#after 20 mins let me log off

[melrosing]

MATE I have a feeling I am so late to this but what happened to your job!

lmao! so much! but I don’t have it anymore! ok you didn’t ask for the full story lmao but im always in the mood for venting lately so the full tale under the cut on What Happened With My Job

so without getting into detail they have been absolute asses all year!! like with each other the women in my team are like Bosom Pals but apart from a handful of pleasant people they just have no time for me lol it’s very cliquey??

anyway. we had some really difficult clients in the Spring who were ready to throw in the towel at every stage of our work process bc it was unfamiliar territory for them. I was leading the project but really struggling to meet their insane expectations like it was HUNDREDS of emails a day from like 8AM to 8PM and their ‘head of’ sometimes swearing at me on calls with a dozen other people and thinking I can work magic and get [MAJOR CELEBRITY] involved in a thing for them when objectively I can’t and just scream. anyway my directors get really uneasy because this is a big client and they don’t want them getting scared off so when the client starts reaching a crescendo of frustration they fully just scapegoat me right at the end of the campaign (at which point our results are great! lmao) and say it will be Dealt With

around the same time I start to realise that the business is failing and my ‘specialist position’ is typically the first kind to go and that COINCIDENTALLY they are on my ass day after day trying to insist im not meeting their ‘standards’ and genuinely making up the most insane reasons why not (like I know I’d be biased saying this but SERIOUSLY) so im like ohhh right. I see where this is going

THEN my dad gets goddamn incurable brain cancer and my whole life falls apart. and they suddenly have to be like ‘oh no. I am sorry this has happened. oh dear.’ I’m off two weeks having a complete mental breakdown until im kindly reminded that cough I’ve almost used up my statutory days of compassionate leave! but per company guidelines they do have to manage my workload whilst i er. struggle indefinitely w the emotional burden?? so my capacity is thus reduced and man you can tell they’re not thrilled about it

so they basically check in every Friday for a month saying ‘hope everything is ok can you take on more work yet’ CONSPICUOUSLY never asking how anything is going with dad (like when I first logged back in I had a catch up with my line manager and kind of tremulously started talking about what had happened and she literally said ‘it’s ok you don’t need to tell me the details’)

THEN I get GASTROENTERITIS 💃🏻 god knows how. but it’s a bad one and I physically can’t eat for a week man I eat like a banana a day and even that makes me sick lol. but whatever the first day I phone in and tell my director im not well. she’s like ‘WELL I ACTUALLY HAVE SO MUCH TO MANAGE RIGHT NOW SO THIS REALLY ISN’T HELPFUL LIKE I GET YOU CAN’T HELP BEING SICK BUT I REALLY NEED TO BE ABLE TO RELY ON MY TEAM TO SUPPORT COS WE HAVE A LOT COMING UP’ (I’m not even kidding)

so on the third day I log back in bc I feel like I need to just push through it but oh no im still vomiting my guts out so I message the same director ‘look I think maybe. I am still sick’ and she says NOTHING in response till I suddenly get a text from my LINE MANAGER saying ‘Hi. X says you say you still don’t feel well. We understand it’s food poisoning. That usually only lasts 24 hours’. LIKE??? apparently with all the compassionate leave I’d had to take, the sick leave was just too much for them to bear lmao so i got myself a goddamn doctor’s note and have to announce every day for the rest of that week ‘I’m still not well sorry’ (they never ever reply)

Then finally I recover and I log back in and my director doesn’t ask me how I am or anything literally just says ‘WELL let’s get straight to business’ and explains the status of everything at me for 20 mins going on about how stressful it all is.

And then an hour later I get a surprise call from my head of department telling me unforch they’re making me redundant. can’t be helped. understand this is a bad time for you personally. (said head of department has never addressed what bad thing is happening personally rn). and im in shock. till i figure that what with my dad this is probably an appalling time to make up some performance based reason to fire me so this was their only option

and then finally I see the paperwork and realise severance pay is a third of my annual salary. so i promptly get over it, log out halfway through the month whilst still being paid for my time till the end of it, and NOT ONE of those fuckers has even reached out to say goodbye in all that time but god knows I never want to hear from them again so?? fuck it! i told HR everything anyway I was like look I don’t want to take formal action but?? I think you should know.

and now im just gonna chill for Christmas w my dad and my fam and my pals and my cats and do my weird asoiaf shit on tumblr I guess lol. so there we go that’s what happened!!!!

tl;dr got made redundant lol

[raymoohackery]

ok rambling about phone time after my post about the tik tok update that DESTROYS your phone and how i actually hate the whole thing of people shaming others for having 8+ hours of screen time instead of doing something more "productive" aka time consuming activities that need their own schedule and can't be done on the go. people love to pretend we can switch 8 hours of scrolling where the person reads and watches videos with let's say pottery sculpting learning a new language.. the latter especially being "on your phone" with overpriced apps.

let's say someone has to do a total of 4 hours of commute a day and has a total of 40 mins of break at school or work we can already put that as potential screen time made to log the brain off, therefore leaving only 3 hours and 20 minutes of "wasted" time on the phone.

people pretend we can read or watch a documentary during the commute AS IF you'd memorize anything you'd read in between two noisy subways. I'd take my glittery screen over faking to be an intellectual anytime.

to me excessive phone use becomes a problem not if it's 2 to 15 hours a day but rather at the moment the phone time makes you unable to work, to study, and most importantly prevents you from doing the things you usually love or if it endangers you (using your phone on the road because you can't stop using it). add to that it becomes problematic when the person absorbs everything they see on tik tok twitter tumblr pinterest like a reality when it's obviously mostly fake *thinking about aesthetic hustling culture diet culture blogs here* anyway I'd love to see where you stand on that

thought abt this ask after LRB. honestly i do think that excessive phone use has bad sides to it, dependinv on how you use it. mindless scrolling is bad for your brain in the longterm, but looking at stuff like art or talking with people on enriching subjects is great. at the end of the day the problem is capitalism and the attention economy where shortening the customer's attention span so it can be bought up is the profit model. unfortunately we DO live in a reality where most of a working day is monopolized by being tired and unfocused where the best way of entertainment is looking at funny images on your phone cuz thats all you have time for. its a vicious cycle really. not so much about minmaxing all your productive time, but about keeping your brain healthy by not getting addicted to watching 5 videos at once so you dont have to suffer the horrible dreg of: watching 1 thirty second video in full undisturbed

in sum, its not the great evil everyone claims it is, but it can go down south real fast and shatter your attention span. but don't get caught up in that and it's really not a problem i think. i'm guilty of scrolling all day erry day but its just cause its the easiest way of getting laughs in, engaging with others, and look at inspiring images. i get sone of my best fic ideas looking at what the ganondorf mutuals are saying ..... :)

[fizzingwizard]

(Complaining)

Today I got to work. The first hour was teaching my extracurricular class. Then I went directly to my homeroom class, taught their lesson, then sat with my wigglers for the next teacher's lesson because otherwise they run around in the back of the room screaming. (IMHO our school expects two year olds to sit for lessons for way too long. It's 45-50 min total. But I've suggested at least breaking up the lessons before and am always told no by the leaders. I do let the wigglers check out and go read a book or do a puzzle when they really can't sit, because I just think it's ridiculous that two year olds should have so little freedom... but Japan... anyway)

After that I had to frantically get ready for our craft and activity time. Usually I do that during my co-teacher's lesson, but this year there are too many wiggly kids, and my third co-teacher tries to help but because we have so many kid she also has too much she needs to do during that time... After that, we get ready for lunch. Got a lot of kids this year who refuse to eat anything but rice. More than usual. So lunch is pretty much us standing to observe and sneaking quick bites of our own lunches when we can between helping kids eat and encouraging them to eat a teeny tiny bite of literally anything besides rice.

Then they play. We have to take them to the bathroom, clean the tables and chairs, clean the floor, pack away the lunches, change the diapers, log information about lunch and daily activities in their individual notebooks, help the kids pack their bags, and refill their water bottles, while watching them play. Then we do a gross motor activity, then we read a storybook, and then the kids go to nap time.

It's four hours of constantly moving, talking, standing, squatting. Never sitting, lol. Now we do our best to convince the kids sleep is a good idea. I stay through part of my "break" finishing those notebooks. Then I go do my cleaning duty. Then I go to the computer and fill out the required report on our day. Then I have to do 20 assessments, go through all the photos we've taken so far to make scrapbooks of 24 photos for all 20 kids, organize all their crafts and worksheets into the scrapbook, review and upload our class time videos for the parents, plan events, go shopping for materials, make the materials for the next craft, write the newsletter for the parents, and create my lesson plan for next month. I have an hour to do this. I am not being paid for this hour. (Also it's often not even a full hour, but 30 min here, 15 min there.) It is so fucking impossible lol. And the assessment and stuff, it's worse because it's redundant as well as ridiculous. We JUST assessed the same sort of stuff in the kids' progress reports less than a month ago, and now we have to do it all over again with very slight variation for every single kid, AND this assessment will be used to evaluate the kids' readiness for next level, which is just silly because the majority of those who haven't reached certain benchmarks yet will have reached them by the end of the year... utterly silly.

So during this hour I do as much of that as I can, which today meant I did the reports, did some lesson planning, and managed to finish ONE assessment. I have sooo much left to do. When when when. Where is the time for it. I'm not paid a salary. I'm hourly. They literally expect me to do it on my unpaid breaks and whatnot. And it's not even stuff that can be accomplished in an hour - especially when everyone else also needs to accomplish the same things, we're all off duty at the same time, and first come first serve at the computers haha.

Now that hours up, so I go to wake the kids, all 1-3 yos, from their nap. One of the kids throws a tantrum, so my co-teacher takes him outside. They're gone for fifteen minutes, which is precious time right now because there is, again, so much to do. Wake all the kids, get them in their shoes, sitting at the table, drinking their water. Clean up their futons. Take their temperatures. Document stuff in their notebooks agaaaain. Hand out allergy snacks. Hand out home snacks. Hand out school snacks. Check everything off on a plethora of checklists. As they finish, wipe their hands and faces, make them drink more water, help them clean up, check their diapers, change their diapers, watch them play, send them home with their parents or to extracurriculars, clean up the crumbs, clean up the tables and chairs, clean the floor, vacuum, clean up the garbage, watch the kids play.

Because the co-teacher is gone for 15 minutes, I'm the only one, the ONLY one, taking care of all the kids who are eating. I have a kid who will stuff his mouth so full of food that he'll start to choke, so I have to diligently give him one bite at a time until he's finished, in between cleaning. There are two other teachers in charge of diapers and the notebooks (who for some reason just didn't do the notebooks today?? I'm not really sure what happened there). It's supposed to be two and two, so there's no one to help me. I have to do all the cleaning, wiping, diaper-checking, and breaking down by myself. By the time my co-teacher comes back, she's off duty. So I have to deal with tantrum kid too, whose current mood is "say no to everything." He screams while I desperately try to put away all the tables so there's room for kids to walk, and sweep the floor so they don't have to walk on squashed grapes and cake. Between doing all the overseeing and cleaning myself, I was on my feet doing physical stuff for 55 minutes. Usually we're cleaned up in 40 minutes. Ah, there's that 15 minutes. (Not my co-teacher's fault though - the kid needed to be taken care of. It's just that we're expected to do SO MUCH in a single hour.) Also it's really freaking hot, and yeah we use AC, but there's a lot of bodies in the room and when I checked the thermostat, some alien person had set it to 25. I was like nope nope 23, 23 it is. Suddenly the room was a lot more bearable (9_9)

So now I can FINALLY sit down with the kids who are playing. It is literally four minutes till clock out time. I find a kid who threw a fit about changing his diaper, who I'd managed, while cleaning up, to cajole into doing it by himself. He had put his diaper on backwards. I tried to fix it, he tried to run away, he fell and started to cry. This is that kid with the hypersensitive parents I've mentioned before. Guess when his mom decides to arrive? Yup, just that moment.

She acts fine, I fix his diaper, he stops crying and goes off happily. When I go to clock out, I see mom changing his entire outfit. The parents have told us that if their kid sweats, we need to change his clothes. We already change kids' clothes if they get wet or are sweaty. Today we didn't go outside because it's too hot. Their kid didn't get particularly sweaty staying inside. His shirt wasn't wet at all. But the mom changed all his clothes. I am bracing myself to hear about it tomorrow.

But I keep thinking. When the hell was I going to think to change this not sweaty kid's clothes?? At what point during the day did I have a moment to do anything except frantically run around doing as much as I possibly can? I have not sat down all day except to work through my break. I've eaten nothing but a little bit of rice myself because lunch time was so busy. I'm exhausted, hungry, and hot. Someone give me a break to change my sweaty clothes, lol!

I want to do everything possible to keep the kids happy and healthy but I absolutely have no idea when I or my coteachers had a moment to think about anything not 100% essential. I'm just fried.

I felt a little... not vindicated, but seen, I guess, the other week after some leaders came for yearly observations, and their feedback was that our class is doing great, but I'm doing too much. They really encouraged my coteachers to help me more. And while I am most DEFINITELY doing waaaay too much, it's also too much to expect more of co-teachers, because the veteran teacher is also doing a lot more than she should be, and the rookie has only been here a month. She's trying but she hasn't developed the skill for behavior management yet, and she doesn't know how to anticipate what I'm doing. Plus I know she is EXHAUSTED everyday. Last Friday she was so anemic that she had to go lie down and I stayed late to cover her shift. I don't blame her one bit. This is too busy and fast-paced a school for a first-timer learning the ropes. I'm glad it wasn't my first school. She is working really hard and doing so well, and my other co-teacher is amazing. It's none of our fault we just have TOO MUCH WORK, not enough time, and not enough staff.

I'm just counting the days until Obon break, ugh.

[austincharcoal]

OCTOBER 2023 MEDITATION LOG

this was inspired by an assignment in my english 101 class. it prompted us to watch/read some mainstream articles/vids about meditation and try meditating for 3 days in a row, then write about it.

Fri, Sep 29    1:05am           Watched the Light Watkins TedX video. Interest was piqued when he said that meditation brings a deeper rest than is possible in sleep. Then he went on and on about the difference in biological age when you meditate. Excited to try more rigorous meditation schedule. Meditated 1:35-1:45am, was really nice. Came close to falling asleep a couple times, I am very tired. Felt grateful to be living in the city hearing rain sounds on the street.

Sat, Sep 30   9:01pm           Took a break from anatomy notes & electronic music to meditate 10 mins. Had a hard time keeping my mind off [redacted]. The things that were difficult then would be easier now that I’ve matured and relaxed a bit. But [redacted].

Sun, Oct 1     10:38am        Tried to do 10 min meditation during AA meeting but had to poop after like 4 mins. Did 10 full mins after meeting ended. It’s easier in the mornings, but I can feel I have lost the groove to a large degree. Still, morning meditation is simpler. By the evening my brain is usually in full pleasure-seeking mode. Mornings I’m usually reeling a bit from soreness and stiffness.

Mon, Oct 2    8:45pm           Did 10 mins sitting up. It’s wild how my body is aware that it’s tired but my mind ignores it, until I try to meditate sitting up and have to fight off sleep over and over. Maybe I should turn in early tonight. When I was awake, I was releasing thoughts about food and women, as usual. Laughed a bit to myself remembering how excited [redacted] was to find the “hidden veggies” pasta recipe on TikTok.

Tue, Oct 3     1:19pm           Late start today. Brewed coffee then laid down to meditate before drinking it. Lot of sexy thoughts bouncing around! Hard to bring my racing mind down today. Probably because I didn’t sleep well. This is somehow becoming both a mediation and a sleep log.

Wed, Oct 4    9:40am           10 min meditation during morning meeting.

Thu, Oct 5     12:28pm        Had been sinking into phone-greyout, scrolling haze, absolute oblivion, and needed a break. 10 min meditation was the only thing that could work. Counted breaths for most of the 10 mins, after english prof. explained during class that counting breaths is the important part of '20 breaths' meditation. It def helped during 10 min meditation. Leg pain was distracting so toward the end started stretching a bit. Feel refreshed and ready to sit down for some studying before work.

Fri, Oct 6        11:52am         Watched the Andy Puddicombe Ted Talk. I liked his analogy about knowing you have a loose tooth and continuing to mess with it even though you’re in pain. Meditated for 10 mins. Feel less overwhelmed about how many things I need to do this afternoon. I’m calmer and more apt to work through them in an organized manner without resorting to distractions. Thought about what to say to [redacted], thought about doing dishes and stretching and listening to new Drake album and taking anatomy notes and making a doctor’s appointment. Tried to recenter and focus on breaths a few times.

Sat, Oct 7      10:30am        Meditated during morning meeting.

Sun, Oct 8     9:51am           Meditated during morning meeting. Thought about my plans for the day (going to NYC to have dinner with my aunt), thought about my mom and my grandma, thought about the family counselor Dr. Prakash who taught me to meditate in 4th grade. Used breath counting to help 'let go' of thoughts and return to quiet mind.

Mon, Oct 9    9:50am           Meditated during morning meeting but was kinda drifting in and out of sleep.

                        8:45pm           Went to [redacted]. It got kinda intense but [redacted]. Decided to decompress by meditating together for 10 minutes. It was beautiful and memorable.

Tue, Oct 10   2:10pm           Read ½ of NYT meditation article then set 10 min timer to meditate. Lots of thoughts running through my head, I can be so obsessive about personal stuff. Was good to have a break from that, even though I didn’t really want the break, I wanted to keep obsessing. Post-break though, I feel better. Body is really sore since I’ve gotten 17k steps, two days in a row. So before the 10 mins were up I got out of my chair and started doing some stretches with eyes closed. Love combining stretches and closed eye meditation. Definitely feel better now, and my 'mindfulness muscle' is getting a tiny bit stronger each day. I find it easier to return to the centered calmness of counting breaths.

Wed, Oct 11                          Didn’t meditate

Thu, Oct 12   10:47am        Meditated 10 mins after morning meeting. Really out of the groove today but tried to just count 100 breaths. Thought about chopping wood for work, about sex, about being messy in romantic relationships, about stretching after meditation, about the kid in my math class who seems to be following along better than anyone else.

Fri, Oct 13                             Didn’t meditate

Sat, Oct 14    9:45am           Meditated during morning meeting.

Sun, Oct 15   2:01pm           Took a break from studying anatomy to meditate. Was sort of fighting off sleep part of the time. Said simple prayers to ask for God’s will to be done, and to discover what that will is. Prayed also for a loving and generous spirit in my heart.

Mon, Oct 16  11:00pm         Meditated 10 mins after looking at Twitter/Reddit for ~3 hours. I think I need to try 15 or 20 minute meditations because sometimes I find myself totally distracted and overstimulated for more than half of a 10 minute meditation. That was the case this time. At some points I opened my eyes and just stared at the wall to keep from thinking about downtown Montreal, or applying to a Master’s program in 5 years, or how I had a bad attitude at work the other day.

Tue, Oct 17   12:14pm        Been feeling emotionally unhinged lately, lowkey lashing out at people. Trying to redirect. Meditation is a good starting place. Meditated 10 minutes and had to stop myself over and over from planning out my day. How much time will I spend in the restaurant working on prep? How much time on schoolwork? Will I have time to pick up a cleaning project? Could I meditate for 10 minutes on the clock? Who will I see there and what will the vibe be when I talk to them? Used breath counting to reel in some of the thoughts. Asked God for help. I have a long way to go toward being centered, organized, disciplined. Please, God, help me make some progress today.

Wed, Oct 18                          Didn’t meditate

Thu, Oct 19   10:30am        Meditated in morning meeting. Feel at peace with my life, with who I am and where I’m at, with my propensity for anxiety, for mistakes, for seeing things through a distorted lens. I’m gonna keep learning and I’m gonna be okay.

Fri, Oct 20     10:30am        Meditated in morning meeting. Had trouble staying quiet mentally. In the meeting we talked about the 'confusion' that exists without a spiritual connection. Thought about how meditation and confusion are like exact opposites. Lot of confusion and noise for me lately. Meditation must be one of the main solutions. Not just meditation but a meditation practice. Prayer as well, I need more of that. Talked about meditation with my sponsor later. He recommended I try the 'toes-to-head' meditation.

Sat, Oct 21    9:00am           Made coffee then meditated for 10 mins before meeting.

                        9:45am           Meditated for 10 mins in morning meeting. It felt good to get more time in. Would like to do one longer session but 10x2 was easy and felt very calming.

Sun, Oct 22   9:30am           Set a timer and laid on yoga mat to meditate for 10 minutes. Said a prayer for my mom and grandma, who are going through a difficult time. Had to keep returning to baseline as I kept fantasizing about sex with [redacted], who I’ve been texting. Sex is a constant refrain for my tired brain, I think I’m subconsciously convinced that there’s some simple relief there. But intellectually I know it’s never that simple, relationships are complicated and usually come with more stress than being single. Important to talk myself down from these underlying desires.

Mon, Oct 23                          Didn’t meditate. Busy day, but I think I need to start finding more time. It’s possible to replace some of my phone-scrolling time with meditation every day, sometimes I just don’t do it. This log is helping me stay accountable and showing me what I need to change to meditate more.

Tue, Oct 24   12:45pm        Meditated 10 mins laying on yoga mat. Was really able to start calm with deep breaths, maybe because I was laying down. Often I start with a hectic mind and try to calm it for the first 5 mins.

Wed, Oct 25  10:30am        Didn’t meditate? Can’t remember

Thu, Oct 26   11:45am         Meditated 10 mins. Sick with a cold, hopefully not worse. Did not want to meditate but do feel a bit better

Fri, Oct 27     9:48pm           Meditated 8 mins. Got antsy during the last two. Feeling very baby because the cold is actually a flu or something. Lots of schoolwork to do before tomorrow night. Trying to stay calm and not get overwhelmed.

Sat, Oct 28    8:15pm           Meditated 10 mins which led to me napping for another 30. Very ill but still going to work and studying. Sad!

Sun, Oct 29                           Did not meditate. Walked for 2 hours listening to an old interview with Brad Phillips, he talked a lot about 12 step program, psychedelic drug experiences, Zen vs. Tibetan Buddhism. Helpful for pondering meditation and how to consider it in my life.

Mon, Oct 30  10:45am        Meditated 10 mins after morning meeting. Health is improving slightly. Trying to spend the day doing work, chores, service to others, or meditative things like prayer, listening to spiritual talks, walking. Trying to leave alone the chaotic, noisy things that are really perpetuating my discomfort and dissatisfaction.

Tue, Oct 31   2:03pm           Meditated 10 mins after writing for English class, before going for a walk and calling my sponsor. Turns out I had covid. At least it's almost over. Same with October. What's next.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Biggest Fan 2

Part 1

Warning: coercion, blackmail, porn, nonconsent sex, cheating 

It was a long, silent walk back to the office. You rubbed your palm with your thumb as you struggled not to think of the feel of him in your hand. The hardness still barely concealed in his pressed pants.

He opened the door for you and you walked ahead of him. He followed you up the stairs and you felt his gaze on your ass, realising too late your mistake. As you reached your floor, you rushed over to your desk and he let you. He went to his office. It was as if nothing had even happened. As if your hand hadn’t been on his dick only fifteen minutes before.

You took a shuddery breath and logged in to your computer. Most of your work was transcription or shadowing Andy. Nothing overly complicated. Even so, you found it hard to concentrate on your work. You rubbed your forehead and leaned back in your chair. You glanced towards Andy’s office, his door was open, he was watching you, his pen pressed to his bottom lip. He tore his eyes from you and grabbed his phone.

You wanted to be sick. You drew your attention back to your screen and forced yourself to type. The buzz of your phone distracted you but you ignored it. It vibed again and you slid it out of your blazer pocket onto your desk. You positioned it just under your monitor and unlocked it.

‘Today. After work.’ The first text read and the second hovered above. ‘I can’t wait for the real thing’.

You swept away the bubbles and blinked at the computer screen. He was like a teenager. This man you’d looked up to, this man you’d admired for his professionalism, his veracity, were just like those boys in your program who tried to talk you into one of their stupid red cup parties. And he was married. The thought made you want to sob but you just forced down the bile and kept typing.

Though the morning had dragged by, the rest of the day seemed to fly. You looked at the clock and your phone lit up. Another message from him. You packed up your things before you dare to grab your cell and reluctantly looked at it. ‘Got a meeting with Canavan. Meet me at Joe’s down the block, 20 min.’

You looked over and found his office empty. You’d been so determined to ignore him, you hadn’t even noticed him leave. You grabbed your bag and headed out. Joe’s was a coffee place just down the block, you always grabbed Andy a small coffee when you got yours. Wait, had you led him on? With coffee?

No, no. He was a forty year old man and you were just a college student. This wasn’t your fault. Well, those were your pictures on the internet. You had put them there.

You barely recalled making your descent onto the street or hurrying down to the little cafe. You ordered a bottle of juice so you could sit in the corner. You picked at the unbroken seal and your leg shook nervously beneath the table. What were you doing? If you just ignored him, would he really send those pictures? Andy was a good guy… or so you thought.

You were startled as the table shifted and he sat across from you. He smoothed the front of his suit and smiled at you then looked around.

“We shouldn’t stay here long,” He said. “Too close to work.”

“You can’t be serious about this?” You kept your voice low. “Andy, I--”

“Shhh,” He raised his hand. “Look, we don’t have time to waste.”

You stared at him and gulped.

“First thing, delete your account.” He said.

“What? I can’t-- That’s how I--”

“I told you. I’ll take care of you.” He interrupted. “Delete it. Now.”

“You’re married,” You whispered. “Why--”

“I know what I am. What I want.” He turned his hand down onto the table. “Ten seconds or I add your professor to the CC.”

“Goddamnit,” You bent and reached into your bag. 

You sat up with your phone and keyed in the code. You opened the app and he took the phone before you could hit anything else. He placed it on the table between you and went to settings. You watched as he scrolled through the settings and finally found the option to delete. He accepted several warnings before everything just disappeared. He turned the phone back to you and slid it forward.

He stood and sighed as he checked his watch. “Alright. Laurie’s taken Jacob to his tournament so we should have some time. Let’s go.”

📚

Andy’s house was nice. Much nicer than your small apartment near the college. You felt out of place as he drove right into the garage and let you in through the side door. You hated that you were sneaking around. Hated that you were doing this at all.

You entered the kitchen and he turned to you. He took your bag and set it on the counter. You shuddered as you lifted your foot and he stopped you.

“Keep the shoes on,” He smiled. “I like ‘em.”

“Are you… sure about all this?” You lowered your foot slowly. “My account is gone, you made sure of it.”

“That’s not what this is about,” He grabbed your arm and wrenched you forward. He took your hand in his and pressed it to his crotch again. “Feel that. That’s what you do to me. Every fucking day.”

“Andy--”

He spun you and pushed you against the island. You saw a flowered notebook on the other side. That was probably hers, just like the man behind you. He leaned his weight against you as he gripped your waist and purred.

“I can’t help but think of you on my desk as I’m sitting on it but this will have to do,” His hand went to your ass and he slapped you hard. “Oh, fuck.”

His hands crawled up to your shoulders and he pulled your blazer off. He dropped it on the floor and reached around to unbutton your blouse. You grabbed his hand and he brushed you off.

“Don’t make this difficult, baby girl,” He warned. “Don’t tell me this isn’t what you wanted all along?” He tore your blouse open and forced it down your arms. “Posting those pictures.”

“Please--”

“Shhh, don’t want the neighbours to hear.” He flung your shirt. “They always are so fucking nosy.”

You hung your head as he unzipped the back of your skirt, pulling back to let it slip past your hips. It pooled on the tile and he stepped on it until you lifted your feet one at a time and he kicked it away. You regretted your ridiculous choice not to wear underwear. Well, it had been more a dare and earned you a smooth fifty on your paypal.

“Fuck.” He rubbed your ass as his other hand fought with his belt. 

You smelled his woodsy cologne as his fumbling grew more frantic. You heard the soft metallic clink and his zipper as he pushed it down. He wiggled as he shoved his pants down. His hand went around to your stomach and he guided himself along your ass his foot between yours as he urged your legs apart.

You slapped your hands on the island as he dragged his swollen tip along your folds and found your entrance with a hum. He pushed inside you and jolted your hips into the edge of the counter, nuzzling his head into your neck as he leaned into you. His hot breath was wet against your skin as he forced himself to his limit.

“Shit,” You swore as you stretched around him. 

“Mmmm,” He hummed and thrusted hard, lingering inside you as he basked in the feel. “God, you’re even better than I could have--” He rocked his hips again and choked. “Jesus.”

You scratched your nails against the marble island and pushed your head back against his shoulder as he moved his hips steadily, each tilt coming quicker than the last. You gritted your teeth as you tried to fight off your own arousal. Despite your reluctance, your core burned hot and you could hear how slick you were with each thrust.

He withdrew his hand from your stomach and grabbed your shoulders. He pushed you down until you were bent over the island and your feet left the floor. He held you down as his motion picked up and he slammed into you with dusky grunts. With each jolt of his hips, yours hit the marble and you held your breath to keep from moaning.

You closed your eyes and pressed your cheek to the cool counter. Your lips formed an O as you came quietly, covering your face with your arm. He crashed into you harder than before, you felt your juices spreading along the open v of his pants and the tails of his shirt. He gripped your hips and his thumbs dug into your flesh.

He pulled out of you sharply and swore as he spilled down your thigh, stroking himself along so that his tip rubbed his seed over your skin. Breathless, he spread his hand over your lower back then dragged it down to your ass and squeezed.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” He rasped.

He drew his hand and backed away. You slid off the island and your feet wobbled beneath you, your heels almost perilous as your legs buzzed. Andy leaned against the other counter as he wiped himself with a paper towel and put his cock away. He zipped up his pants and buckled his belt before tucking in his shirt and straightening his collar.

“Whew,” He took a breath. “Baby girl, that was worth every last penny.” He looked you up and down and bit his lip. “Better get dressed before the wife gets back.”

[jikookisrealerthanmylife]

I've gotten so many asks which I don't want to post but let me address them all in a concised way along with my thoughts :

I was never fan of insta. Imo it's for narcissistic people. I prefer feeding my brain rather than my eyes. So even when BTS came to insta , it didn't make me go install that app or log in . Watching them all stage a facade of being new to app was funny just for like minutes but they seriously were lying and pretending to fans . The group treating fans as consumers of their content and not someone who are familiar with them who'd understand that they all had Priv accounts prior to this , put me off . Becuase comeon, every Korean has a insta acc. They love their unique fashion style and even old people in media industry have it so it won't be surprising if BTS had accs .

And then the 'accidental follow' plus fandom wars . If you ask me both tae and Jennie seem to have the same character of having multiple connections and using them for social ladders . So I won't be surprised if they both knew each other. Plus they both have the same friends circle. So I thought this was some spoiler for a future public interraction between two group officially and preparing the fandom for that . But then they were still acting new to app and caused fanwar then shipwar eventually ending up on jimin as usual.

The reposting pics of yeontan as if the feed can't wait until irl pics could be taken and had to satisfy a certain agenda (au storyline as imagined by the target audience shippers) and pics of bam being posted (again, old pics not new ones that could be taken after quarantine returning home to the dog) - another point of confusion

And the biggest red flag - Jimin, who is the ultimate travel lover returns Korea with no vacation trip in US stay (he's the one who wanted to go another trip in 2 days gap last time with jungkook) , passenger says she saw him sitting in business class not first class and jimin was the one who came last while jinkook came before 20 mins on Korea arrival. Was he seated in business class again?

And looking at the extent to which company is promoting even after the song isn't going to be realeased , I think we are getting that jikook song this month . That'll explain juggling of both big ships

And since everything is being staged like a movie for the audience I'm gonna opt to walk out the theatre. That's right.. I'm gonna stop being an army . I can't let some capitalist corporate play with my thought process , I'm here for music and dance ffs! But this ain't the BTS i knew- they're now enteratiners and staged content creators . They're now responding to shipper fanarts! Subunit is being hyped before even it's created and it's by members themselves . I'm not getting any MMA or MAMA groundbreaking grand performance of the year .

I will bleed yellow now - jimin and jikook only (maybe namjoon and hobi too ). I'll take jimin being offline as a sign and I'll follow only him from now on . This is a semi- army / jimin solo Stan jikooker page officially from now on.

Thank you.

[doctors-star]

Can you stay still for the next 20 min? (If this was meant as a prompt ask 😅)

“Okay - have you got it?”

“Yeah, you can - shift it to the left a bit, yeah - is that right your end?”

“Looks good to me.” Peter leans back very carefully, eyeballing along the length of the beam with half of his face scrunched up in a squint. Alex resists the urge to fidget the cold, heavy wood between his hands; there is a strong likelihood that, in seeking a better grip on the slippery, paper-like bark of the skinny silver birch trunk they are using as a rafter, he will in fact fumble with numb fingers and drop it through their half-built structure. Peter straightens up and grins at him. “Right. Now, you just hold that there, perfectly still, while I drill and fix this end - shouldn’t take too long, anywhere between-” he tilts his hands mock-thoughtfully, “-two minutes and three days. All right?”

Alex sends him a withering look, somewhat weakened by the smile he is valiantly attempting to fight from his face. “You may have twenty minutes, maximum,” he says sternly.

“Why twenty?” Peter asks, casting about him for the auger they’re using to bore holes in the rafters and peg them together. “And - I mean you no offence, mate, but you keep shifting the beam - can you stay still for the next twenty minutes?”

Peter starts to descend his ladder to hunt down the drill and Alex takes pity. “You tucked it in your belt.”

“Ah! And you told me it was a bad idea,” Peter acknowledges with the point of a finger, scrambling back up and fidgeting the large, curling length of very sharp iron out from the small of his back.

Alex tilts his head slightly. “I meant because you might fall on it and die, but yes, fine, also because you have no object permanence and would lose it.”

Peter snorts and aligns the auger carefully over the crossed beams, perpendicular to their length, before beginning to twist the handles that form the T-shape of the drill. They’re down to their loose white shirts, despite the biting cold, what with the hauling and lifting and boring and pegging. Alex can see the muscles across Peter’s shoulders shift and pull under the thin linen.

“Anyway,” he says, dragging his eyes away and fixing them on the birch between his palms. The wood is scarred and knotted by the vagaries of Welsh weather but straight and sturdy; the bark is peeling in tight coils of ghostly parchment. It judders in his hands with every wrench of the auger, so he focusses on simply holding it still. “You can only have twenty minutes, because lunch is at one and that’s in about twenty minutes - whereupon I will abandon this whole project, because I’m hungry.”

Peter huffs a laugh, silver in the winter air. “Oh, right,” he says, as though this is quite reasonable, “I understand. Twenty minutes it is, then - although you’ll have to count it out in your head, what with us being Stuart farmers in rural Wales and therefore not having access to such newfangled things as watches.”

Peter looks at him out of the corner of his eye, biting his lip. Alex assumes a suitably innocent expression in the face of this challenge. “Mm,” he agrees.

“After all, I assume that’s how you know it’s twenty to one - you’ve been counting the minutes since dawn.”

“Oh, no, I can read the time in the sky.” Peter looks sceptically at the thick duvet of cloud overhead - the light has remained the same weak greyness since the sun technically rose, though they’ve not seen it. Alex shuffles the log into one hand, moving his foot up one ladder rung to support its weight on his thigh, and fumbles the other hand in the small leather pouch attached to his belt. He lifts the modern stainless steel watch up to the sky and makes a show of squinting at it against the clouds, and then puts it away. “Twelve forty-five,” he says decisively, slowly creasing into a smile when Peter abandons the auger to put his face in his hands and laugh.

“The director’ll have your head for that,” Peter points out, amused, as he goes back to the drill with a fond shake of his head.

Alex shrugs. He can, it turns out, do without most modern conveniences: he’s become used to candlelight and going to bed early, he likes the food, he honestly hasn’t thought about television for about three months. They’re allowed enough bits of their old lives to keep them all healthy and sane, like toothpaste and regular phone calls to friends and family, but other than that they’ve been keeping to the period fairly religiously and Alex wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s just - it turns out that, like how an explorer might like to keep a compass on them to know which way is north, Alex likes to know what time it is. Not for any particularly rational reason. There’s just a sort of comfort in knowing where he stands, temporally.

“Should have got you a pocket sundial for Christmas,” Peter says wryly, jimmying the auger back out of the wood with effort.

“A sundial? In Wales?” Alex objects mildly. “Peter, be serious.”

“Hah. Well, Stuart Welshmen managed somehow,” Peter points out, trotting swiftly down the ladder and fishing about in a basket for a peg long enough to pin the beam to the apex.

Before Alex can respond, there is a call from the farmhouse, and Ruth is waving at them as she picks her way through the frosted garden towards them. “Hello, boys - oh, this is going up well.”

Peter smiles shyly at her and pats the nearest upright of the latrine. “It’s good, yeah,” he says, turning the peg in his fingers with the other hand. It’s terribly sweet, this nervous adoration Ruth seems to inspire in him when she catches Peter off-guard. Sweet, and slightly embarrassing on Peter’s behalf, and very slightly inspiring of jealousy, as though Alex were five years old and sulky over Ruth stealing his best friend. He doesn’t like to examine that much.

“Slightly roofless,” Alex points out.

Ruth smiles, tilting her head back to look up the ladder at him, and the niggling, uncomfortable envy fades somewhat. “It’s al fresco,” she corrects cheerfully, and he grins. “It’s got walls, anyway, and this looks like your last roof beam, so it’s only slightly roofless.”

“You won’t say that when it rains,” Alex foretells, and she laughs.

“All right. I came out to tell you lunch will be in a minute, so if it’s at a point where you can leave it-”

“I’m letting go of this beam,” Alex tells Peter firmly. “I’m doing it.”

“You said twenty minutes,” Peter corrects, scrambling up the ladder.

“I said until lunch,” he says, steadying the beam carefully so that Peter can jam the peg in and shove at it with the heel of his palm. “It is now lunch, and I am no longer holding this beam for you.”

“Two minutes,” Peter pleads, shoving at the peg and then looking around him, patting his belt and where pockets might be on jeans but definitely are not on breeches. “Where’s the - thank you, Ruth.”

Ruth’s eyes slide sideways to Alex in amusement as she passes Peter a sturdy wooden mallet. She’s always pleasingly entertained by their antics, even if Alex and Peter are being more than slightly unhelpful, and it absolutely encourages them to further bouts of silliness. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she says warmly, folding her arms and looking delighted around the edges of a stern expression. Alex basks in her indulgence.

“Alex wouldn’t really abandon me for lunch,” Peter says, deliberately overwrought and self-pitying, as he secures the peg. “He wouldn’t destroy all our hard work just to eat, not after the hours we spent working on it - and the years we’ve been friends, and all the nice things I’ve done for him.” Ruth laughs and Peter, beam now secured, leans on it slightly to look plaintively in Alex’s direction. “You wouldn’t leave me just for food, would you?” he says, with his best puppyish eyes.

Alex looks back at him. He’s given up a lot to be here with Peter for this year - they’ve not been out of uni that long, all things considered, and are definitely in that stage of academia in which a person is supposed to work extremely hard and get all the funding available to become very specialised and useful - essentially, they are not supposed to be going on a year’s sabbatical to wrestle pigs and plough fields and become bizarrely knowledgeable about early seventeenth century agriculture, which is something neither of them are aiming to specialise in at all. He has no idea if this is a good career move, or a sure-fire way to never be taken seriously again. On top of that, he’s given up on all the comforts and joys of modern life, and on seeing his friends and family particularly often, and on starting or maintaining relationships with anyone other than Peter and Ruth and the rest of the cast and crew. He had been worried, when he and Peter had been discussing whether or not to go for this opportunity, that he would be constantly miserably cold and lonely - but Peter had promised him good company and all of Peter’s spare layers and blankets, and had reminded him of all of the things they would get the opportunity to do and try, and all the experiences they could have out in the valley that they might never have again. And Alex had allowed himself to be convinced, and had followed Peter onto the farm and into Stuart life. He is yet to have cause to regret it; he has loved it, and Peter and Ruth and all his new friends, to excesses.

He fixes Peter with an unimpressed look. “I would leave you in the mud for an unripe tomato.”

[theycallmebecca]

February Ice Storm

It just occurred to me that I hadn’t really told you guys about the experience I had back in February with the ice storm that nailed us and knocked out power for us for 3 days but people in my city for up to 10 days.

Originally, I had planned to turn it into a drabble and I actually started it, but it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to revisit. Mentally, I wasn’t in a good place thanks to anxiety and an emotional rollercoaster of what’s going to happen.

I know I shared bits and pieces of what had gone down, but this a more in-depth account of my experience from the ice storm that hit Oregon Valentine’s weekend of this year.

Let me preface this by saying that we knew that we were going to get an ice storm... but it was the worst ice storm we’ve had in a long time. And it did an astonishing amount of damage that we are still trying to recover from a month and a half later. Driving around, it looked like a tornado had ripped through and knocked down trees randomly. With as many trees that fell, it’s shocking how many didn’t.

The storm hit Friday night, February 12th, and it was just cold. Then about 3 am, the power went out. I know this because that’s when I suddenly found myself in the complete dark (no alarm clock, etc.) I didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep.

I was rudely awaken a few hours later by the sound of trees cracking and crashing to the ground. Let me tell you, that is a terrifying experience.

Knowing I still didn’t have power, I put on multiple layers and tried to make myself comfortable. However, by this time, it had started to warm up so there was lots of trees cracking all around me. Which was great for my anxiety.

Neither was the fact that the power outage had taken out the cell phone networks in my area. More on that in a moment.

Then I heard some neighbors outside, so I went out to talk to them and saw that a large limb from the pine tree by my building, was practically laying on my car. Some guys walking past, assured me that it was just on my car and not in my car.

It was cold, so I went back inside and tried to distract myself. But my main source of distraction, aka my phone, wasn’t really an option to me. And I could not access any of the music I would normally use to help myself relax when my anxiety is acting up.

I finally found a place in my apartment where I got good reception... by the sliding glass door that over looks the backyard where one tree had already uprooted itself and where more trees could easily come crashing down.

Anxiety is being amazing at this point. I’m sure you can tell.

Especially when on top of the trees cracking... I got the beautiful thunking of ice dropping out of trees as it warmed up. And we’re talking like chunks of ice as big as baseballs!

It was about that time that I heard a crack that was too close for comfort and knew, without a shadow of a doubt that the limb had broken and it was on my car. Two steps out my front door confirmed my fear, but when I tried to go see how bad it was, I heard the cracking of limbs and had to run back to the safety of my apartment as more limbs and ice baseballs dropped.

I was able to text my parents and asked if someone could try and come get me. They live parallel to me across two major roads, so it wouldn’t be a long trip if they could make it a little later once it had warmed up some more.

While I waited, I packed some stuff and tried to read, but it honestly was just too much.

And as annoying and little brother like as my brother-in-law can be, I have never been so happy to see him as I was that day when he and my mom showed up to get me.

By that time, I was flinching at every little noise that seemed to echo through my small apartment. And it was just becoming way too much. Even as I write this, the memory of that morning has me crying because I was too scared to cry on that day.

While he was waiting for me, my brother in law looked at my car and saw that the branches were resting on it, but the car looked ok.

The short drive to my parents house was shocking with the number of trees and power lines that were down. Also shocking was how many trees that didn’t land on houses. We did see a couple of cars smashed by trees though. And street lights were out every where.

I was very happy when we got to my parents house which is bigger than the building with 8 apartments that I live in. Their backyard is full of pine trees and they had lost a lot of limbs and stuff, but with everyone else there, you couldn’t hear the noises that had ramped up my anxiety.

Once I was there, the rest of the day passed relatively easy. I was with my family and that helped calm my anxiety because I knew I was in a safe place. We ordered pizza from a place that still had power. My brother in law built fires my parents fire places and my mom and I played dominos by flashlight. I also got some reading done.

Then I slept in my parents guest room... and the bed isn’t comfortable and the house was probably in the 45F range.

Sunday morning aka Valentine’s Day was warmer than the day before and my mom and I drove to my apartment to see what we could do about the limb on my car... only to find that someone had already pulled it off and chopped it up. We confirmed that my car was ok and the only damage to it was that my $5 license plate frame had been broken and the corner of my license plate was bent.

After that, we drove out to a grocery store that had power for some food, more logs for the fireplace and coffee... that my mom had to stand in line for 20+ mins to get.

When we got back to their house, we found a flurry of activity happening as my parents next door neighbor had rented a giant generator the day before to keep his house going and offered to let us plug some extension cords in so we could charge stuff, use small appliances and use a small heater.

So our Sunday afternoon was spent with our phones plugged in and a small space heater barely keeping us warm. But it was an improvement from the day before.

Then my uncle showed up. He’s been going back and forth between living with his ex girlfriend and living with my parents. With him at my parents house and knowing that my own apartment was still above 50F and therefore warmer than my parents house, I opted to sleep in my own bed that night.

So after getting pizza for dinner again (🤢) my mom dropped me off at my apartment for a cool night.

I started in my living room knowing that my back wouldn’t like 10+ hours in my bed and I actually got some light from a lamp by plugging it into my computer’s battery backup, which really did raise my spirits a bit.

But eventually I ended up in my room with the door closed, knowing I’d be able to lock in more heat that way. And it did work... but it was still a long night.

Because of no power and the fact that I’ve been working from home since March 2020, I told my boss I was taking the day off. At that time, the power company still still quoting power back on Monday. For me, they were even saying early Monday.

But my apartment was still cold and dark when I woke up. Which meant I cleaned out my fridge and freezer and then took my laundry out to the laundromat by my mom’s office that had power and heat.

So I took care of my laundry and then was going to head back to my parents, until I decided to see if Office Depot had any sales going on with laptops. And I ended up driving across town to buy one in case I needed to find some place to work other than my apartment for a couple days.

After that, I went to my parents house and watched a movie with my niece while power crews worked outside. I was still hoping they’d be able to get the power and internet back up so I wouldn’t have to drive to work Tuesday, but it wasn’t looking good.

By 5:30, I knew even if the power did some how come back on, I was still going to be without internet, so I left my parents and went to the grocery store for things to make a lunch that didn’t require a fridge since I still didn’t have that. And they were operating on their backup generators and actually stopped letting people into the store as I was checking out.

That evening, I played on my new laptop a bit and chatted with friends since my cell network was almost back up to speed, but I was in bed when the power came back on around 10 pm. And you sure as hell know I got out of bed and turned on every light switch just because I could!

I slept much better than night and did end up going into the office the next day for a partial day, but when I got home I had internet again.

For me and my family, we were without power for some 56 hours or so. But we had family friends and coworkers who went a good 10 days without power.

We don’t get storms like this and we were not prepared for it to be as bad as it was.

But the biggest take away for me is now necessarily how dependent I am on technology to entertain me... but for how to help me get through a rough situation.

Other than seeing a few members of my family once a week, I’ve been relatively on my own for the last year. And it’s been my “pocket friends” that have been my saving grace, my connection with the outside world. They’re the people that I turn to when I’m having a problem. And I was almost completely cut off from them for two whole days.

Add to that the rain storms and other anxiety reducing sounds that I’ve come to depend on. With the networks down, I couldn’t access any of those coping tools either.

My anxiety was the worst that Saturday morning than it has been in a long time. But by Monday evening, I was so tired emotionally and physically that I was just a mess. The roller coaster of the unknown was the worst part. You could make plans... but without power, there were things you just couldn’t do.

All in all, it was a once in a life time experience. As in, I don’t want to experience it again. Ever.

I think it will be a long time before a power outage doesn’t trigger anxiety within me. Because this last one was rough.

And now that I’ve relived this all in hopes that it might help me recover a little from what happened, it’s time for me to try and get some sleep. Probably shouldn’t have written this at night.. but oh well.

[needtherapy]

soaring, carried aloft on the wind...continued 20

An arranged-marriage story for Xichen and Mingjue, in another time and another place.

The Beifeng, the mighty empire of the north, invaded more than a year ago, moving inexorably south and east.

In order to buy peace, the chief of the Lan clan has given the Beifeng warlord a gift, his second oldest son in marriage. However, when Xichen finds out he makes a plan.

He, too, can give a gift to the Beifeng warlord, and he will not regret it.

Part 1: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13  Part 2: 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 … HOME

It’s complete on AO3 here.

Notes: Check the tags if you’re concerned about the pairings ;)

For translations of the entirely fictitious Beifeng language, you’ll have to scroll to notes. I’m only going to translate something that’s not clear in the text. Sadly, there’s just not any other good way to do it on Tumblr!

Chapter 20 Now

Xichen could not have guessed that the Ikarahu would throw a festival in an army encampment in the middle of a war. It seems so dangerous for so much of the army to be distracted. And yet here he is in the transformed sparring arena, surrounded by hundreds of people eating spicy meat grilled in huge open pits, drinking the sweet Ikarahu ale, dancing in pairs and circles, and singing boisterous, noisy songs. Any watching scout could see that there are brightly striped flags, strands of bells, and colorful lanterns looped over ropes suspended between posts around the outside of the arena. Xichen suspects the lanterns mean this festival will extend long into the night, and he tries to squelch the nagging concern.

After all, it is a party. It’s supposed to be fun.

Xichen had helped Huaisang hang lanterns for what felt like years, and Huaisang had explained that the festival was called Hatapi, a celebration of the ahuti’s birthday. The ahuti was considered a valued ruler as well, and the Hatapi was a chance to thank them.

“But really, it’s just an excuse to eat and drink,” he’d said, completely seriously. “Who doesn’t love that?”

When Xichen had asked how he had time to plan a festival, Huaisang had just laughed and said it was a yearly event, which gave him plenty of time.

“Right now Hatapi celebrates my mother’s birthday, but it used to be my grandfather’s birthday. And before that, my great-grandmother. It’s always celebrated on the birthday of the ahukau’s spouse,” Huaisang had winked. “Eventually, Hatapi will be on the eighth of…”

Xichen had slapped a hand over Huaisang’s mouth and refused to let him finish that sentence.

Even after Huaisang’s descriptions, Xichen hadn’t fully expected the sheer chaos of the day. It’s riotous and loud and full of surprises. There have been strength and skill contests all day: sword fights, hurling giant logs, foot races, even a surprisingly early drinking contest. Every winner gets a trophy and an enthusiastic clap on the back from Mingjue, and it pleases Xichen that it’s hard to tell which the winners prefer.

At the moment, Xichen, Qingyang, and Guangyao are watching the last contest of the day, the mounted archery competition, which Xichen has to admit is spectacular. More than fifty of the finest archers in the Ikarahu cavalry are riding without saddles or bridles in a tight circle, bows drawn, shooting arrow after arrow into bales spaced around the outside of the circuit. The judges, including Huaisang and Mingjue, are on the other side of the arena, both standing on horses, presumably for the vantage, which raises questions Xichen has never thought he would ask.

Guangyao sniffs. “It hardly seems like a challenge. They’re just riding in a circle.”

“Huaisang says the second half is more impressive.” Qingyang shrugs. “There are bonus points for style, but I don’t know what that means.”

They know immediately when the real competition begins. One by one, the riders take a circuit of the arena, making impossible shots as they stand on their horses or cling to the bellies of their horses or drop to the ground and bounce lightly off their toes to turn backward or dangle across the side of their horses to shoot from under their necks, hidden from view, all while galloping full speed. Xichen has simply never seen anything like it. He’s not sure there even is anything like it.

“My mother would have loved this,” Qingyang sighs, softly enough that Xichen almost doesn’t hear her above the din around them. “She missed the galio of her homeland more than anything else, I think. I’m sorry she never went back to Ikara before she died, but I’m glad I had as many years with her as I did.”

His own mother’s death is still a sharp pain in his side, but Qingyang doesn’t seem as unhappy as Xichen would expect. She looks at him with a wistful smile, one that seems to want to share this memory, so he ventures to ask, “When did she die?”

“Two years ago, before the Ikarahu came,” she answers, and Xichen squeezes her shoulder. So recently. He is amazed that she’s willing to talk about it.

She smiles at him, a bravely crooked tilt, and Xichen suddenly wants to tell her. To tell someone. Maybe sharing the pain will release it. Holding it tightly certainly has not.

“My mother died when I was twelve. Of a wasting sickness,” he says, and Qingyang makes a sympathetic noise. “I have always wished I had more time.”

Qingyang nods. “There is never enough, is there? I will always want to see her face again or hear her call me a-Yang. She was an artist too, and I was fortunate to work with her for years, until her fingers were no longer agile enough for fine details. The only comfort is that she didn’t have to…” Qingyang exhales sadly. “She didn’t have to know why I left Lanling.”

Guangyao is quiet and seems to be caught up in watching the last rider, a slim, short man who rides the circuit in constant motion. He is nearly a blur, bouncing off the ground, sliding under the horse’s belly to pop up on its other side, slinging under the horse’s neck, flipping backward, and somehow still shooting arrows. The crowd roars when he takes top honors and Mingjue bounds over to present him with the prize, a huge gold bowl filled with water that the man shares with his horse.

“My mother is dead too,” he announces, the words slicing cleanly through the noise of the crowd.

For once, Guangyao doesn’t seem to be trying to hide the emotion in his voice. He sounds as though he has been brutally stabbed in a wound that had not yet healed. When Xichen looks at him, there is such animosity on his face, his eyes narrowed to slits and his jaw clenched so tightly, Xichen can almost hear his teeth grinding together.

“Since you didn’t ask,” he says, his lips flattening into a tense slash. “I was seven when I found her. She wrote that she was sorry, as though she had something to apologize for.”

Xichen reaches out instinctively to slide his fingers around Guangyao’s tense hand, wanting to erase this terrible tragedy, this horror that still haunts his friend.

“Aitapaho, Qingyang, Yao-ti!” Mingjue’s booming voice interrupts, and Xichen jumps as though he’s been caught peeking at something forbidden, as though he’s been caught doing something forbidden.

Mingjue kisses Xichen firmly, with all the enthusiasm of a man thoroughly enjoying his life, but not before Xichen sees the quick, appraising look Huaisang gives him and Guangyao.

Guangyao sees it too, and laughs, the sound higher and more strident than usual. “We were only bonding, Oringa’anhu Ikira. Over stories of our dead mothers.”

He takes a deep, bracing breath as though he will say something else, something even worse, and Xichen is suddenly afraid of what it might be. Guangyao seems like a mirror about to shatter and slash whatever might be near it.

Huaisang grabs Guangyao’s wrist and interrupts him with a teasing grin. “Guangyao, you were wrong about the winner, so I am claiming your forfeit. You are required to learn the next dance. Ani?”

Guangyao frowns. “You didn’t tell me his horse was a galau, so I think you should forfeit,” he argues, but he lets Huaisang pull him toward the dancers.

Mingjue laughs and kisses Xichen again. He tastes like winter mint and joy, and Xichen lets it distract him. Mingjue can always distract him.

“Come, aitapaho. We will eat and drink and dance!”

Only part of that sounds enjoyable, and Xichen shoots Qingyang a pleading look, but she laughs at him too, shooing him away cheerfully as Titakau joins her. Friendship is not what it used to be, he thinks. He will have to get revenge later.

There is no reason he should not be able to learn this foot kicking, jumping, spinning dance, Xichen thinks crossly, but he is growing increasingly irritated with the frequency his feet get caught together, and he trips, falling against Mingjue, who only catches him with curious, roving hands. Finally, Xichen throws up his hands in exasperation.

“Ahoraho, I am going to watch,” he yells over the music, singing, and shouts of laughter.

In answer, Mingjue grabs Qingyang’s hand and drags her into the circle where she, Xichen notes enviously, picks up the steps almost immediately. Titakau silently hands Xichen a bottle of ale and he takes a drink.

“Roka iko auha em koni,” she tells him sympathetically, “Pia ei sakona auha em ga. Et taka ti eta engati hako.”

She’s right about that much. It is fun to watch. There are two lines of dancers, one on the inside, one on the outside. The two circles turn, flicking their heels in the air, kicking forward and backward, spinning from the inside line to the outside line, changing partners and changing back. It seems random and reminds Xichen of spinning maple seeds that flutter from the tops of trees in gusts of autumn wind.

Xichen catches sight of Huaisang, whose face is alight with mirth, and Guangyao, who looks—not quite angry anymore. Begrudging, perhaps. Huaisang leans in to say something and Guangyao rolls his eyes, but his expression softens. Huaisang tips his head back and laughs, suddenly spinning Guangyao toward Mingjue who catches his hand smoothly, exchanging it for Qingyang’s. Mingjue’s grin is impossible to resist, and a smile, one with dimples that reaches his eyes, settles on Guangyao’s face, and he shakes his head with a reluctant laugh. Mingjue’s face, which Xichen knows so well, shifts just slightly, from watchful hawk to satisfied cat, and he ruffles Guangyao’s hair as the song seems to finally end.

Xichen wonders. He wonders if Huaisang and Mingjue worked together to coax Guangyao out of his bleak mood. He wonders why. He wonders if there is something else here, a more complicated set of steps here than Xichen can comprehend.

As the night wears on, the crowd grows ever larger, including nearly every member of the Ikarahu encampment. Ale flows freely, the food tastes even more delicious grilled over huge open fires, and Mingjue convinces Xichen to try dancing again. It does not go any better than his first try, and in retaliation, Xichen trods on Mingjue’s toes. This is also unsuccessful, as Mingjue merely stops dancing and wraps his arms around Xichen, kissing him until his knees are weak and he forgets the whirling, swirling tumult around him.

“I’m ready for bed,” Xichen whispers to Mingjue.

Mingjue tightens his embrace and rests his forehead against Xichen’s. “After fireworks?” he asks hopefully.

Xichen nods, unable to resist the sweet, boyish grin. He traces one dimple with his thumb and Mingjue inhales, turning his face to Xichen’s palm. Xichen slips his fingers over Mingjue’s ear, into his hair, down the strong line of neck, and Mingjue sighs.

“Or now,” he says, voice husky, and Xichen chuckles.

“Now,” he agrees, taking Mingjue’s hand and leading him back through the crush of people where they run directly into Huaisang and Guangyao.

“Anakau! Xichen!” Huaisang hands Mingjue a bottle. “You have not toasted our mother with me! It’s tradition!”

Thwarted, Xichen can do nothing but take the bottle Guangyao offers him and raise it.

“Di ika gati,” Huaisang and Mingjue say the obviously familiar words together. “Sika galio, em inga oduna!”

Shaking his bottle at Guangyao and Xichen, Huaisang repeats the whole thing again, to long life, swift horses, and blue skies, until they join in.

Huaisang and Guangyao finish their bottles, and Xichen hands Mingjue the rest of his. He already feels lightheaded, and he doesn’t want to be drunk.

“What is your mother like?” Guangyao asks, surprising everyone. He looks like he regrets his words, though, and tenses as if preparing to run. “Does she enjoy this festival?”

Huaisang furrows his brow and answers the second question first.

“She endures it because my father loves it. Truly, she is the most generous person I know and the most terrifying.” An unconscious smile tilts his mouth. “She’s clever and stubborn and ambitious. She is not a soft mother, but she is wonderful. She would have been an exceptional ahukau, but she doesn’t like…” he looks at Mingjue for confirmation, “Being in the front of the room?”

“She is called Kiri’anata,” Mingjue offers. “It means…” He wiggles one hand and uses his other hand to move it around.

Huaisang laughs. “It means Shadow Hand,” he fills in, and Mingjue nods agreement.

Guangyao looks unusually confused. “It is known that she rules from behind your father?”

Huaisang shrugs. “They rule together, as partners. It’s not one or the other. They’re necessary to each other.”

Xichen can’t imagine what it must be like to have parents who love and respect each other. Who value each other.

He looks at Guangyao, who is staring at the ground, his expression a wholly neutral, blank mask Xichen recognizes from wearing it so often himself. Like now, when he is trying not to think of the treaty that forced Mingjue into this relationship or now, when he is trying not to think about what it means that Mingjue is the crown prince of his country and he is only Xichen.

“She is loved for who she is,” Mingjue adds, threading his fingers through Xichen’s.

“She is,” Huaisang agrees. “All the good and the difficult. Sometimes so difficult.” Huaisang’s eyes dance, and he laughs lightly, but he is watching Guangyao’s pensive, unchanging expression.

Huaisang is always watching everyone, Xichen thinks. Whatever he’s looking for, whatever it means to him, it’s too great a mystery for Xichen to puzzle out today. There is something else he would rather be doing.

“We’re leaving,” Xichen announces and turns, pulling Mingjue behind him. He looks back once to see Guangyao finally look up and meet Huaisang’s eyes without flinching.

The fireworks begin just before they reach Xichen’s tent, and the explosions reverberate through him, numbing his fingers and toes. Mingjue slows, intending to watch, but Xichen pulls him on, tugging off his coat before they’re even in the tent.

“Xichen,” Mingjue murmurs, cupping Xichen’s face in his hands, gentle as always. “What was your mother like?”

It isn’t what Xichen expected, but he says the first thing, the easiest, truest thing.

“She was beautiful.”

Xichen pauses and thinks. He seldom talks about his family. He rarely even talks about his former home. It has seemed like a necessary separation of the two halves of his life. And until now, Mingjue has never asked.

Xichen chooses this, too. He can not have a future without sharing his past.

“She told us stories of monsters and heroes. Stories of carp who became dragons, tigers who granted wishes,” Xichen says, smiling at the memories. “We played the guqin together. She was a healer. When we were boys, she taught my brother and I how to befriend the rabbits in the woods, although my brother was always more patient than me. Only the bravest rabbits would let me feed them.”

Mingjue laughs. “Ani, you are very fearsome, my bright heart.” He kisses Xichen’s forehead softly, lingering in the embrace. “Huan, will you tell me one of these stories?”

What can he do but agree? Xichen undresses Mingjue, and Mingjue undresses him, and they lay together in bed, legs tangled, Mingjue’s head on Xichen’s shoulder. Xichen tells him a story of a magical carp who granted bigger and more magnificent wishes to a man and his wife until the last wish was too greedy, too selfish, and the carp took everything away again.

“Tiras mau, Ahora’ipa,” Mingjue says drowsily, and Xichen smooths a hand over his hair and down his shoulder, listening to the sound of his breathing even out into sleep.

Love is such a surprise, he muses before he, too, falls asleep. It is a wonderful and perplexing surprise. Whatever their future holds, if he were to repeat the past, he would gladly pledge his heart and life, his honor and obedience to this man again, even if only in a treaty and not a true marriage contract. It is enough. Xichen curls deeper into the safety of Mingjue’s arms feeling lucky to have this much of him, his love and affection, and he will not wish for more, in case there comes a day he wants too much, and it is all taken away again.

Notes: Ahuti = The ahuti is the consort of the ahukau. It's gender neutral (as is ahukau). Roka iko auha em koni. Pia ei sakona auha em ga. Et taka ti eta engati hako. = I don't dance either, and I grew up with it. It's fun to watch, though.

[cofferi]

Just some FFXIV thoughts....

To start, here's some boring info about me: I used to play Maple Story, Flyff, and Ragnarok Online, as well as a myriad of other obscure mmos and private servers back in the 2000s. Point is none of these were considered hardcore in the slightest.

So, starting ffxiv after so long kind of hit me like a train. I get to level 15 where I must queue up for my first low level dungeon Sastasha in order to move forward with the story. I don't have friends so I will be grouped up with 3 random strangers. The expected wait time to get in is like 7 mins. I wait about 5 mins and then withdraw from queue.

I have to do stuff with others??? Ummmmmmmmm. I honestly wandered around the map for like half an hour just questioning myself and if I should keep going.

Tank? Healer? DPS?

Coming from games of long ago where you just kinda wanted to have a healer on your team but you had no real obligation to, ffxiv actually recognizes the job roles and specifically requires a party of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dps. You cannot deviate from this! (Well, you can but that's not typical, and later dungeons expand the number of players in a party but the general idea of requiring at least one of each role is still the same). It's interesting to me how this structure has become so sacred. Dungeons cannot be completed without you doing your specific job. It's to promote efficiency and comfort so everyone generally knows what to do as well as what others will do right off the bat.

Visibility AKA "Why are people looking at me"

Oh no. So, if everyone has a job to do that means there is the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known. If you don't do your job, your party members WILL notice lol! And it will be obvious because there will be just 4 of you in the party. It's not hard to see what 3 others are doing. Further, if you're tank/healer, you will be the only one of your job role in your party. If you don’t follow your role, no one else can cover for you. You are very visible. And that's very anxiety-inducing!! You don't want to let the party down. Here are some notable job anxiety narratives:

- Tankxiety. You have to essentially lead your party through a scary maze-like dungeon. Nobody will move unless the tank moves first because the tank needs to be the one to take initial damage and get enemy aggro. You are therefore kind of expected to know your way around and where to go. This is less about competency, though, and more about confidence in yourself. If you get lost, no one tangibly loses anything. You just find the way eventually. Playing tank forces you to learn maps and enemy patterns. As someone who would rather fade away into the background, this scared the shit out of me.

- Healing responsibility. If someone/everyone dies, it's your fault. It's common to feel like this even if your party consists of 3 dumbasses who can't play and kill themselves on purpose. You feel responsibility because the whole point of you is to take care of everyone. That's the reality, and that's a lot of pressure. Playing healer forces you to have 0.1 reaction time, learn enemy patterns, and know how to prioritize who gets to live and who stays dead. People’s lives are on the line. When I was a child, I told my parents straight up I could never be a doctor.

- No real dps bad narratives though except to git gud. You're not as visible at being bad dps unless you literally stand there doing nothing. You can be head empty no thoughts about most maps and enemies as long as you react normally enough.

This game sounds very unforgiving and mean

To combat this anxiety hurdle, there is a huge focus on guiding and taking care of new people who don't know much. You have a literal sprout icon next to your name until you catch up to the latest expansion. So, like 1000+ game hours?? You are overtly "new" for a very long time.

Because the game is so heavily story-driven and requires a new 4-person dungeon run literally every step of the way, these dungeon queues need to have a steady stream of players ready to run them at all times. Otherwise, it would be actually impossible for newbies to get through the story. Not everyone has friends to make a pre-party with, ok cool guy. Majority of dungeon crawling is done with random parties.

So, you get rewards out the ass for running "duty finder" daily which puts you in a random unlocked dungeon with an automatically-generated party of random people. It is the #1 best way to get exp and level up. You are essentially rewarded for helping out new people to do their required dungeons. You can give advice during the run, tell them how best to go about things, give tips on their job, etc.

I find this so smart as a game philosophy in order to get people to constantly play/revisit all content while also being friendly to new people. New people are the lifeblood of a game. You literally cannot just play in a bubble with only top tier savage raider people and shield yourself from new people or incompetency. Not that I'm calling only new people incompetent.

Competency AKA "What am I doing and why am I bad”

The side effect of running these dungeons randomized is that you will often be dropped into one that you completely forgot about. The average person cannot memorize every single one and everything that happens in it. The game came out in 2010 so there is 10+ years of content.

If this game teaches you anything it's that You Will Fuck Up and it will be a lot and until the end of time. You are honestly forced to come face to face with your own incompetency nearly every time you log on lol. In a sense, you try to put on your best performance every time you enter a 20 min dungeon instance and just hope you don't cause a party meltdown.

It won't matter how many times you practice your rotation or how many times you run through the same dungeon over and over. You will inevitably forget something, you will misclick, you will get tunnel vision and forget to move from an aoe and get slammed in the face and die.

But it's fine. I see people dying to dumb shit all the time. It's fine because you get up and try again. Dungeons are not so difficult that you can't get through it on a second try, usually. There are no consequences to dying or performing sub-optimally except your own personal shame, time, and sadness. In fact, there's an exhilaration you get when things get particularly hairy but everyone pulls through by the skin of their teeth and manages to make it out alive.

CONCLUSION: You are important and contribute to the fight in your own way.

Only once you get over the Mortifying Ordeal can you then achieve the Rewards of Being Loved. There is something so satisfying about each successful dungeon run and knowing it is the result of each party member's cumulative contribution. When a role is missing or dies, there is a noticeable difference. (Even dps. Sometimes fights are ones of attrition and will take 5-10x longer without dps).

So, yes, you are extremely visible to other random strangers who may judge you. But that also means that when you do a good job, your good job is visible. 80% of my dungeon runs end in the party thanking each other. The pressure the game puts on you to do your best but not to stress too hard about it is just enough, in my opinion.

You are encouraged to get over yourself, your ego, your own anxiety.

Personally, it is a point of pride for myself if I am able to hit all my buttons right when I'm supposed to. I want to be good for myself and for my random party members who I will ride or die for after just 20 mins. The game wants you to do your best, to be social and communicate when things go awry, and also to be humble in the face of weird shit happening -- all at the right levels. And then you are treated to the coolest damn visuals and game mechanics I've ever experienced!

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Kurgess the Strong Man

Neutral Good God of Bravery, Competition, and Sports

Domains Community, Good, Luck, Strength, Travel Subdomains Agathion, Competition, Family, Fate, Home, Resolve, Self-Realization, Trade

Inner Sea Faiths, pg. 64~69

Obedience: Find the nearest boulder, log, or other unattended object that you can reliably lift over your head, and hold it up high for the duration of the obedience while meditating on the ennobling nature of sports and tests of physical might. If you are interrupted at any time by any creature or person, you must challenge your interrupter to a contest of strength, speed, or stamina, with the boulder or another object of your obedience used as the main focus of the competition. Benefit: You gain a +2 sacred bonus on Acrobatics and Climb checks, regardless of who wins the competition.

Obedience: Be a jock. Auto-succeed if you’re a Str-based martial fighter. I appreciate that Kurgess allows even the physically weak to take part in this Obedience (the path to fitness can be walked by anyone after all), and through constant practice one hour each day, your noodle-armed nerd caster may yet gain some Str and Con from their dedication. It’s not a particularly intense workout, mind, but the dedication to doing it for an hour every single day is something the DM should reward! At least until their Str/Con reaches maybe 13, at which point more strenuous activities would be necessary to raise it higher.

Anyway, easy enough to do if you own literally any item or have access to something you can grab and lift. You may look a little kooky doing it, but other Obediences get much weirder than just doing squats and lifts with whatever you have laying around. You’ll just be the local health nut! One who’s weirdly into challenging people to sudden competitions. Your party may quickly learn not to interrupt your meditation lest they get pulled into a 80s training montage, but if some poor citizen or wandering monster prods at you, you’re spurred on by your god to challenge them. Note that this says any creature, so even a non-sapient creature that was just snuffling around gets challenged, even if it can’t understand you.

No word on what happens if the intruder declines the challenge, or cannot accept it in the first place. Maybe you just automatically win? Not very sportsmanlike to declare yourself a victor like that, but it’s also not very sportsmanlike to force someone else into a competition they want no part of. I’m sure Kurgess will understand; not everyone is built for the life you’ve chosen to live!

Benefit’s bad. It’s half the strength of other benefits on two skill checks that are rarely important (Acrobatics can be extremely useful but isn’t as flexible as, say, Knowledge or Sleight of Hand). And... god, you know. I like Kurgess as an actual character, but this benefit is just a small taste of what’s to come. Brace yourselves, because it’s going to get pretty bad from here on out. 

Boons are acquired slowly: the first once you reach 12 hit dice, the second at 16, and the third at 20. However, the Evangelist, Exalted, and Sentinel Prestige Classes can be entered as early as level 5; doing so grants you the Boons at levels 8, 11, and 14 instead. As Kurgess is a true deity, you earn the right to enter the classes earlier than those who serve fiends!

-------- EVANGELIST --------

Boon 1: Blessed Runner. Gain Longstrider 3/day, Cat’s Grace 2/day, or Haste 1/day.

Starting strong, at least! I’m talking of course about Haste, whose power as a buff is nearly incomparable and useful at pretty much every level of play. Longstrider adds a comparatively meager +10ft to your land speed, and Cat’s Grace gives its target +4 to their Dexterity, and though they have a duration that’s an order of magnitude longer than Haste (Longstrider especially, lasting an hour/level), their functions don’t hold a candle to the extra damage output you and your martial allies get from Haste. The only competition it really has here is if two of your allies need increased Dexterity stats for a good long while, but you’ll never see me turning Haste down whenever it’s offered.

Boon 2: Strong One. You gain a +2 sacred bonus on all Strength-based skill checks. 

Just skill checks? Not even Strength checks in general? Eurgh. Couldn’t even spring for, like, just a +2 to Strength.

Strength-based skills are Climb, Swim, and... wait, what? It’s just Climb and Swim? Well, congratulations I guess. At level 11 you’re finally getting that +4 to Climb checks you should have been getting at baseline. Absolutely--ok you know what? Here’s what I’ll do.

--Patch Notes: Strong One now grants a +4 sacred bonus to Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, Ride, and Swim checks. There! Now it rolls thematically into the Darechaser Prestige Class and is actually good! Not the best Boon out there, but on par with what some Evangelists get.

Boon 3: Farmer’s Brawn. Treat your carrying capacity as though your Strength ability score were 3 points higher than it actually is. 1/day as long as you are wearing light, medium, or no armor, you can lift up to two unconscious or dead Medium or smaller creatures and their equipment onto your shoulders and still move up to your base speed, ignoring the added weight. You cannot both attack and move in the same round while carrying one or more creatures in this way. You can carry these bodies in this way for a number of rounds equal to your Hit Dice; afterward, they encumber you as normal.

The amplified carrying capacity grants you, on average, about 25 more lbs to your maximum load depending on how high your Str was before. Neat! This should have been part of Strong One, though, even with my little buff. Also, carrying capacity rarely matters at the level you get this ability at, either because of Bags of Holding or because nothing really becomes worth carrying aside from what you already have. Aside, I suppose, from unconscious allies.

This is just... A flat bonus to Strength would have been better than whatever this is. An emergency tool of rescue, I suppose, Combine with Longstrider or Haste to grab your fallen allies and get out of there! Oh, wait, no, because “still move up to your base speed.” So there goes that. Also, despite the fact they don’t encumber you, you’re still basically staggered while carrying them (you can still take two move actions, though!). ALSO also, this ability only lasts for around a minute and a half, which is pathetic if you’re using this ability for its intended function (narrowly escaping a complete party wipe); it’s likely to cut out about halfway out of the Evil Lair.

I suppose there’s the utility of just picking up whole entire enemy bodies and running off with them, but seriously, just...

--Patch Notes: Farmer’s Brawn now reads “Gain a +4 sacred bonus to your Strength. Once per day, you may carry two Medium or smaller creatures or corpses and all of their worn equipment without counting them towards your encumbrance for 1 minute per HD you possess.” 

-------- EXALTED --------

Boon 1: Holy Strength. Gain Enlarge Person 3/day, Bull’s Strength 2/day, or Rage 1/day.

Oh hey! All three of these are good and useful at any level! Rage can whip a whole party into a frenzy at once, giving them +1 to attack and damage rolls with melee weapons and giving them +1 HP per HD they have, at the comparatively minor (but still noteworthy) cost of -2 AC. Having a legion of summoned creatures, some hirelings, or just a party with a decent number of martial fighters can expand Rage’s usefulness even further... but a meager +1 to a whole lot of people is only useful if you, well, HAVE a lot of people. If you don’t? Bull’s Strength gives +2 to attack and damage rolls for minutes at a time, and has the added utility of beefing up someone’s carrying capacity and skill at lifting and throwing things around.

Enlarge Person is really the way to go if you have (or are) a powerful melee fighter on your side, though. A nice +2 to Strength is secondary to the delicious, tasty +5ft of reach, letting the target hold a much greater area within their threat radius. Knowing that you always have this spell on hand (3/day with a 1 min/level duration basically means you have it every time you need it) can prompt your primary tanks to take feats like Pin Down and Step Up to make themselves into inescapable tar pits of pain.

All three of these are good and flexible choices! Excellent! Now lets see what else Exalted can do...

Boon 2: Coordinated Escape: 3/day as a standard action, you can shout an inspirational command that affects you and any allies within 60 feet for a number of rounds equal to your Hit Dice. During this time, affected characters can use the withdraw action to move up to triple their base speed (instead of up to double their base speed).

... run away real good, apparently? The ability is described as showing Kurgess’ wisdom, fleeing from a fight that cannot be won rather than standing and accomplishing nothing, but like. He’s the god of bravery! Eurgh. At least there’s the amusing use of using withdraw to get CLOSER, since it essentially gives you an extra move action. And, for what it’s worth, it IS a decent escape tool, provided the enemy you’re running from has no way to catch up with you or slow you down. Much like the original Farmer’s Brawn, this ability just kind of doesn’t represent a god of sports and athleticism, which is what drives me nuts.

... well now that I think about it, using it exclusively for a sporting event like football or some other “keep-away” type game would be hilarious. But, still:

--Patch Notes: Coordinated Escape has been renamed to “Audacious Escape” and now reads “3/day as a standard action, you can shout an inspirational command that affects you and any allies within 60 feet of you. Any creature affected by this command can move at double their movement speed for one minute, and while they’re affected by this ability, their movement does not provoke Attacks of Opportunity.” Capped the time limit and shrank the movement buff, but made it a far more powerful defensive OR offensive tool.

Boon 3: Break the Anvil: 1/day, you can perform a disarm or sunder combat maneuver with a +4 competence bonus against an adjacent creature and a weapon it holds. If you succeed, the creature’s weapon is simultaneously damaged and disarmed, as though you had succeeded at both combat maneuvers simultaneously. If you exceed the target’s Combat Maneuver Defense by 10 or more, the target drops the items it is carrying in both hands, but you only sunder the weapon you initially targeted. If you don’t have either the Improved Disarm or Improved Sunder feat or a similar ability, this attempt provokes attacks of opportunity as normal; however, if you have one of the feats or a similar ability, this attempt does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Alright I’ll admit, this is a... well, it’s not a complete letdown. It can be pretty good! Or, it would be better if it were attached to the Sentinel, rather than the caster-focused Exalted. And also if you could use it more than once. Needing to invest in Improved [X] (or at least Dirty Fighting) to avoid being slapped for your attempt to do something cool is also kind of a letdown. Now, I’ll admit, sundering at this level is very difficult to actually make viable, as most enemies you’ll face will have either enchanted weapons (which are very difficult to damage), skymetal weapons (again, difficult to damage), enchanted weapons made of skymetal (basically impossible to damage without one of your own), or no weapons at all (either because they use natural attacks, or use magic)... but that’s why this ability is also attached to disarm, which IS viable even at high levels, because knocking an enemy’s weapon from their hands and allowing an ally to pilfer it can render a great many foes impotent.

It does also require you to be adjacent to someone, though, which means you, the caster, must put yourself in arm’s reach of an enemy. And probably the BIGGEST weakness is that enemy CMD at levels 15+ can get ridiculous, so you’re going to have to focus at least part of your build on it, augmented by either spells or feats or, more than likely, both. The +4 bonus you get from Break the Anvil--which I have to admit is a really good name--is certainly some help here, but you’ll still need to build around it if you really want it to work.

--Patch Notes: Break the Anvil can now be done 3/day.

-------- SENTINEL --------

Boon 1: Master of Games. Gain True Strike 3/day, Bear’s Endurance 2/day, or Heroism 1/day.

It’s been one week and True Strike is still bad, even for the martial-focused Sentinel. Let’s just ignore that.

Bear’s Endurance is the weakest and least flexible of the ‘animal aspect’ spells, granting a +4 bonus to Con which translates to a whopping +2 HP per HD and +2 to Fortitude saves, and basically nothing else. It’s a bandage when someone’s suffering from disease or resisting a poison, and while it may occasionally save someone from being Blood Drained to death, it doesn’t justify taking Endurance over Heroism.

Heroism is a great buff to just use on yourself right before entering the final stretch of a dungeon, or even just after entering the front door. It’s a +2 bonus to attack rolls, skill checks, and most importantly saving throws and lasts for a tremendous 10 min/level, meaning it lasts two hours when you first get it and only rises from there. There’s no reason to take anything but Heroism, and little reason to not have it running the instant you enter hostile territory.

Boon 2: Reveal Frauds: You can, as an immediate action, activate Discern Lies as a spell-like ability. You can maintain this ability for a number of rounds per day equal to your Hit Dice, but these rounds do not have to be consecutive.

I had originally wished this ability had been granted to the Exalted instead... but a character going into Exalted likely started as a Cleric, so their Wisdom is probably already sky high and augmenting their Sense Motive to similarly heavenly levels. Thus, Sentinels gaining this power isn’t as bad as I initially thought, especially since it can be used as an immediate action in response to someone opening their lying gob to speak. Discern Lies doesn’t reveal the truth, nor will it ping you if the target is being evasive or changing the subject (such as by answering your question with a question of their own), so you have to keep on top of that. That being said, this ability has three advantages the vanilla spell sorely lacks which elevates it from ‘sometimes good’ to ‘indispensable:’

1) The lack of components means there’s absolutely no tell that you’re using this ability, aside from perhaps you focusing too hard on them. That means your target has no idea you’re using magic to read their speech; they may conclude you’re simply that good at reading their tells.

2) The casting time of “immediate action” means you can use it right when someone talks, rather than needing to prepare it beforehand. You can catch them in a falsehood without alerting them to the fact you’ve done anything supernatural.

3) The on-off nature of the ability means a hostage you’ve taken can’t simply wait out the duration of the spell. You can shut it off the instant they stop speaking and turn it back on when they start again; a canny caster may know the duration of the vanilla Discern Lies, but your version can be raised or lowered more or less at will.

While it won’t truly help you in a fight, this makes you an amazing interrogator, and not even necessarily a mean one! Just throw your arm around some badguy’s shoulder in the middle of a party or a bar and chat them up all friendly-like, sniffing their every word for a hint of falsehood. Sometimes, knowing what’s false helps narrow down what’s true.

--Patch Notes: None. Good as-is!

Boon 3: Unchained Savior 1/day as an immediate action, if an ally within 60 feet of you would normally take enough damage to fall unconscious or die, you can move to an adjacent space and intercept the killing blow, taking the damage in your ally’s place. If the attack would have inflicted any effects other than hit point damage, those effects are negated. If the damage would bring you to negative hit points, you are brought to 0 hit points instead, and the remaining damage is negated. Any attacks of opportunity you provoke by moving in this way are resolved after you take the damage from the intercepted blow; you take any damage from those attacks as normal.

Ohohoho, it’s been nearly two years since we’ve seen a Boon like this! Unlike Milani’s Martyrdom, though, this ability has a MUCH shorter range, a MUCH more restrictive activation condition (it only activates in response to damage!), and doesn’t save your life if you fall in the line of duty.

But you know what? It’s still a damn solid power. Your tankiness will absolutely allow you to survive a blow that could outright kill an ally of yours, but even if the attack COULD crunch you instantly, Unchained Savior flat out stops your HP from going below 0 from excess damage. 1000 damage, 100 damage, or even just 1 extra damage are all turned to Nothing as soon as your HP hits 0, AND this ability negates all extra effects from the attack, such as diseases, poisons, or additional spell effects. This, very importantly, means that even the dusting effects of Disintegrate and Destruction are negated!

Leap in the way of that 40d6 damage without fear! Well okay, SOME fear, since being dropped to 0 still means you’re unconscious. Unless you have Diehard or Ferocity. Y’know what? If your martial build doesn’t have Diehard, it probably should if you’re gonna walk around as an Unchained Savior! Just imagine the look on your enemy’s face when you tank their best shot and just keep coming.

Oh, also, since this power puts you adjacent to your ally, you’re probably now in slapping range with whatever attacked them in the first place. Draw your javelin and show them that you can give just as well as you take!

--Patch Notes: None! A 10/10 ability, Kurgess! Now if only you had this power while you were still a mortal, eh? Haha ... ha... ha... hwoof....

You can read more about him here.

[fangirl1029]

You’re my moon -Paul lahote

@caro-jean​ @sunflowerleii​ @percussiongirl2017​ @fiskers7136​ @daze-fluff

part one 

Part two

Paul looked to Freya as if she spoke in a dead language. " What do you mean there isn't one?" Freya smiled " well here's the thing. Anna wanted me to have a curfew and my dad didn't want to argue. She goes to sleep early so my dad tells her I have one. No fighting and I get to be out as late as I want."

Paul chuckled as he started his truck. Allen was clearly a smart man , but not smart enough to fix his SUV. When they arrived at la push beach there was a small fire going with a few people sitting on logs. Paul tossed the keys for Allen's SUV to another man so he could go fix it.

Freya looked at all the people of the group. There wasn't much diversity everyone was native American. But yet again they were on a reservation so she didn't think twice about it.

Paul had started telling Freya who was who before she even got to them.

Embry , Seth and Sam were in the water out deep. Leah had just gotten out of the water and was talking to Emily.

Freya smiled politely to Emily who had 3 long scars down her face. "Oh you must be the new girl" she smiled genuinely. Emily called for the boys to come introduce themselves. " I'm Emily and this is Leah my cousin and that's Seth her brother. Sam my fiance and embry." Freya smiled and introduced herself.

After a moment of talking she decided to take a dip in the water. Back home they had beaches but nothing this pretty. She took off her hoodie and leggings to reveal a burnt orange bikini that made her copper skin pop.

"are you sure you want to go in , it's pretty cold." Paul asked her as she put her long black hair into a ponytail. Freya looked at him confused." Everyone except Emily was in the water when we got here. I think I'll live."

Freya took no time to go into the water and swim out past her shoulders. 'maybe Paul was right. It's pretty cold'

Embry smiled " you must run warm if you're staying in the water this long and your lips aren't blue yet" he chuckled. Freya fought the urge to roll her eyes at the cheerful boy. Paul was in the sand still briefly talking to Emily. He took his shirt off to reveal tonned abs and great muscles. Freya tried to tear her eyes away. The other boys may have also been built but there was something about Paul that made her never want to stop looking at him.

He took off his jean shorts to show dark red splashed with orange swim trunks And dived into the water. Embry and Seth began to wrestle with Paul double teaming him. Freya smiled shyly until Paul made his way over to her and pulled her toward the group. His skin was hot against her cold skin. " I told you you'd get cold" she rolled her eyes and splashed him with water. " Not all of us can be as warm as you." Sam smiled knowingly at Freya and paul. The look he gave Freya was the look he gives Emily.

Freya's lips turned purple after being in the water for maybe 20 mins. Seth looked at her " I don't think your lips are supposed to be that color. Come on let's go the shore."

Emily gave her a towel to dry off with so her clothes wouldn't be soaked. "thank you I honestly didn't even think to grab a towel." Freya , Leah , Emily and Seth sat next to the fire. Freya between Emily and Seth and leah facing them. The fire was warm and danced as the rest of the boys continued to stay in the water.

Freya relaxed and talked with Emily for what seemed like forever. Paul touched her shoulder " hey let me know when you want to head home." She nodded knowing that she should probably get there eventually. Seth looked up at Paul innocently who just rolled his eyes.

"So Freya why'd you move here?" Seth asked excitedly. " My dad is getting remarried and he thought us moving here would be better than asking her to move with us." Paul sighed and looked at her noticing she was upset.

It wasn't her choice to move but he was going to make sure she felt welcomed in la push.

Freya sat in front of Emily as she braided freya's long hair. Whenever she tried to do it she'd get cramps in her hands or shoulders. Emily's touch was soft and motherly as she finished the first braid and began the second. The boys talked and mostly goofed around. Except sam he seemed the be the oldest and most mature of the guys , Paul following. Then Leah , Embry and Seth was for sure the baby.

As the hours went on Seth , embry and Leah left. Freya sat next to paul and Emily sat next to Sam . It felt normal , relaxing not awkward as some may think. She looked at the time on the clock " hey Paul?" He looked down at her their noses almost touching. " You getting tired?" Freya nodded. He grabbed her back pack and helped her up. Emily went up to Freya her arms open " I'm a hugger" freya smiled and hugged Emily tightly. " Don't be a stranger." " I won't be" she waved to Sam as her and paul walked up the small hill of sand to get to his truck.

" how much you want to bet theyre together by end of the month?" Emily asked. Sam chuckled " 25 on two weeks"

[apexart-journal]

Tasha Dougé, Day 12

Today started bright and early with a Landmark Commission Public Hearing.  There were 10 locations on the agenda.  The first one was the Kimlau War Memorial.  The minute I heard the name, I was like I know that memorial.  It brought me right back to Day 4.  I got to hear more history about the memorial, but it was nice to hear people talk about the impact the memorial has on them.  I heard individual stories from people reflecting on how their families migrated to the States for the American Dream, while others shared how representation matters to them and how they show up in community.  If was clear that the  memorial’s presence impacts them and adds immense value to the community.  Now my memory of the that area is infused with their stories.  The Landmark Commission will convene again on June 15th to make a decision.  I hope it gets approved. 

Next, I was supposed to head over to the Park Slope Center for Successful Aging.  NYCares partners up with them to deliver meals to seniors.  I called to let them know I was running late, but I was informed that they already distributed all the food and didn’t need any more volunteers.  Dang that was quick.  I asked what was their schedule for delivering food.  I was told Tuesdays and Thursday.  I said thanks.  In my mind, I made a mental note to let Abbie know what happened and try to get this back on my schedule.  Sad I missed it, but the day still had much to offer me.  Next stop, Prospect Park.

I’ve been to Prospect Park a few times, but had no idea how nice the park was.  If I was going to an event, that was exactly what I did.  I would beeline my way to the event’s location, not paying any true attention to my surroundings.  Nor did I think to look up what was actually in the park.  So my trip today was a scavenger hunt to find the Camperdown Elm (tree) and the Quaker cemetery, all while staying open to whatever else I discovered.  Early on in my walk to these places, I walked under this gorgeous underpass.  I couldn’t help myself, I just had to take a pic.  I didn’t think it was possible, but I think walking through it was some sort of time travel because I look even younger.  Forty where? (Not in my face, but in my knees. lol)  The Camperdown Elm was located a few steps away from the underpass.  It looks like something out of a fairytale.  It gave me Chronicles of Narnia vibes.  Mr. Tumnus, are you there?  If you get the reference, know that I love you.  Anyhoo, the Camperdown Elm is special because its branches grow parallel to the ground.  Its branches are really do majestic.  I was definitely getting Ferngully vibes. (I love that movie! Avatar is like the people version to me.)  It was almost cut down, but through the efforts of an artist/poet, Marianne Moore, the elm was saved.  The poem she wrote about the tree is renowned.  Not to far from the elm is the boathouse. There was a bride getting professional pictures taken and I could see why.  Absolutely gorgeous!  I could have stayed by the water for much longer than I did.  I watched the momma swan and her babies, and the turtles sunbathing on a log further out.  The moment was serene and tranquil and much more.  Abbie called me back and we caught up.  We sorted everything out with my schedule for the remainder of my time.  Thursday, I would go deliver food to the seniors and Abbie said finally get to kayaking.  I mentioned since I had a gap in my schedule and the weather was clear, I would try today.  She said go for it.  I continued on my walk until I got to the Quaker cemetery.  It’s closed to the public and it made think that maybe they was silence in death as well.  Doesn’t look like there will be any music clubs happening here.  En route back to the train station, I passed by the boathouse again and you won’t believe what I saw.  A Black-crowned Night Heron!!!  You already know that I took a picture.  I immediately thought about Marlys and how she is going to love hearing about this.  For me to see this bird again (in a different park), what were the odds?  I just had to look up the symbolism of the heron.  Here are some clips of what I found:

  “Heron symbolism is important because the heron meaning refers to tranquility and stillness for us humans. We need to understand these two elements well if we wish to recognize the opportunities in life... Primarily, the bird is a symbol of beauty because it prospers and flourishes in the majestic realm where the land and shore dance in a symphony. The result is a wondrous spectacle. The marriage of the two elegant energies of water and land is included in the meaning of herons. The heron shows us the abundance of life in the sea, for when we see the peace, contentment, and tranquility that the heron finds at the edge of the waters, we are assured of the plethora of life present inside the waters.”

The link says so much more that resonates with this moment, where I am in my life and what the future holds for me.  God, Universe, Ancestors, Lwas and other deities, I hear you and I receive it.  Thank you Prospect Park.  Now I really want to go to the water.  Kayaking here I come.  Unfortunately, my excitement to be on the water was met with a closed gate.  How sway?  No rain and still no kayaking.  At least, I tried.  It was disappointing for sure.  I’ve kayaked on the Hudson before, but it was so long ago.  I was really looking forward to doing again.  The Sunset Mediation was exactly what I needed to settle this day.

Socrates is my park homie.  My sister actually moved to Astoria about 4 years ago.  Once she got her dog, we frequented the park more often.  However, never have I ever participated in mediation in the park.  There was a decent size group in the park.  As per the name, the sun was setting and that meant the temperature was dropping.  The facilitator had a mic, but they were barely audible.  To be honest, it didn’t matter because we were there to be still and mediate.  The coolness of the grass sent electricity through my body and then, there was calm.  My calm did get interrupted with some of the city sounds.  Yet, after the city listening exercise, I was able to incorporate some, not all, of the sounds into my mediation.  The session ends at the same time as the park, so with about 20 mins remaining, the park attendant started to announce that the park was closing soon.  He did so again 10 minutes later.  With the remaining time, the facilitator asked that we turn to our neighbors and chat for a bit through intros and reflections on how we went.  The folks next to me paired off really quickly, but two women called me over to join them.  There names were Morgan and Jenna.  They were nice folks from the neighborhood.  We shared what brought us to meditation.  I told about the residency, but not my art.  lol.  It was a good mini convo.  We left each other saying that we may see each other again.  Calm and coldish, I headed on my way and that was the end of my day.  

[hypnodesires]

What if I hadn't waited?...

I often look back on my life, on all the crazy things I have done in the past that I know for a fact, I could never do at my age now (I'm making myself sound like I'm 80 but trust me I'm way younger than that)….  For me at least being a first-time mom took a lot out of my body and mind (along with the damn drama going on in my family is not helping), so I can't see myself getting it on in the back of a movie theater or a quickly while the family is in the next room or out in a park…. Fuuuuuck that shit, I have had my fun but in all that time I never told anyone about hypnosis or my love for it….. I can't even imagine what someone would have done to me if I had shared it with the wrong person… (keep in mind I lost my Vcard at age 14 freshmen year) and that guy played me for a fool… of course I fell into it, I didn't feel loved in my own home. Everything and anything that happen was always blamed on me… and all the house duty fell onto me as well, while my younger sister was clearly the favorite and got away with it all. I made lots of bad choices just because I wanted to be love, Not to mention the body-shaming my mom put me through that still effects me and my sister to this day….. being told no one would love me being as big that I was (keep in mind I was 150 compared to what I am now 223 lb or my biggest that I ever was 265 lb) but After falling for that fuckface with a small ass dick who played me, I knew then that I couldn't let it happen again.

I don't know what others would do if they went through what I did, the rest of my relationships following that event had to wait more than 6 months to get any action from me….. And for a teen girl or boy that shit was hard lol (I was a good ass tease though wink*). I wanted to know that the next person was into me as a person and not just wanting sex, I kept my true kinks to myself and if asked I would say "3sum, roleplay, etc" even in roleplay I would never bring up hypnosis, none of the men I was with ever mention it…… but if they had ooooo I was going to have a good time, I mean it was role play, why waste it right, not like they would know. After I dated fuckface, I dated a metalhead for 2 weeks… he left me only to date another girl the next day….. my only guess is that she was willing to put out the same day, in a way it just reinforced my mindset on making men wait (trust me, ladies, the payoff is glorious) but I know not everyone has the same will power but I have my weaken too, I am only human after all haha. I was single for a short time after that metalhead, where I soon became the target of a dirty (I mean never took showers) white guy, An old friend of mine told me he never took showers until he started to ask me out over and over. In high school, I would get there an hour before classes just so I could eat with my friends before school and one day he showed up along with some other guy who I thought was much cuter but was gay sadly, we'll call the gross guy Jim. I don't know what he saw in me that he just could not leave me alone, I had turned him down twice but I'm guessing he got some of my friends to get me to give him a chance….. How I wish I hadn't, this guy was so pushy about wanting to do stuff and my no's fell on deaf ears. Asking people to help him but my good friends stayed out of it (you could warn a bitch damn lol) inner thoughts, I was approached by two teachers at different times while I was with him. I was told by one that Jim would throw fits like a toddler in class and scream if things didn't go his way, they just wanted to make sure I was ok and he wasn't doing anything to me (not at that time) but after the second teacher confronted me about him, I was already seeing some signs….. he wanted to follow me into the girl locker room until a teacher kicked him out, he would run to my last class of the day just so he could walk home even though we lived in a different direction, the thing that creeped me out was when he called me while I was out at the movies with my friend but I never told him what movie I was in and 20 min into the movie I hear the theater door open all hard and when I turned there he was looking around to find me….. and he did. I found myself wanted to get away from him but I still stayed up until he moved away….. Well, even then I still stayed… I'm not proud of it but I was young and dumb plain and simple, I know that if I would have left him while he was still in the same city I would have ended up on the ID channel (google it if you don't know ). I can't even imagine what he would have tried to implant into my mind had I ever told him…. I shudder to think. I was in my senior year of high school and still with Jim, he would text me all day and once home I would hope on yahoo massager and we would talk the rest of the day…. But I met my main man that year in my second semester, we became friends through a mutual friend of ours, he knew I was with Jim but told my love I was single. In a way I'm glad he did that, I don't think I could of left Jim on my own. As time went on I knew my love had the feeling for me and so did I, I woke up on Feb 14, 05 at 5:00 am out of a deep sleep full of energy blurting out "he is going to ask me out today!" something in my gut was screaming at me that it was going down, I worked up the courage to break up with Jim….. yes on that same day…. I was scared… I called and prayed he wouldn't pick up…. I pulled a Mosby (how I met you mother reference) I left a brake up voice mail and before any more of you looks down on me, ANYONE and EVERYONE is allowed to break up with a CRAZY/UNSTABLE person over the phone that is the only exception that is appropriate and not to mention its much SAFER.  The day went on and I kept checking my phone surprised that he hadn't blown up my phone yet, my love asked to walk me home and he did. While we walked I kept checking my phone but not a word from Jim, we made it to my house and my love gave me some candies, a beautiful card with his feeling written down inside… at that moment I had forgotten all about Jim, forgotten my fear, my dread. Looking into the eyes of my love I felt safe & that I found someone who truly loved me, to this day I still can't fully explain how he made me feel in that moment all I know it was a beautiful feeling... All I know is that no one ever made me feel that way since. Of course, once he left and us being a couple now, I was on cloud nine…. It would be short-lived. Once I hopped onto yahoo messager I made sure to stay invisible as to not be seen, Jim was on and had already sent me a hello message… I was surprised he was so calm, surely he'd already heard my voice mail?…. I had sent it first thing in the morning but it was already 4 pm, I switch to online and asked him if he wasn't mad?  He said mad about what? I then told him I was sorry but my voice mail would tell him and I "log off"  1 min goes by and I got call after call from Jim. He left voicemails with each call he made and there was a pattern, first message he left was him crying "please Quinn pick up, I love you don't do this to me" next massage in a raging voice "I'll fucken kill you, pick up your phone you stupid bitch" next message "I'm going to kill myself plz Quinn PICK UP!" and start all over with the sobbing and begging for me to comeback…… I did pick up the phone after he left over 50 voicemails and told him "you need to stop, I can't do this anymore and you are scaring me…." Before I could continue Jim said, "please talk to my mom PLEASE!" I agree and while on the phone with her, I could hear Jim screams and his mom yells out to her husband "get the pills away from him! Jim, you need to stop!.... sweetie what going on?" I told her I was scared of her son and that I was no longer going to move up there with them, she understood and told me "you know that ring Jim gave you? it's my engagement ring, could you send it to me. I gladly agreed and asked her to mail me back some of my stuff Jim had taken from me and she did, though not all of them, I was happy he was no longer in my life. He did continue to call my cell, my sister cell, and my grandparent's house phone just to talk to me, until my dad picked up the phone and asked him to pass the phone to his dad which he did & that was the last time I heard from him over the phone, he did try a few months later but I never picked up… so I think he gave up.

I was with my love for 3 years until I ended it due to, growing apart and I didn't like being put down or made to feel bad just cuz I didn't want to do something. We met in 05, the same year that How I met your mother premiered, and got back together the same year the show ended in 2014. my reason for leaving him, to begin with, was the fact he got too comfortable just taking off and sayings things like "I guess they're not much for me here then, I'm all done here then" and he would just leave if I didn't put out for the night?! our break up was necessary for us to make the changes that ultimately made us stronger. I was a freak in the sheets it was his fucken loss, he knows that now and say he will never let me go. I know we did a bit of role-playing of my kink when we were first together, but he never took it seriously and I never made a big fuss about it…. but it was hot. Then I was with Kyo (it was my pet name to him because he didn't like his name) I was with him for a while and I fucked up…. WE both fucked up, meeting him online and being apart I had a relapse and slept with my love….. I know why would I sleep with him if I left him in the first place…… no one is perfect but I made it clear that this was NOT going to continue, I felt extreme guilt and told Kyo…. He forgave him as we still had not even met yet, but little did I know he was still talking to some women he had been seeing and fail to tell me he hadn't ended it with her….. but once he moved in with me it was over but something inside me was telling me to look through his laptop so I did, I found he still had photos of his ex... nude photos of her… including emails of him making it seem like he was still with her but he told me they broke it off and he deleted everything. From the start I should have known this wasn't going to work, we all make mistakes and I have defiantly learned from it. But as time went on Kyo discovered he was into cross-dressing with the help of my best friends, I encouraged him to be himself and that was the only time I saw him happy…. We would give him dresses, do his makeup, wax his whole body, and take him to the clubs to strut his stuff. At the end of the night, we'd go home and enjoy some sexy time and he loved being in his outfits while we got it on and I loved it as well…. With many outing that we have done, I decided to finally tell him about my kink…. Keep in mind I did what I could to get him off whatever he wanted I tried, he likes it when I would jack him off with my panties, blow jobs, and doing it while dressed up…. So when I brought it up, he was like "that weird" (really guy?!?! I'm weird! Get your bitch ass out of here with the panties jerking and cross-dressing) I was hurt…. I had welcomed all he wanted and never made any faces or made him feel bad about it cuz there is no need to kink shame, but he couldn't do the same for me? He barely gave it a try. More time went on and my love for him had faded away, I didn't feel loved by him…. I had done so much to make him feel welcome with all my friends and showed him how much I cared but I never felt like his #1, I felt like an afterthought with him… like I'll get to you when I can…. I knew that if we didn't last, his childhood friend would hop on that dick when I left him. He took it hard and called him mother to tell her everything….. we both made mistake but I'm sure I was made the main villain, Kyo kept telling me he wanted to try again and he still loved me but he was joining the marines. I had told him before he ever thought of joining that I could never be with someone who joins the marines/army/etc, etc… and I kept good on that but my best friend called him out on his bullshit about "loving me" as he had shown her photos of him at base camp but failed to remove the nudes photos of the girl I knew would take him once I was gone, my friend just told him "you love Quinn huh? You can cut the shit you have moved on, so stop acting as if you miss her".  From what I know he is married to her, she doesn't like his cross-dressing and won't sleep with him if he does dress up cuz it makes her feel "uncomfortable"…. He told me this on the last conversation we ever had, I could hear his sadness but I could hear him try to play it off like it wasn't hurting him or bothered him…. How could it not? For almost 4 years he had encouragement, support, and lots of love from a woman who fully accepted every part of him to a woman who thinks it's weird…. How the tables have turned.

I didn't stay single for long as I reconnected with my love and soon started dating again, since we last were together  we sure did a lot of growth in that time apart. It made us even stronger, I honestly can't see myself with anyone else (maybe Johnny depp lol) a girl can dream right hahaha I can feel my love's eyes rolling back hahaha. When I first told him about my love for hypnosis his reaction was the best, with a calm loving look he says "oh that's new" since then we have had our fun with it, even tho its more for me then it is for him. he is coming around to it so that makes me happy. 

i’m happy with how thing have been going on in our sexy time department, getting our kinks out and what not. i’m just glad i don’t have to worry about someone fucking up my mind, its mine! ya i want someone to play with it and get freaky with it but at the end of the day i’m still me! and not with abuser or crazy person. so watch your mind ladies and gentlemen not everyone is going to care for you so choose wisely we only have one mind, so dont loss it!

[incarnateirony]

You didn't ship Destiel until S13!? That really took me by surprise! In that case, thank you for defending the ship even if you didn't ship it, that's really nice and your meta made it easier to deal with the antis. And welcome to the Destiel side of the force! :)

Yeah, several people -- @dotthings off the top of my head, I really don’t remember who else -- literally witnessed the screaming fall into the dumpster.

Again, I really don’t know if I still consider what I do ~shipping.~ I have no specific demands for how their relationship continues from here, I just acknowledge it within the work. The difference that hit in S13 was welcoming that content instead of guarding myself against it because we got slammed with several consecutive bookends that completed an entire romantic arc and punctuated it with a far more impacting mirror of an endgame that didn’t even have said romantic arc to begin with, in Swan Song, so like??? what am I supposed to do? Just ignore it? Act like I can’t understand what just happened in front of me?

To put some perspective, I’ve been running SPN games for... a while. My most recent one was on a discord server that’s niche, but my prior one was on a giant multifandom server. I covered for Cas to keep his power levels in check to the story balance without like, making the humans irrelevant. My Dean at the time was hardcore shipping trash. His name was Chris, he was a bisexual dude in Chile, psychologist, good dude. But like??? it deadass annoyed me? How up Cas’ ass his writing was? The shippers that came in actually kinda annoyed me with trying to matchmaker them in game??? Like. I saw it, but I guess it’s the old “That’s not what the show is about” (which unlike how fandom whips it around, doesn’t mean it can’t exist at all, it’s the obsessive tunnel visioned focus that pissed me off because it kept railroading scenes)

But despite that, during and before it, I was yeah, defending it. Just because I wasn’t an active ~shipper~ didn’t mean I was cool with people stomping on people for very reasonably seeing the stuff my last post mentioned. I just kinda kept myself from investing because I know this old media song and dance too well and didn’t expect it to break, say, S10 levels. And then 11 happened. And then 12. And then--

Because no matter what this fandom says, Castiel’s alien mystified staring at Dean, while great chemistry in old seasons, does not actually compare to things like frequent lunch dates, need and love yous, mixtapes, Eileen being Sam’s Cas in 15.09 and so on. In the actual, not-head-up-ass-about-old-rewritten-content-meta’ed-15-times-over often fused to really bad hot takes on what people call queer coding. But I could respect that, say, the ramifications of swapping Cas and Anna roles to keep Misha around while Julie was bouncing out and getting uncomfortable naturally landed Cas in the hero’s journey goddess role, ala princess Leia if you will, the distressing warrior nondamsel rebelling against the empire and whatnot. But that doesn’t start or end at star wars, that’s thousands of years of human writing.

So while yes, the show heavily stripped the actual content that would have traditionally structured it romantic, people like seeing that x their chemistry early on-- not crazy.

And I defended it for years /to my wife/ despite my server vexations. On this giant dozens-of-thousands-of-users multifandom server not connected to any core fandom spaces and hosting innumerable fandoms and walks of life, I was the oddball out -- me. As a nonshipper annoyed by the crowd, often having 20-30 people logged into my channel at a time playing everything from early Cain to Benny to TFW to Wayward to *throws dart at board* whatever, of the hundreds of names that drifted through the game in sum (including player rotations, OCs and audience that just came to watch/read like a fic), you know how many antis we had?

Three.

One was my wife. so removing her, two.

Do you know how many shippers there were? 

Yeah neither do I, just, “pretty much all of them.” a few hung in “see it, don’t care, moderately annoyed” like I did. But this idea that the GA is a bunch of het-guzzling bozos that can’t do the same basic math all of you fucking did before you got here, just because some other dead-ass irrelevant ship composed entirely on leftfield interpretations to validate niche fandom ships -- that shit’s so far fucking divorced from goddamn reality.

As for my wife, yes. She was an anti. In fact long before I wandered into fandom social media (I think I actually jumped in around S12 bc I saw Dabb taking over and Bobo getting promoted and was interested in Yockey-- Yockey was the first person I tweeted at), I was on these servers, running these games, having these ARGUMENTS with my wife to be quite honest, because like, look, I get it, Destiel fandom can be weird and needy and over the top but they’re not crazy for what they see out of it. By Carver era it was classic subtext.

But she had followed Winbros for years not realizing it’s literally run by the real world becky and her BFFs that have tasteful POVs like “Misha Collins is cancer” “Dabb is a disease” and whatever else on their personals that proxy through their posts and motivations. She attended it on Facebook, which is THE goddamn conservative magafarm asshole platform and yeah, read a lot of shitty arguments. Yes, she picked up sayings like “it ruins the show”. Yes, she hated it. No, that didn’t mean I felt anyone deserved more than mild frustration for their behaviors at the time just because they were stuck in fanfic-shipping-fiction-over-romanticised-land and not canon-divergent-show-genre-complex-interpersonal-relationships fiction. 

She, too, cracked about the same time I did. I was more receptive sure, I saw it more sure, but after a mix of addressing some personal problems, making an OC that completely changed how her perception filtered Dean and Castiel working together, whatever-- and yes, 12.19->13.5. The night of 13.5, the final shot, as the screen went dark, she stared over her phone and, with tonal distaste, said “Oh. So they’re going there.”

Yes, it’s that fucking obvious. No, she didn’t admit that’s what did her in. Not until the end of the season, when she admitted she had been bullshitting arguments since early season 13 because, literally, and I quote, “otherwise Min wins.” -- which, if that comes by way of my own wife, I can only stare into the fandom camera at other people that have turned this show into a decade long money sink and have been divorced from the actual canon path for like minimum 3 years, maybe 6, yelling about it being wrong all the time, etc. Because on the internet, people convince themselves they have ownership and power, that their opinion of what the piece should be overrides even the creators, et cetera. Yeah. There’s a lot of disingenuous horse shit.

TLDR my wife fell into the dumpster and, as the flag of the end of our weird spats, and a birthday present, I made her this, since she IDs as Dean (OLD vid, has hiccup issues newer ones don’t)

So, yup, dat me.

To this day I still don’t read fanfics or browse fanart or any of that. I’ve never cared about that face of the fandom. I’ve never cared about making up rando ships, I’ve never cared about exactly how any given relationship plays itself out, I just enjoy the ride and address it as it does indeed play out. Most shipping culture still pisses me the fuck off with its dialogue, as I’ve made very clear. But because I’m acknowledging the text instead of denying what keeps happening more centrally and critically every year on screen, I’d be called a shipper. Because I’m tired of watching people spew logic even most children could pick apart in an endless roundabout of negativity, because I have no tolerance for absolute horse shit and fandom whining so I just lay out counters to bad talking points, I’d be called a shipper.

But 13.5ish is when I finally let myself start emotionally receiving the content rather than barring it off in a distant wall of exhausted old gay that knows their media too well. Why? Because it already completed and went above and beyond every element of the original way they painted the original goddamn endgame and I guess because I won’t set unfair bars against queer relationships and set them at Extra Hard Difficulty, I’m a shipper. IDK. This fandom fucking exhausts me. Fandom culture in general exhausts me.

[snowslasherr]

here's a little something i’m making for all of you because you deserve it ♥️ if you don’t have a valentine you have all of these babies and me as well ♥️ i love you all so much, stay safe and take care of yourselves! i'm sorry if this is too short to be a holiday special :')

i'll add a read more thing later im sorry for clogging up ur dash

Dwight Fairfield

poor boy he'd be so nervous

dwight's really good at keeping track of the days in the fog, so he'd have extra time to prepare

he just wants to make you happy : )!!

he'll nervously tug at your sleeve at the campfire. go along with it and follow him blease

after near 20 minutes of walking in the woods you were about to ask where you're going, but before the words slip out of your mouth you see what he's been leading you to

a couple dark vines are concealing a small space, with a little creek running through the middle. the trees loomed over it, much taller than some of the other trees. crows were settled on some branches but flew away when you stepped in. the whole area was littered with flowers that dwight had planted himself, with the help of claudette. he wanted to make the perfect spot just for you.

"do you like it?"

what a stupid question. of course you like it. smh ❤

theoretically you can both sit there for hours, but trials get in the way. either way, it's perfect. he's perfect.

although he wasn't expecting anything from you it was a pleasant surprise when you whipped out a little gift. you'd gotten meg to help you force convince danny to let her borrow his camera, so she could take pictures of you both. of course, dwight didn't know this

meg was a surprisingly good photographer. the photos weren't blurry and they would make a good gift even in the normal world.

when you gave them to him he teared up and spent the next half hour quickly stuttering out how much he loves and appreciates you : )

Meg Thomas

oh boy

meg is a lil bundle of energy

you'll just be chilling at the campfire, maybe lounging around talking to nancy or jeff, when meg just nyooms in and grabs your hand. you squeak and she just starts zooming away, dragging you along with her.

meg tends to keep her offerings in a secluded place (a hollow tree trunk) because sometimes the other survivors tend to get the offerings mixed up. unfortunately, meg found this specific tree while on a run. she looked like she was having the time of her life, her braids flying behind her. she was fast.

she finally stopped and you could have a well deserved break. but that break was unfortunately cut short, because meg only stopped to pick up a small photo, before she burst back into a run.

when you got back to the campfire, she barely looked phased. you were panting, trying to catch your breath, and she looked relatively calm. she slipped the photo into the fire and then skipped off to the woods with you, to avoid passing out in front of the others.

when you woke up, the both of you were in the ormond resort. the entity had accepted the offer. you didn't even want to ask how she'd gotten the legion to stay out of their realm for you two

neither of you were dressed properly, but like almost everything in the fog, the temperature was fake.

which led to the most obvious situation

snowball fight!

she's so extra with it. she'll build a whole fort while you're pelting her with snowballs, paying no mind to it.

she makes it so big that you could hide in her fort and attack her with snowballs from the inside.

eventually, the girl gets worn out. it takes a while. but she still wants to keep going, so you two make snow angels with connected wings.

after you're both too tired to do anything else, you're pulled back to the campfire, grinning and tired

Claudette Morel

sweet baby. absolute sweetie.

smol lil claudette just pokes you on the arm, gesturing for you to follow her.

of course, you do. don't deny her she's babey

she's taking you down a long homemade path that you've never seen before. maybe because claudette spent hours between trials clearing it out just for this day, and finished it before she came to get you.

Jake Park

he didn't really have big plans for valentines day. dwight reminded him and he kinda just shrugged it off

he probably won't ever have a huge celebration for valentines day, it's not his style. he's a chill guy.

he'll probably sit with you in a clearing near the forest, holding his arm out for the crows to perch on, and showing you how to do that as well

he'll want to just lounge around, comfy day. you wanna get up? nah. comfy day. not today amigo.

consider yourself extremely special if he gives you a bouquet. it's rare, but he might!

the crows will dance around and bob their heads when you cuddle. they don't know what they're doing but let's just say they support your relationship. he totally didn't train them to do that.

he cares, kind of. he knows it's a day to be sappy but again, not really his style. he'll take the opportunity for a bit of affection though.

Nea Karlsson

nea has been planning this for a while, lets say.

every trial that you go in without her is an opportunity! she's been making a detailed mural with the few spray paints she's been allowed by the entity.

she's sure you'll be proud of her. and to top it all off, she finished just in time for valentines day. what a coincidence!

after you get back from a surprisingly laid back trial, you don't get a chance to rest before nea's smiling and telling you to follow her. you complain for a moment, but gave in anyway. you always do

she jumps over a couple logs and puddles, before coming across a couple lone brick walls. they look like nothing at first, but then you walk around to the other side.

nea's smirking as you're in awe, looking at her and then the mural.

"it's beautiful," you whisper, eyes shining. "but not more beautiful than you."

she does a complete double take at the cheesy generic line. she crosses her arms, looking away. but you can see the smile that she was trying to hide. she looked so pretty when she smiled.

Laurie Strode

she'll organize a little something :)

if you can imagine a party room, maybe one similar to one you'd see at a young kids birthday party, that's the kind of thing she'd set up.

it's just a comforting and safe scene, so she thought it'd be best

she collected a lot of offerings for this, please like it : (

she would've baked something but there's no ingredients in the fog besides corn

if you want corn though go for it

it has the vibes of one of those really good cookies from Walmart or something (okay i googled it they're called lofthouse cookies)

in the end she just wants a comfy safe environment,, it's so nice compared to the brutal things that happen in trials

Ace Visconti

do not let this man near flowers or anything of the sort. he'll take a bunch and

so cheesy

he'll take some random thing off the ground that looks cool (like a dandelion or a shiny rock) and say it's a luck charm, and pass it to you.

ace, handing you a flower tied to a funky rock with a piece of grass: happy valentines day :)

he'll set up a whole area beside the campfire for you two and if anyone steps into it he'll kick them out

if he finds a heart shaped rock he'll riot and get nea to spray paint it red. ultimate luck charm. because it's a reminder of him.

Feng Min

small little gamer :)

i'm convinced feng will take you on a romantic trip to taunt killers

myers is tired of it. susie thinks you guys are cute. evan is not having a good time. sally is supporting you. it's chaos

feng is just holding your hand, walking you around the autohaven wreckers. philip is cloaked and is too scared to be hit in the face with a pallet to uncloak.

feng is really short and she's climbing on things to be taller than you, just for the fun of it.

piggy back rides!! she loves piggy back rides. yeehaw

pick her up and carry her around? heart eyes motherfucker

Quentin Smith

aw what a cutie

he forgot about valentines day, but no fear! you didn't

after you guys swim he'll act like he's really tired so that he can rest his head on your lap. you know he's lying cause he keeps silently laughing as if he's a genius sneaky trickster

when you just happily say happy valentines day he's like 😳

he panics

just reassure him it's fine and you did something!

he's still upset about forgetting, but he's quickly distracted by you.

you've found a secluded spot in the woods, the only disturbance being the occasional core popping in to see what's up

you set up a blanket fort. you'd burned quite a few offerings for this. it worked out better than you expected it to, and you were pretty happy with it overall.

you spent as much time there as you could before being pulled into a trial

the time spent together made up for the offerings burned

Kate Denson

both of you set it up together

you stayed at the campfire, nothing crazy

kate played her guitar, and she showed you how to play a song or two (assuming you don't know how to already)

if you want to sing you are welcome to :)

kate will encourage you all the way even if you sound like nails on a chalkboard

she'll make anyone who comments negatively on your voice have a time out. no questions asked. they're older than her? don't care time out.

it's just,, nice and cozy,, and uninterrupted by trials

Jeff Johansen

big cuddly man!

like nea he'll also do something art related!

but it'll still be unique of course

instead of a mural, he'd do a small-ish but still breathtaking painting.

the rest of your day would be spent just chillin. if you're unlucky enough to be ripped into a trial, he'll bring a toolbox to get out as soon as possible. yknow. for more chillin.

Jane Romero

she'd be pretty extra

again, meg would force convince danny to let her use her camera. she'd have a big photoshoot, as best as she can with the limited resources. claudette would set up a scene, and you and jane would pose for the pictures

they turned out really good!

jane keeps them in a secure place and she won't tell you where if you say anything negative about how you looked. not risking it babe!

(phew finally done! i'm super sorry i was a couple survivors short, i didn't wanna burn myself out. if you like it please reblog? i made this in less than 24 hours to surprise you guys. i hope this is a decent special!)