favorites, is it?”

That was definitely one of the rules more honored in the breach, Lan Qiren thought with a sigh. But what could be done, when their elders did the same? The sect followed the example of its leader, and his father’s tendency towards favoritism were well known, albeit one that was widely indulged as a quirk rather than condemned as a serious flaw. 

“I will remind the teachers of that one,” he said. “Perhaps a refresher would be suitable, to remind people. But the rule are meant for your own discipline, not others, and – ”

“Just because other people aren’t following the rules doesn’t mean I shouldn’t, I know,” Lan Yueheng said with a sigh of his own. “I’ll go…oh! It’s getting late. Weren’t you supposed to go to the guest’s pavilion by the western watchtower already?”

Lan Qiren blinked. “I don’t have that patrol route in my schedule until the end of the week.”

“No, no! I was supposed to tell you! Lao Nie’s come to visit, and –”

There were rules against running in the Cloud Recesses, so Lan Qiren was slightly late despite his best efforts, but true to form Lao Nie didn’t admonish him: he only turned from where he was sitting in the pavilion and smiled, calling out, “Qiren! There you are!”

“Forgive –”

“Forgiven,” Lao Nie interrupted before Lan Qiren even got the first word out. Lan Qiren was relieved to see that there was neither food nor tea already prepared; he would have been mortified if it had grown cold while Lao Nie was waiting to see him. “And don’t bow, either. How have you been? Tell me people aren’t harassing you over the nonsense with Hanhan.”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth, then hesitated.

“Do not tell lies,” Lao Nie observed, grimacing. “Ah, Qiren! Sometimes your brother’s worse than useless. It’s a pity, really, I hadn’t realized – well. At any rate, I’ve been bothering him for weeks to tell me about you and he wouldn’t say a word.”

“He was angry at me for messing up the conference,” Lan Qiren explained.

Lao Nie’s eyebrows arched. “You mean the conference where the Lan sect got first place in both major events and then extracted serious concessions from the Wen sect in a completely unexpected and nearly inexplicable political coup that got the whole cultivation world talking in awe at your political acumen? That conference?”

“I lost face for him. He thought – well, he’d thought it was worse than it was,” Lan Qiren hesitated. “He’s not the only one.”

Lao Nie huffed. “People are, by and large, stupid,” he declared. “Don’t let them get to you. They’ll change their tune soon enough.”

Lan Qiren wasn’t so sure. “They say a reputation is like a porcelain vase,” he said, unable to conceal his worries in the face of someone actually expressing concern rather than curiosity. His dream was to be a traveling cultivator, and that would be much easier with a good name, which he had always had before – good, or at least boring, which was just fine with him. He preferred to be boring! It had never occurred to him that he might do something that would render him the subject of gossip; it had never happened before. “Once cracked…”

“Right now, there’s only some bored people speculating that there might be a crack,” Lao Nie said. His confidence was contagious; Lan Qiren couldn’t help but relax a little in the face of it. “No one’s actually sure about it, and they’re willing to hear otherwise – things aren’t yet so bad. Don’t worry. I’ve spoken with Hanhan about it already.”

Lan Qiren felt his ears burning in shame. “Lao Nie! You didn’t!”

Especially since that would undoubtedly only make Wen Ruohan even more angry…

Lao Nie laughed and put his hand on his head, rubbing it lightly. “I did. Not in your name, but rather his own – do you think the Wen sect wants to get a reputation for being led by a man with an unhealthy interest in noble-born children? It’s in his interest to get this cleared up as much as you.”

Lan Qiren felt the tension rush out of his shoulders all at once. That hadn’t occurred to him, but now that Lao Nie had pointed it out, it was clear enough.

After all, for all the talk going around about Lan Qiren, it was widely agreed that he was clearly the victim in whatever scenario they’d thought up, whether through having his oath extracted under torture or by force; even among those who theorized that Wen Ruohan intended to use him as a cauldron, the reputation Lan Qiren might get would be, at worst, that of a seductive flirt who couldn’t be resisted. Lan Qiren’s brother had scoffed audibly the first time he’d heard that, saying that such a rumor would naturally be dispelled the moment anyone came in contact with Lan Qiren for more than a moment, and in all honesty Lan Qiren agreed with his assessment. He had the classic Lan sect looks, yes, but so did many others, and he had a demeanor as stern as a schoolmaster, giving off the feel of an old man even though he wasn’t even of age.

Meanwhile, for Wen Ruohan, the consequences were undoubtedly more dire – if he was said to have a taste for boys, especially noble-born ones, the other sects might be afraid to send their sons around him. It was a different reputation by far than his taste for torture, or his supposed use of dark and forbidden cultivation; those would make people fear him, while lusting for children would only make people disdain him.

Still, Lan Qiren wasn’t sure how exactly even someone of Wen Ruohan’s cunning would go about fixing such a mistake – and that was putting aside why he would make such a mistake over Lan Qiren in the first place. He hadn’t had a chance to explain to his brother his theory that Wen Ruohan had acted just to irritate Lao Nie, and in the end he’d decided it wasn’t worth drawing his brother’s attention back to the subject.

Besides, if Lan Qiren could figure it out, with his notorious inability to understand interpersonal affairs, then surely his brother was more than able to do the same. It wasn’t as if Lao Nie were being shy about it…

“Hanhan said he had something in mind,” Lao Nie was saying, shaking his head. “He usually does, I find, and each idea’s more awful than the next.”

Lan Qiren shifted a little from one foot to the other. “If you know he’s awful, why do you…” he hesitated. “I mean, you call him – an endearment.”

“Oh, he’s a little awful, no doubt,” Lao Nie said, sounding rather fond. “But as long as it’s not my sect, what do I care? Anyway, Qiren, you shouldn’t worry. If there’s one thing you can trust with Hanhan, it’s that he takes care of anything associated with himself.”

Lan Qiren didn’t really like the fact that he was now counted among that number.

It didn’t seem all that safe.

“Though of course that doesn’t protect him from you,” Lao Nie added, suddenly smirking, and Lan Qiren blinked owlishly at him. “Apparently, you’re a very talkative drunk.”

Lan Qiren’s face burned red.

“And effusive, too! According to Hanhan, even after you forced him down in his seat to keep listening to you, you kept waving your hands around while you were talking and knocking things over; he had to pin you down to keep you from destroying things by accident.”

That would explain the marks on his arms.

“Apparently, you didn’t appreciate him doing that and kneed him right in the –”

“You really think he can make the rumors go away?” Lan Qiren hastily interrupted, rubbing the back of his neck a little as if it would make the heat of hideous embarrassment go away. That tallied up a little too well with the physical evidence to be anything other than accurate. “There’s – a lot of them. And I’d like to have a clean reputation.”

“You will,” Lao Nie said, thankfully distracted from his mortifyingly plausible story. “Anyone who meets you will know at once that you’re a righteous and upstanding person.”

Lan Qiren liked that better than the way his brother had put it.

“It’s just that you haven’t had a chance to make your name in the cultivation world,” Lao Nie said. He sounded sure of himself. “You’ll do wonderful things one day, Qiren. I’ve no doubt.”

“I don’t want to do wonderful things,” Lan Qiren said, scowling. “I just want to travel around and help people.”

“Yes, I know,” Lao Nie said, and he sounded fond again, just the way he did when he was talking about Wen Ruohan, or even Lan Qiren’s brother. Truly, Lan Qiren thought to himself, the Nie sect had no idea how lucky they were to have him as sect leader. “Really, Qiren, it’s like I said: don’t worry about it. Now come, tell me what you’ve been studying recently.”

Lan Qiren had promised himself that he would reduce the amount of time he spent with Lao Nie on his occasional visits to the Lan sect, not wanting to risk inciting Wen Ruohan’s unreasonable anger and jealousy any further.

He would need to assign himself an appropriate punishment for breaking that promise, he thought, and sat down to start telling Lao Nie all about the work he was doing with one of his teachers on comparing the origin points of the various Lan sect rules, as well as his experiments on arrays to enhance open-air acoustics that would, he hoped, eventually be inscribed on all Lan sect instruments to increase the range and impact of their spell songs.

He even mentioned the possibility of a joint project on the mathematics of musical theory, and for whatever reason he thought Lao Nie looked especially pleased about that.

He didn’t think about Wen Ruohan at all.

[aldmerisorcery]

This is the impact of the US Empire's tech oligarchy and its global dominance. Plus the fact that so many people did grow up online, the consequence is often stunted social skills plus severe addiction to social media and other US Imperial tech products. In the 2020's, the US Empire isn't just one that uses finance and resources to Conquer, it colonises the psyche also.

There is a way out, however. Social media should be used as sparingly as possible. "Facebook spies on you", well no shit. It's a psychological trap that gives you a massive dopamine hit for giving away all information about yourself of your own volition. The owner of this giga corporation has already stated that privacy is a thing of the past. I wouldn't want to pay for social media but if a for profit enterprise is free to use then it is not the product, you are! Don't get your news from social media, go back to how we used to do it and run an aggregator, RSS is still very much an option. Don't doom scroll, spend as little time as possible on their apps and don't feed them data.

Use an RSS feed to get the news you need online, this allows you to read what you want without generating profit through social media clicks and the lack of endless arguments in a comments section prevents anyone from collating your political & psychological profile to sell to ad companies so an algorithm can be further weaponised against you, fucking up more of your mental health in the process. RSS is subject to no algorithms. You see more and you see it as it appears chronologically, there is nothing being hidden from you or artificially promoted.

Try and wean yourself and your friends away from social media messaging apps and onto alternatives. This one is difficult as as much as we like to (justifiably) complain people are lazy at the end of the day and are determined to not give slightly more inconvenient alternatives a chance. There's a reason YouTube's dominance has never been threatened by an alternative. But privacy respecting messaging alternatives, like signal, do exist. Also, while a Gmail account might be necessary for accessing those Google services you absolutely need for work, YouTube etc, start to migrate towards pro-privacy alternatives for personal info use. Proton Mail is a good alternative email account.

Desktop operating systems also have a solution. Sure there might be Windows systems we've known and actually really liked before, everyone remembers Windows XP, for example. Truth is though that Microsoft have always been a morally bankrupt entity. They have went out their way to trap people in a monopoly and in the early days hid the fact that other browsers besides their own actually exist. But, like Apple, planned obsolescence is a part of Microsoft's strategy of mega greed. They forced everyone to upgrade to Windows 10 when they wanted and support for that is ending in October 2025. Windows 11 has the most egregious form of legalised spyware, compulsory AI and bloat in Windows history, and that's saying something. All this means, of course that system requirements for running Win 11 as your OS are also higher leading to the necessity of purchasing newer hardware. But you don't actually have to do that.

Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS are not the only game in town. The solution to keeping your old hardware alive and escaping the American duopoly's grip on the desktop OS market is Linux. An OS kernel designed by a European based on old UNIX operating systems. There are plenty of Linux OS to choose from (distros). Do some research and install what supports your needs, is a project that is local to you, not based in silicone valley and which supports free and open source software. Gaming on linux systems is also easier than ever with Wine and Proton compatibility layers meaning more games than before are perfectly playable. It does mean doing a bit of research and learning how to install your own operating system, but it's not impossible. You'll be fighting against the US Empire's evil corporations while learning new practical skills at the same time.

Apply this philosophy to as much of your digital life as possible. Don't use Google Chrome, install privacy respecting browsers like Librewolf or Mullvad. Learn to spoof user agent and other data browsers gather on you. Visit deviceinfo.me to see just how creepy corporate browsers actually are. Support piracy for things corporations either won't allow you to own legally or make it unbelievably difficult to do so. After all, if buying isn't owning (if you even get that choice, especially for older media) then piracy isn't stealing. And while streaming can be convenient, again, you own nothing there. The service can and will remove what you like watching, irrespective if you're in the middle of a series or not. Support physical media as much as possible and buy CD's, DVD's and Blueray.

Also, lastly but really importantly, remember than online isn't real life. Try and spent as much time as possible offline as well. Go outside, enjoy nature. Spend time with family members and friends. Share experiences that you'll remember long after. Sure, you can have online friendships and remember certain conversations on some soulless, sanitised social media app. But it's not the same as a genuine in-person experience with someone you really value. So, remember to also put down your phone and pick up your life.

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[sunnyrinusstudies]

Going FOSS: An Intro to Open-Source software for studyblr (and also some privacy related bits)

Source for Header Image

Intro & attempt at TLDR

Hey everyone! Today I’d like to tell y’all something about Open Source Software, and also Why this should matter to you! This’ll probably be the first post of a series I intend to do, because I believe the Studyblr community, even the non-nerd folks, could really benefit from switching some things out in their digital environment. Since this is a long post, I attempted to summarise it below, please do read on if you have the spoons tho!

TLDR?

FOSS stands for “Free and Open Source Software” the “free” part doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free as in free pizza, but mostly means free as in freedom.

There’s a humongous amount of variants on this concept, but the core of FOSS specifically is the four freedoms:

1. To run the program however you want and for whatever you want

2. To study how the program works and to change it in whatever way you want

3. To be able to share it with whomever you feel like

4. To be able to share your modified version with whomever you want

There’s a whole host of software licenses built around these concepts, you can check those out at the Open Source Initiative website, or at Choose A License. Both have a good summary of what they all stand for.

Open Source software is used for a lot of products, nearly every single webserver is an Apache Linux server, Google chrome is built on top of their open source chromium (google is still the devil, but y’know, it’s an example), and even deep deep down, Apple computers run on top of a Linux Kernel. Many more can be listed, but I won’t do that otherwise this isn’t a TLDR anymore.

Now, Why is this important for you? The Open Source Initiative summed it up real nicely already, but heres a short paraphrase:

Control & Security. If software is open source then you can check if it really works the way it does, and to make sure it’s not spying on you. Even if you don’t have the skills for it, someone else who does will be able to check. Also if you don’t like how something works in a program, then you’ll be able to change it or find someone else’s changed version that you like more.

Training. People who want to learn programming can use the code to see what makes programs tick, as well as use it as a guide for their own projects.

Stability. Because everything’s out in the open, that means someone else can take up maintaining a project or make a successor of it, in case the original developers suddenly quit working on it. This is especially important when it’s software that’s absolutely critical for certain tasks.

Community. It’s not just one program. It’s a lot of people working together to make, test, use, and promote a project they really love. Lots of projects end up with a dedicated fanbase that helps support the developers in continuing to work on the software.

I’d like to add one more tho: Privacy, which ties in a lot with the security part. Nowadays with protests going on and everything being online due to the pandemic, folks have been and will be confronted much more with the impact of privacy, and lack thereof. Open Source software means that if any company or group tries to spy on you, then you and anyone who feels like checking, will be able to know and take action on it. Here’s the EFF page on privacy and why it should matter to you

If that got your attention then read on past the readmore button! Or, if nothing else maybe check out the Free and Open Source Software portal on Wikipedia? Or maybe the resources page of the Open Source Initiative?

Terminology: Let’s get that out of the way first

Open Source: The source code that a program is made up of is freely accessible, anyone can look at it and check whether it works well enough or to make sure it doesn’t spy on you.

FOSS: Free and Open Source Software. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to pay for it, it’s free as in freedom and free speech, not free pizza.

There are four freedoms associated with FOSS:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

FLOSS: Free and Libre Open Source Software. This time it is “free” as in free pizza. The “libre” is french for “free” as in freedom.

GRATIS: Sometimes people use this word to mean “free” as in free pizza. Usually alongside “FOSS”

Licenses : A license is something that tells others what they can or cannot do with your code. Licenses also apply to art and literature, those are copyright licenses. There are many different software licenses and I’m not going to be able to list them all.

The biggest players however are:

Apache License 2.0

The 3-Clause BSD License

GNU General Public License (also known as GPL)

MIT License

Mozilla Public License 2.0

There’s even more and you can find a list of them Here on the Open Source Initiative site There’s so many licenses that there’s even a Choose A License site, where you can pick a license depending on what you want it to achieve

Who and/or what even uses open source software?

You don’t need to be some nerd to benefit from Open Source software, in fact, you’re using open source software right now! The biggest example is the whole entire internet. Websites are stored on servers, and nearly every single webserver is a Linux server. The second biggest browser Firefox is open source, and even google chrome is built on top of “chromium” an open source base. If you dont use an iPhone, then you’re probably on an Android phone. Guess what? Android is part of the Android Open Source Project, which is then built upon a GNU/Linux base. All Open Source. Chromebooks? Built on top of a Linux kernel (like a non-patented engine you could put into any motor vehicle you’d like). Heck, even Apple computers are, at their core, built on top of a Linux kernel.

Neat apps you may wanna check out!

I’ve made a little list of apps that might be especially useful for studyblr folks, but depending on how well this post does I’ll probably make some more posts for specific apps.

TiddlyWiki, has a bajillion different ways to organise your thoughts, and also a lot of variant builds out there. Check out their table of contents if you feel lost! There’s versions available for most big browsers, as well as windows, linux, mac, android, and iOS.

AnyType, is an app that looks and almost exactly like notion, but is much more decentralised. They’re currently still in development but if you want to support them, sign up for early access and give them some feedback so they know what works and doesn’t! They’re still in closed alpha, but are intending to give beta access to about 100 folks at a time throughout 2021, so please sign up if this looks interesting to you!

Trilium Notes, is slightly more like a “notebook”, however you can arrange your notes in nearly infinitely deep folders. You can use things like Relation Maps & Link Maps to visualise your notes and how they go together. There’s even more they do and I just cant list it all, so go check out their stuff for a more comprehensive overview! Works on windows, linux, and (unsupported) mac

LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE are two office suites that function just as well as micro$oft office, often Even Better in my experience. I’ve used LibreOffice for years now and honestly? never going back. OnlyOffice is technically free (as in pizza), but it’s a slight hassle to get everything set up, cause you need to set it up on a server. They have a paid and hosted version available with educational discounts, but honestly i’d go with LibreOffice.

OnePile, is an app I haven’t used myself since it only runs on Apple stuff. But I’ve heard a lot of good things about it so that’s why it’s in here. It looks like it works similar to most general “note taking notebook” apps. Looks really pretty too honestly.

EtherPad, is similar to ONLYOFFICE, however this one’s a lot more focused on specifically text documents. Works with real-time collaboration which is really neat.

Anything that FramaSoft has going on. They’re a non-profit organisation, dedicated to promoting digital freedom. A lot of open source cloud related things are not really useful to people who don’t have the time and/or money to set up a whole-ass server. That’s where FramaSoft comes in, they do it for you. Just about everything they offer (here’s a full overview) are free (as in free pizza). They also have a separate site to help you get started!

It’s not free to run it all on their side, so if you find yourself interested in using their services please try to support them any way you monetarily can! (they even have a “minetest” server (not minecraft, deeeefinitely not minecraft))

Joplin!! Which is also what I used to write this post so I wouldn’t have to use The Tumble’s post writing thing. It’s good for taking notes, has a bunch of neat plug-ins, and can also sync with a variety of cloud services!

Nextcloud For if you want to go just that little bit further on the open source and the privacy. Nextcloud has honestly way too many features for me to list, but the important parts are that it’s a nigh perfect replacement for office365, and probably even GSuite. The one caveat is that you either gotta host it yourself, or get someone else to host it for you. Framasoft (mentioned above), has a nextcloud instance. It works on just about every single platform, and can integrate with an absurd amount of services. Here’s a list of providers that work with nextcloud, and what different apps they have installed on their server.

I personally use Disroot, because they’re a local (as in, my country) non-profit that offer about 2gb of free storage, and then for about 15 cents per GB per month you can get more storage if you want. They also have an email service which is hella neat. Their one main rule is Do Not Use For Business Purposes, because they’re here to help the individual folks, not companies.

Neat Links you may also want to look at!

Here are some sources, and also resources that I used for this post. There’s also some stuff here that I think folks may be interested in in general.

General Wikipedia Article on Open Source Software

The Free and Open Source Software portal on Wikipedia

Resources page of the Open Source Initiative

Free Software Foundation definition of “free software”

itsfoss page on what FOSS means

itsfoss page on the history of FOSS

Open Source Software Foundation list of projects and apps they really like

Open Source Initiative on “the open source way”, and how it goes beyond software

Check out literally anything the Electronic Frontier Foundation has going on maybe?

TED talk on privacy and why it’s important

The Surveillance Self Defense project by the EFF

This EFF page on privacy for students

ExpressVPN article on privacy (not necessarily endorsing this company, just a good article)

What’s next?

I’ll probably make some more posts on specific kinds of software that I think folks may like. Or maybe a general overview on the more privacy forcused reasons and solutions for doing all of this.

Future post ideas, none of these are set in stone:

Open source Note taking apps

Replacements for just about Every Single google service I can think of

My personal setup

Open source / privacy conscious social media that studyblr folks may be into

Chatting, Calling, Videocalling: Discord and whatsapp alternatives etc

??? More studyblr apps that could do with a FOSS alternative??

How to support open source when you’re not a big fudgin nerd

How to be better at digital privacy and security, while still maintaining that studyblr aesthetic

Apps, software, other stuff, for specific areas of study maybe?

Feel free to suggest other ideas! Or leave feedback! This is my first big resource post so I wanna know if/how I can do better when I make another one!

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader, Present Mic x Reader, a sprinkling of Erasermic and eventual polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: Explicit, Minors BE GONE

Trigger Warnings: None in this chapter.

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 12/16 (all chapters)

Stain’s capture radically changed the atmosphere in the school, for students and adults alike. Luckily, your suspicions about the case proved correct and no one was expelled, though that wasn’t to say Midoriya, Todoroki and Iida got away scot free.

Iida was, for obvious reasons, the most apologetic of the three. He bowed his head so many times and so passionately that you worried he would give himself a concussion. He apologised for being untruthful and pushing away the help offered to him, seeming to expect disappointment and anger from you or Shouta. If anything, the lack of it hit him harder.

Iida, Midoriya and Todoroki weren’t the only ones affected by the incident. Students you had never seen before dropped into your office, some terrified by the footage they had seen and others conflicted.

A particular video began to circulate the web after the incident, one that detailed Stain’s background and ideology. It didn’t seem to matter how many times it was taken down or blocked, for within minutes it would appear elsewhere. It went without saying that almost every student in UA saw it eventually, as well as the vast majority of the faculty staff.

Everyone had an opinion and something to say, yourself included. You chatted about it at the izakaya as well as the staff lounge and then again during the recording of Support Mic.

Even after public interest died down, when Stain’s name no longer appeared on the news and fewer people came to your office to talk through their anxieties, the atmosphere at UA remained tense. Summer vacation loomed over the horizon and with it the end of term examinations.

As was the case with most people, you were especially curious of 1-A. They had experienced so much in such a short period of time that it was difficult not to be even slightly protective of them. With Nezu’s approval, you attended their physical exams, watching wide eyed at each match.

Your intrigue didn’t only stretch to the students. This was your first chance to truly see your colleagues at work and you could barely hide your excitement, chewing at your thumbnail and twirling the pen in your hand, wincing whenever anyone hit concrete or landed on their face. Recovery Girl seemed to find your fascination amusing, though wasn't annoyed, instead chuckling under her breath whenever you gasped or jumped in your seat.

You watched in awe as Shouta jumped from rooftop to rooftop as easily as he climbed stairs; as Ectoplasm duplicated himself over and over; as Cementoss completely transformed the area around him. You felt incredibly small, the reality of having pro heroes for coworkers never quite so clear as then.

That wasn’t the only realisation you had.

You watched as Shouta moved, remembering how it had felt when he fucked you against a bathroom sink. When Hizashi stepped out to activate his quirk, you couldn’t tear your eyes from his throat, remembering how he had moaned into your mouth when he came. Even now, you could still feel Shouta’s hands against your hips; the vibrations of Hizashi’s mouth against yours.

You were ruined now in terms of standards. You’d slept with heroes and nothing else would satisfy you.

Hizashi had stayed true to his word, saying nothing of what had happened between you the night of the Hosu incident. He flirted as he always did, though it never went any further from there. In many respects, you were grateful for it. Not only would it be far, far more suspicious to other people if he suddenly stopped joking around about how cute you were, but the impact of the reset would almost certainly hit harder. On a surface level nothing had changed between you at all.

You winced when he finally activated his quirk and bellowed across the forest. You didn't have any sound, but could see the trees buckling and shedding their leaves from the impact.

You watched as Jirou and Kouda sheltered in the trees, Jirou’s ears bleeding and Kouda trembling in fear, feeling incredibly conflicted. You wanted them to do their best and show how resourceful they could be, but you didn’t want Hizashi to go too hard on them either.

Several students had gathered in Recovery Girl’s makeshift office and watched each new development with just as much interest as you. Each had opinions on potential strategies, though Kouda’s eventual plan of action took everyone by surprise.

He placed his hands flat on the ground and began to speak, which you initially believed to be him panicking as before. However, moments later, the ground at Hizashi’s feet grew deformed and cracked, a seemingly endless number of bugs flooding out from between the gaps.

You clapped a hand over your mouth, skin prickling at the idea alone. Recovery Girl had little sympathy, tutting and shaking her head as if he had tripped over his own feet.

“Honestly,” she said as her desk phone began to ring. “A teacher of this school…”

“I’ll go and check in on him,” you said, getting to your feet and dusting nonexistent crumbs from your lap.

~~~~

Much like the students, the teachers had a makeshift waiting room outside of the examination areas. You jumped back the moment you opened the door, a sea of beetles, centipedes and spiders scurrying through the gap and towards freedom.

It took you all of two seconds to find Hizashi. All you had to do was follow the layers of discarded clothing. You picked up his jacket and gloves from the middle of the room and his shirt and boots from a little further in, wincing at the layers of bugs still contained within. You tipped his boots upside down at the outside door, giving them a few forceful taps that released several beetles. You gave his jacket and gloves a good shake, turning both inside out to double check for any intruders.

Then, and only then, did you return to the waiting room, draping his jacket and gloves across one of the chairs and setting his boots underneath.

The adjacent room was an infirmary of sorts, with several beds and a privacy curtain and you squirmed as even more bugs scuttled through the open door.

Hizashi had dumped the rest of his clothes in the middle of the room and disappeared behind the curtain, running a tap and whimpering every few seconds.

“H-Hizashi?”

He switched off the water at the sound of your voice and mumbled something you couldn’t quite understand.

“Are you okay?”

You stepped closer to the shield, dodging a line of ants.

“My b-”

“Hizashi?”

He poked his head through the shield, white as a sheet and hair soaking wet, though still sticking up in places.

“Boxers,” he said, so quietly that you could barely hear him. ”They’re in my boxers...”

“O-oh,” you said, blushing with both second hand embarrassment and discomfort. You squeezed your thighs together before you could stop. “I’ll try and find you some clothes, just wait a moment…”

You glanced around the room, leaning over to rummage through every cupboard and set of drawers. In the end, all you could find that was likely to fit him was a set of sweatpants and swimming trunks, as well as an oversized UA branded hoodie.

“Here you go,” you said, slipping them over the top of the screen. “Try these on.”

You were leaning over to salvage the remainder of Mic’s clothes when Shouta walked through the door, immediately rolling his eyes when he realised what you were up to. You glanced up at him, t-shirt in hand, scanning his body without meaning to. Now that you’d seen him swinging from rooftops, goggles only emphasising the sharpness of his jawline, it was difficult to think of anything else.

You didn’t notice that he stared back, taking in the way you had tucked a few loose strands of hair behind your ear; the way your blouse loosened around your neck as you bent over and teased a glimpse of your collarbones.

“I…” You said, realising you were staring at him. “I…”

“You came to observe us, then?”

“Yes,” you said, grabbing Hizashi’s shirt and folding it over your arm. “I uh… you were great. Oh! The students too! You were all great!”

You told yourself Shouta had encouraged you to pursue Hizashi. He had taken a step back and you should respect it.

Even so, you still couldn’t stop feeling flustered when you saw him, thinking of the kisses you had almost shared.

In retrospect, you wished you had gone after him while emotions still ran high. You wished you had asked him why he was pushing you away. What was it that had changed between you? Had you been misinterpreting his feelings all of this time?

No.

You remembered how sad he had looked. You definitely weren’t imagining that.

An awkward silence had broken out between you and you searched your brain for something -anything- to say. Shouta seemed to have had the same idea, for he reached out to you. You wondered if he was going to pull you into an embrace, but instead he scooped up a spider from the shirt you were holding, allowing it to crawl across his palm.

“Sho,” Hizashi called, “are you there?”

Shouta sighed at that and stepped towards the shield.

“Who else would be here sounding just like me?”

“So mean!”

“Anyway,” said Shouta, shooting you a knowing look, “I’ve got a present for you.”

“A present? For me! Really?”

Hizashi sounded genuinely excited, which only made your moment of realisation even worse.

Surely he wouldn’t?

Surely not.

Shouta pulled the curtain back, though, and activated his quirk. You didn’t see what happened next, but Hizashi’s screams were enough for you to make an educated guess.

“What are you doing?! Get that thing away from me!”

“It’s irrational for you to be scared. Look, it’s far more afraid of you.”

Even without the use of his quirk, Hizashi’s screams were loud. You weren’t entirely sure what Shouta did next, only that a half naked Hizashi threw himself through the curtain to escape. He was in too much of a panic to pay attention to his surroundings and crashed into the first thing to block his path, which unfortunately happened to be you. The pair of you collapsed to the floor, you landing flat on your back against the tiles, Hizashi face first on top of you, one hand either side of your head.

“O-w,” you muttered, having hit your elbow and the back of your head on the way down.

Hizashi winced, looking down to see what it was that had tripped him and blushing a furious shade of scarlet when he saw it was you.

Naturally, that was the precise moment Nemuri walked inside, mopping her brow on her sleeve.

“Well, well,” she said, closing the door behind her. “And they call me the R-Rated Hero.”

Only then did you realise the suggestiveness of your position, both you and Hizashi frantically untangling yourselves and getting back up onto your feet.

“H-h-h-how was the exam?”

“Yeah,” said Shouta, stepping out from behind the curtain, spider still in his hand. “What happened with Mineta and Sero?”

“Oh that,” said Nemuri, grinning and folding her arms. “I lost.”

At that, the room fell silent, all of you trying and failing to digest her words. All of you had crossed paths with Sero and Mineta at one point or another and, while Sero was certainly a capable hero, it was common knowledge that Mineta had a weakness for women.

In the end, Hizashi was the one to break the silence.

“You’re shitting us, right?”

“No joke,” said Nemuri, looking incredibly happy about it. “I lost.”

“Give me a play by play,” said Shouta, setting the spider down on a nearby shelf. “I want to know what happened.”

“You could have just watched, you know,” said Nemuri, before smirking and glancing at you and Hizashi. “Unless you found something more interesting.”

Your stomach churned at the implication, even though you knew for a fact that it had all been completely innocent.

“It wasn’t like that,” said Shouta. “So are you going to tell me or do I have to go and watch the tapes?”

At that, Nemuri sighed and described the exam, how Sero had passed out only a matter of minutes in, leaving Mineta to fend for himself. You barely paid attention, mind wandering.

Nemuri didn’t know you’d slept with both Shouta and Hizashi. She’d been making a joke and nothing more. Even so, you couldn’t help but imagine what it might be like if those experiences overlapped: Hizashi burying himself inside of you while Shouta pushed a vibrator against your clit; Shouta fucking you under a blacklight while Hizashi stole the moans from your lips.

You didn’t realise how obscene your thoughts had gotten nor how much you had stopped paying attention until Nemuri clapped a hand to your forehead.

“You okay, (Name)? You’re really warm.”

“I’m fine!” you squeaked, knowing you probably didn’t sound at all convincing. “Actually...I was just thinking...once exams are over, I want to treat everyone to dinner!”

You had taken Akira’s ring to the jewellery store a couple of days earlier, eyes still popping from your head at the number of digits. You spent most of the night wondering what on earth you would do with it. Your bills were cheap, you had a good salary. You didn’t need that sort of money.

In the end, you split the money in half, keeping some for yourself and donating the rest to a number of charities. You had already arranged to go to a cocktail bar with your girlfriends, but wanted to treat your work friends too. They had, after all, come to your rescue in a number of ways.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Hizashi, “we can just go out to dinner anyway!”

“I know, I know...it’s just,” you shrugged, “I sold the engagement ring and well...it only seems fair.”

Shouta glanced from you to Nemuri to Hizashi, scratching the back of his neck. He clearly had questions, but didn’t ask any of them.

“What about sushi? A new place opened up on Pink Street and I’ve been wanting to try it,” you said.

“Oooh, I’ve heard so much about that restaurant,” said Nemuri. “Their rolls melt in your mouth...”

“I haven’t been for sushi in so long,” sighed Hizashi.

“I guess that settles it,” you said, turning to Shouta. “How about you?”

“I’ll pass,” he said, “places like that are too fancy for me.”

“Aw, c’mon Eraser,” said Hizashi. “It’s the end of term, enjoy yourself.”

“They have fancy tuna,” you said. “Even if you don’t stay, you can take some home for Sushi.”

He paused to consider it, glancing from Nemuri to Hizashi and finally you, colour rising in his cheeks at your hopeful smile.

“Fine,” he said, “but I’m not staying long.”

~~~~

That night, for the first time since his recovery, Shouta stayed home instead of patrolling the streets. He had downloaded copies of the matches onto his laptop and made himself comfy on the couch to watch them, making mental notes of every move and decision.

He wanted to go over the strengths and weaknesses of his students ahead of the upcoming training camp and autumn term, though his mind wandered. He kept coming back to the moment Hizashi had fallen through the curtain and landed on you.

He had had suspicions that something had happened between the pair of you ever since the night of the Hosu incident. You had both arrived at the same time, which didn’t make a lot of sense given where you lived. You would catch different trains and arrive at different stations. Perhaps the most incriminating detail of all was the scent that lingered about you both; the same tangerine and orange blossom scent that he remembered from Hizashi’s visits during his recovery. Shouta’s own simple bath products had offended him on a personal level and he brought several bottles from his own collection on subsequent nights.

Shouta remembered turning his nose up at the perfumey scent and layers of bubbles, neither of which belonged in his otherwise simple home. That said, when Hizashi left one of the bottles behind, he didn’t give it back, often reaching for it and inhaling the sweet scent. It was the scent he caught on Hizashi whenever he got close enough, and he didn’t know what to think when he smelled it on both of you.

It wasn’t completely out of the realms of possibility that it was a coincidence, that both of you happened to have used the same product on the same night and bumped into one another outside of the school, but he knew it was unlikely. The simplest explanation was usually the right one, even if he didn’t necessarily want to accept it.

He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. He had told you to pursue Hizashi; he didn’t have the right to feel betrayed when you did. Even so, something had stirred within him when you and Hizashi arrived together, something he had managed to seal away until Hizashi fell through the curtain. He couldn’t stop thinking about it now; thinking about the pair of you in far less innocent circumstances.

His stomach churned whenever he thought about your naked bodies; about the pair of you sharing kisses and secrets. He hated it and he didn’t know why. Hizashi would be the perfect boyfriend and you the perfect wife. It made sense for the pair of you to get together. Hizashi was into marriage and holding hands in public; you had books on the meaning of flowers and pancake moulds shaped like bunnies. He didn’t belong in either scenario any more than he had belonged in the group hug you, Nemuri and Hizashi shared.

He groaned and scratched his hair, turning over onto his side and reloading the video he had been watching. He didn’t want to think about this anymore. It was giving him a headache.

He stared at the screen, watching as Kaminari and Mina sprinted through empty streets, Nezu not far behind. He made it only about five minutes before his eyelids began to droop. He was still getting used to the limits of his quirk and had a feeling he’d overused it in his match against Yaoyorozu and Todoroki.

Shouta stretched back, resting an arm on the arm of the couch and laying his head down on the crook of his elbow.

He’d rest his eyes for a moment and just listen.

He listened out for the racket of crumbling buildings, drifting to sleep before he could stop himself.

When he opened his eyes, he was in someone else’s bedroom, sunlight shining through the windows and bathing his skin in golden light. He was flat on his back and on top of the bedcovers, head resting on sweet smelling pillows.

He realised he was naked and that he wasn’t alone.

Giggles broke out from further down the bed and he looked down, peering through his spread legs and into two smiling faces. You and Hizashi were laid on your front and as naked as he was, laughing at the lurid blush that had broken out across his face.

“Go on...get on with it,” he said, eying his own hard cock.

You turned to Hizashi with a smile.

“Should we?”

“I don’t know,” said Hizashi, “he’s been such a grump lately.”

“All the more reason to cheer him up!”

“Oh, just as expected of you, (Name),” said Hizashi, kissing you on the lips, “so considerate!”

Shouta groaned, watching as he kissed you again with more than a hint of tongue. The wet sound your lips made whenever you broke contact was almost too much for him to bear. You stole glances at him as you ended the kiss, knowing the effect you were having on him.

He gasped as the pair of you ran your tongues over his cock, taking turns at the tip. It was overwhelming and he bucked his hips into your touches, not sure which detail to focus on first. Should he listen to the popping sounds whenever one of you sucked his tip? Should he sigh in pleasure at the gentle way the pair of you ran your hands over the inside of his thighs? Should he choke in desperation at the feel of your combined saliva dribbling down his cock?

This was too much.

Hizashi took hold of his dick and pumped it so quickly that he could do nothing else but grip the bedsheets and shake, watching as the pair of you kissed again. You leaned over to spit on the tip of his cock and Hizashi jerked him faster, the wet sound shaking him to his core.

“I think he’s close,” you said, watching as Shouta arched his back, gripping the bed with both hands. “Should we let him?”

“I’m not sure,” said Hizashi in a tone of mock severity. “I don’t think he’s ready yet.”

You both looked at him, taking in his half sitting position and rasping breaths.

“Fffuck,” he hissed, holding himself taught, “both of you.”

You both laughed at that and Hizashi let go of his dick, making way for you to take it into your mouth, bobbing your head as you took more and more of it in. Hizashi stroked his fingers through your hair and cooed at how cute you were, Shouta squeezing his eyes shut and gasping for air. He was close to the point of no return and the vibrations against his dick as you moaned didn’t help.

He couldn’t breathe; his breaths were short and sharp, his heart raced and his dick almost unbearably tight. You pulled away just in time for him to whine and flop back against the bed, cumming all over his--

He woke up, bleary eyed and sweaty, taking in the dark room and abandoned laptop, the hard couch under him.

“Shit,” he said, reaching for the waistband of his boxers and grimacing at the knowledge that he hadn’t dreamt the part where he came everywhere.

He got to his feet and waddled to the bathroom, cursing both at the mess and twitching of his cock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a wet dream. Had it been high school? Whatever the case, he felt dirty.

He kicked off his boxers and climbed into the bathtub, trying and failing to distract himself from the waves of pleasure still rushing through his body.

He turned on the cold tap, both to bring himself back to earth and wash away the evidence. He rarely remembered his dreams, but this one wouldn’t leave him.

“Shit,” he said, rubbing his temples and willing away the mental image of you and Hizashi trailing your tongues over his dick. “Shiiiiiit.”

He sank down into the bath and sucked in a deep breath as the cold water touched his skin. He closed his eyes, orgasm fading and lucidity setting in. For the first time in weeks, he felt clear headed.

He scowled, no longer focusing on Hizashi falling on top of you, but the part that came soon after and bothered him just as much.

Engagement ring?

~~~~

“I don’t believe you.”

Nemuri sat back to sip her beer, looking across the crowded restaurant.

“I’m telling you,” said Hizashi, “she’s the one!”

With the end of term came the promised sushi dinner; you, Nemuri, Hizashi and a reluctant Shouta all at one table.

Only after you and Shouta got up for another round of drinks did Hizashi drop the bombshell he had been sitting on for weeks: that you were the woman from Ego . To say Nemuri was skeptical was an understatement.

“(Name)? That (Name)?”

She pointed across the room and towards the bar, where you and Shouta were ordering drinks.

“She had the dress , Nemuri!”

Nemuri held her beer to her chest, watching as you ordered your drink and bowed several times to the bartender.

“Let’s assume I believe you,” she said, tilting the bottle towards him. “What were you doing in her bedroom in the first place?”

Hizashi hadn’t mentioned the fact that you’d slept together and he broke out in goosebumps at getting even remotely close to caught.

“I-I walked her home and my hair tie broke. Nothing happened!”

It wasn’t a lie. That really was why he’d been in your room. Nemuri had known him for long enough, though, to pick up when he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“You slept with her, didn’t you?”

“I,” Hizashi realised he’d raised his voice and leaned across the table to speak in hushed tones. “No, why would you think that?”

“You’re a terrible liar. Besides, she told me you did.”

“She what ?”

Hizashi clapped both hands over his mouth, not meaning to shriek as loud as he did. Nemuri flinched at the sudden loud noise, rubbing a finger over her ear.

“She...she really told you?”

He remembered his own words that night, his promise not to say anything unless you did. He hadn’t expected you to say anything, much less so quickly, and for a second he wondered if he had you all wrong, only to notice Nemuri’s shit eating grin.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” she said, taking a satisfied sip of beer. “You just now, though? You told me everything .”

“Nemuri, promise me you won’t say anything about this! I didn’t mean to, I just...it just happened.”

“What, did you trip and land dick first?”

“No!” Hizashi buried his face in his hands. “No, it wasn’t like that. I only meant to cheer her up a little, but there she was...all beautiful and sad and sweet and lonely...like a love song.”

Nemuri didn’t say a word and he lifted his head, watching the way she stroked her finger through the condensation on her beer bottle.

“Hizashi,” she said, “I don’t know how we got here, but somehow you’re the Shinohara.”

Hizashi buried his face in his hands again, remembering Shinohara’s lurid blushes and trembling hands.

“I don’t want to be the Shinohara,” he wailed into his hands. “I don’t want any of this!”

Nemuri reached out to pat his head, beer forgotten and all of the mirth gone from her face. She remembered a different time and a different trio: a different story of unrequited love.

She wondered what Shirakumo would have said about all of this.

Knowing him, he’d find a way to fall in love with you as well.

“Listen,” she said, patting his head, “let’s assume (Name) really is the girl from Ego .”

“But she-”

“Let’s assume she is.”

“But she is the-eeek!”

Nemuri had picked up her beer and rested it on his head, sending a surge of cold through his scalp.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You don’t have to feel guilty about pursuing either of them.”

Hizashi didn’t miss her wording. They could be his. He didn’t need to feel guilty about pursuing either of them. He had never mentioned having any kind of feelings for Shouta to her. He’d never mentioned them to anyone.

“How long have you known?”

Had he really been that obvious?

“I asked you a while ago if you remembered Shinohara,” said Nemuri.

“You did...and I do!”

“No,” she sighed. “No, you don’t.”

She lifted the bottle from his head to take a sip, remembering the way she, Hizashi and Shirakumo had crouched against the wall in the neighbouring classroom to eavesdrop; the way Shirakumo had reached into her lap without looking to help himself to the chips she’d brought. She remembered the tension in everyone’s bodies as Aizawa began to speak.

Neither Hizashi nor Shirakumo had ever looked so relieved as the moment he turned her down.

“Hizashi,” she said. “Do you want to date one of them, or do you want them to date each other? Which one is it?”

He stayed silent, knowing that the true answer was neither of those things. He wanted both of them in every way it was possible to want anyone. He wanted to be greedy, wanted to be selfish, wanted to forget how it felt to be lonely.

“I want to do the right thing.”

Nemuri sighed and scratched her chin.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It...I…” Hizashi rested his head on the table. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I just want them to be happy.”

“In that case, I know what we have to do next,” she said. “1-A are going to summer camp next week and I was supposed to be chaperoning the girls. I could...hypothetically...be unable to go.”

Hizashi looked up at her and nodded, as visibly sad as a wilting sunflower.

“I guess that’s the plan, then,” she said. “Now don’t forget to smile!”

He didn’t get the chance to ask why, for you and Shouta returned with drinks at that very moment and the transformation was instantaneous.

“Heyyyy, what took you guys so long,” he cried out, practically bouncing back up with an enormous grin plastered across his face, “we thought you got lost!”

“Not quite,” you said, with a giggle. “I couldn’t decide what drink to get.”

“Ahhh, indecision,” said Nemuri, with a knowing smile. “Sounds familiar.”

You sat back down at the table, Shouta not far behind.

“So,” you said, “what were you guys talking about?”

~~~~~

FIVE MINUTES EARLIER

From the moment you stepped inside of the sushi bar, Shouta had made it quite clear he didn’t intend to stay. Even so, you had been there for well over an hour and, while he had poked and prodded at his food and stayed quiet, he hadn’t made any attempt to leave. He had even offered to help you carry the next round of drinks and you were finding it difficult to hide your joy.

He didn’t say much even then, but you didn’t mind it, losing yourself in the numerous options on the cocktail menu.

When he did speak, it took you by surprise.

“Back then. What did you mean?”

You recalled the last conversation you had had at the table, about what you planned to get up to now that your schedule was all but clear. You had mentioned going to Yamanashi to pick peaches and wondered what part of that might have confused him.

“The...the fruit farm?”

“No,” he sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you like peaches?”

“I told you, it doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” you said, wondering what it was he meant to ask you, not noticing the way his eyeline skirted across your bare ring finger.

The pair of you fell into silence again, watching as the bartender put together your drinks.

“I do,” said Shouta at last.

“Hmm?”

“Peaches. I like them.”

“Oh! In that case I’ll bring back a souvenir!”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But I want to!”

Shouta sighed and rubbed his temples and you wondered if you’d said the wrong thing.

You wondered what it was he had meant to ask you and clasped your hands together.

“Shouta.”

“Yes?”

You took a deep breath, the question dying on your lips.

“What about cherries?”

~~~~~

A/N: RIP EVERYONE READING THIS FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE NEXT CHAPTER IS A DOOZY

[ly-canthropewrites]

Love or War

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Word Count: 2998

Rating/Warnings: SFW. Brief mentions of previous season drama.

Summary: “I saw you staring at each other, I wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage” 

You can feel the heavy gaze from across the field. Intense eyes fixated on your figure as you rattle the chain-wire fence that surrounds the newest section of Alexandria. The post-apocalyptic town has been thriving since the end of Negan’s reign and with the undead being the town’s only consistent antagonist, it has given the community an opportunity to expand their borders. The chain-mesh fence was scavenged from the Sanctuary before the community fell off the map and serves as a strong protector as the new plot of land gets tilled. But it remains fragile when leant against and it has become a daily task during guard duty to rid the walkers that stumble near the temporary fence, a job you jump at to vent your frustrations. 

The deliberate noise draws the attention of the few walkers close by and they turn, growling as they catch your scent in the wind and they shuffle your way. It’s second nature now, muscle memory, to shift your grip on the knife handle and strike at their heads, using the fence for leverage and stability. The motions do nothing to quench the frustration and fire that rages inside you and you growl, yanking your knife from the last walker’s head with more force than necessary. The bloodied blade gets cleaned on the rag that is tied to your belt loops and then you are left with nothing to do, no more walkers to distract you from the boredom or the swirl of emotions that fester inside. 

You find yourself glancing over in his direction, succumbing to the gravitational pull of the universe and you don’t find yourself surprised at all to find him still staring at you, a dark scowl painted across his face. You sneer back at him, standing strong with your own gaze. 

“Stupid, fucking redneck,” you mutter under your breath and the fire that burns in your chest grows hotter, feeding off of your anger. 

The swishing of grass on your left distracts you and you are met with Carol only a few feet from you. You nod at her, giving her a tight-lipped smile as well before turning to look at the perimeter, finding nothing in the wilderness has changed and you sigh. 

“I saw you staring at each other, I wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage,” Carol says lightly, walking to your side and mirrors your stance; arms crossed and back straight. 

You scoff, openly showing that you aren’t in the mood for her banter today but it doesn’t deter the older woman. 

“Most definitely murderous rage” you grit.

“See, I don’t know about that - I see a lot of passion,” She teases.

You throw her a withering look, disdain heavy in your eyes and if Carol isn’t careful; some of that murderous rage will be pointed at her soon. 

“So if it is murderous rage, how long are you going to remain angry at him?” Carol tries a gentler approach, obviously getting the message and you wince, guilt beginning to set in as you mentally chastise yourself about your unrestrained attitude. 

Shrugging, you refuse to make eye contact with your old friend. “I don’t know Carol, he humiliated me,” you breathe.

“He didn’t mean too, he was worried,” Carol begins to defend him but when she sees you shaking your head and the flash of hurt across your face, she stops herself. 

“But he did it anyway. He humiliated me, he berated me in front of everyone, undermined me, treating me as if I am some soft fucker who hasn’t been beyond the walls” you spit and you render the woman silent, unsure about what to say next. 

When the silence between the pair of you becomes stagnant, Carol realises it’s time for her to leave and she steps back a few feet, mulling over her next words. 

“Talk to him,” she pleads and you snort, “Fuck no,”. 

Carol says your name in warning, making you roll your eyes. “I’m not fucking submitting. If he wants to talk, then he can man up and come to me with a goddamn apology,”. 

You hear her heavy sigh behind you before her retreating footsteps, leaving you to stew in your malcontent alone. It is your stubborn pride and bruised feelings that prevent you from talking with your old companion, from making amends and burying the hatchet, an ideal that is important in this world because life is too short and unpredictable to be so petty. And yet, you cannot help yourself this time. He hurt you, deeply, a stinging wound that will take time to heal. 

It’s not like you have done anything wrong in the first place. With the apocalypse a decade old, resources are unimaginably scarce, leaving only items that are grown, hunted or handmade to be used. It was commonplace for you to be the first person out of the gates in the morning and the last to return in the evening, spending hours and even days hunting, refusing to go back to Alexandria empty-handed. You are too stubborn for your own good, too arrogant in your capabilities to survive and adapt to the dangerous world. As a repercussion, your last run was almost the death of you. 

Enemies are like hydras; one falls and another takes its place. Negan was once considered Alexandria’s greatest threat, but that fear was usurped by the latest peril; the Whisperers. Negan ruled with fear and violence. The Whisperers rule with death. Their ability to influence herds is an obstacle that the community does not know how to overcome. The capricious nature makes every run, every scouting mission, every patrol dangerous and life-threatening. Therefore, it became law that no-one is to go outside the metal walls without a group and without informing the council. It should have been expected that you would struggle with this rule, never been one to abide by strict regulations, but the thought slipped the minds of the council and you kept slipping outside the gates. 

Your last run is a perfect example of why the rule is in place; you got caught by the herd with Whisperers dotted within. Perhaps they tracked you down or perhaps it was just shit luck that you ran into them, but it resulted in a fight for your life and an injury that planted fear on sight. It was sheer, dumb luck that allowed you to escape with your life; an old tree fell whilst you were in the midst of swiping at walkers and humans alike, and caused a great enough distraction that gave you the opportunity to bolt. You damn well shocked Rosita who stood on guard duty that evening as you came sprinting towards the main gates, coated in two types of blood and clutching at your side, out of breath with wild eyes. 

That night you had Siddiq inform you that you got lucky the knife wound at your abdomen was free of infection but he was stern to chastise that only one hour more and you wouldn’t have made it, wound too deep to be stemmed by only pressure and the combination of exhaustion and blood loss would have defeated you. His words didn’t shake you that night, instead, you shrug nonchalantly and smirked, telling him that death in this world is inevitable and you would greet it like an old friend.  

You refused to stay in the infirmary that night, scrunching your nose at the thought of being surrounded by sick people in a sterile environment, rather opting for the privacy of your own place. He was unable to stop you, letting you go with an armful of supplies and a sigh, watching you stagger down the pathway. You made it only halfway home before you were halted by a loud yell, the noise capturing the attention of not just you but the other residents that were milling in the nearby courtyard. 

“What the fuck wer’ ya thinkin’?” Daryl yelled, storming towards you with a glare that would frighten Hades. “How fuckin’ stupid are ya?” he adds. 

He berated you in public that night, practically screaming in your face about your stupidity, your lack of respect to the council and their rules, your selfishness and conceited attitude. He didn’t let you get a word in to defend yourself as he raged, words becoming harsher by the second. You could handle the words but it was the venom in his voice that surprised you. It was filled with so much anger, so much hatred and spite that you lost the words that you wanted to scream back at him. Instead, when he took a moment to catch his breath, you just walked away, your eyes on the ground as you stifled the bewildered cry that ached in your chest. 

The incident happened two weeks ago and you haven’t spoken since, avoiding each other like the plague but the distance hasn’t stopped either of your from directing heated glares at each other, consequently deepening the rift in your friendship. 

                                                          ----

The guard changeover occurs on dusk and when your replacement comes, you greet them with a tight smile as you pass over the unused rifle before quickly leaving the post. You don’t head home after the shift and instead, you go down to the armoury with hopes that working maintenance on the weapons will distract you from the words Carol has lodged in your mind. Daryl worried? You scoff at the thought. In a previous time, those words would have made sense - you and Daryl have been partners in crime since the fall of the world, similar in too many ways and it made sense that you were friends. But after seeing the pure acrimony he directed at you, you fail to believe it stemmed from a place of compassion. 

It was well past midnight when the doors to the armoury creaked open. It was probably someone on shift wanting to pick up more ammo or something alike. What you didn’t expect was to see the rugged hunter ease into the room. You stared at him with furrowed eyebrows and a twist in your lips, hands paused on the shotgun you were working on. 

“You weren’t home when I knocked,” Daryl states simply, gruff voice a melody to your ears after the long radio silence. 

“You know I don’t sleep when I’m alone,”

It’s true; you struggle to rest when there is no-one watching over you, a position that is usually filled by the man in front of you. 

Daryl nods, biting down on the inner side of his cheek as he reflects. Of course you don’t, you never have and he knew that. The poignant silence weighs heavily between you and Daryl shifts uncomfortably, moving further into the room to take a seat on the chair that sits in front of the sole workstation. You never sat at the workstation, preferring to sit on the floor so you had more space to work with but at this moment, you hated how you were positioned lower than the man. 

“Yer gonna use that thing on’ me?” There is a ghost of a sly smirk upon his lips, a sparkle of mischief in his eyes but you aren’t having it, you won’t befall to his sparse charm. 

“Don’t tempt me, Daryl Dixon,’’

The full use of his name and the stern attitude makes Daryl wince, the severity of damage he inflicted to you now evident before him. He nods silently, gnawing anxiously at his lip as you both fall back and stew in silence. You resume cleaning the weapon in your hands, needing to keep busy in an attempt to distract your mind from the chaos that sits in front of you. Daryl watches you, this time without the hatred and disdain, but his gaze is just as heavy as before. 

“Why are you here, Daryl?” 

He notes the tiredness in your voice, not the physical exhaustion that is a permanent state in this new world, but the emotional weariness that burdens you. 

“‘M here to apologise,” 

“Are you here because Carol told you to or because you actually want to?”

His hesitation is a loud answer and you scoff, glaring up at him with your teeth bared.  

“Of course not. Daryl Dixon never apologises because he actually wants to, no, someone else has to puppet him. You are so fucking incompetent,” you growl, “You can’t even do the right fucking thing. Whatever ‘apology’ you have concocted to make this all better; forget it, Daryl. I don’t fucking accept it!”. 

You take a predatory satisfaction in seeing the raw hurt flash across his face at your words. Your words are harsh, digging at old wounds that the man harbours but you can’t even conjure up the guilt or regret; hungry to dish out the same pain that you have received. Vexation and wrath raise its ugly head and you furiously rub at the long barrel of the shotgun, as if you would be able to transfer your rage through kinetic energy. 

“Yer keep sacrificing yerself for the group ‘n’ and I fuckin’ hate it,” He breaks the icy air. His voice cracks despite his whispered tone but you catch it the little hitch. 

Your cautious gaze meeting his is the signal he needed because he keeps going, as if the dam inside breaks and the words come spilling out; unrestrained, pure and honest. 

“You’v’ done it since the beginnin’. Take the burden of the group on yerself ‘n’ takin’ all the risks. We’v only survived this long b‘cause of ya. You’v always kept us goin’. When the prison fell, you wanted ter round everyone up ‘n’ then Terminus happened and..” he breaks off, eyes squeezing shut as he recalls the horrible and degrading things the savages there threatened you with; how they held the machete to your neck and how powerless he was to stop everything. You were so close to death that afternoon as well, mere seconds away from being just an empty vessel. 

“Then all the shit that's happened since. You’ve never stopped, never broke down. Just kept trudgin’ on. But it all caught up and you could’ve died out there… without me. ‘N I wouldn’t have known until it was ter late”. 

“But I could have died in here and you still wouldn’t have been able to do anything, Daryl - that’s life,” you argue.

Daryl’s head whips up so fast, you are sure he could have suffered whiplash, but you get distracted by the flames in his eyes. 

“It’s not life. You ‘ave no fuckin’ idea what yer do to me, woman,” Daryl groans, looking at you so helplessly, almost insulted at how you don’t get it. 

“Apparently I piss you off!” you retort, “Ya know, with my selfish attitude and lack of respect” you parrot his own words back to him, a glare resituating across your face. “You yelled at me, Daryl. You screamed in my face, in front of everyone, and then gave me the cold shoulder. Me, out of all people, your fucking friend”. 

He shakes his head while you speak, an action that only infuriates you more. You are ready to attack him about that, mouth already open as you reveal your disgust, “Stop fucking shaking your head as if I’m playing the vic-”. 

In your rant, you don’t acknowledge the scrape of the metal stool along the concrete, given barely enough time to react to the new stimulus of rough lips upon yours and a hand that grips your chin. Daryl swallows your surprise, mouth unyielding as he crowds into you, pushing you back against the back leaving you no room to run. He kisses you desperately. Frantically. It is messy and unruly, a bruising kiss that steals the breath from your lungs and makes your head spin. You can taste every single secret that has ever danced across his lips, taste the fear that dwells within him but has never been uttered to another soul. You learn more about Daryl in this instance than you ever will in a lifetime. 

You both are slow to break apart; lips barely separating as you catch your breath, greedily sucking in as much oxygen as you can to sate the burning of your lungs. 

“‘M so fuckin’ sorry,” he cries against your lips. 

His hand still has a firm grip on your jaw, which is sure to leave finger-shaped bruises in its wake, but like his kiss - his touch is desperate as well. 

“You’v neva been a victim. I was just so fuckin’ scared that I would lose ya. I can’t lose ya,” he stresses, a voice that sounds so pained and winced; it sounds as if the wounds were personally inflicted upon him. 

He drops his death-like grip on your chin, bowing forward to rest his head against yours, never straying too far from your space. Your arms wind around his hulking form; bringing him closer and Daryl lets himself slump against you, his head slipping to rest on your shoulder as he nuzzles into your neck and his body, although heavy, feels like comfort from a warm blanket. You can feel him utter endless apologises into the crook of your neck, lips brushing along your skin and you memorise the soft tone of his voice as he echoes “‘M sorry,”. 

You hush him, turning your head to press a gentle kiss to the dark tresses, whispering “I know,” to every apology he mutters. Eventually, the apologises fade and you are submerged in peaceful silence, curled into each other. You don’t need to ask why he couldn’t have just told you all those words at the beginning, to save you both the agony and trauma of the last few weeks. But your Daryl is complex, a stunning mosaic of intricate emotions that aren’t easily given and you accept that this is who he is. The man would go to war for love; for you.

Tags:

@guywithacrossbow​

@oncemorewithfeelingg

@rachelxxraucous

@gaenahelleborus​

[victorromeofox-blog]

VRF Website and Community

VRF Website and Community - Soft Opening Coming Soon!

I've been a little less active here in the last little bit, but have been working behind the scenes to build up the VRF website and planning around community-building.  I'm just about ready to start opening the site to semi-public access and start inviting trusted people to the Discord within the next week!  There is some information below introducing some of the content and features of the site and Discord server.  Please contact me (Ask or email preferred) if you would like access - I recommend reading the rest of this post before you do, but it is not required.

If you’re looking to better understand BDSM and kink, participate in a community of rational, respectful, and conscientious kink practitioners, and contribute to protecting, uplifting, and helping others - while still enjoying some fantasies - you are exactly the type of person who would be a great fit for this space.

If you’re “just here for the porn”, this website and community are not going to be what you’re looking for.  They are specifically a pushback against that very mentality, and the rampant toxicity and problematic discourse in the online BDSM/kink space, especially CNC kink, and your needs will be better met elsewhere.  Same goes for those who are just out to get nudes, roleplay online, organize hookups, or find a submissive - there are other spaces geared toward that.

In the meantime, I'd like to explain what this all means to me, where VRF is headed next, and what factors I'm taking into consideration as I continue.  This is going to be a fairly reflective post - almost like a letter of intent - but I'm putting it out there primarily for transparency and also for those of you who want some insight into my thoughts and process.

VRF - A Quick Recap

When I started VRF in 2015, I didn't really have a goal.  I was just looking to curate the kinds of porn I enjoyed the most on Tumblr and occasionally added some captions that came to mind as I did - and accidentally cultivated a sizeable following.  As the blog grew and began to have more interactions with others on the network, I realized that I couldn't stay in-persona all the time - not without sending a potentially dangerous message - so I started answering asks and giving advice out of character, as myself.  These "real" interactions, as well as the reality checks that kept rolling in, set the tone for what VRF would become - and made me feel much more comfortable with running a blog featuring questionable content.

I stepped away from the blog and went on hiatus in 2016; I saw a sharp rise in hateful, bigoted, and violent voices online and no longer felt comfortable that my posts would remain firmly in the realm of fantasy for the majority of readers.  Although the original @violent-rape-fantasies was terminated in 2019, I made a fairly complete backup of the entire blog before it went down.  I returned in late 2020 to start again from scratch, try to rebuild my following, and reconnect with the community - that effort was terminated by Tumblr in 2021, leading me to the two blogs I currently have (@VictorRomeoFox-blog / @violent-rape-fantasies-2​) and to create a self-hosted website containing the original VRF archives with major quality-of-life improvements to the Tumblr experience.

This process made me consider what my goals are for VRF, how I want to achieve them, and what promises I make to the community as part of that journey.  

VRF - Mission and Values

VRF's mission is to be a safe, inclusive, and collaborative space that promotes affirmative consent, healthy relationships, and conscientious kink, where consenting adults can explore their kinks, enjoy fictional fantasies, and uplift one another without overbearing guilt or shame.

Let me quickly break some of this down:

safe: I want people to feel comfortable consuming and interacting with me and my content - not only the kinks and acts depicted in the fantasies, but in the entirety of the space that VRF projects, including knowing that their personhood, privacy, anonymity, and emotional safety are important to me.

inclusive: although I focus primarily on male-on-female scenarios, people from all walks of life are welcome so long as they are good citizens of the community and conscientious kink practitioners.  This also means rejecting hate, bigotry, and willful ignorance.

collaborative: VRF is discursive, both in-persona and out-of-character; the content and direction I take is often influenced by the conversations I have with followers, the asks and submissions I receive, and the state of the community as I see it.  I want to always be in conversation with the community to understand its needs and goals so that I can better meet them.

affirmative consent: as discussed in a previous post, I highlight affirmative consent because it centers around positive action as opposed to consent, which can be a passive state.  I believe this is critical for conscientious kink.

healthy relationships: the relationships we hold shape who we are, who we become, and how we interact with the world around us.  I believe that healthy relationships build healthier, happier lives - this concerns all relationships, from friendships to families to romantic or sexual partnerships.  I have seen less emphasis in this community on relationships, and interpersonal interactions in general, and think that this is a major oversight.

conscientious kink: kink can be dangerous or harmful when not practiced with care and consideration - not just for physical health, but for mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  It requires reflection, introspection, and communication in order to form intentionality - the understanding behind what you do, how you do it, and why you do it.

reducing guilt: this is one of the concerns I get most often from followers - how to reconcile their guilt for enjoying consensual non-consent, and whether it is morally wrong or an indication that something is wrong with them.  I believe that CNC, like most kinks, can be practiced in a conscientious way to reduce and mitigate the potential dangers, but that it requires consistent effort, education, and research.

Aside from these, I identified values which are important for me to maintain in order to meet the mission.  Some of them are:

transparency: I try to be as transparent as I can, while maintaining my privacy and anonymity, so that people know that I have nothing to hide.  I cannot build a safe space without building trust, and I can’t build trust without being honest and transparent.

leadership by example: if I am positioning myself as a resource and giving advice to others, I must embody the values I put forward and lead by example, not by words; otherwise, what I say is worthless and lacks substance.

data- and research-driven: I want to provide people with a deeper understanding of themselves and their kinks; while anecdotal information can at times be helpful, I want the things I posit to have weight and justification behind them.  This means an intersection of data, research, and analysis around all of the factors involved, including moral philosophy, psychology, sociology, and biology.

care and patience: these kinks are difficult and hurtful to some people, and confusing or conflicting to others.  I need to be caring, considerate, and patient in order for people to feel comfortable engaging with my content and interacting with me.

contextualized: these kinks and fantasies don’t exist in a vacuum and must be contextualized in order to remain conscientious of the relationship it maintains to the real world.  This means that I don’t want fantasies misrepresented as reality or reality misconstrued as fantasy, and the onus is on me to ensure that followers are seeing both sides of the equation.

quality over quantity: I have a limited amount of time that I can dedicate to VRF work, and want to make the best possible use of that time.  I want to focus on high-quality content, both in-persona fantasies and out-of-character advice, research, and resources, without worrying about how much or how frequently I’m posting.  It also means that I care far less about the number of followers and viewers I have, and much more about whether I am cultivating the kind of followers that match my vision for VRF and its community.

There are other factors and values as well, but these are the biggest ones for me.  They drive how I present myself, how I interact with the community, and what kinds of content I put forth.

VRF Website - Content and Features

What does the website allow me to do that I couldn’t on Tumblr?

No censorship, frustrating filters, or threat of termination - I can focus on my content without running into blockers at every turn, or worrying that I’m going to lose all my work without warning.

Better content controls, organization, and layout - I can group posts logically and have different ways for users to access and view them instead of being one monolithic stream of posts.

Tagging and search - I’ve tagged my archive with kinks, features, toys, actions, positions, locations, and more to make it easier to both find content that you want to see and avoid content that you don’t.  The VRF site features granular search controls, including tag combinations, so you can engage with the site how you choose.

Random Post/Random Caption - sometimes, you’re in the mood to mix things up.  Instead of seeing a temporally-sorted feed of posts, you can go to a random post or caption from the menu bar.

Clear disclaimers and view control - instead of my content being blended into a sea of posts, which creates difficulty in carving out that safe cognitive space for engaging with these kinks or necessitates rapid context-switching, all of my posts will be in one central repository with clear disclaimers where I have control over how things are viewed.

The VRF Archive - the content from the original @violent-rape-fantasies blog have been restored to the VRF website.

There are some downsides, of course - like the lack of network discovery, limited server space and resources, cost, maintenance, and effort.  But the benefits greatly outweigh the additional overhead.

VRF Community

What’s the VRF Discord community all about?

This is a new idea I’m playing with - I’m not new to Discord or community management, but combining that with VRF is a new endeavor for me.  Since I’m going to be shifting my focus from Tumblr to the VRF website, some of those network and community interactions from Tumblr will move to Discord instead, such as interacting with followers, taking requests, feedback, and suggestions, and delving deeper into kink philosophy, fantasy, and practice.

I’ve set up the Discord in a way that different sections can be partitioned - like general discussion, BDSM/kink discussion, CNC fantasies, member content (submissions), and so on.  The different sections are accessible to different levels of membership and verification to maintain that safe, inclusive, and collaborative space.  For example, agreeing to the rules and guidelines gives you access to the general discussion section; verifying your age gives you access to BDSM- and kink-related sections; and being an active and trusted member who contributes to the server over time gets you access to the private sections.

This will also be a much easier way to get in contact with me, and keep the majority of my interactions with the community in one place, instead of hunting across Tumblr messenger for both my accounts, Asks, Twitter, Discord DMs, Telegram, Kik, and email.

VRF - Next Steps and Future Work

In the next few weeks, the VRF website and Discord community will soft-open and move toward general opening.  This is a new direction for me, but after assessing my priorities and goals, it is the solution best suited for what I want to achieve.  I will continue to use Tumblr, but will likely be focusing the majority of my time on the website and Discord.

The mission and values I’ve identified leave quite a bit of room to explore various ways to express these kinks and share knowledge.  I’m not hard-set on VRF being a blog with porn and captions, and could see changes or pivots in the future.  I would love for this work to be able to generate some modest revenue in the future in order to cover basic operating costs, support survivors of abuse as well as kink education and safety, and commission custom content.  As an aside, if you read all of this, please start your request for access with the word “potato” in all caps to let me know you got this far.

I also want to move toward a more ethical and sustainable model of captions and fantasies.  My first step toward this is in creating gifs myself and fully crediting the source, which I started doing when I returned from hiatus.  Concurrently, I am working with my partner, who is an artist, to develop illustrations and animations to accompany captions instead of commercial pornography - we’re still in the R&D phase for this, but hope to share some early content soon (including a fantasy and sketch that we’re working on to accompany a follower submission).  Ideally, we would be able to collaborate with submitters and sex workers to create fully original, credited, and compensated content - but that’s a huge stretch goal for the future.

We are also considering other formats for fantasy and knowledge delivery, including a visual novel format or interactive media (i.e., games) if the art development turns out well and proves sustainable.  We’re both fairly busy people in our personal and professional lives, and in situations where we have to maintain a fairly strict separation between kink involvement and our everyday lives, so carving out time for VRF work is challenging at times!

I look forward to seeing folks on the VRF website and Discord community soon!

[purplepints]

Red Cross & Donations during Emergencies

You’re probably going to see a surge in posts about why you should not support Agencies like the American Red Cross because “they refused our donations” or "they steal donations" etc. so please read this first before posting anti-ARC/Non-Profit/etc groups mostly run by volunteers.

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE REBLOGGING NEGATIVE STUFF ABOUT THOSE GROUPS!!

Okay, let's talk about this. Food stuff first, then clothes, then a list of Things You Can Do.

Pay attention, people, because while our actions during events like Hurricanes or other events can save lives, our half-cocked reblogging of emotional anecdotes can make lives that much harder. I am not going to claim that the Red Cross (or any other similar Organization) are perfect or unproblematic, but I will say that it is better to light a candle than to refuse to provide batteries for a flashlight. Provide the names of groups you are donating to and the PayPal or site where those groups are accepting monetary donations, don't just fill timelines with anti-Whomever stuff without providing alternatives. Moving on to the Big Questions.....

WHY DO THEY REFUSE FOOD?

— Food can be dangerous.

Think about it. Kids have nut allergies, people are lactose intolerant, the dish could have been sitting somewhere for hours growing bacteria....

— Food can be divisive.

Think about it. Who gets the fantastic homemade lasagna and who has to be content with a bag lunch? Who makes that decision? What about areas populated by people with religious dietary restrictions? Are the items kosher or halal or vegetarian? Worse yet, could someone donate items to locations having high numbers of immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, LGBTQ, etc. that were made with the intent to harm groups of people?

Do you see how all of this could be a problem?

It is simply too much of a risk to trust that every person who cooks something followed all safety guidelines regarding ingredients, can provide accurate lists of ALL the ingredients (and no, not just "1/2 cup vegetable oil", because there could be differences between brands, someone may use olive oil or canola oil exclusively, or simply not think to mention that while they made the dish with ABC Brand 100% Canola, they sprayed the casserole pan with Pam or greased it with XYZ Brand Margarine) AND would leave their name & contact info in case people get ill from eating their food.

Businesses like restaurants have to follow certain guidelines and accept the risks, but private individuals? Not so much. Too many shelters/distribution locations simply don't have the fridges/freezers needed to store perishable foods for the number of people they are trying to help and are using what space they do have to store things like breast milk, formula, insulin, etc. Some shelters/locations are in places that face loss of electricity, disruption of utilities, you name it. They may or may not have generators. They may or may not have the resources to plate & provide utensils to every person. They may or may not have dishwashers or just several large sinks to clean dishes, and they can't just shove dirty dishes into a corner for people to come retrieve. Even if they do have sinks, they probably don't have the manpower to assign toward labeling dishes, storing them, reheating them, serving them and cleaning dishes/kitchen/etc to avoid contaminating other food.

Hate to bring this up, but it should be mentioned that many of those places also lack the bathroom facilities to handle the influx of victims, so a few dozen people coming down with salmonella (which, fun fact, can be spread by touching items which were touched by an infected person who wasn't as diligent as they could have been while washing their hands) or other common ailments caused by eating undercooked, poorly preserved or cross-contaminated items, especially in situations where clean water could be in short supply ...well. I think you can imagine how that would be an issue.

WHY DO THEY REFUSE CLOTHING?

— Clothing uses a lot of resources.

Think about it and you'll see similar problems to the ones regarding food. Some people are allergic to certain detergents, break into rashes when encountering pet dander or have other sensitivities.

— Like food, safety is a concern.

A lot of the clothing donated to shelters/organizations is nowhere close to new or in the ballpark of used: it skips directly to awful and most of it isn't laundered. Claims that all the items have been laundered doesn't change the fact that it has to be laundered again before it can be given to anyone due to the aforementioned issues. If possible, donate new, packaged unisex things like t-shirts. Leave the fancy stuff, out-of-season stuff and dress clothing at home unless you're told they are looking to collect heels, thick sweaters, ties, etc.

Laundering aside, the condition of items can be unbelievable. Pants with broken zippers or large holes in the crotch/butt, single socks, old promotional shirts covered in stains and holes, tops & bottoms stretched out or with blown seams. Soiled clothing (every kind of thing you can imagine), scuffed up individual high heels, bras with wires poking through other items, old prom dresses spilling sequins everywhere and all of this is shoved in garbage bags or boxes willy-nilly along with other random items....it is astounding what people will drop off with an attitude of "it's better than nothing" while failing to realize that all of those bags and boxes have to be sorted, laundered, grouped (child/adult, then sizes), then distributed. This is all worse than nothing and only eats up resources better spent on getting people help they actually need.

Again, many shelters/locations have a limited amount of resources and storage space. They may or may not have access to laundry machines. They may or may not have rooms to set up for sorting, nor space to keep the items for any amount of time. The volunteer hours spent digging through clothing hardly good enough for a rag bag would be much better spent on other tasks that can improve the lives of people impacted by these disasters.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

If you want to provide food or clothing for people but don't want to donate money to the Red Cross/Other Large Organizations, here are some suggestions :

*** First, ALWAYS make sure to contact locations/groups and LISTEN when they tell you what they need! ***

FOOD:

* See if any restaurants are looking for volunteers to help prepare or deliver meals.

* Ask groups you're already involved with to host a shop-along to supply people returning to their homes with staple groceries. [Even if homes were not flooded or damaged, power outages could cause a total loss of all products in refrigerators and the majority of people who rent apartments do not have any type of insurance policy that pays to replace food.]

* Ask if specific items like bottles, sippy cups or reusable water bottles are needed, or if the location could use a reliable fridge/mini-fridge for storing insulin or breast milk, or offer up a hot plates or electric kettle that can be used to to boil water or prepare small amounts of food for ppl with special diets.

* Get with schools that have teaching kitchens (think Home Ec) and offer to help cook or buy supplies for use: this could provide parents who need a bit of time to check their property or fill out paperwork with that time while providing their child with an activity that results in cookies. Offer to do the same thing with entire families through the schools in the evenings, because a few hours away from a shelter, a hot meal and a bit of privacy can mean so much in times like these.

CLOTHING:

* If a group says they are accepting clothing, please only donate items without damage, without stains and make sure to ask if the location needs clothes hangers, special kind of detergents, mesh laundry bags for distribution, etc. If you have large-load capacity machines, offer use of them if you're close to the shelter or can lend them for a brief time.

* Most groups will ask you to only donate underwear and socks that are new and still in their packaging. Most groups don't receive new underwear and socks in packaging and I don't know of any group that will distribute used underwear or socks, so please think about providing child & adult sizes of those items.

* Consider a group effort to help specific groups of people: gather up gently used business/business casual attire for young adults seeking new jobs or returning to work; maternity clothing for all stages of pregnancy; or look into providing steel-toe boots, work gloves, jackets and safety vests for people involved in cleanup efforts.

* Look into sponsoring a future family event that was delayed by the emergency. Provide a dress and suits for a wedding, pairs of cleats for a soccer team, changes of school uniforms or go the services route by offering your own skills as a photographer, hairdresser, tailor, whatever, for free (or form a group that can provide several interconnected skills to work together over, say, 6 months-1 year post event for free or discounted for X amount of events) or at cost/discount.

* Ask groups if they need fabric or findings for arts & crafts and offer to bring items ready to go: bags of buttons, t-shirts cut into yarn, denim or other fabrics cut into sizes requested, etc. You'll be able to thin out your closet and provide a useful thing that can be used to craft a handy item or teach a new skill. This also applies to other art supplies & school supplies, as children in shelters aren't attending school and/or need an outlet for their feelings.

MISC:

** Masks, shower curtains, hygiene prpdicts: having mass shelter happening during this covid-19 breakout is a triple nightmare, so if you sew masks or have extra masks in any size offer them to the mass shelters.

* Different groups of people have different needs. Groups having more children may need more baby wipes or diapers ; groups having more seniors may need mobility aids ; groups having people with natural hair may need different shampoo ; groups having more autistic or special needs may need sense-friendly items, and so on. Help is “one size fits most” deal in many areas of care (like shelter, food) but there are many individuals who need something specific. Ask, listen, provide.

* Groups are almost always in need of translators, not just for adults & help with paperwork or other concerns, but to watch, entertain or otherwise provide assistance for children. If you are fluent in another language (or have books/movies in different languages) contact agencies and let them know.

* We rely on cellphones & electronic devices for much of our communication, so chargers, charger cords, battery banks, working phones and even laptops could help people find their families. Mobile wi-fi and pre-paid phone cards are things to consider, too. Battery or plug-in speakers with Bluetooth could be used for storytime or dance activities with children or audio books for adults, basically any extra electronics you have that are

fairly modern and can play video/audio would be a godsend. Older phones that have been factory reset while still able to work on modern system could help greatly, so call/check with providers and see if any older models you have will still connect & if they are doing anything with the phones themselves re: redistribution.

* Totes, backpacks, duffels and other reusable, durable bags can come in handy. Ziplocs too, to keep items dry. Often people only stay at a shelter for a few days while they're working on other arrangements so it's nice to have everything packed and secure as well as offer a bit of pride and normality rather than making everyone use hefty bags to carry their stuff.

* If you are a notary public or someone with special knowledge pertaining to documents, mortgages, bank accounts, medical POA, etc call and see if your services could be handy for people. A lot of victims lose their birth certificates and other important documents and will need help reestablishing their identity and proofs of ownership.

Most importantly, please make sure people you know understand that there are ways for everyone to help! There are reasons why certain things are not accepted, and it is frustrating, but keep in mind there are other ways to give. Right now, focus on ways you can help and encourage people you know to join your efforts. Please focus on what we can do to help!!

[not-majestic-bluenicorn]

Assassin, what is your Treasure?

Group: ATEEZ

Pairing: Everyone x Everyone

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 1,435 words

Warnings: Murder, Child Soldiers, Psychological Torture, Throwing Up

<< Previous || Masterlist || Next >>

~*~*~

9 years old

"Run faster!" The instructor yelled, looking at his chronometer.

Everyone began to run faster, in sync, without breaking formation. They were soldiers in training. They lived in an enormous tower of marble, isolated from everything else until it was their time to fulfill missions. They had no parents, no family that could claim them. All they had to them was a name and a code, but no family name that could tell them they belonged somewhere, because they didn't.

Artificial life was incredibly penalized in most places, but not in Lyria 38. The government had financed all sorts of investigations and projects until the Life Architects Organization had been born. They were in charge of creating Lyria 38's militia, the only product they could offer to the universe. The planet itself was almost entirely barren, with barely enough resources to support life there, so it's main exports being the people they created.

He was one of such products. They were made to stand all sorts of conditions and situations. They healed faster and were stronger and faster than others. And they trained all their lives to become the best at what they did. From what he knew, they got all sorts of missions to assassinate high profile targets and create chaos among the governments. It payed well, and it kept them alive. They were protected and highly valued by others, which made the training all the more strict.

"Stop!" The trainers yelled and the group stopped at once. "Go take a shower and prepare for target practice."

All of them moved towards the exit of the room and to their dormitories so they could grab clean clothes and head down to the showers. The dormitories were like big halls lined with bunk beds, one after the other. The concept of privacy was foreign to them, they were used to simply working on the clock like machines. The cost for a lack of discipline was high after all, and none of them wanted to face the Dark Room.

It felt nice to shower after spending more than an hour running around a room and trying to overcome obstacles. However, it had to be cut short, because their next instructor was already waiting for them. So he, like everyone else, hurried to clean himself and then followed the rest of the trainees to the shooting range. It was usually lined up with targets and guns, but this time it looked different.

In the middle of the room, there was a man tied to a chair. He was all beat up and covered in bruises, and began begging for his life when all of the soldiers in training walked in. It was clear he didn't belong to the organization, even when they had never seen someone from the outside before. It took him a moment to notice it, but when the animation reset itself, he was able to notice it was an hologram. It didn't make it any less scary, though.

"Today we'll start practicing with semi-realistic targets." The instructor said, walking behind the chair. "Code 710-28, you're an exemplary student, you try it first."

He jolted out of his stupor and looked away from the target and into his trainers' eyes. The instructor was talking to him, expectation evident in his eyes. He looked to his left and found a table with different kinds of firearms. He chose a small shotgun almost unconsciously, thinking of what would be less loud given his surroundings. He could feel the eyes of everyone on top him, observing his every move.

"Shoot him," the instructor ordered.

He lifted the gun and aimed. The man begged for his life louder, crying. He felt his stomach twitch and turn but placed his finger on the trigger. He could barely hear his instructor's orders over the cries of the man, and then he lowered the gun and threw up on the floor. There was a collective gasp that died quickly when the instructor clicked his tongue at him.

"You failed to obey my orders," he explained, gesturing to the guards at the doors. "Put him in the Black Room for a whole day, let's see if that hardens his gut."

He wanted to yell and beg for forgiveness. He wanted to promise that he would try again and succeed, but he did none of that as one of the guards grabbed his arm and pulled him away. They threw him into the room and shut the door closed, leaving him in nothing but dark emptiness. The Dark Room was simply that, a room painted black that swallowed all the light and left you with nothing. It was horrible, and he couldn't help but cry until the next day, when the door opened again.

12 years old

He held onto her thighs with as much force as he could muster and tried to pull them away from his neck. She was holding tightly onto his hair and trying to choke him, legs wrapped around his neck and falling on his back. He stumbled and fell, head crashing against the floor as his opponent caught herself with her legs and stepped away. He yelled from the pain, and rolled to his side as he tried to focus again, to fight. He didn't want to lose here.

He stood up immediately, even though he was still dizzy, and tackled the other fighter down. She tried to push him off with all of her strength, and she would have succeeded if he hadn't hit her throat. She wheezed and coughed, choking on her own spit, and he dealt the finishing blow to her head which rendered her unconscious. He got off of her and sat on the floor, still dizzy and with a blurry vision, but he had won.

The guards outside of the practice room took the girl away and he stood up when the instructor approached, bowing his head humbly when he was praised. He had been so close to losing, but he had sworn to himself that he would never step a foot in the Dark Room if he could avoid it. The only way to ensure that, though, was to win against everyone else.

"I've been told you've been assigned to a boss, from now on, you'll be able to go to missions," his instructor said. 

He looked up, jerking his head only slightly in surprise. They weren't supposed to express emotions inside the organization, unless they were in their acting classes. The instructor nodded and began walking, with him following closely behind. He was guided to one of the meeting rooms. He knew of their existence, but had never seen the interior of one. They were white like pretty much everything else in LAO's headquarters.

"This is him, Code 710-28." The instructor introduced him as soon as they walked inside.

"Very well," the man said. He had a long scar crossing the right side of his face. "I saw you defeat the other candidate, very well done."

"Thank you, sir." He didn't miss a beat and answered.

"I would like you to work for me," the man continued.

"It would be a pleasure, sir," he replied in return, under the watchful eyes of the instructor.

"I need you to do something for me first, though." The man stood up and began walking, guiding them to another room. It took him a moment to understand what was going on until she saw the girl he had just fought kneeling on the ground, tied up. "I want you to kill her."

He looked to his left and there it was again, a tray full of firearms. He grabbed the same weapon he did the first time he was asked to shoot someone, and stood in front of her. She looked up, there was not a single sign of fear in her face. This was different, though, even without all the pleading, this was someone he knew. He felt his stomach turn again, but he had promised himself that he would never go back to the Dark Room.

He didn't understand why she had to die, though. She was an excellent fighter, she could have been an excellent agent if given the chance. He turned to look at his new boss for a second, and understood that such a thing didn't matter. They could fabricate another one better than her, than him, even. All they cared about was loyalty. He looked back at the girl, who was still looking at him.

"Live." He saw her mouth move, and then he fired the gun.

[tabloidtoc]

Globe, May 3

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince William and Prince Harry: Showdown at Prince Philip's Funeral

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Alec Baldwin, Kathy Ireland, Conan O'Brien grabs lunch in West Hollywood

Page 3: Meg Ryan, Heather Graham, Jon Voight steps out in Beverly Hills

Page 4: Kris Jenner says her role as momager of the Kardashian clan is like being a fireman because she has to put out so many heated squabbles -- satisfying daughters Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner takes skill and Kourtney is often so fed up she fires her three or four times a day, but Kris believes she's done a good job, saying she's totally dedicated to her brood and spends oodles of time and energy going the extra mile for them

* Jailed Ghislaine Maxwell is raising a stink over federal lawmen's claims she's a prison piggy, saying the institution's busted sewer pipes, not her toilet habits, are responsible for the overwhelming stench in her cell -- lawyers for sex perv Jeffrey Epstein's accused madam and sex trafficker leveled the charge to flush out prosecutors' claims the socialite's cage stinks like a hog's pen because she doesn't flush her toilet -- her lawyer Bobbi Sternheim insists there was a pervasive stench of sewage in Ms. Maxwell's unit, necessitating guards to flush pipes by pouring water down open drains in an effort to trap and disperse gaseous emissions and at times the stench in Ms. Maxwell's isolation cell has been overwhelming due to overflowing of toilets in the cell block above -- as for Ghislaine flushing, she does it often, at the guards' bidding even, though she doesn't use the commode in her cell due to lack of privacy

Page 5: Kelly Clarkson's tacky tales of pooping in trash cans and other crude antics are grossing out her alarmed pals, who fear divorce stress is pushing the talk queen over the edge and while Kelly has loved to shock people, her cringeworthy behavior has gotten worse since filing for divorce from music manager Brandon Blackstock, father of her daughter River and son Remington -- now Kelly has many fearing she's finally flipped after recently telling talk show guest Clint Black on-air she destroyed a poor trash can by pooping in it during a quick backstage concert break and she's constantly making potty jokes and seems to get a rise out of shocking people and even by Kelly's standards, this was a step too far and people are urging her to scale back on the belching, farting and gross anecdotes because they're a turnoff and make her look trashy and her grueling workload and prickly divorce has manifested in this gross behavior where she can't seem to hold her tongue and blurts out whatever she's thinking without consideration for other people -- other stars like Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton are thinking twice before inviting her to social events and for talk show rivals like Ellen DeGeneres and Drew Barrymore, it's a dream seeing her push the boundaries of taste and Kelly doesn't have a filter and as long as she's got an audience she's just going to keep on doing it

Page 6: Macaulay Culkin is the daddy of a brand-new baby girl named Dakota, who is named after Macaulay's sister who died at 29 in a 2008 car crash, and she was delivered by Macaulay's lover actress Brenda Song

Page 7: Angelina Jolie has become a stressed-out single mom trying to care for her brood of six during the pandemic lockdown, and the strain is is showing on the 98-pound actress, but the 45-year-old, who shuns hiring a full-time nanny, still wants sole custody of her underage kids Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne, and is fighting tooth and nail with ex-husband Brad Pitt to get it; their oldest Maddox Jolie-Pitt is now 19 and considered independent although the university student frequently lives with his mother -- caring for the gang puts a big drain on Angelina's bank account and her custody war with Brad is costing a pretty penny -- Jolie and her children spend most of their time bunkered in a massive 7,500-square-foot Los Feliz mansion that boasts a huge library lined with resource books but the kids need to be separated so they can concentrate on their individual Zoom classes and someone is always hungry or needing help and at the end of the school day, when they are bored, they end up looking for Mom to find them something to do while she is trying to work on her own projects, and like most siblings, the kids fight or argue, and that can test any parent's nerves and Angie is with the kids pretty much 24/7 and it's taking a toll -- there is a glimmer of hope as schools are close to reopening and once the five youngest are back in school for several hours a day it will give Angelina the breaks she needs and hopefully she can hang tight until then

Page 8: Cover Story -- Prince William and Prince Harry bury Prince Philip, but not the ax -- despite their public displays of grief, bitter brothers William and Harry erupted in a raging royal screaming match behind the scenes of their grandfather's Prince Philip's funeral and Princess Diana's sons lashed out, accusing each other of ugly betrayals and destroying the royal family and the princes blamed each other's wives for igniting the family feud and their showdown was explosive and they're refusing to forgive or make peace and any hope Philip's death will end this feud is pie in the sky -- Harry and William were forced to reunite to mark the Duke of Edinburgh's passing and comfort their grandmother Queen Elizabeth, but that doesn't mean they're kissing and making up; far from it because Harry and his wife Meghan Markle have caused so much damage with their TV interview, it will take a lifetime to heal this rift -- sparks began flying almost immediately after Harry landed back in his homeland. He went straight to his former marital home Frogmore Cottage in Windsor to quarantine under COVID rules while William and his wife Duchess Kate Middleton and their three children were holed up at their country home Anmer House in Norfolk, about 100 miles away, but that didn't stop the once-inseparable brothers exploding in fury at each other during a video call finalizing funeral arrangements -- William and Harry knew they'd have to walk together behind the cortege to honor their grandfather, but that was where their reunion ended and while their grieving grandmother and royal relatives mourned the loss of the family patriarch, William and Harry's pent-up anger and frustrations exploded as, on the same side of the Atlantic for the first time in over a year, William blasted Harry and Meghan for bad-mouthing his wife Kate and selfishly trying to destroy the monarchy and he reamed Harry for not visiting their grandfather in his final days and using the funeral as a publicity stunt while Harry retaliated by accusing his brother of throwing him and Meghan under the bus and vowed never to talk to him again -- instead of an expected joint public statement praising their beloved grandfather, they issued separate tributes, which underlined their split as in their statement, William and Kate reminisced about Philip taking their children for horse-drawn carriage rides and they vowed to support the queen in the years ahead and that was a dig at Harry and Meghan, who can't help the queen due to their self-imposed exile to California and it was also a shot because Harry's son Archie has spent no time with his royal relatives since his birth almost two years ago -- Philip's death has only intensified this horrific feud and this war is far from over, and may never be

Page 10: Prince Philip went to his grave regretting he couldn't stop Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle from ripping the royal family in a bombshell TV interview -- The Duke of Edinburgh called the explosive tell-all madness and he had some sympathy for Harry and Meghan's desire to do their own thing, but he thought they were wrong and he hated Harry and Meghan's preoccupation with their own problems and their willingness to talk about them in public; one of his rules was give interviews but don't talk about yourself -- Philip loved Harry and thought him a good man, but he did not believe they were doing the right thing for the country or themselves when they quit royal duties and Philip died worrying the explosive interview permanently damaged the monarchy and he deeply regretted he wasn't able to prevent the scandal

* Outraged Prince Philip shunned his son Prince Andrew's ex-wife Duchess Sarah Ferguson for the last 19 years of his life after she was caught cheating in raunchy photos that went public -- Philip considered Fergie beyond the pale and refused to have anything to do with her and when Sarah was staying at Balmoral Castle with her daughters, her ex-father-in-law would run from a room she'd entered and Fergie said it was ridiculous because as soon as she came through one door, he'd be falling over the corgis to get out of the other and she added it was very funny, except, of course, it wasn't -- the only time they appeared together in public was at Prince Harry's 2018 wedding, 26 years after Fergie was photographed lounging topless while her then lover John Bryan sucked on her toes on the French Riviera; she and Andrew were separated at the time

Page 11: Marie Osmond is getting the last laugh on rival Sharon Osbourne after the big-mouthed Brit, who chased off Marie from The Talk, was booted from the chat show in a racism scandal -- while Marie doesn't wish ill on anyone, she certainly isn't feeling any sympathy for Sharon's plight -- in public, Marie has never said a harsh word about Sharon, and never blamed her co-star with pushing her off The Talk, but behind the scenes, Sharon made mild-mannered Marie's life hell, which chased her away and Marie still cringes from the whole experience of working with the brash former reality diva, more than seven months after leaving the show and Marie doesn't want to stoke the fire, but it's kind of satisfying in a way that Sharon's finally being exposed for what she is: a snippy, smug phony

* Chaka Khan was the first celeb booted on Season 21 of Dancing with the Stars in 2015, and it's no wonder because she was a lousy partner, claims pro hoofer Keo Motsepe -- Keo slammed the singer for demanding they only rehearse around midnight, because that's when the night owl was used to going to the record studio and laying down tracks -- Keo accepted the challenge but now calls Chaka his worst partner ever

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Jane Lynch eats lunch in West Hollywood (picture), Khloe Kardashian is getting called out for her attempt to erase a bathing suit snap that revealed some very real body dimples and famous for posting airbrushed and filtered photos depicting her as flawless she went berserk over the unedited pic summoning legal eagles to get the image scrubbed off the internet but she drew colossal backlash, Sutton Stracke of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills got promoted to series regular and impressed producers by making ousted castmate Teddi Mellencamp cry by branding her boring, fired New York Housewife Dorinda Medley has lost 14 pounds, Lil Nas X's limited-edition designer Satan Shoes which commanded $1,018 when they hit the market are now deader than a doornail after legal pressure from Nike

Page 13: Dean Cain sports a Superman-style logo on his hoodie as he bums around Malibu (picture), Annabella Sciorra shoots an episode of Blue Bloods in NYC (picture), co-anchor T.J. Holmes shows his tongue on the Good Morning America set (picture), Olympic champ Lindsey Vonn admits skiing was a slippery slope when she started mingling with the beautiful people of Hollywood

Page 14: Brooklyn Decker proves she going gray at just 34 and she's kinda digging it, Kathryn Dennis trying to prove she's comfortable in the natural skin she's in shared pics from her first-ever bikini photo shoot and actually points out imperfections

* Fashion Verdict -- Zoe Saldana 6/10, Kelsea Ballerini 3/10, Jessica Madsen 7/10, Joy Bauer 2/10

Page 17: Eddie Cibrian is incredibly proud of wife LeAnn Rimes for baring the truth about her battle with psoriasis in a naked photo -- Eddie applauds how LeAnn let it all hang out for a photo shoot to show solidarity with other people with the scaly skin disease who are ashamed and want to hide it -- LeAnn has described the horrors of hiding her painful, crusty rashes, saying onstage she'd wear two pairs of pantyhose or jeans, even in 95-degree heat and underneath her shirt, her whole stomach would be covered in thick scales that would hurt and bleed, and the pandemic worsened her condition because stress is a common trigger for psoriasis, and with so much uncertainty happening, her flare-ups came right back

Page 19: 10 Things You Don't Know About Catherine O'Hara

* Sylvester Stallone may have gone his final round as boxing great Rocky Balboa as his reps reveal the actor has thrown in the towel and won't reprise his iconic role in the upcoming Creed III -- in the Creed spinoffs, retired fighter Rocky trained Adonis "Donnie" Creed, the son of his onetime rival

* Dr. Dre hit back against the abuse claims of estranged wife Nicole Young, slamming her allegations as appalling in recently filed court documents in their ugly $1 billion divorce -- in the docs, Dre charges Nicole hurled the accusations only after realizing their prenup may prevent her from getting half his money, but Nicole insists the rapper forced her to ink the agreement, a charge he also denies

Page 23: Caitlyn Jenner is refining her image ahead of her run for governor in California by reducing her massive breasts to look more conservative -- she wants to downgrade her E cups to a more respectable C cup because she's been worried for a while they are way too big within the context of her body and draw unflattering stares and running for the California governor's office is serious and she wants people to listen and look at her face, not her boobs and the truth is, the implants have been weighing her down and giving her back pain too, so this makes sense in more ways than one -- Caitlyn will be slowly abandoning other cosmetic procedures and she would like to wean herself off filters and Botox too, but that'll be a gradual process that she'll do as time goes by and the big thing here is that she wants to look more natural and relatable for voters

* Nearly half of America is ready to vote Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson into the White House -- 46 percent of voters are ready to rock and roll with the 49-year-old former WWE wrestler as their prez -- in his new sitcom Young Rock, Dwayne plays himself as a future candidate for the Oval Office, but in real life he has admitted he is seriously considering a run for the top job

Page 24: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, now facing two separate investigations into sexual harassment charges made by at least eight female staffers, is accused of cheating on longtime love Sandra Lee -- there's obviously a reason Sandra moved to California; she literally could not have moved farther away from Andrew; she's on the edge of the Pacific

Page 30: Grace Kelly died nearly flat broke -- the Hollywood starlet gave up millions to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco, and when she died at the age of 52, her only assets were a cottage in Ireland, owned by her grandfather, and $10,000 -- in 1956, she married into Monaco's royal family after coughing up a $2 million dowry, which is about $20 million today, and walking away from a glittering career -- according to a new documentary, her Hollywood earnings have disappeared as during her film career, Grace's total earnings could have reached $1.5 million, earnings that appear to be entirely missing from her will, but thanks to Grace, Monaco's royal family has cashed in big-time as her son Prince Albert II has an estimated net worth of $i billion and his wife Charlene Wittstock is rumored to be worth $150 million -- most people think of Grace Kelly's story as a fairy tale, going from Hollywood and suddenly being whisked off to a lot of wealth, but what is so poignant is that she had to pay to become a princess

* LeVar Burton may soon be helming a new enterprise: Jeopardy! -- nearly 200,000 people have signed an online petition supporting LeVar to replace the game show's late host Alex Trebek and LeVar supports the idea himself

Page 32: Kirstie Alley had two husbands and once claimed she was crazy about John Travolta, but for decades she secretly carried a torch for a married man: Patrick Swayze -- Kirstie described Patrick as the one that got away and truly believes they would have been together until his 2009 death at age 57 if things worked out differently and she says her love for Patrick began on the set of the 1985 miniseries North and South where she thought he was the most handsome, sexy, kind person she'd ever met, and each day on the set, she began to fall more and more in love but at the time they were married to other people: Patrick had his wife Lisa Niemi and Kirstie was married to Hardy Boys actor Parker Stevenson, her second husband -- Kirstie and Patrick shared a deep emotional affair and confessed their love, but never actually cheated on their spouses and Kirstie said they had an affair of the heart -- Patrick and Kirstie played lovers on the series and you can see the chemistry and at least once a year Kirstie watches the series and reminisces about the time she spent with him -- she says she cried for months after his death and she and his wife Lisa eventually became friends and even today, Kirstie wonders what would have happened if she and Patrick had not been married to other people

Page 36: Sally Struthers reveals she quit Save the Children charity after she was nearly murdered by a gang of bloodthirsty rebels during a trip to visit African orphans -- Sally was a roving ambassador for the charity for 35 years until a terrifying incident in Uganda where she was filming ads with a boy, who'd come from a remote village, when suddenly a roving band of guerrilla warfare guys came out of the bushes and asked the boy where he was from and he named his village, which was far away, and they decided they had kidnapped him, and they were going to shoot all of them and Sally was terrified and figured she was a goner, but a priest with her group told her to slowly walk off while never turning her back on the terrorists and as she walked, he convinced the gunmen to let them alone and at that point, Sally, who had a daughter Samantha from her six-year marriage to shrink William C. Radar thought she's been on so many little airplanes that could have crashed and in so many horrible situations and she's got a child, a real-life child of her own, and she can't do it anymore

* Usher is being accused of stiffing Las Vegas strippers by tipping them with fake money with his moniker and mug on the bills -- the flap exploded with a Twitter post slamming the singer for handing out Usherbucks in $100, $20 and $1 bills at the club Sapphire Las Vegas but club honcho George M. Wilson denies the charge, saying Usher, who stars at Caesars Palace stating in July, was a true gentleman and great guest and he and his crew converted thousands of real dollars to tip the girls dancing on the stage and left a generous tip for staff and apparently someone in his team left some Usher dollars on the floor to promote his Vegas residency and that is where it seems the confusion came in

Page 40: Val Kilmer is shooting for more than a career comeback after bouncing back from throat cancer; he is also looking for love -- Val admits he doesn't sound like he used to following a tracheotomy, but he insists he feels a lot better than he sounds but his voice is a raspy, grating sound, and he's forced to eat through a feeding tube, but he feels that shouldn't matter with the right woman -- the actor, who is slated to appear in the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, is pumped up about working again, but it's dawned on him that he's missing one other thing, love, and the single star feels more energy now than ever before and there are things he'd like to do with a partner, like travel more -- Val regrets some of the things he did in the past and he was difficult and selfish, but his whole cancer ordeal has made him a better man and more open and giving but it's been a long, long time since he had a girlfriend, let alone even kissed a woman, but with the support and encouragement of his kids and friends, he's ready to put himself out there

* Fans are saying Christopher Meloni has one of the most remarkable rears on TV after a photo surfaced showcasing his awe-inspiring ass-ets -- a shot of the Law & Order: Organized Crime star in skintight jeans sparked a Twitter-storm where fans of his fanny let loose about his sculpted caboose

Page 44: Straight Talk -- Holly Madison is blabbing about her eight years as Hugh Hefner's No. 1 squeeze in the Playboy Mansion, and, if he were still alive, the king of skin mags would hate that he pretty much comes off as a dirty old lech

Page 45: Paula Abdul was a nervous wreck during her American Idol comeback, but she was not so jittery she couldn't brand her former co-judge Simon Cowell an STD -- special guest Randy Jackson and Simon previously teamed with Paula in the 2000s to make the talent show the biggest hit on TV, and Paula temporarily resumed her role after Luke Bryan tested positive for COVID-19, but when Randy told Paula seeing her on set seems like old times, she blurted "We're just missing the STD," and the remark caught host Ryan Seacrest off-guard as he held a computer device linking Paula and Randy, who was not physically present and Ryan exclaimed, "The what?!" and at that point Paula joked she meant it was an abbreviation for Super Talented, Debonair not sexually transmitted disease -- Paula also referred to Simon, who's only three years her senior, as a grandfather and while Paula seemed in the swing of things, joining the current Idol panel of Katy Perry and Lionel Richie, she was reportedly a bundle of nerves backstage before her comeback show and it was like she'd never done it before, and her pals couldn't believe it; they told her she had more experiencing judging than anyone out there

[florence839]

“Is surfing all the websites are equally safe and secure?”- Isn’t this the question you always crave for, while surfing on the internet. Just to eradicate these sorts of risks, we use the virtual private networks. There are lots of virtual private networks available nowadays to make your connection safe and secure.

Out of those varieties, one of the most heard one in the NordVPN. If you want to be familiar with all the features and specialty of this VPN or even if you want to verify whether it is a perfect one for you or not then you are on the correct page. All your doubts regarding the Nord VPN will be cleared till the last line.

About NordVPN

NordVPN is a virtual private network service provider that is applicable to a wide range of devices. You can use it even for the wireless routers and NAS devices.

When you are using the NordVPN, you do not need to worry about the leakage or stealing of your private data or even the activity. You can now totally surf privately without anyone knowing which sites you are visiting.

You can use it for your Windows, macOS, and even the Linux. The mobile apps of the NordVPN can be used for the Android as well as iOS.

NordVPN Establishment

As per the website, NordVPN was established by four friends in 2012, and then after in 2016 the first Android and the iOS app was released. The progression went on, and finally, in 2017, a browser extension for Google Chrome was launched. Since then, the new discoveries were continuous. The next progression was made in 2018, with the launch of the application for android in 2018. As per the survey of 2019, it was operating more than 5,200 servers.

In further coming years, the NordVPN policies in different countries were being legalized as per their own authorities. Likewise in Russia, the local authorities directed it to join the state-sponsored registry of the banned websites. This is what prevents the Russian NordVPN users from circumventing the Russian state censorship. This is why the Russian NordVPN users cannot access the local servers.

NordVPN Reformations

As a business solution, NordVPN Teams was announced in 2019. The main aim of this solution was the small and medium businesses, remote teams, and freelancers. Altogether it was majorly focused on those people who need to access the work resources really securely.

The reformations and the new policies were so well enough that in 2019, NordVPN became one of the founding members of the newly formed “VPN trust initiative”. The main aim was to promote online security as well as the more self-regulating as well as transparent industry.

How does NordVPN works?

As we know that the main purpose of any virtual private network is to hide the IP address and encrypt all the incoming and outgoing data. Similarly, NordVPN also routes all the user’s internet traffic using a remote server that is run by the service, and thereby it hides the IP address as well as encrypts the incoming and outgoing data.

OpenVPN and Internet Key Exchange v2/IPsec technologies are the primary source or say the applications being used by the NordVPN fir the purpose of encryption. Besides general-use VPN servers, the provider offers servers for specific purposes like P2P sharing, double encryption, and connection to the Tor anonymity network. This proves that the NordVPN provides you many extra things apart from the private servers.

NordVPN is so much conscious about the user’s data that, once it had used the L2TP/IPSec and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol connections for routers but these were soon replaced considering it being largely obsolete and insecure.

NordVPN Applications

The NordVPN is available for a wide range of devices through its several applications. It had desktop applications for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Also, it has mobile apps for Android and iOS also for the Android TV apps. It then allows the subscription of up to 6 devices. The subscribers can also get access to the encrypted proxy extension through it.

NordLynx is a new VPN tool which was released in 2019, and is based on the experimental wireguard protocol that majorly aims for the better performance than IPsec and Open VPN tunneling protocols. NirdLynx is majorly available for the Linux user and under some conditions speed boosts of hundreds of MB/s. The NordLynx is a WireGuard-based protocol. It has shown higher average download and upload speeds than both the Open on and IKEv2.

Features of NordVPN

Here is a list of NordVPN features and afterward is the detailed information about each of them:

-Next-generation encryption

-Strict no-logs policy

-CyberSec

-DoubleVPN

-Automatic Kill Switch

-DNS leak protection

-Onion over VPN

-Streaming support

-SmartPlay

-P2P-friendly

-Lightning speed

-Secure up to 6 devices simultaneously

-Dedicated IP address

-VPN apps for various devices

-Browser proxy extensions

-24/7 customer support

Speed

NordVPN is not only the most secure VPN but also is the one with the best available speed. The average speed loss so far recorded so far is 32% with 5,300 plus servers available which are located in 59 locations. The total number of IP addresses is 5,000.

The speed test majorly depends on the local infrastructure, with hyperfast internet service that yields high test speed results.

Here, in this case, you should majorly wonder about the amount of speed loss because the use of the virtual private network can typically cut your internet speed by half or even in some cases more. But NordVPN is even more reliable in this case as well and just reduced the speed by 32% on an average basis. Its speed had been proved reliably faster as compared to many of its competitors. You will never experience any sudden dips it service interruptions. This is the perfect virtual private network providing the minimum speed loss.

Security and privacy

The security and privacy section of the NordVPN is well established and settled to ensure the privacy of the users. It has the Panama jurisdiction with the encryption provided by the AES-256, 4096-bit RSA key, Perfect Forward Secrecy which ensures the 100% security of your data. Till now no single leakage has been detected in the NordVPN.

For the emergence of security, you will find a customizable kill switch. Another major reason why the security is so strong here is because of its headquarters being in Panama since it is a privacy-friendly country due to its lack of surveillance sharing agreements with other countries.

In order to avoid the security comprises it frequently changes encryption keys with the help of its encryption standard i.e. AES-256-CBC, and it supports Perfect Forward Secrecy. Also to provide both speeds with security at the same time NordVPN also uses OpenVPN protocol and IPSec/IKEv2 each of which is responsible for security and speed respectively. Once you are linked with the NordVPN, you do not need to worry about the leakage of IP address, DNS, or any other potential user-identifying data.

NordVPN also offers a very important feature known as the kill switch. This feature is offered to prevent the network data from leaking outside of its secure VPN tunnel if the event VPN connection fails. So from here, you will get the chance to select which apps to kill in the event of a VPN drop-out. But all you need to consider is the fact that any of the apps which are not mentioned on that list will still transmit the information over the internet and finally become a privacy liability.

Nord VPN Price

NordVPN has a friendly interface along with easy controls that can be used in a wide range of platforms such as Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Linux.

It also comes in a very friendly budget with the best offers. If you go for a 2-year plan then it will just cost you $3.71monthly which is charged after a 68% discount.

You can make up to 6 simultaneous connections. You will love its clean, easy to use interface, its toggle controls as well as its server search functions. This is what the users are more liking in it and what makes it different from the other VPNs.

Final words on NordVPN

If you want to get a final suggestion on whether you can use the NordVPN as your virtual private network or not, then the answer is clear after all these detailed descriptions. It is the most reliable, secure, and fast VPN.

Apart from the best features available in it, the customer care service is also much more reliable. NordVPN offers you 24/7 customer service support through live chat, with an email option.

It also has a well-built support section on its website, which contains a veritable library of FAQs and tutorials. Thus will make it more user friendly for you to operate with.

Thus, NordVPN will give you the best private surfing experience which will keep your data confidential as well as won’t allow anyone to look over your events.

[yandere-musings]

Heyo! Good to see new yandere blog <3 Well, can I request some Wolverine/Logan headcanons? God I love so much this boy but it's very sad that there isn't much yandere content of him... Well I don't have anything specific to request for, so do whatever you want! Good work, luv ya <3

Enjoy! I feel like he would be one hell of a yandere considering that almost nothing would be able to keep him from loving you.

Yandere Logan "Wolverine"

Yandere Type: Possessive, Protective, Smothering

• It's a slow burn. Logan isn't one for simply falling in love with someone. Sure, doing something special to stand out will make you more memorable, but its not necessary. Being a mutant like him would also earn bonus points because you'd be able to understand him a bit better to an extent. Even if he admits it or not, Logan suffers with abandonment issues. There was a lack of consistency in his life from as far back as he could remember. If you interacted with him daily for a long period of time, he would slowly lower his guard because he knew you weren't going anywhere. Once he got attached though, it was over for you. Say goodbye to simple things like freedom or privacy. They were things of the past.

• Logan is insanely protective of the people he cares about, even more so if they are his romantic partener. His need to protect you will only grow stronger, especially if you are known to get into trouble or struggle to control your powers. He's possessive in the sense that everybody will know you are taken. Unlike most yanderes, he won't try to isolate you. Logan wants to trust you and has learned over the years the importance of having friends and support. Besides, he knows you'd probably scold him if he scared people away.

• Absolutely insane when it come to PDA. If you are out in public together, he will be touching you one way or another. A hand on your hip, arm across your shoulders or if he's feeling threatened, his lips on your neck. Don't even get me started on the hickies. It's easy to tell that you're spoken for when you have THAT many hickies littered across your skin. If he's not directly at your side, rest assured that he will be glaring at anyone who approaches you.

• Even if your powers were strong, he would still worry and try to baby you. Its rather sweet to see such a big and gruff man fawning over his partner so much. The other mutants might tease him for showing his soft side but he'd just cuss and tell them to mind their own business. And that's just in public. When you're alone together Logan is practically glued to your side. And if you're sitting down, you better believe that you are sitting in his lap. This isn't up for debate. Seriously, even if you try to sit beside him, he's gonna pick you up and plop you down on his knee.

•If you can't control your powers, he will encourage you to use them on him as practice. His super healing makes for an easy training session. Do anything you want to him and he'll just let it happen. Which is both a blessing and a curse. If you ever tried to break it off with him -why would you- there is nothing you could do to escape him. You could run and hide anywhere and he would have the resources to find you. You could shoot him and travel across the world to go into hiding but it would be useless. Coupled with his regeneration, his determination to find you will always result in him dragging you back.

• His love can be a bit overwhelming at times, but if you REALLY want space, tell him. Logan is actually self aware of how attached he is. Maybe it'll buy you a couple hours of peace. But don't expect it to happen often. If you start showing interest in someone else romantically, don't let him know. Logan can and WILL threaten them. And if he finds out they you ever slept with them, its a death sentence. Logan will never let anyone else replace him in your life. He will kill anyone who tries to stop him from being with you.

[elphabashepard]

I just... it’s weird.

I spend half my time being this strenuously tenuous three-part-harmony with my brother & my mother, not quite sure how things are going to go. If we’re not all drunk, it’s like walking a delicate tightrope of “what will mesh, what won’t, what will cause us to fail & argue”.

Bro’s Ok, he gets to escape around 8.30 each evening to his room. CoD, friends stuff, work stuff, girlfriend stuff. All acceptable excuses & I don’t blame him a jot. It’s entirely my fault I’ve done so little to establish my other bubbles within all of this. Now, my phone calls are always “other”. Out of the ordinary. An aberration that interferes & possibly overpowers the norm. Makes her feel like I’m choosing other people, when she has so few to choose from.

I knew this was coming. We had such a good run. Three weeks, I think, of cooperating, of gentle, of being kind, of working things out. That has to be a record. I honestly didn’t think it would last this long. & I am, I am, I am grateful for it. Of finding somewhere I could retreat to, feel at home, feel comforted. Feel like these people want me here.

But this was always going to happen. & the first CRACK, the first this-isn’t-enough, is always the worst.

Doing washing up, wiping down, all the while in pain & tired & having worked for Most Of The Fucking Day while she lays upstairs sleeping/reading/doing what The Fuck she likes, & then being told about a whole new chore that apparently now applies right after the washing up - what. The. Fuck?? Then acting as if I’m the moron for not knowing about it & acting disbelieving when Not One Person actually said a Damn Thing about it? Fuck. Off.

I did so well. The first couple of weeks, I was on it all - the washing, the cleaning, the cycle, the dinner, the management, all those things I so resented when I was actually living here.

I kept thinking “what will she do when we’re not here?” How does someone who can barely make it to the corner shop without crutches even begin to think about cleaning a whole house? But then I start remembering all this - the cobwebs, the disregard, the not-giving-a-flaming-toss started far before all of this. & it makes me cross. That she just expects us to fix this. That she let it get this bad for so long, when she has the means, the resources, to at least try & do something about it all.

But she doesn’t give a shit. Hasn’t for a long time. & I don’t understand why. & it’s infectious, that attitude. My brother has it too. Cleaning one side of the crockery because that’s the side you eat off, as if the other side doesn’t collect germs or mould or anything else damaging. Cleaning only those areas you can reach, because why does it matter about the rest? Because those corners, those fumbling pipe lines, those things you keep ignoring will only become bigger problems for as long as you leave them.

I’m really glad of the company. Of getting to spend time with my brother. Very, very glad. Because he & I will always have an understanding that no one else shares - what it’s like to deal with her. I found out she’d thrown a calculator at him the other day & I was FURIOUS. But then I mentioned she’d thrown a tv remote at me & he was confused & I remembered I never told him because that was during the time I was still trying to deny just exactly what she was becoming. Not much chance of that now.

I have no experience with addicts, other than her. Maybe it does bring out the toddler mentality. The I-must-have-what-I-want-otherwise-I’ll-scream-&-throw-things impulse. It’s so wearing, & I do not have the energy to spare.

I did. Before. I was dancing just as much as my brother was. But add hormones & lack of sleep & general why-are-we-still-doing-this-ness & I’m almost shit out of patience.

Why does she get to dictate all the rules? It may be her house but she does NOTHING towards it.

I’m actually looking forward to heading South. Back to my tiny little room. Because privacy & no responsibility & This Is My Fucking Life & all those things. & that’s as it should be.

[gg-astrology]

TWICE Kim Dahyun - Overview

Hello! 💕 I am here-- finally, doing Dahyun’s overview!! 💕💕 I got a few asks about her so I thought I’d do it now sknkj thank u for motivating me even tho u didn’t know u did!! 💕💕💕 After this--- we have Tzuyu and Chaeyoung but I’ll save them to do later!! 💕💕 Doing three readings in a row is exhAUsting but I’m!! 💕💕 Happy to deliver this now aaah 💕💕💕 Their comeback is so soon, please support the girls!! 💕💕

Masterlist  | Momo | Mina | Sana | Jihyo | Nayeon | Jeongyeon | 

Disclaimer: For unknown Birthtimes we’re going to use the standard 12.00pm --and as always, please read with your own discretion! 💕

May 28th 1998 Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Gemini Sun - Cancer Moon

I know I’ve talked about them before in my Sun-Moon combination (for this combo it’s right here)   

Anon mentioned how the members said she acts like a grandma back at the dorm, and you can kinda see that from this combination as well. With Gemini being inclusive, naturally charming and usually independent-- Cancer has to ‘recover’ and spend time recuperating from the information intake Gemini brings for their own emotional well-being

Y know-- kinda like if you’re outside and meant to be socializing, you don’t realize how exhausted you are until you come home. Cancer Moon in their domestic side comes off as a ‘different’ person (to others) bc that’s where they reset sometimes. 

That’s their ‘me’ time, sometimes they need a little more privacy in order to go through emotions as well. Which is why it’s such an interesting combination when placed next to Gemini. 

There’s a lot of mental (intellectual) connectivity that’s combined with intuitive/emotional objectivity. This mixture of Gemini/Cancer -- you have someone who can make connections fairly easily, assisting in smoother communication/guidance and relaying information.

And supplementing that is Cancer’s emotional objectivity-- cardinality, ‘what direction are we going in/what to do’ -- who has to be where, what’s the situation at hand. 

This makes for a natural leader/organizer -- but perhaps more in the term of taking in directions and then translating, relaying and making the information more hands-on afterwards for others.

A very hands-on communicator in terms of ‘so what should we actually do’ -- she assists in reality, the logistic and pragmatic nature of things. 

She understands-- what she’s working with (her resource/premise -- the girls/team- long-term ) and then what the immediate command/directions are (prompters). And applying that together in a way that works is what she does best.

Besides this, it’s also interesting to note how Gemini suns are known for their youthfulness, their energy (aura) that gives other people’s strength. 

But with the Cancer Moon that talks about wisdom and age-- you have this duality of a person who is both a ‘energetically youthful’ persona as well as a confidante-- someone who is wiser than her looks or her age, and can be reliable/dependable for others when they don’t know what to do.  

Dahyun -- if we’re to summarize her Sun/Moon in one word-- is a practical person. She’s pragmatic, in the way she organize, communicate and direct where things/people should go/work/what happens (role in the team).

She has a clear sighted-ness about her-- and a humane level of understanding (discomfort towards certain things) that makes her raise questions/points when she needs to (not a doormat). 

Rather than saying she’s overly nice or friendly, chatty or sociable. Her biggest strength is her dependability and reliability. Her emotional security in herself keeps others afloat, and her Gemini Sun engages, moves, works, and direct energy around. 

She’s inclusive to everyone around her-- and tries to understand them from a nurturing stand point (like a mother) as well as a communicative stand point (language isn’t a barrier, you can just use gestures/expressions to say what you want) 

From then-- she directs information of what to do/where to go, and resolve problems quickly/deftly with communication/mental prowess. So from Cancer Moon -> Gemini Sun, you have this internal intellect that transform into external communication skills. 

One thing to note for Gemini/Cancer combination is that they are receptive to their environment and others emotions--- their internal alignment is about keeping control.

Security, stability-- internally. Which is why they’re so good at controlling things externally. BUT because of that need for security/control -- it can also ‘lock’ them inside of themselves.

When other’s emotions are high -- these people may tend to hold themselves back. Locking themselves away from emotionally charged situations, and thus ends up not voicing their opinion/thoughts since they feel they won’t be heard/shouldn’t assert themselves right now. 

They’re receptive to other’s energy-- so be aware of how much you actually take in from your environment. You keep your own personal desires locked inside of yourself and may have difficulties voicing them out (Cancer Moon) -- if your environment/group is gloomy, stressed, depressed -- you’re susceptible to the moods of those around you and absorb them into your personal self as well (imprint-able)

You take a while longer to ‘recover’ from these moods than others do -- it’s like if the sea (Cancer) gets contaminated by oil -- it’s hard to scoop/clean it out than it is to contaminate it in the first place. 

It’s important to you that you have good, energetic/positive environment around you. That you’re engaged with lighter energy/sources because you ARE susceptible to falling/sinking into ‘heavier/deeper’ ones. 

Positivity is something you should discern, curate and edit constantly in your life. Making sure those around you and what you do can influence you for your betterment and not ‘fall’ into the snarky/sassy side that you’re only serving to your detriment.  

Your mental strength and emotional well-being relies on these as well, not just your own. Because the environment has much more of a grip on you than you realize.

Thus-- you have to watch out for those who can take advantage of you. Especially since you’re so influenced (more than you realize) -- just the wear and tear of the day drags you down. 

And whilst you might not like running away from a problem (Gemini/Cancer -- doesn’t like cowering down, backing away if it feels like it’s disloyalty/unfaithfulness -- stubborn) -- it’s important to realize how your self-esteem is influenced by others, and your vulnerabilities/sensitivity to being picked on or viewed/treated a certain way as well.

If you get backed out by an aggressive comment/lash out, drawing yourself back-- you also tend to be on the receiving end of letting people pile things on top of you.

Whilst you didn’t mean to accommodate other people (which you can do if you let yourself get swept away into it-- even when your Cancer knows it’s not something you want to be doing) --- you let them make decisions for you, because you’ve indirectly censored yourself. 

You lose a part of your own confidence and self-affirmation. But this has to do with you rejecting your own emotionality as well--refusing to talk about your own vulnerabilities/feelings, thoughts or desires. Perhaps seeing certain displays of emotions as a ‘weakness’, negatively or just ‘not the right time’. 

You brought this down on you-- with preconceived notions/stigmatization of certain emotions yourself that you eventually reject your own internal struggles/externalization becomes harder for you 

(Passive aggressiveness can happen, as well as pettiness or grunge that can form because of your own censoring yourself projected onto others as the ‘aggressor’ in this situation). 

You evaluate/think about them in private but refuses to talk about them to others/share with others to not ‘look weak’ (unless you can put them into words yourself) -- self-expression is something you do struggle with, more than you realize. Because you may feel things but you never really let yourself embrace them. You overcome emotions, and that’s why expressing them outwards can be harder for you to do.  

Learning to affirm yourself without the approval of others, and embracing your emotionality without others/past experience tells you that you shouldn’t (should put on a shell, etc.) for it will help a lot.  

Anyways, beSIDES this -- she also has a pretty prominent Sun/Mars conjunct (3′) and Sun/Pluto opposition at 0′06!!! 

This is pretty significant, Dahyun gives off a Scorpionic vibe sometimes and it may be because of how tight her Sun/Pluto opposition is (Pluto being in Sagittarius) 

In terms of what it does-- this gives a strong desire/drive to the person’s personality. With the Sun symbolizing our core-energy -- having aspects to Pluto pushes us forward externally (moving/getting to where we want regardless of enemies -- can be quite harsh despite not knowing so) along with being confident in ourselves/our ability to demonstrate and manifest thing with our will power (Mars)

Their sense of self is indeed very strong-- at the same time, they are extremely focused on having versatility to their skill-set/repertoire --  as well as a natural curiosity that turns into argumentative nature if they are stimulated/their pride is on the line--  without meaning to be.

They can be quite defensive, quick to put things bluntly and may hurt others without knowing/caring too much. Because we’re talking about Gemini which is flexible and adaptable sign-- sometimes you don’t listen to someone properly and misunderstanding can occur.

Knowing when you’ve hurt someone’s feelings (an apology is needed) with your callousness is crucial, because you may think it’s not necessary but others might not. Your insensitivity (lack of care, carelessness) can be your personal downfall as well. 

Because you are naturally popular-- but you don’t know how to maintain or mend relationships when you’re careless/crass -- you discredit your actual positive side (friendliness and helpfulness).

You are clever and witty, but don’t use it as a defensive mechanism (Cancer Moon) to make quick stabs at others. It only serves to discredit you more if you don’t know how to be more thoughtful/caring. You’re an adaptable sign-- so know your own weaknesses and make an effort to fill up/work through your vices. 

Taurus Mercury (3rd Decan/Capricorn)

Stubbornness exemplifies-- but also with Taurus in this decan, you tend to be much more of an ‘old soul’ than you realize

Taurusean with Capricorn decans relies heavily on their pragmatic side. Their cooler nature to get them through things, it’s natural to often see things from the bottom -> up. As in-- what’s the ‘base’ of all this and where can we go from here?

It’s not necessarily pessimistic, but more realistically-- where can we start on the low but stable point of the mountain before climbing up?

Finding good footing/grounds is necessary, and often times this comes with humbling/grounding herself with her family or those around her.

In her early childhood-- those who has been with her and have had parts in influenced her morals/views/values (that she now sees as being ‘good/will be useful’) -- are people she sticks with.

There’s always a slight fear of ‘losing the self’ when you’re floated up too high-- and with Taurus Mercury, it can be losing grounds on your own thought, personality and possession as well. 

Self-confusion is what turns them topsy turvey (like mooning a cow?? is that the world when they roll over?) --  because they never want to be confused about themselves. So thus why they stick so close to the field/what they know. 

Certainty and self-possession is necessary for her-- it gives her autonomy and also directory on what to do, where she goes, how she’ll handle things. It’s a part of ‘knowing yourself’ that Mercury brings-- an area that we interact with a lot in order to figure ourselves/others out.

With Taurus in Mercury she’s often pretty straight-forward, if not a little blunt with her thoughts/opinions. She can sometimes not hold her tongue, or bite it in but she has immense charm/influential voice to make up for it.

Taurus is actually quite a good sign to have in a Mercury because it technically rules the throat-- people who has Taurus Mercury often has melodious voices, and can often very persuasive and make others see/abide by her point of view. 

It’s the Ultimate Defense sign-- the immovable object. If she makes up her mind on something or was told to change, she can have a hard time making necessary adjustment 

Because her mind (Taurus Mercury) isn’t necessary looking forward to it.

Understanding why she needs to change is hard, adapting to it naturally may be easier for her to just ‘do’ -- but when it comes to ‘thinking’ about the change she reaches a stubborness, drag-feet-along-the-ground that Taurusean can have.

Especially with bigger, more impactful changes. Consequences are something that’s always on their mind whether they realizes it or not. 

More so than the change themselves (which they have the best will-power to go through when the time comes)-- it’s thinking about what the change implies, what the consequences are, what they’re losing in terms of their personal self/experiences that makes them wait back a bit.

Taurus as a fixed/earth signs are quite impressionable. They’re rather romantic-- often times clinging to their sense of self, the sensory experiences they have. 

They can be quite sentimental since they’re a very sensual/sensory sign-- sometimes refusing to throw things away for the memory/values it has to them. 

Often times, a Taurus’s emotionality runs deep (and so does their thought-- deep thinker) and expressing that outwards can be quite hard if they weren’t nurtured in an openly affectionate environment. 

Even when it’s GOOD to express these outwards, they can sometimes ‘give up’ on communicating things if they’re too ‘dragged down’ by their own stressors.

Eventually-- you’ll have to watch that they CAN make positive changes for themselves and not use their own stubbornness against themselves. As in-- they SHOULDN’T be so stressed/stagnant in a situation/confrontation they have to do that they just avoid it completely.

They’re a rather indulgence sign-- so when they’re avoiding something (denial) they really go full on into ‘lazy mode’ with it. Sometimes even cancelling stuff in order to take care of their own ‘well-being’ -- even if those well-being are because they brought this onto themselves and are just avoiding something else.

A Taurus Mind is often deep ravine with a lot of scenic flowers and growth that they nurtured there-- but getting to that place and getting them to move out of their own comfortability safe space can be quite hard.

They’re opinionated even if they don’t necessarily say it. Inflexible with their own morals/values/thinking. Sometimes ‘in their own ways’ -- it’s nearly impossible to get a Taurus to move unless they make those choices themselves. Thus why development sometimes can be slower for them than most.

These Taurusean Mercury are rather soft-hearted however, they are persuasive and Venusian. So there’s always that sensuality to them that allows them to charm the pants off others without making any changes themselves.   

Dahyun relies a lot more on instinctive level feedback -- common sense in a way, whether it’s actually sensory, developed values or how she was nurtured.  Learning for these Taurus Mercury (and how they communicate/think) is often dictated by simplicity and managing themselves for their own optimal path (make their own paths). 

Aries Venus (3rd Decan/Sagittarius) Gemini Mars

This is prime Aries Venus example skdjnskjks with Gemini into the mix as well -- this makes for quite an upfront person, often times if you ‘overthink’ it it becomes a Taurus territory (and slows her down considerably) 

But if she just DO THINGS without thinking about them, she can actually be very direct, forward and Daring. It’s only when she has to think or slow down-- that it becomes ‘well how do I explain this?’ (Taurus Mercury wants to be as deliberate and come across as charming as possible, not crass or ‘too much’) 

So you can see how she has this side-- the Aries/Gemini that’s quite meme-y (reactionary) and ‘yeah let’s do it!’ (pioneer attitude) while her Taurus/Cancer is more of the conservative ‘oh god what did I do’ attitude. 

Let’s be clear-- she DOES like challenges, but she likes challenges that doesn’t make her think too much into herself/her own flaws and introspects. She likes things that allows her to expand herself, escape a part of herself and move forward into discovering her own versatility.

With Aries Venus-- she often likes new and exciting premise/concepts, passionate, something she can fall forward into and ‘start up/can do’ about it. 

She’s quite enterprising-- so areas like business endeavors can be interesting/good for her too

She’s independent, but at the same time forward-driven and wants to be forward thinking. She has a strong sense of conservative/traditionalism to her though (Taurus/Cancer) that can stop her from fully embracing this pioneer attitude she likes--- but she does her best to exemplify this general ‘can do’ attitude in her self-expression anyways, regardless of how she might feel about it later/in private. 

‘If you don’t try it, then how will you know?’ -- is the main attitude Aries/Gemini has. At the same time, she only tries if she knows the consequences aren’t big or as impactful as she thinks they are. 

Her Taurus Mercury is calculative and her Cancer Moon is cautious-- they won’t let her get away with doing something that will make her fall/feel the rug pulled under her (Sun/Pluto aspect) -- she takes calculated risks, but in a way-- it’s less thought-out and more instinctual/intuitive/sensual risks. 

Her common sense guides her (Moon/Venus)-- and this Aries/Gemini is the crass side to her that’s ‘less thinking more doing’ 

This makes her playful -- and at the same time, quite professional. Aries Venus isn’t just about having fun, it’s about working hard too. As a Martian sign in a Venus placement-- these people want to be taken seriously (in a professional setting, respected for their own strength/work ethic) 

There’s no room for ‘playing around’ that can lead to others making snide comments about them or pitying them-- there’s no back-handed-ness here. 

Aries Venus pulls their all into what they do-- whether it’s work or play, they want to be direct because they give the same energy back. If you have a problem with the way they self-express, then say it to their face or prove them wrong. 

Aries is the ram -- that’s some staying power right there. While they’re also soft and fluffy (innocent, charming, playful and fun-loving) they can also butt you again and again if you aggravate them too much.

Sometimes immediately-- if her self-expression is questioned/threatened, she can jump into the defense and ask them to sort things out right then and there. 

Aries as a fire/cardinal sign-- doesn’t like dragging things for too long. They’d rather get the process done and over, so they can move onto other things.

This applies to themselves as well-- and how they treat their process/growth. They don’t wait for stagnancy-- they want to see changes immediately and now. 

They want to do things, or make those happen. If they have to facilitate or DO something FOR it (to deserve it) then they will. If it’s necessary to make the changes they want to see-- then they’ll do it (action-oriented).  

Combine this with her Gemini Mars--- there’s a lot of ‘freshness’ to her personality/what she attracts. In a way-- Dahyun is like ‘you attract what energy you gives out’

Even if she’s not all sunshine and rainbows-- she knows that if she put this energy forward (’this is what I like’) she’ll gain them back. Sagittarius sometimes do this too-- but more consciously, Aries tend to do this. 

Because her Venus/Saturn is conjunct-- she’s often someone who embarks on her own project, as in she already has a plan formed in mind. Sometimes she can be a little old-fashioned (yes, Aries can be like that) but that’s because she sees it in terms of principality.

Is she following a principle -- rather than a reason/motivation to do it, it’s the matter of ‘following things through/proving that she can do it’ that matters the most. You can say it’s prideful-- but it’s also very dutiful and respectful of others. This is a part of her that is very personal-justice inclined. Unlike Libra who can be very wishy-washy in this regard-- if SHE feels like this is personal justice, she WILL deal it out herself.

Nobody else can really tell her what to do, since she already has her mind set on what she wants to achieve. This is on her. 

She also has her Venus/Neptune square-- which can lead to a little bit of self-expressing problem when you take into consideration her Venus/Saturn from before. With Venus/Saturn is prudent, stable and restrictive. Doing as much as what is acceptable, and being accepted socially for that (as a unit) as well. 

Whilst Venus/Neptune is like yearning-- yearning to be more, feel more. Sometimes even a little bit of an angst streak about fantasizing/let yourself be swept up in something and then getting second hand embarrassment because of it. 

Reality doesn’t always align with our thoughts/fantasies-- even when we’re super convinced that it’s reliable. There’s always a part of her that pulls back or restrict her (Venus/Saturn conjunct) - she ‘knows’ better than to let herself get too attached, too close and too vulnerable/believe in those fantasies. 

Besides this-- her other vice is that her Gemini Mars keeps her restless. Just like her Sun-- what she expels is energetic. Thus she may feel more tired than others, exhaustions from doing nothing is common in Gemini placements. 

You’d think being an active air sign they’ll be active physically-- but it’s more like they’re active mentally. Physicality (or lack thereof) exhausts them. Thus why when they need to ‘exhaust themselves energetically’ (energy is not created, but has to travel through things to lose/gain) they become much more verbally communicative.

This is her chatty side-- the part that talks and entertains. This is her Gemini Mars-- also conjunct to her Sun (truthful/honest) that she uses to expels her internal energy outwards. 

Using her hands can be common especially with mutable placements in mars (gestures) as well as Aries/fire placements when they’re fired up. Since she has both-- when she’s excited or worked up about something she becomes animated and expressive.

Because Gemini Mars is quite scattered--- multi-tasking or spreading themselves over activities is usually the way they go about things. 

Focusing too much onto one particular thing often comes out with them losing focus, concentration or motivation to do it. Sometimes, they can drop the project and ghost if they suddenly don’t want to (isn’t supported/doing it with a friend) 

What’s cool to note is that she has a Mars/Pluto opposition here as well -- just like her Sun/Pluto -- sometimes Dahyun comes across as forceful in her command/will. 

She has a strong pride/ego associated-- might sometimes think she knows better than others (without like-- the holier than thou thing Capricorn/Aquarius has) because she’s trying to communicate her thinking across and gets impatient/brash when others don’t get it.

Watch out for her behaviour since it can cause distress on her ties-- she’s alot more moodier than she realizes, and with her forcefulness-- sometimes she can be careless and uncaring of the consequence ( ‘whats done is done this is just me’ ) -- maturity is needed, because you can’t just be wise and think you have the development to back it up when you don’t. You need to learn, grow and earn it as well. That’s why we’re living in this game called life (uh)

Another cool thing (last one I promise) is that she has her Mars/Neptune trine -- this is often a good indication of someone who de-stresses by being in water, around water, or going away on water. 

The sea in particular may be good for her-- since her Moon is also ruled by Cancer. But more so because we can see it quite clearly in this Mars trine Neptune -- the anxiety and mental energy that Gemini carries are hard-balled by Aquarius Neptune

Conclusion

There’s more to be said about Sun/Mars conjunction in Gemini -- in this she is naturally competitive but in a way that’s encouraging/motivating to others as well. 

She’s naturally self-empowering, despite her Moon being unaspected. 

Dahyun’s gentle and welcoming, but she’s also someone who isn’t easily intimidated by things. 

She knows her self well--- what she doesn’t like, what she does.

Sometimes she can be stubborn with these opinions -- but with the Gemini Sun/Mars -- she can often find her way through overcoming her own stubbornness if necessary (Saturn in Aries -- needs moderating) 

Intimacy is something that she may struggle with concerning her placements/signs-- although she’s effable and friendly, she doesn’t really open up easily to others. 

Others open up to HER because of how welcoming and dependable she is, but in terms of whether or not she relies on others/shares herself with others-- sometimes she has a harder time than others doing so.

I’d say out of all the members (so far) it’s Dahyun, Jihyo and Sana who points more to being dependable FOR others and thus doesn’t open up much/let others get to know them intimately.

It’s the Aquarius, Gemini/Aries and Sagittarius side that doesn’t necessarily like ‘deep’ feelings. Or rather-- they do have them, they just don’t like ‘sharing/expelling’ them outwards (different kind of fears/motivation for that though). 

To further talk about Sun/Pluto opposition -- she can be quite harsh on herself especially her accomplishment/effort. 

Things don’t seem to be ‘enough’ -- and she’s constantly looking to find more opportunities (Gemini/Sagittarius) to better/expand herself more and become more self-dependent as well. 

Although she can be quite sensual and sentimental when she wants to be -- she doesn’t necessarily find it easy to ‘exert’ herself more than the Gemini/Aries kind. Often times it’s quick, momentary releases. Not prolonged self-exposure because her mutable qualities can tire out easily. 

Another thing to note is her Mars/Pluto that we didn’t talk in details yet-- negativity and criticizing (obsessing over mistakes) can be common in this aspect. Particularly when it comes to finding ‘obstacles’ in their path -- they can sometimes looking for them even when they don’t have any.

Letting things go, learning that people can change/evolve and learning how to not get so caught up in instances/moments (and tunnel-visioning into them) is something these people will have to do in order to get out of this negative scape. 

They can sometimes be possessive without meaning to be-- particularly a ‘do or die’ attitude towards certain things. Learn that certain intimidation and ‘ultimatum’ isn’t necessarily granting you ‘power’ like you desire (Pluto always desire power) -- rather, you need to stop deluding yourself into thinking that you’re gaining something you want, because it won’t give you any satisfaction (and you become stuck in a cycle of self-destruction if you do).

With Dahyun who also has Jupiter in Pisces and Saturn/Neptune square --- her self-confidence can sometimes stem from self-consciousness and insecurities. Just like how imaginative she is/what she hopes wishes for the future-- sometimes she can be scared of getting that pulled from underneath her, what her reality is. 

Confronting her actual restriction/limitation and what she doesn’t like in a situation is hard-- she may often bury herself in order to ‘delude’ into thinking she’s content/happy in whatever situation she’s placed in--- if she doesn’t learn how to voice and accept her own emotions/thoughts. 

She compensates with her Aries sometimes--- the confidence, invulnerable armor that she wears (fearlessness, strong, dependable) but she’ll also have to confront her vulnerabilities and emotions if she doesn’t want to be dragged down by them as well (Saturn in Aries-- so she’ll have to confront it eventually)

Alrighty! 💜 That’s it for Dahyun!! 💜💜 She has much more of a mysterious scorpionic charm than we realize because of those strong Sun and Mars opposition to Pluto 💜💜 I hope this reading gives you more things to love her by! 💜 Another perspective to think about/understand yourself with perhaps! 💜