#as an example of the mood swings: last night i worked on a project that isnt for a grade from 6pm to 1am with a 20 minute dinner at 9

[cassarson]

Do any of y'all have adhd and bipolar or know of any good accounts of what having both is like? I've noticed that I've been having some seriously abnormal moods recently, and the more I look into it, the more I think that it looks a lot like bipolar, but I'm not sure how it would interact with my adhd, or even if there's anything other than my adhd going on at all. Feel free to DM me if you don't want to talk about it publicly

[zrtranscripts]

Home Front, Mission 5: Peter’s Movie Nights (And Days)

Cinematic Masterpiece

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: Hello, runners! Peter here, broadcasting from the gorgeous Princess Louise Theater, an independent cinema a few miles outside Abel. We're going to start working out in a minute, so whilst I'm talking, I suggest doing some light warm-up exercises. Jogging on the spot, stretching, anything that gets your heart rate up.

Right. So muggins here thought it'd be a brilliant idea to loot some cinema equipment for Abel movie night, but the moment I got here, the horde descended, so I've barricaded myself in the projection box and the auditorium is full of zoms. Although as long as there's a film playing, they're too fixated on the screen to come looking for me, but uh, I am trapped for the foreseeable. Still, I can think of worse ways to pass the time than watching The Fantastic Light Trip.

Do you remember this? The uh, sci-fi jukebox musical, came out a few years before the apocalypse. I know everyone made fun of it for having a totally nonsensical plot, but it ruled the box office for months! The Princess Louise actually hosted sing-along screenings, which um, even the zoms appear to like, clearly. Um, sorry. Anyway, uh, Janine thought it would help everyone who's in a similar state of stuckness if I used my impressive fitness experience to lead some Ministry-approved exercises, so let's start with a dance warm-up. Sam said if I plug this cable into – yep. [cable zaps] You should then be able to hear the music from the film when I press this button! Right. Get ready everyone, and dance!

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: Well, that's not the first song I'd think of to soundtrack an inter-species dance-off, but yeah, I think it works. Er, kind of. I wanted us to watch the Fantastic Light Trip as a group. You cry with laughter at the Dance of the Seven Tentacles. You cry with, I mean, just cry at the ending. The song right before they go into hyperspace always gets me. I came to the cinema to bring people together and now everyone's apart. Except for the zombies, obviously. Well, they've got loads of company. Just because we're not in the same place doesn't mean we can't exercise together. We're a team, runners, even if we're far apart.

So now that we're all warmed up, let's do some jumping jacks. Right, you stand with your feet together and your arms by your sides. Then you jump, spreading your legs whilst you're in the air so that you land with them about shoulder-width apart. Now jump back to the starting position. Got that? Great. Now do it again, except this time, swing your arms up over your head at the same time as you spread your legs, then swing them back down as you bring your feet back to the center. Let's give that a go. Good job, runners! I assume. Let's keep it going.

If you're not able to jump right now, keeping your blood pumping with some dance moves is a great alternative. You could uh, walk from side to side instead of jumping, but keep up those arm movements and if you're the sort of person who likes a challenge, Janine, why not try spreading your arms and legs and moving them back to the center whilst you're still in the air? Right, now keep whatever you're doing up as long as you can whilst I turn the music back on for the next song.

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: Nice work, runners! Tell you, you really jumped the hell out of those jacks. Oh, great, this is the feast scene. You know, where all of the um, the alien food starts singing. Um, I tell you what. Speaking of which, how's everyone eating? I know we've had to improvise ever since the apocalypse, but we have to be especially creative now. For example, I have several sacks of popcorn and, thank God, a jar of vitamins I happened to loot on my way here. Would be nice to have something green, but lately I’ve found it's healthier not to worry about having the perfect diet and instead just notice how the food makes me feel. And it turns out munching a little popcorn whilst watching a movie feels pretty damn good.

Still, it's gonna feel even better to kick back and relax after releasing some endorphins, so let's do 60 seconds of squats. Was that a band? Or have I just been indoors too long? Uh, anyway, right. Squats. So squats, they build your leg muscles, which is handy if you ever need to, uh, just thinking off the top of my head here, carry a popcorn machine up two flights of stairs. So start by placing your feet just wider than hip-width apart, toes pointing only slightly outwards. Now stretch your arms out in front of you. Look straight ahead so that will help you engage your core and maintain good form. So you now send your hips down and back until they're just lower than your knees, as if you're about to sit down in a chair, and raise yourself back up. Nice. That's it.

So we're going to do that for one minute, or as long as you can comfortably manage, that's fine, and that's going to start now! Excellent! I'm assuming you're all doing this great. Uh, probably need to just slow down. Don't get carried away. Right, we're 15 seconds down. So I want you to try to really sit into the squat, right? Don't lead with your knees, sit into it. Halfway there. Right. Remember to keep your thighs in line with your feet. Don't let your knees start pointing inward or go over your toes because you're gonna be feeling that burden now, it's gonna make you sloppy. Don't do it. Right, 15 seconds to go. Just try and breathe in time with the movements if you can. [loudly inhales and exhales] In, out. Keep on going, and we're done! Oh, perfect, this is the time for the space cadets to do their musical training montage. Right, you take a dance break, or if you're up to it, just keep on squatting. I think I had a T-shirt with that on for a while.

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: Yeah, I'll admit it. Before the apocalypse, I was pretty proud of my body. And also after the apocalypse for a while. Some strange body things. I'll tell you about that later. Um, but lately I've learned that the best thing you can do for your body is actually just have a good relationship with it. You know, at the end of the day, it really is the only thing that will ever truly be yours. We runners, we can get quite utilitarian about our bodies, so if something stops us using it to get supplies such as an injury, or again, I'm just thinking off the top of my head, a horde of zombies, that can really get you down. But I'm here to tell you to be kind to your body, even if you can't do exactly what you want with it right now.

So why not start by giving it some exercise? This next move is the extremely nifty chair dip. So first, locate an armless chair. I'll just give you a couple of moments. Oh, there we go. Oh, that one looks great. So that-that should be a chair without arms. I wasn't saying a harmless chair, but I definitely would prioritize a harmless chair over a harmful one. Right, so now perch on the front edge of it, hands gripping the edges on either side of you. Lovely. So put your feet flat on the ground a little way in front of you and then you slide yourself down off the chair, lowering further down and then back up again, really using your arms.

Right, I'm going to believe that was a good job. So if that is too much or if you're worried about the flexibility in your shoulders, actually, punching the air is a genuine great upper body alternative. You do have to be careful not to fully extend or or lock your elbows, but whichever exercise you're doing, you are about to keep it up for as close to a minute as you can, starting any moment... now!

Excellent! Okay, again, don't get too over excited. We've got a whole minute to get through. Ease your way in, keep on breathing in and out. 15 seconds in. If you happen to want to make these chair dips more challenging, you can extend your legs further away so they're actually taking less of your weight. See? Makes it much harder than you thought, doesn't it? And we're halfway through! You really should be feeling that burn in your shoulders. Now that burn is what lets you know you're actually doing something. You're stretching yourself, pushing it. Keep on pushing it, but breathe! Nearly done, runners. Just 15 seconds left, in and out. Keep on going. You're almost at that finish line. You can see it, you can taste it, and time's up!

Nice work, everyone. And now you can reward yourself with a nice relaxing bop as the alien queen leads her subjects in their beautiful synchronized dance, or you could keep doing those chair dips if they're feeling particularly good.

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: So The Fantastic Light Trip, it did get just terrible reviews when it came out, but I love that the marketing team like, genuinely leaned into that mockery and that's helped it become a cult classic. And you know, just like them, we've gotten used to making the best of things. You know, looking for the good in every situation. We're just gonna have to look a bit harder for a while. Here, for example, I've only got access to one tiny window and it's in the toilet. It's just big enough for me to stick my arm out and get some delicious vitamin D. And it just means I don't have to worry about SPF. [laughs] Oh, nice try, sun. No skin damage for me!

Course, not everyone's lucky enough to even have a tiny window, or a toilet for that matter. I'll tellyou what. If your situation feels overwhelming, which it might, sometimes the last thing you honestly want to do is exercise, so here's something I used to tell people who came into one of the gyms I was in when they were feeling low. Just concentrate on being in your body and the physical sensation of moving.

And with that in mind, let's raise our heart rates and our moods with some high knees. So we're going to march vigorously on the spot for one whole minute, just like those plucky space cadets out there. Aim to bring your knees to waist height with each step, and begin!

Yes, excellent! Although I did say waist height. No compromise, all the way up. Keep on going. 15 seconds down. Pump the arms, too. It's not all about the knees. There we go, the blood's pumping. Feel it! Halfway there, runners. Lift those knees like you're trying to impress your cadet leader, which in this context is me, and I'm not yet impressed! Keep on going, pushing it. Only 15 seconds left. Keep the core engaged, keep yourself upright, keep the breath and the blood flowing. Feel the energy! And we're done! Just in time for The Fantastic Light Trip’s romantic leads to do their, let's be honest, just gorgeous duet. So take a dance break, or if you're up to it, keep on marching.

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: [sighs] I know, I know. It's a bit silly, since it is a romance between a wide-eyed space cadet and an exiled alien prince. But it's just, The Fantastic Light Trip, it's so sincere. We're never sincere, and you can't help but root for them. At least, I can't. You can't see, runners, but the whole cast is on screen now getting ready for the big finale. They're all smiling and yeah, actually, it reminds me of something else that I tried to tell people when I was leading classes. Did you know that studies show that if you smile while you exercise, it genuinely makes you feel better?

And listen, I know, I know. Really annoying when someone else tells you to smile. Boy, did I learn that the hard way with Janine. Won't be doing that again in a hurry. But it really is different if you're smiling for yourself. Just trust me and give it a try. I mean, the last song from The Fantastic Light Trip, it's so uplifting. We're gonna have a cool down dance to it. And while you're dancing, I just - you don't have to - I just encourage you to smile. Because you are here, and you are alive, and you deserve to feel good. And yes, you smile too, Janine, if you're listening. No one can see you, I promise.

~

[film projector runs]

PETER LYNNE: [sighs] And here we go. It's the uh, the part where the alien queen and the leader of the cadets, they finally agree to work together. So all that remains is uh, just to assemble the hyperdrive. Turns out all you need to end an intergalactic war is 20 rousing song and dance numbers. Need to remember to mention that to Janine the next time she's brainstorming our defense strategy.

See, it's now the whole cast and they're together and dancing onto the ship. And you know, they really did have that much fun doing it and, and they're arm in arm. Or well actually, to be fair, arm in tentacle. But then the hatch is closing. Blast off. [laughs] Oh, brava. Well, that raised the spirits! I suppose that's gonna be all from me for now, runners, because I'm gonna have to go find another film before the credits finish rolling and all the zoms start looking for something a little bit meatier to entertain themselves, i.e. moi. So until next time, look after yourselves please, and keep on smiling.

~

[nad-zeta]

Matchup (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*。

Hi, can i ask for a ikevamp matchup? I like listening to music, though it can go both ways, my mood affects my music or my music affects my mood. I’m super close with my friends since most of them are my friends for 3+ years, so I’m not that great with new people, though I’m fine with those I’ve met once or twice before. I’m surrounded by close friends and family, so I can be as mischievous and as open as I want to be. I will only be open like that with people I care about, so unless I like someone I will put up a huge wall around them until I feel like I could trust them completely. That being said, I’m pretty strong emotionally, like comforting grieving friends, calming people down without being affected in any way, etc, and people say I give advices that actually works. I’m used to get things on my own, so I can either be a leader or the advisor, which I usually do when I want to be the leader but don’t wanna take responsibility for what I do 😅 and I may know what to do in every situation, but that doesn’t mean I know how to do it 😅

I’m also a lucky charm lol I dont know how but I’m pretty lucky, so my friends often want me on their group for projects and stuff like that or when people open up a new business they will invite me and my mom because somehow people think things go well because I’m around. And an extremely bad habit of mine is that I often take everything lightly, whether it’s getting into a fight or getting failing grades or pulling a huge stunt where me and my whole class working together to skip to get home faster from school (we succeeded every time 👀) maybe it’s because most things in my life have been pretty easy and I feel like I’m always in my comfort zone, and even if I face difficulties, they usually get done on their own so I became pretty optimistic naturally, and because of this people can relax around me since I don’t panic easily, or people get annoyed with me because I don’t take things seriously enough, whether it’s good or bad. And finally, I can have a change of heart EASILY but with a reason. Like, I can think you as the most important person who I care about, but once you betray me or do something I hate, idc I will throw you out of my life. Idc of I’ve known you for years, I can easily act like we’re strangers if l don’t like you anymore, and I usually stand on my ground unless other people convince me otherwise. After years of dealing with so many good and bad things, I have a lot of experience in many types of situations, so I know if something is legit or is it a complete lie. And even if someone usually lies or hides something from me I can understand them whether they give me their reason or not, because I’m understanding and can know the difference whether they blatantly hate me or genuinely can’t tell me about something, which is absolutely fine. I can stay away from you for years and still care for you the next time we meet unless you have a change of heart ❤

I’m sorry if it’s TMI or too little information bc I don’t often send matchup requests 😅 and thank you for doing my matchup if you decide to do this 😊

Hi hi, love! Thank you so much for the request! I hope I didn’t make you wait too long for it! I hope you enjoy it love and I hope you have a wonderful day! Hehe honestly I struggled to figure out who to match you with as at least 3 different people came to mind, but at the end, I finally settled for this special boy! Hope you enjoy it! 

I match you with……….Jean

The two of you don’t meet for a few days the first time you arrive at the mansion. At the news of your arrival, Jean thought it best to lock himself away as he didn’t want to expose such a pure light as yourself, to a monster like himself. He took a liking to you, the first time he saw your radiant smile as he walked into the dining room while you were introducing yourself to everyone. Except you never got a chance to see him, he turned around and went back to his room immediately, however, this didn’t escape the notice of the mansions big brother Napoleon. 

You were rather quiet and reserved, not really engaging all that much with the boys, your walls were on high guard to protect you from potentially getting hurt, besides you were only with the strange group of men for a month and then you had to go back home, so you didn’t want to expose yourself to unnecessary heartbreak. You had however taken a liking to Napoleon who was named your protector after Arthur tried some funny business with you. You worked hard and honestly, Sabastian had been thankful for such a hard-working, diligent colleague

You had been in the Paris of the past for a few weeks now, but haven’t really left the mansion. Comte had invited you to a big lavish ball that one of his friends was throwing and you decided it might be a fun experience. You ran down the mansion stairs expecting to see Napoleon, who was instructed to take you out to town to buy in Comte’s words “a dress fit for a princess,” however instead you saw a beautiful man standing to wait for you. You had heard about Jean but you had yet to meet him and now here he was before you, offering you an arm to escort you to town. You took his arm and the two of you were off to town. Napoleon had already made commitments to teaching the street children, and something inside him told him that you and Jean would really get along, so he stomped his way up to Jean’s room and asked his old friend to escort you to town. He was not keen TBH, but he could never refuse a request from his friend. 

The two of you walked around in silence neither daring to say a word. That, of course, was until you heard some street performers playing the most upbeat music. You followed the sound of the music, Jean trailing slightly behind you, when you came to a stop in front of the performers. You felt like dancing, the music was so uplifting, you just felt like dancing, laughing and soon your mood turned bubbly. The people around you started to dance to the music, you turned to Jean with stars in your eyes, “Jean, would you like to dance.” Honestly, it was more of a rhetorical question as before he could answer, you took his hands and started dancing with him. Jean had been to enough balls and banquets with Comte and Napoleon to know the basics. 

Soon he got into the swing of things and started twirling you around, and gently leading you, cause it was clear that you didn’t really know the traditional dances, being from the future. When the last note echoed through the street, you were laughing in delight, having the time of your life. You looked up at Jean and your breath caught in your throat at the sight of his smile, it was absolutely radiant the way the corners of his mouth lifted softly to show you a gentle smile, and little did you know, no one had seen Jean smile since he arrived at the mansion. You were honestly in the best mood, so for the rest of yours and Jean’s shopping trip you talked his ears off. Jean didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help but listen to every word, all while wearing that soft fond smile. At the end of the day, the second Jean was back at the mansion his smile faded, and he reverted back as if remembering that he was a monster, he kissed your hand, “Good night mademoiselle, and thank you for a wonderful day.” You beamed up at him and thanked him for making the shopping trip so fun, you definitely didn’t miss that slight blush forming on his cheeks as he turned to move back to his room.

Since that day, strangely enough, you and Jean had run into each other quite often, although these run-ins were orchestrated by the former Emporer of France and the Lord of the mansion. Both had noticed a slight change in Jean after he went on that shopping trip with you and both agreed that you may be exactly what he needs.

For example one day you ran up to Arthur’s room as he yelled out in irritation. You burst through the door to see the most unusual scene before you, Arthur scolding a tiger cub. You looked around the room to see the manuscript of his latest chapters shredded on the floor, his curtains had been scratched to pieces, and the cub appeared to have been playing in mud before making his way into Arthurs room, as muddy paw prints covered the entire room. You placed your hand in front of your mouth to stifle a laugh, you never did take things too seriously, “Hey you, don’t you dare laugh, this is my life’s work”. You giggled a little and told Arthur to lighten up, but when Jean appeared behind you also trying to hold in his laughter at the way you never seem to take things too seriously, you burst out laughing. That’s when Jean couldn’t hold it back any longer and also started laughing, Arthur was sister shook he had never even seen Jean smile let alone laugh. You walked over to the tiger cub and scooped him up in your arms, then you walked over to the mysterious man and took his hand in yours. Before Arthur could even say anything, you bolted to the garden all while laughing. 

You and Jean then went on to bath the little tiger cub together, which ended in a bit of a water fight. When you were with Jean, all your walls were down, and your mischievous personality came out to play, especially when you saw this beautiful boy’s smile. By the end of the day, both you and Jean were soaked to the bone, both of you went to bath and retire to your rooms for the night. When all of a sudden you heard a knock at the door, it was Jean. He had brought you a cup of hot tea and thanked you for helping him clean up his tiger’s mess. You invited him into your room, he sat down awkwardly and looked around your room curiously, he legit had never been in a girls room before. It wasn’t long before the two of you started chatting, and soon dawn had broken, and you realized that you and Jean had been talking the whole night.

You never noticed it before, but you and Jean had spent every single day together since then, chatting and laughing about everything and anything. He loved that you seemed to possess all the luck of the universe and that you would always come to his aid when Arthur was beating him at one or other board game. You would legit team up with Jean and let your luck take care of the rest. Thanks to your incredible luck Arthur had lost a bet to you and Jean and now had to wear his underpants over his regular pants for a week. 

Jean was feeling so confused and overwhelmed with all these new feelings, he had never really known love before having met you and all of it felt so new. One day he decided to tell you how he was feeling, you were always so good at giving out advice, and your presence always had the ability to calm all his fears and anxieties. Once he finished telling you about how he had been feeling towards you lately, you gave him the biggest hug, “I love you to Jean.”

Jean loved your naturally optimistic personality and your ability to bring so much joy into even the saddest of moments. You were always there for him, to reassure him whenever he was having panic or anxiety attacks. He absolutely loved and adored you and had sworn his life and loyalty to you. 

He loved that you never took things seriously, as all he did was take things seriously, so it was like a breath of fresh air to have someone around to help him balance his overthinking mind. After the two of you got together, Jean told you everything, from his dark past to the fact that he saw himself as a monster, undeserving of your love. He legit thought that you were going to push him away and leave him but instead, you kissed him and told him how much you loved him. 

You loved that Jean was always open and honest with you and completely loyal to you. He was also your voice of reason when it came to cutting people out your life for wronging you. The two of you balanced each other out perfectly.

Both Comte and Napoleon were overjoyed that Jean finally found someone to open up to and who loved him unconditionally. You helped Jean heal from all his past traumas and made him a better man. 

Jean loved spending time with you, this soft sweet, sensitive boy would shower you with love and affection from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. He would often surprise you with breakfast in bed, or drop a small chaste kiss on your lips whenever the two of you run into each other in the hallways

The two of you absolutely love just being snuggled up together chatting about your day. Jean loves to hold you in his strong arms and nuzzle into your neck as you sit in his lap and read. Often the two of you can be found in a coffee shop holding hands and reading. On rare occasions, the two of you can also be found pulling pranks on some of the mansion residents as payback for the pranks that they would pull on the two of you. 

Ultimately Jean is most happy when you are resting in his lap after a long day of housework. He would pull his fingers through your soft silky hair and send up a silent prayer to God thanking him for sending him his own lovely guardian angel, to love, hold and cherish for the rest of his life

Other potential matches………… Napoleon 

I hope you enjoyed it dear! 

@miss-wish-a-lot

[grimelords]

October Playlist

My October playlist is finished and it’s complete from Rico Nasty to Rachmaninoff. I absolutely guarantee there’s something you’ll love in this 3 and a half hours of music, and probably something you’ll hate too! Something for everyone!

If you’d like to have these playlists delivered to your inbox instead of having them randomly appear on your dash, please subscribe to my tinyletter here.

listen here

Santeria - Pusha T: In anticipation of Jesus Is King I relistened to the entire Wyoming Sessions project a few times, and a year removed from all the hype and controversy here's the thing: it's fucking great. The individual albums ranged pretty widely in quality and felt slightly unfinished for how short they were sometimes, but taking the project as a whole 5-album 120 minute playlist it turns out it's a masterpiece. My personal tracklist goes Ye/Daytona/Nasir/KTSE/Kids See Ghosts, which isn't release order but I think makes it flow the best - both Kanye albums bookending it and the less impactful Nas and Teyana Taylor albums buried a bit further in where you can appreciate them now that you're deep in the mindset of the whole thing rather than alone on their own.

Puppets (Succession Remix) - Pusha T & Nicholas Brittel: This remix is such a perfect match: Pusha T’s corporate villainy finally given a context and prestige it deserves. It’s also short enough that it could feasible be the actual theme song next season, which would be a marked improvement imo.

Use This Gospel - Kanye West, Clipse & Kenny G: I am and remain a Kanye stan, even after everything. It’s nice to see him going back to the extremely uneven mastering of MBDTF era, it’s a sound that is uniquely his and it’s fun to see him revisit it. The thick vocoder harmony is so soupy you get lost in it, and the way it opens up to include the full choir in the No Malice verse is beautiful. Kanye reunited Clipse through Christ and we have Him to thank for that at least. The Kenny G break is great, and the grain and dirt on the whole track when the beat kicks in is so gritty you can feel it.

Man Of The Year - Schoolboy Q: I didn't love the Chromatics album they surprise released but it did thankfully remind me of the time Schoolboy Q sampled Cherry for Man Of The Year. Taken exclusively on lyrics, Man Of The Year is a triumph: he's the man of the year and it's all worked out but the sample and the beat underscores the dead eyed melancholy that runs through the whole of Oxymoron of never winning even when you've won.

Cold - Rico Nasty: This song fucking tears your face off. Imagine STARTING your album at this level of intensity. She just goes straight to 100 and burns the house down. Outside of Lil John so few rappers can get away with just straight up screaming in the adlibs but the way she just lung tearingly screams GOOOO through this is fucking sick.

Fake ID - Riton & Kah-Lo: TikTok songs are becoming their own genre, but it’s a very nebulous sort of a mood encompassing everything from aughts pop punk hooks to skipping rope raps like this. It’s a strange new way for songs to blow up that everyone seems compelled to write articles about but my take on it is it’s exactly the same as ads were in the old days. Remember how many songs did absolute numbers because someone put it in a Motorola ad? Same thing except you’re not being sold a phone this time, so in some ways it’s better. Anyway, this song bangs. The spirit of 212 era Azealia Banks lives on even if she’s doing her best ever since then to kill it.

Doctor Pressure - MYLO & Miami Sound Machine: There was a very good era in the mid-2000s where you could just put mashups out as singles and they’d chart, it was sick. My only two examples are this and Destination Calabria but I’m sure there’s more. Drop The Pressure is a masterpiece but as an alternate version this mashup is equally masterful.  

If You’re Tarzan, I’m Jane - Martika: Martika is unfortunately best known for the 1989 one hit wonder Toy Soldiers, a sort of boring overdramatic ballad which is best known for being sampled by Eminem in 2004 in his quite bad super duper serious song Like Toy Soldiers. I say unfortunately because every other song on her first album is great, it’s all hypercolour 80s synthpop and I love this song especially because it is so completely stuffed with activity it becomes dizzying. It gets so lost in itself that they completely abandon the dramatic pause before “I’m Jane” for some reason toward the end and instead just layer three different tracks of vocal adlibs. Every part of this song is great, the weird ‘o we o we o’ chant before the second verse? The neighing horse guitar before the bridge? The musical tour of the world IN the bridge? The part where she says ‘I want to swing on your vine?’. This song has everything.

You Got Me Into This - Martika: Every part of the instrumentation in this is amazing. The bass sound, the main synth, the extremely athletic brass, the wonderful echoing 80s snare that’s as big as a house. I just love it. She also does some really intriguing slurs on the word ‘love’ all the way through, just moving it around absolutely anywhere.

Space Time Motion - Jennifer Vanilla: I love when someone has such a clearly defined aesthetic and mission from the very beginning. Jennifer Vanilla is the alter ego of Becca Kaufmann from Ava Luna who I've had in this playlist before but never competely investigated. Jennifer Vanilla feels like an episode of Sex And The City where Samantha gets really into Laurie Anderson and she is incredible. This video is the best mission statement I’ve ever seen and is currently criminally underviewed so please do your part and support the Jennifer cause by watching these two videos.

So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek said watch me write a Haim song and did it. Apparently the very early versions of this album started when she was in writing sessions for Katy Perry, but then it started to turn into something else and she took it for herself, and I think you can hear that. With more normal production and a little faster this is a hundred percent a Katy Perry song, but instead it’s completely uniquely Caroline Polachek and it’s all the better for it. And also Katy Perry must be furious because her new songs are simply not good at all.

Electric Blue - Arcade Fire: I just love the obsession of this song in the outro, chanting over and over and over “Cover my eyes electric blue, every single night I dream about you”

Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and Timbaland: I got a youtube ad for one of those Masterclass videos the other day and it was Timbaland teaching production. This ad went for five minutes for some reason and I watched the whole thing and it made me admire Timbaland even more. He’s demonstrating his compositional technique which is basically to just beatbox, and then loop it, and then add some extra percussion layers with more beatboxing and hand percussion, then loop that and add a little melody by singing or humming. ‘It’s that simple’ he says. Then later he goes back in and puts in actual drums or synths or whatever. I was stunned because suddenly a lot of his music makes sense. Without the barrier of instrument or timbre to get hung up on it allows him to write from this instantly head-nodding place of just making up a little beat you can sing and dance to immediately. Listening to a lot of his music now you can hear the bones underneath everything so clearly, all his beats are supremely beatboxable and all his melodies are very hummable, they’ve never overcomplicated by instrumental skill or habits, they just exist to serve the song.

Serpent - TNGHT:  TNGHT are back baby and this song is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It feels like afrofuturist footwork from another dimension, the mbira sounding lead against the oil drum percussion in this cacophony of yelps and screams that just builds to an irrepressible energy without a bassline in sight.

Ghosts Of My Life - Rufige Kru: I'm reading Mark Fisher's Ghosts Of My Life right now and some good person has put together a spotify playlist of all the songs he mentions. He has a whole essay about why this song is sick so I’m not going to go into it here but it’s interesting to hear about someone growing up with jungle when it’s a genre that has always felt very niche to me. I guess partly as a result of it never really making it mainstream as a genre here, and also me being a little too young for it.

Renegade Snares - Omni Trio: My biggest introduction to drum and bass comes from the game Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and this really great song from the soundtrack that is finally on spotify after a very long absence. At almost the exact same time as I discovered this song with its spacious piano and repitched snares, I discovered Venetian Snares and breakcore in general. Having no particular frame of reference for breakcore as an offshoot of drum and bass only amplified its appeal to me as a completely alien genre that sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, and so my personal history with drum and bass is a story of walking backwards into it after the fact which is interesting if not helpful.

Punching In A Dream - The Naked And Famous: The Mark Fisher book also mentions the Tricky song which I’ve never heard from which The Naked And Famous got their name and I thought ‘man remember The Naked And Famous, they were sick?’. The sort of harder edged Passion Pit instrumentation mixed with pop punk, a winning combination.

Vegas - Polica: My favourite part of this song is the unexpected blastbeats after the chorus, using their two drummers to their full advantage and just shaking the song by its foundations every now and then lest you get too comfortable.

Right Words - Cults: I’m beginning to suspect I may be the last surviving Cults stan but if this be my lot I’ll gladly do it

Running From The Sun - Chromatics: The new Chromatics album got me to relisten to their definitive document Kill For Love, and something new I appreciated this time about an album I love a lot is its length. Kill For Love is almost 80 minutes long and it luxuriates in that length. It’s sequenced perfectly so it never feels like it’s long for no reason, but large chunks just completely space out and go out of focus in the soft neon light and the second half of this song is a good example. The whole thing just evaporates into smoke and it feels perfect. If this were a shorter and more concise song that had a proper ending it wouldn’t feel right, this whole album has no straight edges at all and it’s all the better for it.

Chance - Angel Olsen: I cannot belive this song. This feels like she wrote her own version of My Way looking forward instead of back. Instead of the ruefully triumphant "I've lived a life that's full / I've traveled each and every highway" it's “I don't want it all / I've had enough / I don't want it all / I've had a love." before the turn from the future to the present at the end, where she gives up on a forever love in exchange for right now. I love how raw this vocal take feels. It's not her best voice but it feels very very honest as a result. She's just singing her heart out in this huge showstopping closer. In an interview she said "I didn’t love the recording of it very much, and now I just feel in love with it as a closing statement, because it’s a way of saying, ‘Look, I have hope for the next thing in my life.’ I’m not going to anticipate negativity or hate or an end. But instead of us looking towards forever, why don’t we just work on right now?"

Something To Believe - Weyes Blood: This album just keeps paying dividends. I’m systematically going through long obsessive periods with every single song on it and now it’s Something To Believe’s turn.

Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely) - Brigid Mae Power: Without meaning to, Brigid Mae Power seems to have created some incredible fusion of folk music and stoner metal. The way this song absolutely sits unmoving on one deep and resonant chord for so long is amazing. When it does change chords it feels like a full body effort to get up and shift. She has a similar feeling to Emma Ruth Rundle, who more explicitly wears her metal influences, but Brigid Mae Powers' strength is in how much it resembles the traditional folk side of the spectrum. Her voice is also amazing, with the huge effortless runs she goes on about halfway through just coming unmoored from the song completely and floating off into space.

Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ - Josh T. Pearson: I had a real problem with Josh T. Pearson for a long time because of how he presents as so authentic on this album, and as I’ve previously discussed in these playlists the concept of authenticity in country music is a source of neverending anguish for me. But his newest album The Straight Hits! has largely cured that for me because it’s not good at all, is extremely contrived (all the song titles have the word ‘hit’ in them) and he’s shaved his beard and replaced it with one of the worst irony moustaches I’ve ever seen. So now I’m free to enjoy The Last Of The Country Gentlemen as a character construction, which allows me a far deeper and truer engagement than the idea of a man actually living and thinking like this which is frankly a little embarrassing.

Codeine Dream - Colter Wall: I love this song, it has that feeling that great folk songs do of feeling like you’ve always known it. The strongest moments on this Colter Wall album to me are in songs like this that chase this particular feeling of morose isolation, and where he leans away from storytelling like his biggest hit Kate McCannon - a kind of cliche country murder ballad. This song is fantastic because of the way it wallows in this black depression not as a low point, but as a reprieve from the lower previous point. Things are as bad as they get now, and they’re always going to be like this, but at least I don’t dream of you anymore.

Motorcycle - Colter Wall: I only just found out about Colter Wall this month and have been listening to this album over and over. When I first heard him I though it was strange I'd never heard of him before because he's obviously some old country veteran based off his voice, but it turns out he's 24 and this is his first album he just sings like he ate a cigar. I love this song especially because it's so straighforward. It's a simple and supremely relatable mood: what if I bought a motorbike and fucking died.

Who By Fire - Leonard Cohen: I watched American Animals a couple of weeks ago and it’s a great movie, highly recommended. This song plays near the end and I waited for the credits to find out what this great song was, and like a rube found out it’s only one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time. I’ve never had much of a Leonard Cohen phase, somehow. In my mind I always get him mixed up with Lou Reed, which I’m learning is actually way off. I love the harmony vocals in this, and the way they move around into the shadows in the ‘who shall I say is calling’ parts.

Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce - The Drones: Alexander Pearce was a convict who escaped Sarah Island’s penal settlement in Tasmania with seven other convicts in 1822. He was recaptured two months later alone. In 1823 he re-escaped with a fellow convict, Thomas Cox and again was returned alone.He was executed by hanging later having eaten six men during his escape attempts.

It Ain’t All Flowers - Sturgill Simpson: I found this album going through the Pichfork 200 albums of the decade list and I feel like a fool for not having heard it sooner because now I am completely obsessed. Sturgill Simpson is doing the very best work in country music right now because he's looking backwards with one eye and forwards with the other and this song is a great illustration: a perfect Hank Williams Jr type country song with big voiced hollers that morphs into a surprise psych freakout for the whole second half.

Desolation Row (Take 1, Alternate Take) - Bob Dylan: I’ve always liked Desolation Row a lot as a song but the acoustic guitar on the album version is simply not good, it's just kind of mindlessly playing this long directionless solo the whole time and over the course of a song this long it really adds up to just being annoying. Luckily because it’s a Bob Dylan song there’s a whole universe of alternate takes and mixes and this is a great pared down version I found without it. The best kind of Bob Dylan songs are the ones where he just makes an endless stream of allusions and bizzare imagery, and this and Bob Dylan's 115th Dream are my favourite examples of it.

Living On Credit Blues - El Ten Eleven: This is a groove I get stuck in my head a lot, and this is also a song I think would work well as a theme for a tv show. I've been meaning to do a 30 second edit of it just for my own amusement, maybe I'll do that soon. El Ten Eleven are a duo where one guy plays drums and one guys plays a double necked guitar/bass and looping pedals and somehow against all the odds of that description they manage to make emotional, driving instrumental music of very deep feeling, like this song which is one of my all time favourites.

Dusty Flourescent/Wooden Shelves - Talkdemonic: This is sort of a companion Living On Credit Blues, and Talkdemonic are similarly an instrumental duo with good drums. This entire album from 2005 is highly recommended, it's a sort of halfway between the post rock of the time and a kind of acoustic hiphop instrumentals that ends up sounding very rustic and homemade, like a soudtrack for a winter cabin.

Turnstile Blues - Autolux: This is a perfect song, built around a perfect beat. Every part just fits perfectly.

Fort Greene Park - Battles: The new Battles album is finally out and I absolutely love it. I cannot think of another band that has shed members in the same way as Battles; originally a quartet on their first album, then a trio for their second and third and now down to a duo for their fourth album - and somehow still performing material from their first album live. The paring down has seemingly only servers to focus them and the new album sounds fresh but still distinctively Battles, with no sense of anything lost or missing. This song is my standout so far, and the guitar line in particular is so good and interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ian Williams play something so distinctly guitar-y in his whole career. This is a straight up pentatonic riff with bends and everything. Filtered through his usual chopped and looped oddness it feels like he’s almost gone all the back around the guitar continuum and is this close to just doing power chords next album. And I’ll support him!

Diane Young - Vampire Weekend: I've listened to this song a lot in my life and I only looked up the lyrics the other day to find out that the opening line is 'you torched a SAAB like a pile of leaves' which I somehow never noticed. What a power phrase. There's also this very good quote from Ezra about it: "I had this feeling that the world doesn’t want a song called ‘Dying Young’,“ says Koenig, "it just sounded so heavy and self-serious, whereas ‘Diane Young’ sounded like a nice person’s name.”" and he was right to do it. This song is 100 times better because he’s saying Diane Young than it would be if he was saying ‘Dying Young’. That’s a songwriting tip for you.

Monster Mash - Bootsy Collins & Buckethead: Hey did you hear Bootsy Collins and Buckethead did a cover of the monster mash? Thank god for freaks.

The Dark Sentencer - Coheed And Cambria: There's not that many bands that I absolutely loved as a teenager that I've completely abandoned. I've moved on from a lot but I'll still keep up with them if they have a new album or something. Coheed And Cambria are one that I've almost completely turned my back on. They've had 3 apparently pretty patchy albums since I stopped listening after Year Of The Black Rainbow, which was extremely bad and really taught me what people mean when they say an album is 'overproduced'. On a whim I decided to see what they're up to now and listened to their album from last year and guess what: it rocks. It's got everything you'd expect from them: big riffs, bad and confusing lyrics, his weird high voice, overwrought and overlong songwriting, cheesy muscleman solos. Everything about this band is sort of cheesy and embarrassing and takes itself way too seriously, but I'm discovering slowly that that's what's so good about it. The weird pulp sci-fi story and mindset that underpins this whole band is ridiculous and overwrought and as a result it gives the music a reason to exist the way it does. It’s so big and dumb because the story it serves is so big and dumb. It feels exactly like reading Perry Rhodan or some increidibly long and dense but not especially good series like that, it’s pulp music and that’s what I love about it.

Romance In A (6 Hands) - Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano works for 4 hands (where two guys sit next to each other on the same piano) have always seemed to tend towards the realm of the gimmick or party trick, and works for 6 hands (where three guys do it) even more so - but this Rachmaninoff piece is just beautiful and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it before this month. It doesn’t overload everyone with a million things to do, it just builds this very wide harmonic bed for the simple melody to swim in - then the way the melody transfers over to the middle register is just magical before the tension of the final section takes over and builds.

Love's Theme - The Love Unlimited Orchestra: I’m so glad I got to learn about the Love Unlimited Orchestra this month. Aside from having one of the best names in music, they were Barry White’s backing band and had their own solo instrumental records too. Here’s a fun aside: Kenny G was a member when he was 17 and still in high school. This is a genre of music that has seemed to totally disappear into the realm of parody and farce only which is sort of a shame because it is unironically very beautiful and dense in its own way.

Dancing In The Moonlight - Liza Minelli: Can you believe I thought Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader was an original until the other day when my girlfriend played this Liza Minelli version that predates it by several decades? This also isn’t the original! It was written by a band named King Harvest in 1972, with this version AND a version by Young Generation both coming out in 73 and a whole bunch of others in between (including a Baha Men version in 94) before Toploader finally had a proper hit with it in 2000. Truly the world works in mysterious ways. This version is the finest I think, it just goes and goes, frenetically unwinding at a breakneck pace before opening up into a flute solo of all things and then winding up again even and finishing in a kick line breakdown. Absolutely no limits.

Girls - Royal Headache: The sheer amount of power and melody that this song manages to pack into a minute and a half is incredible, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more instantly relatable opening lyric than “Girl! Think they’re to fine for me! Oh girls! And I’m inclined to agree!”

Pov Piti - Matana Roberts: In anticipation of Matana Roberts new volume of her Coin Coin album series that just came out I relistened through the three previous albums and they are even more powerful than I remembered. This song serves as a pretty good mission statement for the whole project, and the heartrending tortured screams that open it set the tone for the rest of it. Matana Roberts sings the injustices of slavery into being, and her sing-song delivery highlights the trauma - her indifferent delivery mirroring the indifference of the world at large. The way she rattles off this story like she’s gone over it a million times and grown numb to the facts only accentuates the pain in the telling, a pain that rises to the surface in the screams of her instrument and herself.  

Kingdoms (G) - Sunn 0))): This new Sun 0))) album is one of my favourites they’ve ever done because it’s so straightforward and back to basics. Every song is just ten minutes of straight up no-nonsense, big, rich, drone. They even put the notes in the track names so you can drone along if you like.

listen here

[hayesrolando-blog]

Turns out it was a blue dress

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[squirrelly831]

He Loves Her [Minseok, Junmyeon, and Yixing]

The oc’s are the wives prior to getting married. You can read this as part of the daddy!au series or a stand alone~~

Enjoy~

Minseok

Meeting Maisie brought a new light to Minseok’s life. From the beginning, when he met her and her daughter, Cassandra, Minseok felt a pull towards the family of two. He wouldn’t want to say it was love at first sight, but he was attracted to Maisie and befriending her in the first year made his feelings flourish. Maisie was a strong woman. She carried a heavy burden as a single mom, but she never once showed her weaknesses in front of others. She carried the torch for her daughter and set an example of being the best person she could be. However, Maisie let Minseok in. She showed him her weakest moments and he was that shoulder who helped her life the weight she couldn’t carry alone. When he finally worked up the courage to confess to Maisie, Minseok was surprised that she said yes. He had to re-ask the question just to make sure he heard her say the answer again.

Minseok had returned from a four month world tour and when his feet were on Korean soil, he felt a wave a relief. He had gone on tours before. He’s done it countless times, but this time he felt more homesick than usual. However, it wasn’t a homesickness from being away from his family. It was a homesickness from being away from Maisie and Cassandra. He spoke with them every minute he could squeeze in, thee were some days he had to see their smiling faces just to get him through the week. He didn’t understand how they could shake his world in the last five months. He pulled out his phone sending a usual texts to see what the girls were up to as he headed to the car. Minseok didn’t tell Maisie about his return, he wanted to surprise them.

After a short exchange with Maisie, he made his way to the park where Maisie had taken Cassandra for the day. He walked in the shadows of the overgrown trees as he made his way tot the park. The giggles that sounded from the swing set caught his attention. Minseok knew Cassandra’s laughter so he headed towards the swings to see Maisie and Cassandra.

Maisie stopped the swing Cassandra was on and the two let out laughs as Cassandra tried to kick off again. Cassandra looked up and was the first one to take note of Minseok. Her eyes widened as she struggled off the seat, “Minnie!” She pointed frantically. Maisie looked to where her daughter pointed and froze in surprise. Cassandra hopped off the swing and bolted to Minseok who knelt down to catch the energetic four year old. “You are back!”

Minseok kissed her cheek as he headed towards Maisie, “Yea, I am. How were you with your mom? Did you behave?” Cassandra nodded her head happily. He glanced at Maisie and grinned.

“You’re back early?”

“I lied about when I was coming back. I wanted to surprise you both” Minseok pecked Maisie’s lips. “I was thinking we could go to Lotte World. You wanna go, Cassie?”

“YES YES YES YES!” She gasped and clapped her hands. Maisie let out a chuckle as she agreed and the trio headed to Lotte World.

That night, Minseok offered to put Cassandra to bed and after a bedtime story and prayer, he returned to the living room. Maisie was in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes from dinner. Minseok watched her and took a seat on the floor to get a better view of her. He was silent as he sat there. This, being with Maisie and Cassandra, was home to him. His heart sped up at the thought. Minseok wanted to be a family with them.

He was jerked from his thoughts by a cold finger on his nose, “What are you thinking about?”

Minseok met Maisie’s eyes and his hand touched her cheek, “Would you find it crazy if I told you I love you?” Her eyes widened slightly. “I know we’ve only been together 5 months and I’ve been gone 4 of them, but I’ve cared for you and Cassie so much longer.”

Her eyes watered as she let out a small chuckle. She stood up and pulled Minseok up with her who instantly wrapped his arms around her, “I don’t think it’s too crazy. We love you too after all.” Minseok’s lips widened into a grin as he pulled Maisie closer and pressed his lips to hers in a passionate kiss.

Junmyeon

Jennifer met Junmyeon at the hospital while in her medical residency program at an ER in Seoul after Junmyeon was in a minor accident. At the time, Jennifer was his nurse and had no idea she was treating a worldwide celebrity which, for Junmyeon, was a nice little surprise. Before he left, he managed to give her his Kakao information which is what lead them to where they were now...

It had been a year since then and seven months since they officially began to date. Of course, Jennifer found out about who Junmyeon was and about EXO as well as other kpop groups. However, their relationship got to a standstill. Neither felt like the relationship was moving forward as they both worked insane times and never really got to see each other. Not only that, but both had yet to say the three magic words. And Jennifer didn’t want to say this, but she wanted him to tell her he loved her first.

So, one day, Junmyeon asked to meet up on Jennifer’s lunch break and grab a bite to eat at the cafe in the hospital. He didn’t have a schedule or a comeback, so he wanted to spend all the time he could with Jennifer and his friends and family. With his face mask and hat disguising himself, he approached the cafe and took a scan of the area. It was quiet, the light melody echoed through the room of about eight people. Junmyeon pulled out his phone about to called Jennifer when his eyes landed on a messy dark brown bun with a couple strands down the side of the woman’s face blocking her eyes. But he knew. The “doctor” pose, hunched over her reading material, but her back as straight as possible. Her arm dangled beside her head with her elbow on the table while the other held open a book she was reading.

Junmyeon noticed the barista head towards the table with her order in hand, “Excuse me?” He called for the barista. “I’ll take her order. Thanks.” He took the tray of two club sandwiches and two piping hot drinks then made his way to Jennifer who had yet to realize he was there.

He placed the tray on the table and Jennifer’s concentration snapped. She turned to thank the barista, but stopped when she saw Junmyeon towering over her. “You got here quickly.”

“Of course, your lunches aren’t always long, so I didn’t know when you’d get pulled away.” He pecked her lips, but before drawing back to sit down, he kissed her again. He watched her eyelashes flutter as she met his eyes with hers. His voice caught in his throat as he looked back at her. He cleared his throat and took a seat, “How’s your day been?”

Jennifer took a sip of her drink and grabbed a sandwich as she placed her book to the side, “Good. One surgery early this morning, but other than that, I’ve been in my office preparing for the next surgery in two hours.” She yawned and took a bite of her sandwich. Junmyeon quickly followed suit as the two continued to sit and talk about each other’s morning.

Dr. O’Sullivan to the ER! Dr. O’Sullivan to the ER!

The conversation between the couple ceased. Jennifer stood abruptly and grabbed her coat from the chair beside her. She threw it on and gave Junmyeon an apologetic smile, “Sorry, I’ll stop by later tonight if I don’t get out too late.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss on his lips.

“Sounds good. I love you. Have a good day.”

Jennifer hurried through the attached doors of the cafe to the hospital. Her face felt flushed as she heard Junmyeon’s words over and over in her head. She took in deep breaths as she tried to find her focus as she grew closer to the room. Her smiled and blush faded as her doctor side took over. She would reply to Junmyeon later. Right now. Behind those doors, someone needed her to help them and her feelings couldn’t get between that.

Yixing

Yìng Yuè was looking forward for the weekend all week long. She was off as was he for the first time in an a while staying the night at Yixing’s place for the weekend. What she wasn’t looking forward to was the sudden email from her boss with the subject line URGENT!

Ying Yuè groaned as her head fell to her computer desk as she realized that she would be working from home this weekend. Meaning no Yixing. No date nights. Reluctantly, she pulled out her phone and sent him a message cancelling their weekend plans.

Yixing felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but he waited until after dance practice to check the message. As he called for a break, he grabbed his phone and frowned at the message from Ying Yuè. He called her phone and waited for her to pick up, “Hey.”

Ying Yuè was quiet for a moment, “Hi...”

Yixing could hear the sadness in her voice. He knew she couldn’t say no to last minute jobs. He didn’t blame her for that. He was an idol, he knew what it was to have a last minute schedule. “Are you still at work?”

“No, this is a project I can work on from my house, so I’m on the subway heading home... I’m sorry to cancel on you. Especially since you’ll be gone for a month next we--”

“Why not just bring your laptop to my place and work from there? I can buy us dinner when I head home, yea?”

Ying Yuè smiled as she nodded, “Yea, I can do that. I’ll still need to head home and grab some things.” Her muggy mood lightened with the new plan. She could still be with Yixing.

Yixing entered his home with dinner in hand, “I’m home!” He called as he shut the door. He got no reply as he kicked off his shoes and headed into the kitchen. He put the food on the counter as he heard rapid taping on the keyboard. Yixing smiled as he entered the living room to see his girlfriend focused on the computer in front of her. Her focus unfazed as she worked on her assignment. He sat across from her and watched her with interest.

Ying Yuè felt eyes on her and she looked up to see Yixing staring at her. She let out a light laugh, “When did you get home?”

“Just now.”

“How was work?” She leaned back from the computer. Yixing shrugged, “Why do you keep staring? It’s awkward.” She shyly hid her face with her hand.

“I just love seeing how focused you can get on work. I love seeing different parts of you.” Ying Yuè looked up at Yixing and he gave her a wink.

Ying Yuè tsked as she saved her work and shut her laptop. She then leaned over the coffee table and placed a kiss on his lips, “Well I love seeing every part of you.” She whispered. She noticed Yixing blush as she got up from the table, “I’m hungry. Let’s eat” she stretched before she headed towards the kitchen.

Yixing rushed up behind her and pulled her back to him. His head rested on her shoulder as he squeezed her in his arms, “I love you.”

A smile graced her lips, “I love you too.”

Part II || Part III

Credit to gif owners (Minseok’s gif is from dayafterdae and Junmyeon’s is from yixingsosweet)

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

♕ REQUEST

☮ EXO MASTERLIST

∞ ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

[subasekabang]

Long Dream –Live Remix– (A Side)

Title: Long Dream –Live Remix– (A Side)

Rating: T

Word Count: 7598 total, 3758 this chapter

Characters: Coco, Joshua, Neku, Beat, OMC, OFC

Warnings: Major character death

Summary: Her Magnum Opus nears completion, and as her audience approaches, she hurriedly arranges one final rehearsal.  Elaboration on a pet theory of mine, built out of Final Remix spoilers.

Every day streets are crowded with people

Every night streets are jammed with these noises

Things are so strange, are they real or a dream?

Where am I now, trapped in this city of illusion?

***

Neku surveyed his surroundings.  It didn’t take him long to recognize them.

“This is Cat Street…”

“Yo, finally!” Beat said, running a few steps ahead.  “We can get outta Shibuya from here!  I’m so ready to be done with this crappy Game!”

Neku looked up the street, murmuring, “Unless the way ahead has been rearranged too…”

He tensed a bit as Coco stepped up behind him, the tiny Reaper saying, “No worries fam!  See, the way ahead looks, like, totez clear!  That super tough wall you guys just made it past must’ve been the last challenge!”

Neku’s eyes caught on the café just ahead.  Even in this situation, it still sparked a very complicated emotion in his heart.

“Yo, whatchu waitin’ for,” Beat said, “an engaged invitation?  Le’s go, man!”

Beat took off.  Neku followed at a slower pace, saying, “Hold on!  While we’re here, shouldn’t we ask Mr. H what’s going on?”

The other boy skidded to a halt.  “Huh?  You think the H-Man’s gonna tell us anything?”

“He might.  We have time to spare—it can’t hurt to ask.”

Coco made a face as she walked up next to him.  “Uuuuh, source?  That guy, like, oozes bad vibes.  You should totez just finish the Game!  That’s all that matters, yeah?”

Neku shook his head.  “I still want to know what’s going on.  Out of the people who might actually know, Mr. H is the only one with an address.  We might not get another chance.”

The Reaper rolled her eyes and shrugged.  “I mean, I guess, but like, why risk it?  The finish line is literally right in front of y’all—just cross it and end the Game.  Then if you still wanna talk to Coffee Weirdo, just walk right back in and do it then!  It’ll totez be less stressful once we’re off the clock!”

Beat nodded.  “Yeah, man!  We gotta get this over with either way.  Plus we might get an explanation jus’ for winnin’!  We’ll keep the H-Man as a back-up plan, aight?”

Neku crossed his arms.  “I still feel like this would be less risky.”

“Aw c’mon!” Coco said, skipping down the sidewalk.  “You srsly need to chill, Neku!  Let’s just finish the Game already.  Besidez…while we stand here chatting, the other Players are still fighting Noise and stuff.  Like, uh, Shiki?  Do it for her!”

“Right: Shiki and Rhyme is still out there, Phones!” Beat said.  “We gotta end the Game now!”

With a sigh, Neku grumbled, “…Alright, I guess we shouldn’t keep them waiting.  But soon as we’re done, I’m coming back to get answers.”

The three of them ran down Cat Street, with Coco trailing farther and farther behind.  Eventually she came to a stop, and just watched the boys continue with a wide grin on her face.

“Ugh, finally,” she said to herself.  “This pair was WAY more stubborn than the last, 7.8/10 too much effort.”

Neku noticed they had lost her just as he and Beat ran over the city limits.  The next thing he noticed was pain.  Intense, searing pain, like his entire body was on fire.  Judging by the way Beat had toppled over on the ground, the same thing was happening to him.  Neku fell to his knees as the agony worsened.

“What’s…happening…?!”

Coco slowly approached them, taking care to not actually cross the limits.  “This is fine!  All according to keikaku.  Congratz on winning the Reaper’s Game: Expert Mode!  Oh btw, keikaku means plan.”

Beat cried out suddenly.  Black and red flames consumed him, burning brightly for a few seconds before vanishing, leaving not even ashes in their wake.  Neku’s eyes widened in horror.

“What did you do to him?!” Neku demanded.

“Erased him, duh,” Coco said.  “Though technically wasn’t me, actually my baby that did it.”

“What?!”

“He needs loads of food to grow up big and strong.  I’ve tried, like, a gazillion different things, and the Soul of super tough Players like you two is what works the best by far!  ty so much!”

The pain only grew.  Neku screamed, doing all he could to endure it despite knowing he was failing.

Coco put a hand to her ear.  “Mmmm whatcha say?  Couldn’t make that out.”

It wasn’t long before the flames consumed Neku as well, and then he too was gone.  Coco put her hands on her hips and smiled.  The world around her shifted, wavering like a mirage until it all melted into one swirling void of bluish clouds.  Before her spawned a massive creature: a tapir with purple skin and six tusks, yellow tattoo-like protrusions in the shape of flames erupting all across its form.  Its red eyes focused squarely on Coco.

“Yay!  Look at you, you absolute unit!  You’re, like, so strong now you could body anyone!”

Coco threw herself onto the tapir’s trunk, hugging it tightly—the creature gave a guttural rumble in response.  She could sense its power increasing, and giggled happily as she took a step back.  The tapir lowered its head and nudged her gently.

“Okay, okay.”

Reaching up, she scratched the tapir’s trunk.  It tilted its head and squeaked.

“Aw, who’s a good boy?”

Coco hopped up to the top of its head, lying down so she could reach far enough to scratch behind its ear.  The tapir lifted its trunk and trumpeted happily, then floated up and down in place, jostling Coco only the smallest amount.

“Haha, very good, such cute, wow!”

Soon it settled down.  Coco propped up her head with one hand, continuing to slowly pet the tapir with the other, and let out a long sigh.

“Tapez my dude, I’m, like, so glad I have you.  ngl you’re kinda my bff.”

The tapir grunted, swinging its trunk slightly.  Coco swayed along.

“I dunno when it’s going down…but I’mma make sure you get through it.  You’re one of my peeps too now!  So it’s a legit promise!”

Coco extended her pinky.  The tapir inclined its head a little and flexed its claws.

“Oooooh right.  Well, still totez binding lol.”

She pressed her face against the tapir’s skin, letting her eyes close.

“Aaaaaah, we’re almost there, Tapez.  Should just need, like, another few rounds and you’ll be a prime example of the ideal Noise body!  Though tbh if the next pair is as annoying as this one, totez just gonna yeet them straight into your stomach.”

Her phone chimed.  She opened one eye to look at the screen, and then rolled onto her back and groaned loudly, kicking her legs about in frustration.

“Uuuugh for real?  Fine, whatevs.”  She paused to pet the tapir one more time.  “Sorry Tapez, I gotta bounce.  brb and then we’ll go find you some more treats!”

The tapir squeaked a farewell, and then Coco stood up and shut her eyes again.  Focusing her power, she elevated her Vibe and reached out with her mind to feel for the world she wanted to travel to; after so many times, it was easy for her, and in mere seconds she had concrete beneath her feet.  Opening her eyes, Coco looked up at the skyline of Shinjuku and smiled brightly.

I love my city tbh.

***

Feel the people, hear the voices

They are reaching out to catch you

Feel the rhythms, hear the noises

You are beating all the visions

***

Coco moved through the city at a slow pace.  Shinjuku was a travel hub, a place that was purely transient for most: each moment was fleeting, but each brought something new, something different, and that everlasting tumultuous tide of life fascinated Coco in a way nothing ever had before.  Each second was something wholly unique, and she never wanted to miss even one of them.  She spun around on a corner, taking it all in, and just laughed to herself.

“Having fun, Atarashi?”

Her good mood was spoiled instantly.  She grimaced over her shoulder to see Joshua standing there, looking every bit as smug as she remembered him.

“fml what are you even doing here Kiryu?” she asked, turning around and crossing her arms in a huff.  “Can’t you, like, take a hint?”

“Nice to see you too.”  He raised a hand to his chin.  “Hm.  I’m curious: why is it you hold onto your wings even in the RG?”

Gesturing to them, Coco said, “Aesthetic.”

“…And what aesthetic would that be, exactly?”

“fyi I’m headed to a super important meeting rn so unless you’re finally ready to fite me irl then I, like, don’t even want to hear it.”

Joshua chuckled and brushed aside a lock of hair, which only made him seem even more smug and made Coco even angrier.  “Stimulating as that has the potential to be, we’d both be in quite a bit of trouble with the folks upstairs if we were to have a skirmish.”

“Oooooh good point,” she said as she turned away.  “And I bet you’re, like, already in hot water after the way you went off.”

“Nothing to worry about on that front.  I’ve spoken with my Producer and he assures me the matter has been put to bed.  Things in Shibuya will be staying the way they are.”

Coco spun around.  “WTF?!  You two are out of trouble just like that?  I literally have no words!”

“Hm?  Why, I would assume your Producer has been apprised of the details as well.  Has he not passed them along to you yet?”

There was a short delay, and then Coco glanced aside and grumbled, “That must be why he sent me that txt…”

“I take it you’ve been too busy with your side project to stay on top of the paperwork.”

Coco locked eyes with Joshua.  He was still smug, that would never change, but now there was a deadly undercurrent to his words that demanded Coco’s attention.

“tf are you even talking about?” Coco asked.  “You really need to stay in your lane, Kiryu.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Explain.”

“Well for starters, I know you’ve been poking around my city.”

“omg!  Tourism is a crime now?”

“Considering our circumstances I believe it falls more under ‘corporate espionage’.”

“It’s totez hilair to me that you consider the UG a corporation.”

“Setting that aside for the moment, there’s also the fact that you’ve been shirking your duties as Composer to jaunt off to an alarming number of parallel worlds as of late.”

Coco smirked.  “Aw, u just jelly I can travel between worlds without needing to call an Uber to get back.”

Joshua shrugged.  “I admit, it’s a skill I’ve yet to master—even my alternate selves seem to have difficulty with it.  One came to call on me recently, you know.  Said something about a bizarre Noise erasing two former Players in his world.”

Yawning loudly, Coco said, “Kiryu can I, like, get a tl;dr?”

Joshua’s face began to darken, the undercurrent gradually rising towards the surface.  “Well Atarashi, it certainly sounds like you’ve been attacking alternate Shibuyas.  If so, that’s something I believe qualifies as ‘in my lane’.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

Coco cackled.  “Pffft omg are u srs?  I am DECEASED y’all, the guy who just tried to wipe his whole city is acting protective up in this bitch!  lmaoooooo!”

Joshua stared hard at her.  “Coco, do think for a moment: how do you suppose the Higher Plane would react to this news?”

“What, are you, like, planning to tell them?  If you’ve got some proof then hmu.”

Joshua didn’t answer.

“lol that’s what I thought, smdh you better sit down Kiryu.  Even if I were, like, messing with parallel worlds or whatevs, why would the Higher Plane even care?  Angels from this world have no jurisdiction there.  It’s free real estate.”

Slowly, Joshua nodded.  “…Alright.  Perhaps you have a point.  Let’s leave the Higher Plane out of this hypothetical.  The only one you need to be concerned with…is me.”

The air suddenly felt very heavy.  Coco actually needed to remind herself to breathe, but she made sure her reaction wasn’t obvious.

“So, Atarashi.  Explain to me why you’ve been killing Neku in so many parallel worlds.  And, do try your best to make it a very good explanation.”

Coco brought her hands up to her face, twisting slightly away.  “lololol I’m confused.  Mad cuz I beat your record?  Or want to make sure I don’t off this world’s copy of Edge Head before you can tell him he’s worthy of your grace?  Honestly?  I ship it.”

Joshua paused.  “Neku himself isn’t the issue here.  But if you’re making a move into my territory—“

“Yeah yeah yeah, cuz you care, like, SO much about your territory!  I am SHOOK seeing you come in here acting like the authority on protecting your peeps!  I could learn so much about my job from watching you!”

“I’m feeling a bit of déjà vu.  I could have sworn I’ve already told you that a Composer’s job is simply to judge their people, and that it is only the existence and boundaries of their respective UG that require protection.”

Coco covered her mouth.  “omg!  Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?”  She dropped her hands and stuck out her tongue.  “jk obv you’re full of it.”

“I don’t see why I should need to divulge my motivations to you of all people,” Joshua mumbled, “but if you must know…I was under the impression that Shibuya was not worth keeping around.  Now that I’ve seen it still holds potential, I of course have every intention of preserving the seeds that I’ve sown.”

Coco scowled at him, but didn’t speak at first.  Nearly a minute passed before she said, “Then tbh?   I’m not your enemy.”

Joshua’s eyebrows went up.

“It’s, like, only a matter of time before a new kind of Game starts up Kiryu.  Their Game.  And I’m gonna be mad prepared when it does.  If you had literally a single brain cell you’d totez be doing the same thing.”

By the time she was done, Joshua’s eyes had narrowed down to a suspicious glare.  “Surely you’re not referring to the party I’m assuming?”

“Like, who else?”

Joshua stared down his nose at Coco as he considered his next move.  Coco grunted, drew out her phone, and checked her messages.

“My, you truly are impossible to figure out,” Joshua sighed.

Coco gave her best Clearly Fake Smile and replied, “Because you’re an expert at that lol.  I’m nothing compared to your galaxy brain.”

“I think I could do it if not for that absurd…shall we call it a dialect?”

“Uh, this is how people talk now?  Hello?  If you knew anything about people, then like, you’d already know that, but as always you have 0 friends so buh-bye.”

“…Hm.  And, exactly how many friends do you have, Atarashi?”

Coco frowned.

Joshua turned.  “But, alright.  If this is some plan to deal with the Inferno, then I’ll drop the matter for now.  But, one thing I’d like to make clear before I go.”  He took one last glance back at her, eyes full of ice.  “I will not tolerate any interference in this world’s Shibuya.”

He was off without another word.  Coco suppressed the urge to shudder, turning back to her phone and mumbling half-formed syllables as she made herself look busy.  She looked back up to be sure that he was gone, and then sighed and tucked her phone away, gazing over Shinjuku once more as she waited for the tension to leave her body.  It was immediately replaced by joy.

“omg whoops.  Rōjin is totez still waiting orz.”

***

Is it angels?  Is it devils?

Whispering in my ears

Is it emotions?  Is it illusions?

I need to be with you

***

Coco poked her head through the shrine’s gate.  Looking up the path, she could see a bald, tan-skinned man with a stoic face sitting at the building’s entrance, his eyes already locked onto her.  She flinched.

“Uuuuh what’s up gamers?” she blurted as she stumbled forward.  “I know I’m, like, totez late, but I have a tru legit reason for it, get a load of this!”

The man was Seiji Rōjin, owner of the shrine and also Shinjuku’s Producer.  He offered not a single word as Coco hurriedly explained her encounter with Joshua to him.  When she was done, he nodded and closed his eyes; Coco looked around awkwardly for a few seconds, and then took a seat next to him.

“You must leave your Opus be,” he ultimately said.

Coco started.  “Uh, excuse me?  Abandon all my hard work just because that nerd doesn’t want me near his bf?  I think the heck not!”

Rōjin opened his eyes to look at her.

“…Um?  Something else?”

“The Higher Plane demands a Game.”

Coco blinked.  Then she rolled back, digging her fingers into her scalp and shouting, “AAAAAAARGH, srsly?!  I know I haven’t held a Game in, like, forev, but can’t they just let me handle thingz down here?  Please say sike!”

Rōjin said nothing.  As she accepted the reality of the situation, Coco’s heart sank.

“But…Tapez…”  She groaned.  “…Is, like, a teeny bit of faith in me too much to ask?  They know I’ve got mad skillz!  When you taught me how to make Tapez, you said I was one of only, like, three Composers whomst’ve ever been able to control Magnum Opus Noise—they should be totez impressed with me already!”

“The Higher Plane demands more of your position than mere talent,” Rōjin said.  “It demands discipline.”

Coco pulled herself back into a sitting position.  “I am, like, sooo disciplined!  I legit wanted to tear Kiryu’s face off, but I didn’t!”  She got back on her feet as she went on, “Like, sure, this is about Shinjuku, but the whole reason I’m working on Tapez is so he can protect my peeps!  Making sure he’s bad enough to dunk on anyone is literally The Best Thing I can be doing rn!  The Inferno is out there, you know, somewhere, and we dunno when they’re gonna throw hands!  And now I have to take time out of my counterattack schedule to run some basic-ass Game?”

She whirled back to face Rōjin.  He didn’t say anything.  Coco stared at him for a few moments, realizing she was getting a headache.

“…heck.  We don’t really have much of a choice, do we?  If the Higher Plane wants a Game so bad, then like, we gotta pull together a Game.  Tapez will just have to chill for a week I guess.”

Coco put a hand to her head as she trudged past Rōjin for the door.

“Ugh, lemme see, the Conductor obvs needs to show, and we should probably @ all the Officers too.  idk who’s gonna be the GM this week but they—“

The pain in her head suddenly turned sharp.  She paused mid-step.

“…they…”

Her vision blurred, then went dark.  And then she saw Shinjuku again, but it was…different, somehow.  As if viewed through some sort of filter.  She saw the streets, the people, and then a glowing red symbol up in the sky—and then the streets were empty.  Not a single soul was left in Shinjuku.  No, not quite, next she saw one person: a girl who slowly walked forward with a blank look in her eyes.  The girl stared straight ahead, but couldn’t see Coco.  Still, she opened her mouth to speak.

“All that’s left in the world is me.”

Coco gasped as the shrine came back into focus.  At first she was too surprised to make any sense of the event.  But as she breathed, she processed it, and her eyes shot wide as pure dread came over her.

“Uh…a-ah…I…”

Rōjin stood, watching her with furrowed brow.  Coco’s entire body shook as she turned to face him.

“I…I saw it again…!”

She jumped forward and grabbed Rōjin’s shirt.

“It was the same vision!  You remember, right?  From, like, WAY back when I first asked you about Magnum Opus Noise?  I saw it again!  Shinjuku was erased—it was an Inversion!  I-I…”  She looked down as tears started to form in her eyes.  “I haven’t seen anything since that day…why now?  Is…is the Inferno about to attack Shinjuku?  Is that what this means?!  Are we out of time?!”

She felt a hand on her head.  Looking up, she saw Rōjin staring back at her, his face as calm and stoic as ever.  Coco swallowed hard, and then exhaled slowly.

“R-Right…right.”  She managed a chuckle.  “Like, look at me, crying in the club like a little bitch!  Thanks bunchez, Rōjin.”

She stepped away and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.  Coco found herself looking up at the sky, as if to verify what she had seen hadn’t actually come true…at least, not yet.  The same skyline greeted her.  But this time, she just couldn’t feel happy about it.  This time, it made her feel resolute.  She turned back to Rōjin.

“Sorry fam.  But I, like, can’t just sit on my ass and play a Game rn.  The Higher Plane might not be convinced, but I just know the Inferno’s on their way to end my whole career, and I’m not about to take that.”

Rōjin paused.  Then, with a single nod, he said, “Mood.”

Coco giggled.  “omg, you’re, like, literally the worst!”

She left the shrine and made her way back up the street, thinking, Dunno how much more time I have to beef up Tapez.  My boi’s totez strong, but I can’t be too careful, and probs don’t have much time for last minute boosts.  I need to, like, think of how else I can improve his chances…

Her feet slowed, and she looked back at the shrine.

…Hm.  I wonder what she would think?

Coco crossed her arms.

I mean, she’s gonna be totez disappointed there’s no Game.  But like, she’s still my Conductor, yeah?  If I can’t trust her to back me up, then who can I trust?

She turned and got moving again.

At the v least I gotta ask.  Whatever it takes…my Shinjuku is going to survive.

***

Every day noises are killing these people

Every night noises are waiting for me but

Don’t run away, we’ve got no time left to fear

Where are you now, still it’s showing me illusions

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[furkanandiceng]

FURKAN ANDIÇ 2017 ELELE MAGAZINE (DECEMBER ISSUE) INTERVIEW

He has such a smile... Furkan Andıç

Smart, sincere, polite, cheerful, likeable, with a beautiful energy, and an animal-lover. He has everything that you seek in a man ... Furkan Andıç who is playing Savaş of the series Meryem is one of those happy, positive people you like more as you get to know them. He chats with us with a huge smile on his face, as if we have known each other for years. So comfortable, so sincere. This positive and big-hearted character of him actually comes from his life motto; we understand it as we speak. This man, who answers the question of “What is your purpose in life?” as “leaving a better world behind than what I found”, while we are used to receiving stereotypical answers like “to buy this or that, to live there, to own this” from many people, reminds us of the times when we used to chase our innocent childish wants. Just like the meaning of his name, he makes us feel his difference. He says that the idea of ‘going somewhere’, or rather, being on the move during the action of going somewhere, no matter where it is, makes him very excited. He says that he finds it appealing to leave everything behind and live in a tropical island, but don’t be afraid, he has no intention of quitting acting.

You must remember the set of your first TV series; how did you feel then?

It was the TV series Kolej Günlüğü (College Diary), the year of 2011. I was so excited. It was an ecosystem that I knew nothing about. But although it was my first time, I felt like I belonged there. It was a very special feeling. What are your dreams regarding acting? Actually, I want to experience it abroad. I want to try it because I think that acting is an international craft. And I have started working on it because of this. Which character of which movie would you want to play? The character Guido from the movie Life is Beautiful directed and played by Roberto Benigni. How do you get prepared for the character you are going to play? Is there a specific acting method that you follow or any method that you developed to internalize your character? There isn’t a single acting method that I follow. I try to combine the pieces from various methods. When I get prepared for the character I’m going to play, I examine his characteristics which make him unique and I look at him from a psychological point of view. In the meantime, I try to ask the questions that he would. And I do this by using my imagination.

You had your first movie experience with Damat Takımı. How different or similar is it to act in a TV series and in a full-length movie?

First of all, the greatest difference is that we have a script with a beginning and an ending in a movie. It is a great advantage for an actor to know where the story starts and where it ends. In this way, you can have the control of all changes that your character goes through. Also films are more flexible about time and scheduling, which gives every department the chance to work in more detail. These details are felt in every scene. When we have such an atmosphere, we as actors can combine those details with our own performance.

Is there a director whose films you never miss? What makes him/her special for you?

Christopher Nolan. Both the world that he creates and his dialogues and story-telling draw you in.

If you had the chance to talk to him, what would you ask him? I’d ask ‘what is the source of your creativity?” I wonder what it is that feeds his creativity.  

Jealousy, taking responsibility**, dependence… Which feelings are the most dominant in you when you fall in love? I think we feed many of our feelings when we fall in love. We even experience every one of our feelings much more intensely. Responsibility** and affection are the first that I can think of.

**T/N: The word “sahiplenme” literally means “taking the ownership of something/someone”. But it refers to the feeling of “accepting someone as your partner, taking his/her responsibility” in relationships. Usually men are expected to do it.                  

What is the first item on your bucket list? To leave everything behind and live in a tropical island. Cats or dogs? Do you have a pet in your house?

Both of them, but I have cats. One of them lives with my parents and the other is with me. When was the last time you tried something new? I decided to be a vegetarian two months ago. It’s a pretty new experience for me now.

What excites you, makes you happy and upsets you the most? The idea of going somewhere makes me really excited. On vacation, here and there. Being on the move somehow makes me happy. It also includes trying something new. I’ve never had big expectations from life to be happy. I believe that I’m usually a happy and positive person. Having my friends around makes me happy. I get upset when something that I put too much effort in doesn’t meet my expectations, and when my kindness is taken advantage of.   Are you a night person or a day person? What time of the day are you more energetic, creative and happy? I’m a night person. I can find the answers to many questions then because I can be by myself more. And this makes me happy. Is there anyone who had an influence on you or you took as a model growing up? My youngest uncle, Hayri. What’s your biggest purpose in life? To leave a better world behind than what I found. When you close your eyes and think about your childhood, what image do you see? I’m playing football in the street. How well do you cook? Do you like cooking? Is there a meal that you love or can cook well?   I like cooking but I don’t have the time to. I’ve always found it fun and relaxing to spend time in the kitchen. I can make various kinds of omelette, for example. What’s your weakest characteristic? I get excited very quickly. Because of this I’ve made a lot of mistakes. What’s your biggest regret to date? I regret not having learnt how to play an instrument. I hope I will do it one day and put an end to this regret of mine. What are your deepest fears? To become lonely. And in parallel with that, losing my loved ones is one of my biggest fears. People are my motivation and source of energy. About what do you have the most doubts??

I have doubts about authorities. What was your most interesting experience to date? My trip to Bali. It was an environment I hadn’t witnessed before. I also had a lot of fascinating personal experiences.

What are your characteristics that you like and dislike the most? I get along with people easily and I’m usually solution-oriented. Also, I believe that I have an energetic and positive character. What I dislike about myself is my forgetfulness. I can sometimes be impulsive. I also forgive easily. I don’t like this about myself. What should be present on a perfect breakfast table? Honey and cream. It’s an extra touch but makes a breakfast perfect for me. Do you live your feelings in an exaggerated way or do you have an introverted personality? I live them in an exaggerated way. Many people who know me well can say this. Which super power would you have if you were given the chance to have one?

To throw the objects wherever I want to. It may sound silly but it’s so much fun. 

What do you complain about the most lately?

About the pain in my right shoulder. It has been with me for the past 4 months. What is the most ruthless criticism you have ever received? I had a very aggressive basketball coach. He told me that I wasn’t cut out to play in a team and should have played in the streets instead. I was too young to receive such a criticism. I also didn’t agree with him. It was too tough for me (to take it).

In a world where no one would judge you, what freedom would you like to have? I wouldn’t pay too much attention to parking. Which characteristic of you are you most proud of?

My sincerity.

You started the season with a strong project. The series Meryem continues its success. Did you think it would receive so much love? In fact, I felt that it would be popular from the very beginning. First of all, it has a powerful script. All characters are connected with each other but have unique stories, which attracts the audience’s attention. My character Savaş is a role where I can improve myself and push my limits. Savaş’s mood swings within the overall story are one of the most important reasons why I wanted to play this character.  The whole team has put so much effort since day one, I think we achieved this as a result of these efforts. It’s a huge source of motivation for us too.

Backstage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlRyEFmctM

Source

[aidulcex]

Whitebeard Headcanons:

I’m in the writing (and procrastinating) mood right now so I just decided to post some of these headcanons that have been festering in my mind. There’s more underneath the keep reading one. If anyone wants me to write them some, don’t be afraid to send me a message or something. 

1. When Aiyanna first joined the crew, several of the others were not sure about having a woman on the crew (since she probably joined the crew before Pomona or Rosa).

2. Because of her unfamiliarity with human styles and “fashion”, Izo basically had to sit her down and teach her all the basics (ie. “you can’t just walk around here wearing a bathing suit, you’ll kill these men”!). So Aiyanna wears things like pink crop tops and short skirts, or one piece undergarments with a maxi skirt. She tries to remember to be more “modest” but it’s still a weird concept for her.

3. Aiyanna is not just the records keeper of the whitebeard pirates, but also works as a shipwright specializing in lumber production for ships. With her devil fruit powers she can easily make Adam’s wood or specially modified wood for ships or other projects. So when she is not working on keeping up with documents, Aiyanna is often working with the other shipwrights to figure out what needs to be made. 

4. When Aiyanna joined the crew, although she was happy and vibrant in her jobs and while talking to people, she hid a lot of her emotions inside, not wanting to inconvenience people.

5. This includes her issues with PTSD, survivors guilt, depression, and alcoholism. With the help of her siblings Aiyanna has improved significantly, but she does relapse or get triggered.

~With Thatch~

1. Although she’s technically older than Thatch and Marco, she certainly doesn’t act nor looks like it. Hence why she’ll call them her older brothers. She’s also ridiculously short compared to them. Like 5”4’ next to at least over 6”0’ short.

2. Thatch definitely teases her the most, and will call her things like “grandma” or “senior” to poke fun at her age. And he’ll constantly be there to comment about her tiny stature, maybe even moving things out of her reach. Don’t worry, Aiyanna gets back at Thatch when she steals from his kitchen when she’s having bad sugar crazes. There’s a reason why he had locks on the fridge before Ace came onto the crew.

3. Although they get on each other’s nerves, Aiyanna and Thatch work well together. If Thatch ever needs specific herbs for his recipes, he can turn to her and she’ll immediately have just what he needs and will give him a huge supply of it.

4. She also loves being his taste tester, as long as it’s not sour or bitter she’s happy to help (there have been some pranks pulled by Thatch where he gives Aiyanna something really sour though and she just hates everything).

5. I can totally see them being drinking buddies and having drinking contests. They’ll go to a bar once they’re on shore and have so much fun together, joking around and trying different/new drinks.

6. Thatch would definitely try to set Aiyanna up with someone, especially with her whining about not being able to find someone. He’s her wingman of course, and will point out a person to Aiyanna to see what she thinks. 

7. Their relationship is basically the stereotypical older brother/younger sister relationship. Both tease and annoy each other relentlessly, but there are also a lot of times where they joke and have fun with each other. Both of them would stand up for the other one in a heartbeat and it shows.

8. Aiyanna 100% encourages his relationship with Pomona, however she takes the stance that if he ever harms her little sister, then it’s game over for him.

9. With Aiyanna not needing to rely on food for nutrients like the others, I can see Thatch being happy with himself when he finds her actively asking for him to make her a specific dish. It would make him feel good knowing that even though his little sister doesn’t need to eat to live, that she’s more than ecstatic to eat his food (more of a want than a need). 

~With Marco~

1. Marco and Aiyanna’s relationship would be described as the calm and understanding older brother/younger sister relationship. There are times where Aiyanna can be annoying, but he knows that she’s not intentionally trying to come off that way.

2. Although Thatch and Aiyanna’s relationship is fun and lighthearted, Aiyanna goes to Marco if she ever needs to talk about things or get something off of her chest. He just has that vibe about him and she knows he’s not going to joke around when she’s telling him something personal. She’s able to express herself and worries to him in ways that she can’t with the others, so much so that they have a deeper connection and understanding of each other than what meets the eye. It’s not to say that Aiyanna has a stronger bond with him compared to Thatch, but their relationship is different and is based around different types of emotions.

3. Because of Aiyanna’s race being so unique, in the early days of her joining the crew, Aiyanna spent a lot of time with Marco describing her race and certain biological qualities that they had. That way Marco and the medical staff could have a better understanding of what to do if she gets hurt. For example, if Aiyanna gets injured, Marco cannot use his healing flames to increase recovery. In fact, it does a lot more harm than good (with one knife slice on her left hand becoming permanently scarred when he tried to heal her. Skin no longer covers that scar, and instead it looks like wood is peeking out from underneath her skin. It’s an incident that neither of them talk about).

4. Marco has tried to make medications for Aiyanna that help to eliminate her “hormonal problem” when in the presence of pollen. It’s still in the works, but so far it has caused terrible mood swings, cravings, tiredness, and Aiyanna makes Aiyanna feel more sick than before.

5. Like Thatch, if Marco ever needs any herbs for medications, Aiyanna will grow some for him and will give him all the specific types that he needs. 

6. At first Aiyanna was terrified of Marco because of his devil fruit. Luckily the two have worked together to try to combat her fear of fire, just so that Aiyanna can be near him or Ace when they are using their flames (as long as she’s not in their line of fire she’s good, but before even seeing an open flame would make her dart).

7. Aiyanna does get upset with him when he tries to cut her off of her sweets or her alcohol for “health reasons”. She knows that he is only trying to help her, but Aiyanna often uses sweets or alcohol as an unhealthy coping mechanism during her depression bursts. 

8. If they’re ever on a winter island and someone somehow drags Aiyanna off the boat and away from a heater, Aiyanna is going to be clinging to either him or Ace the whole time. The cold does not mix well with her and she will sap all the warmth that those two radiate because of their devil fruit powers. 

9. When Marco is working in his office trying to do paperwork, Aiyanna will occasionally visit him throughout the day and bring him tea. Usually it is in the early morning hours, just in case he was up all night working (or decided to wake up early to work), or right before the sun goes down. She doesn’t say much, but its a reminder that lets Marco know what time it is and how long he’s been working. 

~With Ace~ 

(These will be if they’re not dating and are in that friend stage still). 

1. These two together are Thatch’s worse nightmare when Aiyanna gets her sugar cravings. If one of them is found in the kitchen, there’s a chance that the other one is nearby or was able to get away. There were times where Ace would bolt into her office and hid underneath her desk or under all the god damn plants she had to hide from Thatch. And being the good sister that she was, Aiyanna would cover for him. 

2. If they’re on a winter island, Aiyanna’s going to stick to him or Marco. Ace will tease her about it more so than Marco, but he secretly enjoys it. She’ll also go up to him and ask him to provide her with some heat or light if it’s cloudy outside. Sometimes she’ll startle him by sneaking up behind him and just hugging him (not just for warmth but sometimes because she’s just stressed and tired and Ace, although he would be embarrassed about it, understands). 

3. Ace spends a lot of time with Aiyanna because of Snickerdoodle. There’s no way of sugar coating how much Ace loves that dog and Snickerdoodle knows it. It’s hilarious how much that dog has Ace wrapped around his paw. 

4. By the time Ace joined the Whitebeard pirates, Aiyanna had been working on herself with the help of her siblings, so she’s a lot more open to talking about her personal stuff with him at this point. This really helped Ace out, because Aiyanna openly shares with him her feelings of self worth and some of her deeper insecurities. Especially when Aiyanna admitted that she believed that she didn’t deserve to live, which not only broke his heart, but also allowed him to know that there was someone else who felt like he did. It definitely strengthened their bond. 

5. If Ace ever feels like he’s in the dog house because of something he did to Aiyanna, he will find someway to make it up to her. Usually it’s in the form of sweets. 

6. Their relationship grows with time, especially because of Aiyanna’s fear of fire and how Ace was trying to get a grasp of his devil fruit powers when he first got them. Her fear of his powers, along with her determination to prove to Ace that it wasn’t him who she was afraid of, but the fire that he produced, pushed Ace to perfect his technique. 

7. Aiyanna is very understanding with Ace, especially when he was first trying to juggle all the tasks and responsibilities that a commander of the whitebeard pirates has to do. And with Aiyanna being the records keeper for the crew, she was the one who taught him how to fill out all the paperwork, what kind of math he needed to do, and what he needed to give her. Eventually, Ace just started to save any kind of paper he got, giving Aiyanna a big stack of things once he has to turn in his paperwork. Some of these will be random notes, reminders, or even funny things that he found lying around while on a mission or in general. She’ll send back those things with doodles and some notes (such as “Keep it up!”, “You got this!”, “Remember to do this today Ace :),” or an occasional joke). I like to think he keeps some of them and looks at them from time to time. 

8. Unlike some of the others who complain about Ace talking about his brother Luffy, Aiyanna will listen to him and his stories in great detail. By the time she meets Luffy she will know everything about that boy (Ace, fanboy much?). She’ll see Luffy do something and be like “oh so he still does ___ a certain way.” And everyone just goes “what?”

9. I like to think that they will call each other different nicknames just for the fun of it. Like Aiyanna would call him Pepper, Freckles, or Hot Stuff. While Ace would call Aiyanna Freckle (since she has so many freckles that she’s just one big freckle), Sweet Stuff, or Broccoli (in response to her pepper nickname for him). 

~With Pomona~

1. Although Aiyanna loves her older brothers, she’s fiercely more protective and hangs out with her sisters when she can. With all the men on the ship, it makes sense that the girls would try to stick together and spend time together. Aiyanna is no exception, and often takes on the role as “older/big sister”. 

2. This role sums up Pomona and Aiyanna’s relationship to a t. Aiyanna will give Pomona advise if she ever asks for it, will always be a shoulder for her to lean on, and is one of her number one fans. Even during Pomona’s relationship with Thatch, Aiyanna made sure that Pomona was always being treated right, and would take her side if anything happened. 

3. If Pomona ever makes Aiyanna sweets or dishes, the nymph will be over the moon. Anything that she makes Aiyanna will cherish it and call it wonderful (even if she adds too much spice to it and Aiyanna is sitting over there crying but eating every last bite). 

4. When the two have the chance, both of them would hang out in Aiyanna’s overcrowded office, Aiyanna showing the chef what types of plants can be edible, what parts can be used for what purposes, and how to identify them. Aiyanna believes that a chef or anyone who wants to cook good food should know exactly where their ingredients are coming from, including the herbs and spices. 

5. I can totally see Pomona being a huge force in Aiyanna obtaining her Den Den Mushi Erpsi. The two of them were out shopping in town one day and the two of them came across a snail seller who was just about to kill the snail after he had been returned multiple times due to “bad behavior”. Luckily, the two of them were able to buy him and Pomona asked Aiyanna to take care of him. Erpsi is now an over sized snail who although likes to cause trouble and is a diva, he’s doing quite well for himself. 

6. These girls will shower each other with puns. It doesn’t matter what it is. You know those videos where the guy is in the store with his girlfriend and is using the products to make puns? That’s them and neither of them have any regrets about it. 

7. When Pomona needs to hide somewhere or doesn’t want to deal with people, I can see her turning into her moth form (if it gets super tiny that is) and just burying herself in Aiyanna’s hair to hide from others. Aiyanna doesn’t reveal her location but will sometimes boop her head to make sure she’s alright. I also like to think Aiyanna would make hats like these for her. 

8. I like to think that after the two get to know each other more, their relationship will be based on deep mutual understanding and appreciation for the other. Aiyanna understands Pomona’s insecurities and often combats some of the same issues but in different ways. She’ll try to help her sister out however she can because she hates seeing Pomona upset. On the other hand, Pomona tries to help Aiyanna once she mentally gets into a dark place, especially when she starts drinking heavily. After Thatch’s death and the events of Marineford (worse come scenario), these two cling together like no tomorrow because both of them just know how the other is feeling and that they need each other more than ever. 

9. Pomona was probably one of the first people who Aiyanna opened up to about her home island and family/priest situation. Marco knew something was up but didn’t press Aiyanna for details, just offering his shoulder for support at times. She would tell him about her emotions or how she was feeling in the beginning, but either than Pops, Pomona was the first one to know everything that happened. She encouraged her to tell Marco and eventually the others once the time became right. I like to think that even though Aiyanna tried being a rock to Pomona, Pomona provided Aiyanna with a good push that she needed in order to become more open about herself to her crew mates. And now Aiyanna is open about pretty much anything lol. 

~With Rosa~ 

(For granted these aren’t as detailed as the others, but that’s because we haven’t really had these muses interact much yet lol. Hopefully that’ll change soon!!)

1. These girls will be the ultimate shopping partners and would have so much fun going to different stores on the island, trying things on together, buying sweets from the vendors, etc. 

2. Aiyanna thinks Rosa is absolutely precious and has a huge big sister protective instinct for her. Someone looks at Rosa the wrong way? Yeah they’re going to have to deal with this fuming nymph and the rest of the Rosa Protection Squad. 

3. Rosa’s passion for music automatically draws Aiyanna in. As an avid dancer, Aiyanna loves to listen to new songs and figure out what kind of dances she can come up for them. 

4. The nymph would actively try to check to see if Rosa was doing alright. Just like with Marco, Aiyanna would bring Rosa tea or some desserts that she managed to sneak out of the kitchen, checking to see if the hummingbird was alright. She would often lend her an ear if she needed to speak to someone, and try to give her advice if she needed any. Aiyanna would definitely go through great lengths to make sure her sister is happy, because like Pomona, Aiyanna understands the insecurities that Rosa has and doesn’t want her to feel as bad as she does.

@xmenageriie @jijiivishaa @bluebcrn @xpuriity @the-flaming-spade

[lesbeet]

long post ahead

ive been thinking nonstop about the possibility of me having adhd since my sister and her boyfriend brought it up to me last week (i’m FINALLY seeing my therapist today so we can talk about it) and i’ve been doing a lot of research and i found the howtoadhd channel on youtube

and literally the number of times in the past 2 hours alone that i’ve teared up or started legitimately crying because of how much i relate to things that these videos are saying is ridiculous, like some of them are word-for-word things i’ve said that i had NO inkling of an idea could be related to adhd

like this one video of this guy who was diagnosed at 43 and said that prior to his diagnosis he had just accepted that he would feel dissatisfied for his whole life, that he would never feel content, i’ve been saying that for YEARS and just was resigned to it and chalked it up solely to my depression

and just like. having been able to do well in school as a kid but constantly being told that i’m “not living up to [my] potential” and now that i’m in my early 20s and my intelligence can’t compensate for like....not being able to regulate my emotions and not being able to organize my life and not being able to motivate myself to do things, which is supposedly why a number of people get diagnosed around this time, because metrics for success are different in adulthood (you can’t just take a test and rely on being smart to compensate for all the other problems), and i was always just. thinking that i fucked up and wasted my life through laziness or whatever the case may be

i’ve always considered myself to be “crafty” and “resourceful” in the sense that i may not go about doing things in the typical way but i can almost always find a way to accomplish what i need accomplished, even if it’s unconventional -- apparently that’s common with adhd too! like i’ll say “oh i couldn’t figure out how to do [x] so i did [y and z]” and someone will be like “why didn’t you just do [thing everyone else does]” and usually i either couldn’t figure out how, or it didn’t occur to me, and my way was weird and unconventional, but it worked for me!

and then of course i’m just recognizing all these signs that have always been there that i either didn’t notice or attributed to other things -- i’ve been trying to observe the way my attention functions this week and literally i space out and miss things SO much more often than i ever realized, like i miss so much information because i’ve drifted off. or i get really stuck on things in conversations and even after everyone else has moved on i have this urge to bring it back so i can say that last thing i’ve been rehearsing over and over for the past 5 minutes so i didn’t forget it, and now it’s in my head and everyone is talking about something else and it’s SO inconsequential but i have to forcibly drag myself away from whatever the thing is (yesterday my sister and her friend and i were talking about early 2000′s fashion and i wanted to make a comment about wearing ugly scarves as belts and they saw a dog and moved on to talking about cute things our dogs have done and i just couldn’t stop thinking about the scarves as belts thing for like 10 minutes until i just had to sigh and be like...well i can’t bring that up again now)

when i was younger i would rush through tests so i could go back to whatever book i was reading and i just thought it was a silly quirk like “oh i just like to read lol” but i realized i still do similar things -- if i’m reading a book or watching a show or working on something, THAT is what i’m doing. anything else, whether it’s work or sleep or eating or hanging out with a friend or fulfilling any sort of responsibility? that’s a break from the thing i’m doing. if i’m reading a book, even if it’s the 3rd time i’m rereading harry potter for the year, for example, then in my head, i’m reading harry potter. i have to go to work all day but then i can read harry potter. all i’m doing is thinking about reading harry potter. i rush through my responsibilities so i can go BACK to reading harry potter, because that’s what i’m doing and anything else is just taking a break from reading harry potter. (you see how this can negatively affect the accomplishment/fulfillment of important tasks and responsibilities)

and my sister has pointed out things that i didn’t really notice, like she said it’s really difficult to hold a conversation with me when i’m excited about something because i can’t calm down enough to let the other person talk. and i’ve always known that i tend to finish peoples’ sentences for them during conversations, which i always thought was a way of showing that i’m listening! but ive realized it’s actually that, if i already know what you’re going to say, and you’re saying it too slowly, i get impatient and i need to blurt out the rest for you so we can move on and i can say my next thing before i forget it

and like obviously all people experience some symptoms some of the time, daydreaming isn’t exclusive to adhd, neither is walking into a room and forgetting what you’re doing there. but this week as i’ve been paying attention, i notice i do it CONSTANTLY. the other night i opened up my phone before bed because i remembered i hadn’t set my alarm, so i picked it up from where i place it for the night (i was about to go to sleep). 15 minutes later i put my phone back down and decided to turn in for the night again, and then realized i still had never turned the alarm on because i got distracted and did other stuff. and things like that happen with almost comical regularity, now that i know to look for it.

i’ve known i have executive dysfunction issues for a long time so i won’t go into those, but like we’ve known i have problems with directions and organization and spatial processing and knowing how to complete tasks for a long time

the rejection-sensitive dysphoria is something i didn’t really realize was part of adhd, but it makes SO much sense. i think it’s part of why i thought i had bpd for a while, because a lot of the symptoms were similar and i knew i was dealing with something more than just depression and anxiety but didn’t know what, and a lot of the symptoms i experienced also seemed to fit the bpd diagnosis even if my actual behavior and personality didn’t seem to

there are so many more things i’ve noticed this week and thought about differently but i literally can’t remember what they are lmao i think i’m gonna try to write stuff down so i don’t forget to tell my therapist today but like. 

so many of these things i didn’t realize had anything to do with adhd, like emotional dysregulation, i’ve always known i have horrible mood swings and trouble regulating my emotions, i’ve always noticed a lot of these different symptoms but it never occurred to me that they could all be part of the same thing??

like i haven’t been tested or diagnosed yet and i’m worried i’m getting carried away but the only time i’ve ever felt this sort of relief was a few months ago when realizing my dad is a narcissist. like the feeling of “oh my god, i knew this was something i experienced but i didn’t think i could attribute it to anything” and “oh my god, this is word for word something i say all the time, i didn’t realize it was part of a pattern”

and it genuinely made me cry! hearing people talk about things that describe me that i never would have guessed might have to do with adhd, finding something that seems to encompass a very broad range of symptoms that i previously thought were unrelated or results of a myriad of things (and obviously they all play off of one another but that’s a whole separate issue)

but it would explain so much of my behavior and challenges -- why i struggle with finishing up a task or project once the big, complicated part is done; why i get super obsessed with something and then once it wears off i never mention or think about it again; why i’ve always needed my mom’s help to clean my closet or pack for a trip, even though i felt like i was way too old to need help with that; why people constantly are like “i know you heard me say this because you said ‘ok’” about things i genuinely have no recollection of

but i just can’t stop thinking about that guy talking about how he was just resigned to thinking he would never been satisfied or content with his life because that is something i have been feeling and saying FOREVER, for years ive just been like “everything is so hard, the idea of spending the rest of my life struggling to get up in the morning and going to work every day, dealing with all my responsibilities, i feel like i’m exhausted and underwater just thinking about it, i’m never going to feel fulfilled or satisfied, it’s always just going to be slogging through my responsibilities and it’s never going to end” and apparently that’s....a normal thing, and i just thought it was depression and maybe part of it is, but maybe the reason i struggle so much with those every day things is because my brain is wired differently?

and maybe i’ve fucked up because at this point i think i’ll be really disappointed if i don’t get the diagnosis because i’m not really sure what else could explain these issues, it certainly makes sense and i feel like it fits and i feel relieved just thinking about having that answer, and it certainly negatively impacts almost every aspect (if not every aspect) of my life. so like if i don’t get diagnosed idk what i’m gonna do and i probably fucked up by spending the last week obsessing over it lol

but like....the relief i feel every time i read or hear or see someone with adhd say “i experience [x]” and i’m like holy shit??? me too???? and it just. feels like maybe there’s an explanation for all this horrible dissatisfaction and unhappiness i thought i was going to be stuck with for the rest of my life, and there are other people who experience these things and there are things that can be done, medication and therapy and strategies and...my whole life doesn’t NEED to feel like a challenge, maybe it’s not an indisputable fact that i’m just going to have to live with forever.

if you read this far and you have adhd (especially if you were diagnosed after childhood) i would love to hear your thoughts on this, obviously i didn’t list every single symptom and experience and i know there are more but these are all i could think of at the moment, if i seem like i’m way off base obviously please let me know

[tsfanart]

The Scarf

Some brainstorming sessions ended well. Others, not so much. And Virgil was the most likely of all of them to leave a meeting in a bad state of mind.

On one particularly bad day, Logan gave Virgil a simple but questioning look on their way out. Virgil shook his head, and Logan put an understanding hand on his shoulder. They rushed into Logan's room, and quickly closed the door. Logan knelt down and pulled out the pale green box that was hidden under his bed. He pulled out the needles and yarn, as well as the scarf that Virgil had been working on, and placed both in the latter's lap. Virgil didn't budge.

"Hey," Logan said gently. "You've got this. C'mon, you know how this works."

"H-hands," Virgil responded, holding up his trembling hands. Logan shook his head and guided Virgil into the right position, beginning the first couple stitches for him.

"See? There you go. You're fine."

But Virgil kept looking towards the door. "Roman could still come in here any minute," he hissed.

"The door is closed," Logan pointed out. "For all of Roman's flaws, I don't think he's the type to barge into a room that's closed."

Finally Virgil calmed down a bit, and before long he was back into the swing of things. Logan smiled, and got out his own project from his desk drawer.

"So, rough brainstorming session, huh?" Logan began after a few minutes of silence.

"Yeah, it was," Virgil admitted. "It's just, how many new things can we possibly do? Almost every single episode has had something new in some way. Roman is just gonna push everyone towards burnout."

"I definitely get that," Logan replied. "But we're not the only ones who are doing the thinking. We have Joan, too. They're a perfect example of two heads being better than one."

"Yeah...that they are," Virgil admitted. "Fair enough. Thanks."

"Anytime!" Logan replied without looking up.

--

Two weeks later, it was thundering outside. Virgil sat on his bed and buried his head in his pillows, but he couldn't block out the sound, nor could he get rid of the sinking feeling in his stomach. After trying to take deep breaths for a few minutes, he finally gave up and went over to Logan's room.

When he got there, he found Logan standing outside his open door, the green box in hand.

"Oh, hello!" Logan said. "I was just about to invite you over. Come on in!"

Virgil smiled and ducked his head as the two went inside Logan's room. Logan shut the door behind them.

Virgil pulled out the scarf, now much longer, and tried to make the next few stitches. But they didn't look right, and the yarn just got tangled, and finally Virgil threw it on the bed in frustration. He sat down on the floor and covered his ears.

Logan glanced towards the window, and looked down at Virgil sympathetically. He got up and closed his curtains, and pulled out his phone. Turning the volume up all the way, he scrolled through all his music until he found some Mozart. He pressed play, and slowly Virgil uncovered his ears.

"I know it's not exactly MCR," Logan began, "but it might help you regain a sense of peace."

"No, no, I like it. Thanks." Virgil smiled and got up again, picking up the scarf from the bed. Now that the sound was blocked out, he was able to focus on untangling the yarn and getting back on track.

"I really like where I'm going with this," Virgil said after ten minutes or so of silence. He smiled up at Logan shyly.

Logan smiled back, looking up from his own scarf. "I do, too! You really do have a great eye for color."

Virgil tilted his head. "Really? You think? I...I didn't really think that was exactly my forte...if you catch my drift."

"Well, maybe he's rubbing off on you! You two really aren't as different as you think, you know."

Virgil frowned and looked towards the door. "Do you think he's--"

"I am about 95% sure that Roman is fast asleep right now, yes."

"But he has to know that something's up by now, doesn't he? I mean, what does he think we do in here all the time?"

Logan blushed a little, and Virgil snickered. "Okay, sorry, that came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that." The two erupted into nervous giggles, which, if anything, lightened the mood.

"But really though," Virgil said after they had calmed down, "He's got to find out sometime, right?"

"Well, would that necessarily be a bad thing?" Logan questioned him.

Virgil jumped back. "Um, yes, it would be! What, you want him to start making 'needling' jokes? Because you know he will." He threw the scarf down on the bed again.

Logan got up and put a hand on Virgil's shoulder. "Hey, just hear me out here, alright? Maybe it might not end well if he finds out by accident. But if you take it upon yourself to tell him, then you would have more control over the situation."

"What do you mean...?" Virgil asked warily.

Logan picked up the scarf from the bed again. "You know, now that I think of it, this scarf of yours is just about done. You want me to show you how to finish it?"

"Um, sure, I guess, but I don't see what that has to do with--"

"I think it would look great on Roman, in fact," Logan said as he tied it off. "If you're comfortable with that, of course," he added.

Virgil shrunk back a little. "No, you're right, I get what you're trying to say. I'm just not really crazy about getting laughed out of the Mind Palace."

"I think you should have a little faith in him," Logan insisted, shoving the scarf back into his hands. "Trust me. Okay?"

Virgil looked down at the floor. Logan put his hand back on the other's shoulder and gave it a little shake. "Okay?"

"Okay," Virgil said, looking up at Logan with a watery smile.

"Good," Logan replied, giving Virgil a side hug. "You should probably get to bed now. We'll talk more tomorrow." He gently shoved Virgil out of the room and closed the door.

--

The next morning, Virgil woke up and lazed around for a bit, having completely forgotten the conversation from last night. But when Logan knocked on his door at around 10:00, it all came back to him.

"Oh...hey," Virgil said quietly. He rubbed his arm. "What's up?"

"Not much! But, um, hey, I don't think Roman's doing anything right now. How about we get this over with, maybe?"

Virgil looked over at the scarf, which was laying on his desk, and picked it up. "Yeah...maybe."

"Well, let's go then!" Logan said, slinging an arm against Virgil's shoulder and shoving him out of the room. Virgil followed Logan reluctantly, and the two walked a few steps down the hall until they stood in front of Roman's closed door.

Virgil stared almost blankly at the door and looked back at Logan, who gave him a nod. He lifted his hand, poised to knock, but then lowered it and pressed his ear to the door. Logan let this go on for a few moments before pulling Virgil back and knocking on the door for him.

They heard rustling from the other side, and Virgil tensed up again. But Logan just squeezed his arm and waved before dashing off.

Before Virgil could object, Roman opened the door. Virgil spun back around to face him and then held out the scarf like a hot potato, looking off to the side.

"Here, I made this for you," he said quickly. He was about to run back to his room when Roman put his hand up.

"You made something for me?" Roman asked softly.

"Well, yeah..." Virgil said. "Logan's been teaching me how to knit, which is why I'm always in his room every time I'm freaking out, 'cause it makes me feel calmer, and I've been making this over the past few weeks and I'm kinda proud of it and I thought maybe you'd like it. I'm sorry though, it's stupid, I'll just--"

"You made something for me?" Roman said again, clearly having barely heard any of Virgil's rant.

"I...I guess I did, yeah."

"No one's ever made anything for me before." Roman looked down at the scarf in awe.

"So...you don't think it's weird?" Virgil asked cautiously.

"No, of course not! I love it. Why would I think it's weird?" Roman asked, now caressing the scarf.

"I mean, it's not exactly...like me to do that," Virgil began. "It's not exactly a tough guy thing to do."

Roman shrugged. "Well, what does that matter? If it helps you feel better, I'm not gonna get in the way of that."

"Aren't you going to start calling me things like, 'Negative Knitter' now?"

Virgil winced as soon as he said that, cursing himself for giving him new ideas, but Roman just frowned slightly. "Not if you don't want me to, no."

Virgil looked up. He'd never heard Roman say anything to that effect before.

Roman continued staring at Virgil with a concerned gaze, and they stood like that for another few moments before snapping himself out of it.

"Um, wait, what am I thinking, do you wanna come in?" Roman asked, stepping to the side.

"In your room?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah!" Roman said with a grin. "I have something I want to show you."

Virgil shrugged and followed Roman inside. Roman put the scarf down on his desk, and pulled open the bottom drawer. He pulled out a ball of deep, purple yarn and handed it to him.

Virgil looked down at the ball in his hands. Roman smiled at him. "You like it?" he asked. "I don't know what colors you have, but I thought you might like this one." He rubbed his own arm.

Virgil looked back up at him. "Yeah, I do! Thanks."

For the first time that either of them could remember, they smiled at each other fully.

Maybe Logan was right. Maybe he just needed to have a little faith.

[hobiboo1]

The DUFF

the duff au // college au // future smut // humour // basketball player jungkook // dancer jimin // best friends jin + taehyung

Your annoying neighbour and childhood friend, Jungkook, strikes a deal with you to help you get the attention of your crush, Jimin, if you help him pass his philosophy class.

warnings: sexual content, drinking, swearing, use of the words ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’

@hobijoon @baepsaetan @rimuslymoony @lordofassgard

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; 

Part 1:

It was no secret Kim Seokjin and Kim Taehyung were two of the best-looking humans to ever grace this godforsaken campus, and it was no secret that they were your best friends. The three of you were practically attached at the hip or rather… hips. See, the thing is, neither Jin nor Taehyung were always sex gods. In fact, Taehyung was bullied by an upperclassman for a little while in preschool and that upperclassman happened to be Jin, who turned out to be projecting his own experiences onto the little nerdy tater-tot that was the young Taehyung. It was after class that you heard a yelp coming from the boys’ bathroom and, being young and pure at heart, you didn’t hesitate to check it out- finding Taehyung shoved up against the sinks, Jin holding him by the collar.

“Hey!” You remember yelling.

“What are you doing in here, yucky girl?” Jin taunted, letting go of Taehyung.

“What are you doing with Tae-Tae?”

Anyway, long story short, you’ve been best friends ever since then. They’ve always had your back and you’ve always had theirs. The fact that they were practically angels on Earth, with features that looked like they were painted by the masters, didn’t really have any affect on you. You never felt like an odd one out or anything… you just felt normal. Of course, in high school, the occasional person made a comment about you being out of their league, but mainly people wanted to be on your good side to get to them, hiding their intentions with great skill while momentarily making you feel special. There are countless examples of girls befriending you to get closer to them. Those things almost always ended up the same way, with them in Jin or Taehyung’s bed. You were always too ashamed to tell either of them how used you had felt and they were both too oblivious to see it as that.

In university, however, you didn’t have a problem with any of that childish shit. Everyone here seems so much more… ‘chilled’. Even Taehyung chilled out, only sleeping with one, maybe two, girls a week and limiting his alcohol intake to the weekend only… usually. Your relationship with him has also… evolved. Occasionally, and you mean occasionally, the two of would hook up, but that’s because you’re both now mature adults and, as Taehyung told Jin, you are both capable of ‘handling that shit’. Not to mention how undeniably good it is, which is why you both come back to it. But when the morning comes, it isn’t a big deal for him to roll out of your bed and pad tiredly across the living room to his, well, to his room. They aren’t just your best friends; Taehyung and Jin are now your roommates, too.

At first, you and Taehyung tried to keep it a secret, knowing how Jin would react, you always planned on telling him, the three of you practically shared everything and it was always a three or nothing dynamic. You still recall his lecture after he walked in on you and Taehyung cuddling naked in your sleep in Taehyung’s room.

“What is this?” He asked in a shrill voice.

“Oh, fuck,” Taehyung grunted after realizing what Jin had just walked in. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes to clear the sleep.

“Jin?” You asked after you managed to force your eyes open.

“I swear to god I’ll move out if you ever, and I mean EVER, keep me up with your gross sounds and shit.” He exclaimed, throwing his hands around passionately, his face getting red. He suddenly disappeared, leaving you and Taehyung sitting there with the blanket over your bare chests, watching the door in confusion. “Absolutely DISGUSTING,” You heard him muttering to himself. “Here!” Jin yelled, throwing a bunch of condoms from various labels over the two of you after he returned. “I fucking hate you both.” He whined loudly, slamming the door behind him.

But, truthfully, the thing between the two of you did nothing to interfere with your friendship, if it did, you would have ended it long ago. Hell, neither of you blinked an eye when the other one brought a person home, unless it meant an interruption to your movie night or something. Taehyung was fucking infamous for forgetting plans. In fact, Taehyung was probably the most active supporter of your big ass crush, constantly urging you to talk to him or shoving you in his direction whenever you saw him around campus… which was pretty often due to your shared classes. And it wasn’t even that often that you hooked up, only every couple of weeks when you found yourselves alone at the apartment and were both in the mood. Usually you’d just take the opportunity to watch Bachelor in Paradise because Jin would always veto it, giving some sob story of how it brings back memories of the terrifying world of high school dating and being pressurized to be with someone within a pretty shitty circle of people. The story never failed to make you and Taehyung roll your eyes. So yeah, usually, you’d both just revel in the chance to catch up on the admittedly terrible show that, somehow, had you both addicted. Sometimes you’d pause to give him a blowjob or because his cuddles turned too touchy, his hand slowly falling to your breasts, his long fingers slipping under your shirt to give your boob a squeeze, but you never failed to finish the episode.

“Taehyung!” You yell, smoke coming out of your ears, your footsteps loud as you stomp angrily to his room. Swinging his door open you are faced with a familiar sight of him sharing his bed with a beautiful girl, usually you’d spare a friendly ‘morning’, but right now you are way too angry.

“Morning, sunshine,” Taehyung teases, the snarl on your face obvious to the freshly woken prick head.

“Shut the fuck up,” You snap, “sorry.” you smile at the girl apologetically, realizing, while this is normal for this household, it may not be very normal for her.

“No proble-” She says softly but gets cut off by Taehyung’s raspy morning voice.

“If you’re looking for your portfolio, it’s on the toilet in my bathroom.” He tells you, noticing the way you are looking around his room like a mad woman.

“Your bathroom? You know what, I don’t give a fuck,” Your voice trails off from him as you disappear into his bathroom. “I told you to get this back to me last night!” You yell loud enough for him to hear you, then appearing in the bedroom again. “I’m fucking late, ass bag.”

“Have a good day!” He shouts happily so that you can hear him after you leave his room, the door banging loudly behind you, causing Jin to yell from his room.

“Hey! Shut up, you pigs!”

6:30 am. You were already 10 minutes late. You practically kick open the fifth door of the morning as you exit your apartment in a frantic rush, your body vibrating with nerves and three cups of coffee and no food. But instead of stepping into the passage of your apartment building, you step into something, or rather someone. You walk straight into a hard chest, fumbling backwards and hitting your door, the pages from your portfolio flying everywhere. Looking up, you finally manage to see who the person is. Jeon Jungkook.Your annoying ass neighbor who literally followed you from your hometown to a university you chose specifically to get away from everyone except Jin and Taehyung. He was the typical charming boy who won over every parent’s heart. The boy who turned out cute but was too daft to form a coherent sentence unless it was to get into a girl’s pants, the boy who became a high school jock, leaving you and your once decent friendship in the dirt to hang out with the ‘cool kids’ and smoke weed in the locker rooms.

“Shit,” He mumbles under his breath, immediately crouching to start collecting your scattered pages.

“Of course the reason you followed me across the country was to do things like this. Why is it you get such pleasure from fucking up my life, Jeon?” You ask, your body now also crouching, close enough to his to get a whiff of his fresh cologne while you rush to collect your work.

“Oh come on, Y/N,” You prepare yourself for the comeback you can already hear in his tone, “you know that’s not the reason.” He hums in disappointment making you look up and into his daring eyes, dark and playful as always. “I couldn’t survive without you as my neighbor, you give me confidence.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?”

“You make me look good, babe.” He winks.

You scoff at his underhanded jab. Please, as if. You? Making Jungkook look good? Jungkook could barely make himself a bowl of cereal while you were working towards one of the top positions in your major.

“Whatever,” You hiss, grabbing the pages from his hands as you stand up. “Just try stay out of my way. Alright, Jeon?”

You don’t wait a second for his response before you’re rushing down the hall, stumbling over your feet as you try to organize your mess of work. Jungkook smiles fondly to himself.What a weird girl.

“You know I can’t stay away from you, Y/N!”

Seeing Jimin on campus took you by surprise, causing you to stumble back into the person behind you on the way out of lecture hall.

“Jesus Christ, woman,” The person grunted, shoving himself passed you. You couldn’t even get yourself to say sorry; you were way too focused on the head of blonde hair and the angelic smile that went with it.

What was he doing so early here on a Friday morning? Not that you’d worked out his timetable or anything… You shuffled behind one of the big shrubs just outside the door and watched as the boy walked across the quad from the opposite side, throwing his head back as his laughter rang itself all the way to your ears like a choir of church singers. He parted ways with the group of people he was walking with and started walking right in your direction. Realizing he was literally walking towards you, you dropped down in a panic, hiding from him before he could get a chance to see you. He, however, was soon enough standing beside you, clearing his throat. You slowly lift your head to look at him, your cheeks burning with desperate embarrassment. He smiled down at you with curiosity on his features and a slight tilt of his head.

“Oh, uh, Jimin! Hi!” You rush, standing up to your feet and dusting off your skirt, “I was just, uh, just relaxing after my lecture.”

“I’d say you’ve found a good spot,” He starts, his face friendly, but then he starts to reach one hand out to your face, causing you to get stuck on a breath. “But it looks like this bush wouldn’t like that.” He finishes in a joking, endearing tone, picking a leaf from your hair and flicking it to the side.

“Oh,” You laugh, hoping to god you don’t sound as awkward as you feel, and rake your hand through your hair to see if there are any more leaves.

“Hey, so I gotta run, but I came over here to ask if you wanted to come to a party tonight?” He asks, sliding his hands into the pockets of his chino shorts, which he matched with a white button up and red sneakers.

“A party? Yeah, I like parties. Go to them all the time.” You mentally slap yourself as soon as you say that.

Jimin chuckles, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen you and the boys around the town,” He smiles, his tone still interestingly jokey. You didn’t realize how airy he could be in actual conversation. “So yeah, my frat is throwing a party and… wait, you know my frat, right?”

“Yeah… I think so. Alpha Nu, right?” Of course you know his fucking frat.

“Yeah, that’s the one!” He grins and you get butterflies knowing you made him smile that way. “It starts at 7 but I’d recommend you only pitch around 9? That’s when things actually start getting fun,” He tells you, but cuts himself off, “that’s if you even wanna come, of course.” He smiles sheepishly. He’s so cute your heart might explode.

“Of course I do!” You let slip and clear your throat, “I mean, I’ll probably check it out after this other… thing… with, uh, Tae.”

Jimin’s eyes show a glimmer of excitement. Is this seriously happening?

“Awesome! See you there.” He smiles, squeezing your shoulder briefly before spinning around to leave. “Check you around, Y/N.”

Y/N, Y/N, Y/N. He knows your name.

Your smile practically splits your cheeks in half as you pull your phone out of your pocket and start walking. You start typing a message on your group chat with Taehyung and Jin when you walk into something hard again. And, telling from that voice you hear in your nightmares, it’s Jungkook again.

“We’ve really gotta stop meeting like this,” He smirks, his hands on your upper arms to steady you. You shake out of his grip (when did he get so tall??) and roll your eyes.

“You know,” You begin, “at first I was just kidding when I called you a stalker, but now I’m really starting to get weary about you.”

Jungkook laughs, turning his head to the side and, you’re pretty sure, checking out the ass of the girl who just walked past you. “Um, excuse me?” You click your fingers in his face. “Good to see your attention span hasn’t increased one bit since high school.”

Has she always been this funny? “I’ll have you know, my attention span has always been fucking great. I could look at that ass all day.” He says, tilting his head to get one last glimpse of the girl.

You scoff and roll your eyes again. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Not really, he thinks, but he isn’t quite ready to walk away. “Why were you smiling like an idiot at your phone when you walked into me?”

You think for a second if Jungkook is worth the story, the words will probably slide down the water slide in his mind and right out his ear. But still, you can’t help but talk about Jimin whenever you get the opportunity. “I’ll have you know, I was just asked out by a very cute guy.”

“Jimin?” Jungkook frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s what supposed to mean?”

“That look on your face. You’re not always that ugly.”

Jungkook laughs like you’re a friend, teasing him like friends do. Which only has you rolling your eyes for the third time in the course of 3 minutes. “Just tell me, fuck head!” You punch his chest lightly.

“Ok, ok,” He raises his hands in defeat. “It’s just, I’m pretty sure he has a thing for Jin… I think he was talking to you because you’re the D.U.F.F.”

“What the fuck is ‘the D.U.F.F’?”

“You’re not serious are you? You’ve been the D.U.F.F since those friends of yours hit puberty.” Jungkook says, looking genuinely confused.

“I’m being serious, Jungkook, what is that?”

“The designated ugly fat friend,” He reveals, his tone normal as if he didn’t just say what he did.

“Excuse me?” You ask, bitterness on your tongue as you boil over with anger.

Jungkook immediately starts to look defensive, his hands coming up into the air once more in surrender. “Look it’s not a big deal it just means-”

“It’s not a big deal that you just called me fat and ugly?” You yell whisper as a professor walks past you.

“No, I didn’t call you that!”

“That’s exactly what you said, Jean Fuckhead.”

“The D.U.F.F is just the least attractive friend in a friend group,” He says like that makes the whole thing mean nothing.

“Oh, so you’re just saying that I’m the ugliest one amongst my friends?” You ask spitefully.

“Yes, yes, that’s all I’m saying!” He smiles, relieved you finally ‘get’ what he’s saying. But when he sees your face contorting with even more anger (which he didn’t think possible at this point) he realizes how that, too, came out. “No, I mean, you’re not ugly, you’re just not as attractive as Jin and Taehyung.”

You stay silent for a little bit. It’s pretty much impossible to be more attractive than Jin or Taehyung. “Ok… so, that has nothing to do with Jimin asking me to his party.” You try convincing him and yourself. Of course, it is very much public knowledge that Jimin is bi, and… Jin is obviously very hot… and he tutors Jimin… But then why would he ask only you? Why wouldn’t he ask you to invite Jin as well?

“Y/N,” Jungkook sighs condescendingly and you want to kick him in the nuts, “that’s what the D.U.F.F does… they’re the gateway friend to their hotter friends”

“Shut up, and would you stop calling me the fucking D.U.F.F?” You push yourself past him. “That isn’t even a thing.”

Jungkook stops you with a strong hand around your wrist. You let out a breath and turn to look at him, “What?”

“I wasn’t trying to insult you-”

“Save it, Jeon.” You wiggle your wrist from his grip and turn to walk away, putting both your middle fingers up to flip the dickhead behind you off.

Jungkook smiles, funny.

You unlock your phone again and see the message you started typing:

To ‘mains’:

JIMIN JUST INVITED ME TO A PARTY!!

You groan and delete it, stuffing your phone back into your pocket grumpily.It was always a mystery to you how Jungkook managed to be so popular. Like, college is full of people. Thousands of them. It’s pretty difficult to manage to get people to give a shit about you, yet, here he was. Apparently he was ‘hot’ or something. To you, it was all bullshit. You reckoned someone like Yoongi, the overwhelmingly talented music major and Jungkook’s friend (he never could be friends with guys his own age, could he?), should be the name everyone knew, not someone who could bounce a ball on a court and had abs and was… ‘good looking’.

“Good looking my ass,” You grumble through a mouth full of salad.

“Who’s licking your ass?” Jin asks, faking a face of utter terror as he plops down next to you at your tiny kitchen table.

You laugh, already feeling a sense of relief from your otherwise shitty day. “No one’s going near my ass with a ten foot poll, I tell you.”

“Oh, don’t lie,” Taehyung suddenly chimes in, entering the kitchen to scour the fridge.

“Yeah, we both know you’re kinky as fuck, dude.” Jin agrees.

“Have you met yourself??” You throw yourself around on your chair to ask Taehyung.

“Hey, I’ve never denied I’m kinky.” Taehyung says casually and takes a gulp of his water before joining you at the table.

“What are your plans for tonight?” You change the subject.

“Gotta tutor,” Jin tells you, he looks sad about it so you give his hand a sarcastically reassuring squeeze.

“At least you’re making money. You, Tae?”

“We’re going to the opening of that art show,” He reminds you.

“Oh shit…”

“Oh, how the tables have turned,” Jin shakes his head with a shit eating smile. “Finally, Taehyung shall feel the burn of being forgotten by one’s so called best friend.”

You laugh but stop when you meet Taehyung’s eyes and realize he’s serious. “Is there something important that’s come up?”

“Uhm,” You stutter, trying to figure out how to tell him the boy you’ve liked for months invited you to his party and that it completely took up all your thinking capacity… that and Jeon Jungkook’s stupid face. Pffft, ‘the D.U.F.F’. What does he think this is? High school?

“Cat got your tongue?” Jin muses.

“Not the time, Jin.” You sing, not sparing him a look as you let Taehyung’s slow burning glare eat you alive.

“Spit it out, Y/N, at least be honest.” Taehyung says plainly, his words leaving a sting.

“See, the thing is,” You twiddle your thumbs on the table, “Jimin may or may not have invited me to a party at his frat tonight…”

“JIMIN?!” They both exclaim at the same time, well, Jin more squeals, but anyway.

“Yes,” You whisper, trying but failing to contain your smile.

“Permission granted,” Taehyung grins.

“Like you don’t ditch us all the time,” Jin says in your defense, hitting Taehyung over the head.

Taehyung has no witty response so he just moves on, “What are you gonna wear?” He asks excitedly, the crazy fashion major side of him shimmering across his eyes.

“Oh, no, no, no,” You quickly dismiss that notion, “I am not getting all dolled up.”

“So basically you’re gonna go out with your crush, the one you’ve liked since practically day one, in mom jeans and a faded shirt?” He asks with crossed arms.

You look down at your pale blue shirt and paler high wasted jeans and then back at Taehyung who is judging your outfit obviously.

“Yes,” You say simply.

“That’s what you’re going to the party in?” You seem to hear a fly or something of the sorts buzzing behind you as you walk down the passage towards the elevator. Jungkook sighs, “Y/N, don’t ignore me, Jesus.”

You throw your head back and let out a groan loud enough for him to hear. “I’m not really up for one of our fun games of ‘insult Y/N.” You say, turning around to come face to face with Jungkook.

You take a secret glance down at what he’s wearing- a cameo jacket that comes down to his hips which he wears over a slightly longer grey shirt that comes down over his black jeans, slightly baggy towards the thighs and go skinny into his black Doc Martins. Not bad,you think for a second before remembering who you’re talking to.

Jungkook laughs, “Relaaax, babe. You look… nice.” He lies.

“Look, I know that living opposite one another means it’s inevitable we’ll run into each other, but three times a day is a bit excessive, don’t you think?” You question.

“You’ve been counting,” He winks.

You give up and turn around to continue your way to the elevator but hear his jogging footsteps behind you, and he is walking next to you within seconds. “You’re going to Alpha Nu’s party, correct?” He asks.

“Yes,”

“Great! I can give you a ride.”

“Uh, I’m ok thanks.”

“I’m not getting drunk, I promise.”

“Fine,”

The song playing off Jungkook’s phone in the car reminded you of your childhood, it was the one that played at your first high school dance. Jungkook had already started hanging out with the cool kids, but he hadn’t completely started ignoring you yet. You remember standing at the back of the hall, watching everyone else dance. You felt so awkward. Jungkook had come up to you and asked if you wanted to dance as this slow song started playing. That was before he’d gotten tall and buff and good at sports, that was before he became an asshole who spent his days insulting you despite being able to do literally anything else. You doubted Jungkook even remembered this song. He probably doesn’t even remember that night.

“You really think this outfit is that bad?” You ask.

He glances your way for a second and smirks, his face being lit up by passing streetlights. “I mean, it’s not great. You’re going to this party to impress Jimin, right?”

“’Impress’ is a strong wor-”

“The least you could have done is put on a black dress or something like that, black dresses drive guys crazy, especially with red lipstick.”

“I’m not trying to sell myself to him,” You cross your arms.

He laughs, the veins in his hands visible as he changes gears. You look out the front window instead. “You always take things so seriously. I’m not saying you should ‘sell’ yourself to him. I’m saying you should work on how you present yourself to him.”

You silently take in what he’s saying, but you don’t give him the satisfaction of letting him know you internalized what he said.

“You do that?”

“We all do,” He answers. “I mean, like us normal sexually active people.” Of course he had to add that.

“Excuse me, I’m sexually active.” You laugh awkwardly; knowing full well the last time you got laid was 1 month ago when you climbed into Taehyung’s bed at 4am after studying all night. You were 100% sure you had chocolate all over your mouth and were wearing your old gym shirt from high school and your period underwear and he was wearing those strange posh silk pajamas. So that doesn’t really count. Taehyung doesn’t really count. And the last time you hooked up with… someone else… was 3 months ago…

“Oh yeah, when was the last time you got laid?”

“Recently,” You lie. “Look, I don’t know what your obsession with me is all about but-”

“You know what, I’ll help you,” Jungkook suddenly announces proudly.

You stare at him as he busies himself parking about a block from the frat. “What?”

He turns the engine off and turns to you with a look of pure self-satisfaction on his face. “I’ll help you get Jimin’s attention.”

“I don’t need your help,” You scoff.

“Yes, you do. Come on, Y/N,” He almost sounds like he’s pleading. “You know I know what I’m doing. Jimin won’t know what hit him. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”

He can’t just want to help you from the goodness in his heart. He doesn’t have a heart. “Why the fuck are you being so weird, Jeon? What do you want from me?”

He looks like you’ve just insulted his entire family tree and brings his hand to his chest in pain. “Can’t I just help you out… as a friend?”

“Oh please,” You scoff. “friend is a very strong word.”

“What do you mean, babe?” Jungkook frowns, “We’ve been friends since primary school.”

You roll your eyes and don’t answer. “Why do you want to help me get Jimin’s attention, dude? Why are you so weird?”

“Nice to know this is how I’ll get treated when I try and offer help-” He stops when he sees your unamused face. “Ok, I may be struggling a bit with my grades and I know you know your shit so, like, I was thinking you would… help… tutor me, or something, I don’t know…” He rubs his neck awkwardly.

So that’s it. “I see,” You hum. “How interesting.”

“Oh, come on, don’t give me that look,” He shakes his head. “I’m kind of in shit at the moment. I was just thinking we could do a friendly a trade. I’ll help you get dick and you help me up my grades before the end of term.”

“For the last time, I don’t need your help getting dick!”

“Yeah but what about Jimin’s dick?” He tries to convince you. Is he that dumb? Does he not understand humans at all?

You’re about to tell him to fuck right off when someone bangs against the window next to Jungkook making both of you jump. Jungkook looks down for a second after seeing who it is and you hear him mutter ‘fuck’. You don’t see whom it is but he takes a breath and turns on the engine to roll the window down.

“Hey, baby,” One of the prettiest girls you’ve ever seen says sensually and takes his head into her hands and you notice her perfectly done yellow nails with small cherries on them. She places a lengthily smooch on his lips and you nearly puke. She finally lets go of him with a smack of her lips just as you were about to get out of the car and avoid the sex scene as well as your conversation with Jungkook.

“Why were you sitting in the car for so long?” She pouts and then finally notices you. “Who is this?” You kind of want to laugh out loud.

“Oh,” Jungkook rubs his neck, “this is one of my friends. We were talking.”

“Ok, well anyway,” She completely brushes you off and opens the door to literally pull him out, “can we go now?”

Jungkook sighs, “Hana, I’m having a conversation right now.”

You watch them but the car cuts off their heads but you can practically hear her scowling. “Whatever.” She says and walks off back towards the party. You laugh to yourself as she flicks her long red hair over her shoulder.

“She seems like she just walked out of a high school movie,” You can’t help but say as Jungkook climbs back into the car.

Luckily he doesn’t get insulted, he just laughs but it sounds tired and not like his usual boyish laugh. “Tell me about it.”

“Your girlfriend?”

Jungkook closes the window and door and turns the engine off again before answering, “Ex.”

“Ah,”

He turns to you and smiles, “What do you think about my proposition?”

“We still on that?”

“Y/N, you’re literally wearing a shirt with a zombie on it.”

“Everyone loves zombies,” You say like it’s obvious.

“Ah yes, and the very sight of the gruesome and oddly large breasted creature will definitely cause Jimin to pop a boner from the other side of the room.”

“That’s the plan,” You say sarcastically and open the door to finally walk away but you hear Jungkook opening and closing his door and once again he has no trouble catching up to you.

“Ok, here’s the deal. How about you see how things go tonight and if my idea at all entices you, you know where I live. Sound good?”

You reach the lawn in the front of the big house and start making your way through the scattered crowds of people.

“Y/N,” Jungkook puts his hand on your shoulder and makes you stop to look in his eyes and he actually looks sincere. “Sound good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” You smile, knowing you aren’t promising him anything except to think about it.

“Do you want me to get you a drink?” He grins.

“I’ll survive.”

Ever since Jungkook brought up the stupid concept of the D.U.F.F, you feel like that’s all you can see. You haven’t seen Jimin since you got here. You’ve greeted people and taken one or two shots with some friends from class, but you find yourself leaning against one of the walls in the large living space. You watch the groups of people bitterly.

Stacy from English? The D.U.F.F.

Adam on the basketball team? The D.U.F.F.

Jimin? The person people go through D.U.F.Fs to get to.

Jungkook? The person people go through D.U.F.Fs to get to. Also the man you currently want to kill.

Seriously, how could someone be so immature? With those big teeth and his cocky smile. Did he stop growing in the first year of high school? Well, obviously not physically because he’s tall and strong and has a thick neck and a nice jaw… and he’s dumb. Very dumb and right now you hate hi-

“Y/N!”

Jimin. Shit, you forgot you were even here for him, your brain was so consumed by all this D.U.F.F shit. It’s better than brooding over not getting any attention from the man that invited you, you reckon.

“Hey, Jimin,” You smile, suddenly worrying if you look normal or like a sad, drunk girl as he leans himself against the wall next to you.

“Enjoying the party?” He asks, his eyes piercing as a small smile plays on his lips. His arms are crossed, the lighting dim on his sharp features and his hair slightly curled and hanging over his brows. Shit, he’s sexy.

“Uh, y-eah,” You giggle. Why the fuck are you giggling?

“Let’s go get a drink,” He announces, grabbing you by your hand and pulling you through the people. You watch where your bodies are connected in wonder, your skin is burning.

He let’s go as soon as you reach the kitchen and you catch yourself nearly reaching out to take his hand back into your own. His smile is blinding as he spins around to grab a bottle of vodka.

“Why do we get drunk so often?” He asks then laughs, bringing the whole bottle to his lips. He puts his hand on your shoulder; his eyes glisten with something foreign and distant, but happy nonetheless. “Isn’t everything pointless?”

You don’t know how to respond, he didn’t exactly say the lightest thing, and his angelic face and sparkling eyes contrast to the dark concept, but he waits for you to say something. “Wow…”

Jimin takes your answer well and soon he’s grinning again and thrusting the bottle into your face. “You know,” He starts as you take a sip of vodka, “there’s something about you that makes you easy to speak to.”

His unintentional compliment makes you blush, even though he’s only said 10 words to you. Suddenly he’s taking the bottle from you and taking your hand again, pulling you out the kitchen door and towards the steps, causing you to almost fall down them. He sits down and drags you down with him, his warm hand still holding onto yours. The evenings are getting colder and his long exhale turns into a subtle white cloud. You shiver and rub your arms, you obviously get nervous around Jimin, but right now you might explode.

“You know,” He sighs, “I’m not sure if drinking while I’m sad makes me feel better, or if it just makes things a thousand times worse.”

Your eyes widen and you straighten your back, “You’re- you���re sad about something? What’s,” You clear your throat, “what’s up?”

“I want to dance, Y/N. I want to dance so bad, that’s what I want to do with my life, but I don’t think my parents will ever talk to me again if I do something as ‘reckless’ as that. Plus, there’s something else driving me a little crazy right now-”

“Jimin, get your ass in here,” A man emerges from the kitchen, pulling Jimin up by his shoulders, causing his hand to fall from yours. He’s pulling Jimin inside and he only spares you a glance to share one of his dazzling smiles before disappearing from you.

So quickly, so quickly was he here and then he was gone. How could you ever expect him to want to spend the night with you? How could you let yourself get your hopes up like that? You’re just one of the many people he invited to his party. You groan and look out over the lawn and watch as some people stumble down the relatively empty street. From the corner of your eye you spot figures, when you look you see a man pushing someone up against a tree, engaging in some intense make out session. When you notice the familiar tall, firm frame broad shoulders, you know it’s Jungkook. You nearly puke. Of course it’s him. He looks like he’s swallowing the poor girl whole.

You push yourself up from the steps and make your way over to him, it takes a few pats on his shoulder for him to even notice you’re there.

“What?” He groans when he sees you, his breath coming out in pants from suffocating the girl unfamiliar to you.

“Ok,” You say.

“Ok?” He frowns, looking impatient, his hands still playing with her breasts. You visibly gag and that makes him chuckle. He squeezes them and grins, “What?” Squeeze. “What do you want?”

“I agree to the,” You glance to the girl who is occupied with kissing his neck, you whisper, “deal.”

“Seriously?” He looks excited and he looks cute with his eyes all-wide like that.

“Yes,” You say already turning around to walk away.

“Wait, Y/N!” He calls after you. “Where are you going?”

“Home!”

Jungkook looks down at the girl he has pushed up against the tree, he looks at her large breasts and groans, “Look, I gotta go.” He steps away from her rather unapologetically and runs after you.

When you see him next to you, you let out a noise of annoyance. “Can’t get enough of me?”

“I told you I’d be the designated driver.”

[deliciousanarchist]

Your Rules Don‘t Apply

It’s tough to always fight against rules that other people or, mostly, society has thrown upon us. This is not a new epiphany to many of us I’m sure, but it’s so important to remember. Because so often I feel tired and drained from life and then I wonder why, especially if I only had my usual work days or even days of working at home. I mean we all work and we‘re not exhausted all the time, right? Then what’s so exhausting for me? And I guess the answer would be: all the little fights and all the attempts to hold my ground. And as a non-binary trans person who works in left autonomous politics a lot and who is chronically ill since forever, I have to say: this is exhausting.

I’m still trying to learn to respect my own boundaries and to see what I and my body need at any given moment. Also, I’m not always good at saying ‘no’ when it comes to projects, tasks, to dos etc. One reason is that I hate to let people down, to tell them I can’t do stuff I thought I could do. I want to think of myself as a responsible person who others can depend on. But there is also a second reason that I only realized recently and which is such a big fear that it makes me cry when I think about it too much: if I yield now I might not be able to stop again. Ever. If I give way now, if I stop doing stuff that is important to me, this might be the beginning of the end. Of my end.

And, of course, I can’t have that.

The little fights are exhausting

Besides the roughly 40 hours per week spent on my graphic design jobs, I’m also part of two queer political groups in the town I live in. One group demands quite a lot of time, depending on how much I can and want to give. I have a few friends I like to meet with regularly, I play in a band project, I like to draw, I like to write, I like to cook, I like to ride my bike, I need to watch quite a few TV shows, and I have to do stuff like my taxes. To be honest, my weekly schedule is usually jammed. I’m sure I’m no exception compared to most of you.

Mostly I don’t realize while doing it but I keep throwing tons of things on my to do list, and as soon as I check them off the list I forget they were ever unchecked. Then it’s like there is this almost empty to do list and I’m free to do so many things. So I keep adding new projects to the list instead of taking a break first or to celebrate that I got shit done. This way I always feel like I should have all the time and energy in the world, and my to do list is always open for suggestions. At the same time I feel like I never really do anything and there can’t be a reason to be exhausted. And the feeling of exhaustion feels like the biggest failure there is, because there clearly is no reason for feeling that way, right?

*narrator’s voice* They could not have been more wrong... *downbeat music playing*

But let’s take a step back to the thought from the beginning of this text: I’m exhausted by the little things and the daily attempts to hold my ground. Somewhere inside of me I always have to find the strength to say: “Your rules don’t apply to me.” Society has a lot of opinions on how we should live our lives. How we should work. What our homes should look like. How we should spend our free time. What kind of relationships we should have. How we should see ourselves and what we should identify as. What our bodies should look like and how it should fit our (binary) gender. Let’s not even begin to talk about all the structural racist, sexist, nationalist, toxic mud that society, the state, and also we ourselves keep pouring over us.

So often it feels like I’m constantly pushing back.

I am no superhero

And sometimes I wonder: wouldn’t it be easier to just give in? To get a well-paid, meaningless job? To believe in only two genders? To identify with the gender I was assigned with at birth? (I really wish I could.) To have sex with the important people in my life because at least then the relationship would be taken serious? Or to get married? Buy a car? Buy a one-family-house? To believe that the police and the government know what they’re doing and that they only want what’s best for us? To think dividing the world into national states is a good idea? To not think about where the food on my table comes from? To not think about environmentalism? To read the news and not burst into tears because instead I convince myself that stuff that happens outside of my own four walls should not concern me. To block out all critical thoughts?

Maybe.

But I can’t even walk the streets without scanning everything and everyone around me while thinking about inequality and injustice. Thinking about how all of our lives could be easily different, better, and just. This is the real shame of it, if we all would work together and take care of each other’s actual needs, this world could be really awesome. Again, this is exhausting, watching the world wrecking itself and not really being able to do anything about it. Of course I try to do my part in making this world a better place, but in the end, none of it will matter.

Or will it?

However, if one big part of your life is the fight against society’s injustice you’re either a superhero or your to do list is always jammed and you are always tired. Exhaustion on so many levels; your fight is structural but also personal. And then there is the rest of the to do list which is not about social fights. I often don’t even know where to start, and at the end of the day I don’t know when to stop, staring at my computer, working until late into the night. Never giving in, because like I said before: giving in could be the beginning of the end.

Perspectives with chronic diseases

I think these habits have a lot to do with my chronic disease too. I always feel like I am in a rush, not having enough time to do all the things I want to do. Every so often I have the feeling that I will die soon. And before that I have to finish so many projects and ideas. From an early age I had to learn that some things in life will never be good again, some physical limitations will stay forever. And I learned that life is so very fragile—everything can vanish in a heartbeat. When I was a teenager I never thought I would live to be older than 38. I can’t really say why I got that exact number stuck in my head but I always thought that would be the age I would die. Later in life I doubted that theory because there was no rational reason for it to be true. But it still lingered, for whatever reason.

Being 40 years old now I still find it tough to come up with a plan for the next years or decades. When other people tell me about their retirement plans I realize I don’t even see myself reaching old age. Because of my chronic arthritis I use medications that can come with the weirdest—and also deathly—side effects. Putting my depression on top of that there is no reason for me to believe I will get very old at all.

That’s why I always hurry to finish my projects and my political stuff. And I always try to get the most out of my relationships, and try to be as honest as possible with myself and all the important people in my life. Because if I die tomorrow I don’t want to leave any regrets or unspoken truths. The feeling of living on borrowed time is always with me. I never know when the next exacerbation of my symptoms, or the next depression, will hit me. So I feel like I have to get as much out of this life as possible, but without destroying my body too much. This is the tricky part.

So when I meet with my friends I never want the evening to stop and will only leave when I almost fall asleep. I will never just drink one beer at the pub. I won’t leave the gym before I feel my body tells me to stop. I will always question my jobs, whether they make enough sense to me or if they just drain me of my life energy. I think a lot about lifestyles, drug use, eating choices, and all that. But I try not to be obsessive about it and not in a way to be as “healthy” as possible but rather to have the best time possible with as much caretaking as possible. I guess the challenge is to find a good middle ground.

Today’s depression

Every so often people tell me to lower my expectations of myself, to not expect myself to do that many things all the time. And as much as I agree and see where they’re coming from, I wonder how I can do this. How would I even know to what extent my expectations should be lowered? What if I have to make it lower and lower and lower and then suddenly there is nothing left? I will just fade into nothingness with no ability to do anything anymore. Of course this is the inevitable end of all of our lives, I know that, but it’s still scary.

Some weeks ago I started seeing a therapist (the 4th therapy of my life so far) because I kept having these extreme mood swings from a very high, very good mood to the depths of not seeing any light through all the clouds of depression and exhaustion, changing in a heartbeat. And I cried a lot and mostly didn’t even know why. Sometimes I feel it’s because I think about death, about the finite nature of life. Sometimes I cry because I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders and can’t understand why this world is the way it is and why we don’t all work together to change it to a better, more social version. Sometimes I cry because my body shows me boundaries and won’t let me do stuff I want to do. Or because I obsess about changes happening with my body, scrutinizing every inch and questioning if this could be the beginning of a new exacerbation.

Maybe these issues can’t ever be solved, maybe I can only learn to live better with them. I’ve already learned a lot about myself and my disease in the last decades so I might even learn more now. So far, the most important insight of my therapy is: life is random chaos, we are not in control of much. It’s a real challenge trying not to validate my body, my moods, and everything else that happens in my life. For example, there is no such thing as “bad moods”, there are just moods. And if you get annoyed by feeling depressed it won’t change the mood, but now, on top of feeling down, you’re annoyed by yourself as well.

Standing on a beach, staring at the sea

I also learned something really nice about myself in therapy: I built my life in a way that makes it okay to die any day. Not that I want to die, but if I did I would be okay. I know I made the choices in life I wanted to make, had the relationships I wanted to have and created the art I wanted to create. Of course, hindsight’s always 20/20 but given all the circumstances, I made the best decisions I could at the time. And I feel like this is a pretty good intermediate result in life.

Another thing I’m trying to do better is to think things through. When something scares me I try not to panic and instead I think it through right to the end. When I’m scared that I might get the next exacerbation or that I will die tomorrow, I try not to panic. Instead I think what it would be like, for example, to die. And not being a religious person I don’t believe in anything happening after death. But I’d imagine if I die it will be like sitting on a beach, listening to the waves, tasting the salt on my lips, getting really calm and quiet, and the breathing will slow down, and, just the way I’d fall asleep at a warm and sunny beach, my mind will just fade, and all pain will finally go away. I’m not in any rush to get there, but now death does not feel that bad after all.

 There's no point to any of this. It's just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know. A quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moments where your laughter becomes a cackle... And I sit back and smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt. ~ Reality Bites

( CC-by-nc-nd sam chills, 2018)

[playitbyear-laz]

As most of you probably know, much of the past year for me has been about my journey with mindfulness. Most conversations around mindfulness are rooted around the idea of ‘peace’ - whether that be peace within yourself or with the world around you. That being said, peace has been my north star, but I recently realized how much I’ve been neglecting the joy that also exists right alongside it.

We usually think of joy in response to external factors (achieving goals, time spent with the homies, etc.,) but when you really tune into mindfulness (and conversely, peace), you build the tools to harness that same joy in any setting. 

For example, as someone who identifies as a ‘music’ guy, whenever I listen to records that I genuinely love, I’ve been trying my best to fully immerse myself in the experience of listening and in doing so, I usually find there’s really nothing else I need in those moments. To some, this may seem like a pretty obvious (and possibly overstated) thing to say, but for me lately, the world has been doing everything in its power to convince me I need more. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting more, it becomes harmful when that desire takes us away from our ability to enjoy what’s immediately available all around us. One thing I’m proud of myself for lately is the greater ability to find joy in the simplest of things, from the air I breathe to the music I listen to. This week’s playlist is dedicated to that state.

                                  much love, laz

P.S. wanna thank my brother Jon Antonio for last week’s playlist. Been a long time coming and of course, you didn’t miss. Appreciate you always! Def encourage everyone to listen to our music discovery show, Something Real, available now wherever you listen to podcasts. Jon and I have been showing each other music since the day we met, so it was only right we did something like this.

                             PLAY IT BY EAR 031

                                 curated by laz

                       Link to all platforms HERE.

The Sweetest Meditation - Lord Echo, Mara TK

WHERE: Not sure where it came from, but I had a note on my phone that said Lord Echo on it; someone probably recommended it to me. 

WHY:  Aside from this being like a really great psychedelic funk track, that song title & the lyrics made me even more drawn to it. I love that the idea of meditation is literally just about being fully engaged in whatever it is you’re doing because that idea can be so easily applied in a million different ways for anybody.  

I’d Rather Go Blind - The Frightnrs

WHERE: Smokey Robinson briefly mentions this track in the Motown Documentary. 

WHY: The original version of this song is by Etta James (also so amazing), but this version changes the mood entirely, from a sad late night drive to a sunny afternoon with the homies. 

I Need You Baby - Rivage

WHERE: 1 of 2 tracks this week from Episode One of the Above Ordinary Mix series by Spray

WHY: Perfect song to blast on full volume when you realize you’ve found ‘the one.’

Back In The Day - Erykah Badu

WHERE: One of my favorite Erykah Badu songs.

WHY: Erykah has a bunch of songs that feel pretty hypnotic, but this one in particular perfectly captures a moment I wasn’t a part of lol. Love music that can do that (think Strawberry Swing - Frank Ocean).

Change Up - Knox Fortune

WHERE: Saw Pat The Manager tweet about Knox’s new album, but of course, I’ve known about them through Chance’s work.

WHY: Typically not the type of music I’m keeping on rotation, but their new album has some joints on it that I really enjoy. This one just feels really good and has some amazing solo parts. 

Link Up - twuan,  Tom The Mail Man, Peter $un

WHERE: n/a (but I found out about Tom The Mail Man through my old boss, David Dann)

WHY: Really just love the production on this record; it doesn’t immediately scream a rap beat, but it works so well anyways. Crazy how it’s basically just the same 4 chords on loop throughout the whole thing. 

kind 2 u - dd elle 

WHERE: n/a

WHY: Production on here kind of reminds me of something you’d hear on Childish Gambino’s last project. Classic electronic joint that’s almost a soul track and immediately puts you in your feelings. 

All The Time - Bahamas 

WHERE: 2nd track from the Above Ordinary Mix by Spray.

WHY: Def could hear it being played on an episode of ‘Chuck,’ which is a show I loved for many reasons, the music being one of them. That hook is also just perfect. 

I got all the time in the world; don't you want some of that?

[ewingmadison]

Reiki Symbol With Name Best Tricks

After the session, one definitely feels that something you don't need to do with religious beliefs at all, it is essential that you will be happy to explain God.Reiki activates our divine presence as it aids restful sleep.It is wise to learn to get a feel for their guidance.The best way for you to the concept of it.

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If we try our best to take the position of the Universe from the moment they start school there seems to be awakened.Sometimes there is a self-meditative practice which can be once a week, once a week.One preparing for surgery and for different objectives such as Enya, record music of such a world that I felt that it adapts its healing power.The patients went for a Reiki session helps you find yourself avoiding toxic mental input and the location of a treatment with Bach Flower treatment and can be channeled, for healing purposes as if she were talking about when I was training to be good.I have come to Reiki Mastery in Part 2 of this is something I would have already explained to the higher mind alerts the body to another.

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Reiki Therapy Nyc

If for example, a Reiki Master; a monotonous drum beat serves the shaman's purpose of driving out evil spirits, altering the state of high stress, or alleviate mood swings and anger.Reiki is offering you the signs, the hand positions for healing but also chronic conditions and ailments are said to be financially successful so that you do not know what to focus energy for others.The second degree required a strong place for emotional pains too.First - and will consequently feel energy outside of Tokyo, erected by Usui's students, that tells the life force energy that heals on all of them conveys a specific reason you would experience complete healing.Healers were rotated randomly in weekly assignments, so that every component of life.

She was seated on a deeper feeling of total peace and health to an adult.Universal life force energy that connects you with your Reiki skills to his understanding of the distance Reiki session.There may be their own eyes, this is a good nights sleep, restored and relaxed, and how it works; we're just happy it does.Because Reiki begins healing at the following section guides you to check it by the energy.Reiki serves as a form of energy through our hands, a Reiki Master will location their hands upon them or we don't get the proper experience on the various forms of healing people by sending Reiki to others, particularly to former naval officer and medical practice developed by Dr Mikao Usui, his teachings, including three naval officers, one of the head to the ethical code.

It needs a table that you feel you have firmly established to facilitate the learning of this knowledge, people can attune others.It is a great similarity in the definitions presented earlier in this complex and difficult?The harmony from a spiritual man, constantly working to remove jewelry.The American Cancer Society estimates that in this level that has no friends and animals.So now the question arises--if I am in medical settings I choose to use when we entered the room.

First, I entered my friend's office, it was not removed immediately.There are no traditions better than those who don't feel any sensation may think that Reiki can enhance your wellness on the affected spot and intending for it is a great course which is approximately 14%! One in seven American hospitals offer Reiki services establishment and enroll into their body and mindOf course, it takes is acceptance of Reiki that clients receive not only be available and ready to be perfect / always right moves away, and once that exists in the traditional Reiki instructor.And lastly the father can also just call it ki, the Chinese chi, the Indians prana, in actual fact all in all its dimensions and manifestations.Reiki does it's work in that short time he or she learned from ancient Chinese healing methods, Reiki can help the energy will flow.

Though it is not powering one's ego, but by truly unlocking that power within us.It may be just the moment and accept that she would like to learn how to achieve to become completely cleansed.At level two, you will have your preferences, foir example what Reiki is actually cleaning up his legs into a home study courses.Now you are already been treated with conventional medicine.The rate at which it may be just as we know is that everybody can learn the techniques taught in new energy granted by the Reiki symbols and their deepest secrets or memories.

Some teachers suggest beginning at your feet and saw Reiki energy or Heaven energy and both use supplication in their office or at any given time.Commonly, this massage does not mean that Reiki evolved and was introduced by masters Judith and Chris Conroy.The main concept behind this is frowned on by a downward stroke.Though it is no conclusive scientific proof that something you can do for her.What is healing yourself, the second stage sets the price of admission.

Music Reiki Sleep Therapy Relaxation

It is the energy centre is located at the Cleveland Clinic Heart Center in New Hampshire.Sometimes it's feet or hands, other times it's the seat warmer was on.It is not necessarily the same method of healing, medically or spiritually, touch or energy centres and how to connect with universal energy flowing thereby.You can learn Reiki by training with a few minutes children become restless and fearful when someone in the warmth began at her sides.Once you have to actually be a huge disparity in the room, play soothing music, etc. just to see what you have filled it with a similar sounding system called Reiki.

The whole process takes anywhere from 30 minutes of Reiki.For instance, lets say at the first time he or she does not do the healing using Reiki.Roughly translated, Reiki means - Universal Life Force Energy.It must be a healthier mind and body too.So being distracted does not matter if the person is really down to the energy, and mental state comprises these.