#i also spent 15 minutes having a full on breakdown because WHAT THE FUCK and also i am so tired and stressed and that was truly awful

[clonewarsahsoka]

I've just had such an awful fucking time

[weasleysjoke]

Daydreaming

Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Summary: There were two features of Reid’s that drove you insane: his lips and his hands. You couldn’t help yourself to get horny because of the gestures he made while reading. It got to the point where you embarrassed yourself daydreaming of him.

Words: 2.7k

Warnings: Smut, Oral (Female and male receiving), Penetration, Chocking, Dom Specer.

A/N: As I always remind, English is not my first nor second language so if there’s any grammar error please don’t come at me. I had to write this because of my obsession with Matthew’s hands.

Y/N, calm fucking down. There’s people dying and you are being a horny asshole. Breathe and concentrate.

I have to remind myself constantly to keep my eyes on the files and not stare at Dr. Sexy Hands. Spencer and I have been stuck on the commissary, on a little village lost in the middle of nowhere, to keep reading the files of a few suspects that fitted the profile of a murderer we were investigating.

“Y/N, I think I found something.” I hear Spencer’s voice calling me and I turn to give him my full attention. “This guy fits perfectly the profile and his mother died a month ago. That could be enough motive for his psychotic breakdown.” As I read the file of the man, I realize that Reid’s completely right and we start calling the team to let them know.

It only toke us an stressful evening to finish the paperwork and we go back to Virginia on the plane during nighttime. Everybody seem to be extra tired and had fallen sleep just as we sat on the plane. Spence and I were the only ones who were awake, blaming it on the amount of coffee’s that we toke that day.

Reid and I were the only ones sitting by the plane table, both with a book on our hands. To be honest, I was paying 0 attention to the book. Since I started on the BAU a year ago, Spencer and I always had a weird type of tension. Everybody knew I was hella attracted to him, but he didn’t notice any of the many signals threw at him.

He was so fucking oblivious for this type of things. I can believe how a genius profiler couldn’t see that I had the hots for him since day one.

As a profiler there are things that you pick out of people, and even more if you have a crush on them. There were two things that drove me insane about Reid: his lips and his hands.

HIS MOTHERFUCKING HANDS.

On one side, when he started ranting about stuff he knew or was passionate about his lips would dry out. So, with that happening, he had the constant need of travelling his tongue throw his plumped lips to hydrate them.

HE. WAS. CONSTANTLY. LICKING. THEM.

I almost caught myself moaning out loud on the conference room one day that I was extra horny, and Spencer was explaining to me the movie he saw that night. His eyes were fixed on mine and my eyes kept travelling from his to his lips and moving hands. Emily, who sat by my side, smirked and shot me a knowingly look.

On the other side, HIS HANDS. Everybody knew he could read 20.000 words per minute, which was crazy by itself. To help his reading his hands followed rapidly the sentences and flipped the pages with ease.

It may sound stupid, but I got wet several times just watching him read. Reading Reid combined his two most attractive features. His lips moved following the words and his hands accompanied the book pages.

So, after all the tension accumulated in these few days of work, Spencer currently reading by my side felt like a sick joke. A fucking punishment.

All I could think about is how his full lips would feel against your neck, travelling towards your tits and sucking hardly on one of your nipples while the other one was being pinched with his long fingers. How his mouth and hands would feel against your core, his tongue against your clit and one hand against your neck.

You hadn’t realized that everybody had already got off the plane, except for Reid who couldn’t get out of his sit because you were blocking him.

“Y/N!” His hands made a set of movements in front your eyes to wake you from the daydream you were having. His eyes were looking at you worryingly. “Are you okay? You look kinda flushed, maybe you are getting sick.”

“Oh! Sorry, Spence. I was just daydreaming, or more like nightdreaming since it’s 2 am.” I tried to joke.

“Did you know that most people spend 47% of their waking time daydreaming every day? Although, there’s no consistent theory or definition among psychologists on the different types of daydreams.”

To be honest, I did not hear a word he just said. My eyes were locked on his lips and after he said the last word, he drew his lips against his lower lip.

I moaned.

I. FUCKING. MOANED. OUT. LOUD.

Somebody kill me right now.

Embarrassed I falsely coughed. “I didn’t know. That sounds interesting, Reid, but we should leave already. It’s so late.”

Spencer seemed to be speechless because he didn’t say a word just a ‘goodbye’ left his lips after getting to the parking lot.

I fucked it up, I need to talk to Emily and drink a bottle of wine.

“Emily.” I groaned as I hear she picked the call.

“Y/N, I was asleep. What happened? Is there something wrong?” She asked worryingly but annoyed at the same time.

“I messed up. I messed up so badly. I don’t think I can ever look at Spencer’s face again.”

I heard her laugh. “What happened? Do you wanna come to my place and explain it to me?”

“Sure, prepare the wine.” I hang up after hearing her laugh again.

In less than 10 minutes I’m already ringing her door.

“Hey baby, come in.” Emily greeted me and passing me a glass full of white wine.

As I sat down on her sofa, I give a big gulp and sigh. “I moaned. He did his lip thingy while ranting about daydreaming and I spent the whole travel in the plane thinking about him, his hands. You know what he does to me! And then, I was just staring at his lips and couldn’t help myself but moan out loud. I’m so embarrassed.”

Emily starts laughing so much that tears started falling of her eyes. I sigh because I knew that she would react like that and I finish my glass and grab her full glass of wine and finishing it in one gulp.

She stops laughing but a smile is plastered in her face. “How did he react?”

“We made it back to the parking lot without crossing any word. He just muttered a ‘goodbye’ and left.” I sigh again and close my eyes feeling already dizzy because of the wine.

I pour myself another glass and drink it.

Emily stares at me till I finish my third glass. “What if you call him and tell him, finally, that you’ve got the hots for him?”

“You know what?! I’m going to do it.” I pick my phone from the table and ring him.

As he picks up, Emily whispers “Put it on speaker.”

I pressed the speaker option and hear Spencer’s voice: ‘Y/N?”

“Hi, Reid. Remember that I was daydreaming on the plane?” I continue without waiting for a response, but he murmurs a ‘yes’. “All I could think about is about your mouth on my pussy and your hands on my neck.”

“Oh my god” I heard Emily say.

“You don’t fucking know what your lips and hands do to me every time you are reading, and you read a fucking lot, Reid.”

I stop my rant and wait for him to say something, but I’m left waiting.

I sigh on defeat. “I’m sorry, I just thought I had to let you know. I’m not going to make things weird in work and if you want to I can stop talking to you. It would hurt but-“

“Y/N” I hear his voice come out my phone like a growl. “Where are you right now?”

Fuck, I’m wet again.

“I’m at Emily’s right now.” I say unsure.

“Give me 15 minutes, I’m coming.” And then he hangs up.

WHAT?

HE IS COMING?!

TO GET ME?!

“Emily, what did just happen?”

“You are getting laid, my girl.” She says loudly. “Are you wearing cute underwear?”

·

I receive a text from Reid saying to come down and I obey immediately saying ‘goodbye’ and ‘thanks’ to Emily.

I see Reid’s car and just as I got into the passenger sit and put the safety belt, he starts driving.

“Y/N. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fucking sound you made on the plane.” My eyes grew wide and turned to stare at him. “I never thought you could actually be attracted to me, although Morgan and Emily always kept insisting that you did.”

I chuckled. “Spence, I’ve always tried to make you notice me, but you are so fucking oblivious. I thought you didn’t want anything from me.”

“How could I not want anything from you? Are you crazy? You are stunning, funny, and so fucking smart. You’ve everything.” He says staring at me as he just parked in front of his apartment.

His eyes drift off to my lips and proceeds to lick his.

And again, I moan out loud.

“Fuck, Y/N. Let’s get inside before I fuck you right here in the car.”

Jesus-fucking-christ.

I’ve never heard him sound like this, a new kind of confidence occupied his body and it showed.

As we reached the lift, the tension between the two of us was so dense I couldn’t breathe steadily. The door dings and opens, Spencer grabbed my hand and takes me to his apartment. Without waiting a second after closing the door, he led me into his room.

“Sit down.” He ordered me and I don’t hesitate to do it. “Before we start this, I want to tell you that I won’t be gentle. Also, this ain’t going to be a one-time thing, after this I’m going to ask you out on a date. Just so you know that I’m not playing with your feelings or that this is a one-sided thing.”

“Reid, I need your lips on mine, right now.”

“This is the only time I’m going to take an order from you, baby.”

He launched himself over my body and went for my lips. With my bottom lip between his teeth, I opened my mouth granting pass to his tongue. As our tongues dance with each other a loud moan left my mouth.

“Y/N… those fucking sounds are going to be the death of me.” He lifts my weigh while turning around and I end up straddling him. “Remind me again of what you daydreamed back in the plane.” He says while leaving kisses on my check and continued with my jaw.

“You started biting my neck…” he proceeded to do that going for the sweet spot just below my ear. “Fuck.” I moan.

“What else?”

His teeth nipped strongly on my skin and I closed my mouth to try to not make a sound, failing of course.

“I imagined you eating me out and then chocking me.”

He separated his head of my neck and looked at me with a new sparkle in his eyes. “If you behave, I might just do that, baby.”

Between kisses, I toke his shirt off and he toke mine, followed by my bra.

“Fuck, I’ve dreamed so many nights about these two. Had to jerk off so many times in my shower thinking about coming onto them.” I moaned at his dirty talk; I should have known he was good with his words in bed too. “Maybe we could do that another time, now I’m going to give my full attention to this right here.” He said while cupping my pussy with his hand.

He pushed me into the bed on my back and toke my pants and underwear off. His mouth traveled between my tits and continued on my abdomen. He started kissing my thighs but every time he got close to where I needed him the most, he started kissing my other thigh.

“Please, Spencer.” I implored.

“What do you want, Y/N?” He arched an eyebrow.

“You know what I want, Reid.”

“Use your words.” He blew air into the center of my core.

“I need you, your tongue, fingers… I don’t care. I need you. PLEASE.”

“If you beg me like that, baby.”

His tongue attacked my clitoris while two of his fingers entered me.

“Spencer!” I screamed.

With a smirk, his tongue continued lapping my clit while his fingers curled inside me. His mouth left my core to give attention to my boobs. His fingers still working in and out and his teeth nipping my nipples was starting to be too much for me. My legs started trembling and sweat was covering every inch of my body. The warm sensation was overwhelming and as he pinched my nipple and bitted the other one, I came.

“Fucking hell Reid.” I moaned. As I came down of my high, he licked his fingers.

“You taste so good, baby. It almost feels like a sin to taste like this, I wanna eat this pussy every day.”

My mouth opened speechless at his words.

Is it possible to be already wet again and ready for more? Because Spencer just had made it possible for me.

“I want those pinks lips wrapped around my cock. Now.”

He grabbed the back of my thighs lifting me up again to straddle him. We get into a deep kiss in which I get to taste myself and help him get out of his pants and boxers. His cock completely erected stood now on his stomach.

Licking my lips hungrily, I went directly to wrap the tip with my lips and tacking it out making a ‘pop’ sound.

“Shit.” He groans.

With the help of my hand, I start slow movements on his length. I take him fully on my mouth earning a loud moan that went directly to the inside of my pussy. His hand grabbed my hair, stopping me for a second.

“Y/N, I’m gonna come in your mouth if you don’t stop.”

“Do it, Reid” I bob my head faster and I toke his balls on my hands massaging them.

“Holy shit.” He growled and came inside my mouth. His saltiness fulling me. “That felt so good baby.” He sighs and cups my face bringing it to his.

We kissed and I smiled. “Now, can I finally have that cock inside my pussy?”

He tucked my hair with his hand making my neck to be on full exposure to his mouth. “Come and ride me baby.” Ordered while attacking my neck again.

He’s going to leave me so many marks.

I positioned my pussy right on his cock and pushed it inside me. We both groaned at the same time.

“You feel so good around me.”

I moaned at his words and started riding him. We both were a moaning mess, but he seemed to get frustrated.

“I need to go faster.” He pushed me into my back. He pushed himself into me, getting more in depth in this new position. My legs were on his shoulders and his cock was deeper than ever. One of his hands traveled to my clit drawing circles on it and his other hand positioned on my neck with a light pressure.

“Harder.” I demanded between moans.

He did what I said and putted more pressure on my neck.

“Y/N, come for me.” As if I just needed to hear him say it, my whole body reacted to his words giving me one of the best orgasms I have ever had.

“Oh my god.” I moaned. My clenched pussy wrapped around him was what he needed to have his release.

“Baby, that was the best sex I’ve ever had.” He said lying on his back and getting off me.

We lied catching our breath.

“Same, Spence.”

He then seemed to be on deep thought.

“What are you thinking about?”

“That now, everytime I read all I’m going to think is about you moaning.”

I laugh at his response. “Finally, you will suffer some consequences for being hot without realizing.”

We laugh.

“As I promised,” he started and turned all his body to face mine, “do you wanna go out with me on a date?”

I looked at him sweetly while we cupped my cheek with one hand, getting my hair out my face.

“Of course, idiot. It was time you asked.”

[sugarcomatosed]

i love your stories so much!! and was wondering if you can give some writing tips perhaps? 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

Breaking this up into sections for you + putting it under a cut cause I went overboard. 😅

General Writing Tips

These work for both academic and creative writing.

Make an outline.

It doesn't have to be a formal one, but having at least a general idea of the scenes you want to include is helpful. If I know my fic is going to be a longer one (like Don't Hesitate was and my current WIP is), I break down the larger story beats i want to hit on a piece of paper or my iPad.

It's good to know what you're planning to do, in a any piece I usually have a single specific scene I want to do and depending on what it is, I might either just do the scene I want to or turn into something longer.

Draft, draft, draft.

I cannot stress the importance of going through and reviewing your work. This is a big part of any sort of writing.

Your first idea isn't always your best idea. As you work on a piece you might find your original idea is holding you back, focus shifts! Don't be afraid to let your work change as you go. It's not always easy to let go of your original idea but if you find it's not working, you have to let it change. Sections will need to be rewritten, things have to be readjusted to fit with later sections. Reread for clarity while you're drafting and look to see if this makes sense to you, or reads well to you. If you can't follow it and you wrote it, chances are your reader can't either. Did you use the same phrase again and again? Find and search it on your doc to double check.

Sometimes you have to cut things you really like because they just don't contribute to the fic anymore. Save those bits and use them somewhere else!In a lot of my longer pieces I will write a paragraph, realize that's not where it should go and cut/paste it into another part of the doc because the pacing/scene doesn't make sense where I had it originally, but it works somewhere else.

If you're stuck, skip around, come back and then stitch the bits you have written together.

Don't Focus on a Word Count

This might be controversial, but I'm of the opinion just because something is longer does not make it better. Some works are short, and that's okay! I very rarely try to aim for a specific count of words unless it's for a prompt exchange or a personal challenge. I write till I feel the piece is done. Some stories require more words, some require less.

Don't Hesitate is a great example of this again, because all I wanted to do was a bittersweet first kiss fic, but jumping write into the kiss wouldn't get the full effect I wanted. Meanwhile, with Old Habits all I wanted to do was write dumb comedic kisses, we didn't need a 2k preamble.

Get Someone You Trust to Edit

My go to editor for the past six years or so is one of my good friends. She has edited everything from college papers to my fics for me before I post them to read for clarity, find any funky phrases or misspelled words I missed, and I do the same for her when she asks! A fresh set of eyes makes a world of a difference. Find someone to trade fics with or ask a friend! They might have good suggestions you never thought of, or be able to tell what you were going for when you don't even know yourself.

I also rely on my friends a lot to brainstorm and talk my ideas out before I start because it helps me think and figure out what I need. It's super common for me to text someone and say "im gonna spitball at you, that okay?" and then spend twenty minutes chatting through my ideas.

Have Reference Material

For my 13sar fics, I regularly go back and review/screenshot videos of the dialogue to make sure I am staying consistent with story events, character nuance and small details. You don't have to go crazy, but it is really helpful to have your source material to go back to and check yourself against. In non creative writing I always had a pile of papers highlighted with my own notes on the margins.

Take Breaks/Pace Yourself

Know your own limits, and if you are working and working on something and it's not coming out leave it alone and come back to it. I'm really bad at this personally because when I get an idea in my head I want to see it through but sometimes you gotta step back! It's not healthy to keep working on things and overwork yourself. Stretch, get up go for a walk.

Write What You Want to Write

Don't focus on what people want to read. Focus on what you like. Find a topic, a scene, anything that you are passionate about and the rest will follow. The only time I write fic for other people is when I am writing for a friend. Even prompt requests I only take open ended ones, if I am not interested in writing it it's not gonna happen. I know it's super hard and I get really anxious sometimes about letting people down now, or worrying people won't like something but then I step back and remind myself this is a hobby and I'm doing it for fun.

Play to Your Strengths

You shouldn't try to write like me, you should try to write like yourself. Find what skills you have and use them to your advantage!

I can't give you a step by step list to write like me, because nobody in the world has my background! We're all unique. Everything I've listed so far I know because I'm not a beginner anymore! I'm in my twenties and have come from a strong academic writing background.

I took on an intensive course load in high school, and then went onto college for a sociology degree. I very rarely had test based finals and at the end of each semester would have five 10-15 page papers to submit. Straight up some of my skills come from having read and studied the works of anthropologist Clifford Geertz. I am not saying you should read anthropology/sociology texts. Unless you like that sort of thing lol

I also have 6+ years of theater experience (acting & directing), I use this all the time for my writing. When I think about a scene, I think about how I would work through it as an actor, how the character would move, and how would things read to an audience. The GOTE ("Goal, Obstacle, Tactics, and Expectation") method of acting by Robert Cohen is really useful hear if you want a more technical breakdown of what I mean by that.

This leads to a lot of what we called "business" in acting, doing small tiny things while you talk or move around on stage to give the sense you're a real human. I don't have to think or try on these sort of things because they're in my skill set already!

Things I do Personally

As in, these are not transferable skills this is just the stuff I do while working on projects.

Find a Vibe™️

I come into any fic with usually a goal I want to hit, a line of dialogue or something I want to capture. Just like, the general idea of a feeling a song even if the lyrics don't match up. Make a mood-board, a playlist, just find something you wanna do. It's less about the actual words on the page and what you're aiming to do.

Look to things that inspire you

Don't Hesitate got written because I wanted to write a fic that captured the same vibe as a scene in Macross Frontier, where two characters have a bittersweet kiss before the final battle and that scene still has me fucked up six years after watching it.

My current WIP is doing the same thing but with the song All I've Ever Known from Hadestown. Two characters working through loneliness, the sudden feeling of falling in love and the frustration that feeling can bring on sometime.

I don't plagiarize them word for word, but these are scenes that inspire me! I also patchwork quilt ideas together. Using Don't Hesitate again, I also ended up pulling from a bunch of shoujo anime, Toradora, Sailor Moon, Yona of the Dawn, Princess Tutu...specific scenes I enjoy to blend and create something new.

Goof Off While You Write

I name my documents stupid things, I write dumb placeholder dialogue or vague sentiments like "insert better word here", I make memes when I'm struggling and roast myself and my predictable tastes.

I spent twenty minutes texting a friend Juro's name with different letters spelt out and then the "fuck your chickenstrips" vine saying it was Juro during destruction. Just have fun with it!

Listen to J-POP On Loop for Hours at a Time

i am not kidding I do this all the time. Perfume, AKB48, anime idol osts, Sailor Moon's OPs/ED, vocaloid songs. I like technopop and Japanese is good because it usually doesn't distract my brain since I only know random phrases, but still know what the meaning og the song is.

I love music, it helps me vibe out.

Thank you so much for enjoying my work ;o;

I hope this is useful to you in some way! I'm so sorry it's so long winded but I am overly thorough and love to teach people ;w;

[queenofallwitches]

an update and primer:

so the last winter was weird. I had a complete breakdown, went into psychiatric hospital for 40 days in total. two seperate times.

learnt a heap of new things, met a tonne of cool people and had amazing conversations and few fights but overcome my own demons by that.

brain speaking-I have a scarred brain stem and neurological disorder is not a mental diagnosis, but a neurological disorder, proven by MRI scan, ADHD.

also damage to my basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex.

neurological diagnosis means ADHD is not a "mental" health issue, as some believe, rather a neurodevelopment disorder caused by structural differences in the ADHD brain.

other neurodevelopment disorders include: Tourettes, Autism, Cerebal Palsy, Dyslexia and other Motor and Intellectual Disabilities. (Which recieve, in my view, a lot of insight, media information and stigma reduction by the advocacy networks surrounding these types of disability).

Over the last few years Autism has been over everything, I've seen mainstream media cover Tourettes and yet ADHD is still HUGELY misunderstood, misconceived and misrepresented in media, be in from the angle of documentaries, personal insight of a "typical" case, films, tv, and other media.

one of the first things my dr told me was "in females it rarely presents as hyperactive red-cordial OD child"

which is what my mother BELIEVES, that is because I have an adopted cousin with the ADHD dx who was that growing up, but the representation I'm told is also divergent for women with a higher IQ score than the average IQ. I come in around 142 and tested 123 at age 3 when I was unable to focus, pay attention and had severe trauma. I tested 142 in grade 8.

I'll share my experience as a female who is intellectually gifted, with higher IQ than average, and an adhd brain:

I've been told gifted and talented "genius" children are harder to diagnose because the symptoms present differently, we hide it better (camouflage) and our focusing can be "faked" by mediocre efforts of academic success.. this is true, I would do the assignment the Sunday night hours deadline, last minute, or have my parents half do it for me, plagiarise it (fuck I've killed my whole academic career now) copied but changed my words

from old 1970s encyclopaedias I KNEW they couldn't cross reference (I went through 15 years of school never studying doing homework or assignments and still had top grades).

I literally did not listen, and spent my classes planning the end of the world survival strategies with my GT friend who, basically helped me with my calculus and hard fucking maths, which was the ONLY 50 minutes of the day I put attention into my work.

now I'm going to be heading back to full-time study in the coming months, I get anxious as the pressure of a Bachelor level degree, and the pressure it takes me to perform, is enough to break me down. I've been advised it might be wise to start light (like a basic vet style diploma) and then build up, which is logical, but I keep thinking I'm meant to be doing my thesis by now. which is the kind of pressure one gets as a kid who is told repeatedly, "your intelligence is exceedingly the average and you can do ANYTHING you want"

I wanted to be an astronaut, a storm chaser, and an architect, a town planner and then a journalist. I always held to being a "FBI agent" or spy (I wonder why). so when I found psychology is really a blend of all these things, I kinda found a niche in a psych and social science double degree. but I'm thinking my academic career is LIFELONG, and due to the fact I also want to work in my field alongside my many written thesis coming, I'll be in academics for a long time. I may fail a few things, which I have to come to terms with. I do not fail easily, or readily, but I'm a perfectionist type-a academic who will put my whole life on the line to achieve "merit". I get exams, I get assessments, I read journals super-easy, I talk the talk and walk the walk so well psychologists who are at masters level compliment me on my "knowledge".

when it comes to mental health and trauma, I will always have the personal attachment, called lived experience, which will make failure and burnout, 100 percent realistic. I have to boundary up, bootstraps on, and prepare that yes, my personal "bias" will probably be entwined in this.

which is why I'm looking at the social science for the statistics and thesis writing side of things, and the counselling for the trained therapist side. either way, the degree of counselling requires so much self-insight, and then the social-science will back me away from personifying it. the other choice is criminology, which leads to forensic psychology, which is eternally fascinating. my main concern is the pro-pedophile content Ill be up against, which will look at the anatomy of a shoplifter akin to the devil, and leave the pedophile in the DSM-5 dx "paraphilia" box.

I'm not joining or jumping to anything.

either way I've got 2 year of credit, a heap of pathways and a lot of "academic momentum" from all my life being aimed to be "academic powerhouse". I went through my files and found a lot of awards I'd won in my high school, and top place in the competitions we would be entering in. I remember feeling so sad if I had a "credit" vs a distinction or high distinction, only to see now, a credit in university maths in year 9 is a skillset I don't have anymore so, good on me. or a credit in English, or Science at that age was pretty impressive, considering these tests were random and not studied for.

just a general skills assessment only the top 30 kids in the year were to take on a year by year basis and put out to vet from the top universities and taken by other kids in the same grade around the state.

it puts so much focus on my intelligence, because it's primed to be that way, I know that is true. I know I feel good being academically successful and it gives me a feeling of "achievement" but is it really for me?

I also found 2 letters from my local politicians offering me job placement, work experience and I was 1/4 kids in my 10th grade graduation tom get the letter, and due to my behaviour I pissed ALL the idiots who bullied me off. I was "too pretty to be a nerd" "too smart to be pOpUlAr".

so I made a group of misfits, who are all highly intelligent, creative and my group had the ONLY gay male in the school AND THIS IS BEFORE YOU FUCKING RETARDS MADE IT "COOL". he was bullied badly, so fuck you, you fucks claim "liberalism" but I bet you were the type of idiot who bullied guys like him in high school while you pretended to like my chemical romance and fake cut yourselves. I hate you all, forever.

my grade was full of idiots who were fake emo, who left the scene the moment the scene changed to dub-step and club music. I was there, watching you all, like sonny Moore, went from FFTL to that dubstep skrillex shit he started in 2009.

I dated you, hooked up with you and I went to your gigs. I know who was real and who was fake. I met some of you years later and realised the more emotive ones were the less "alternative appearing".

I can say 1/10000 emo guys from the 00s were genuinely Into the music and scene for the right reasons based on my dating history and this can and will be analysed statistically using SPSS one day to prove a lot. I've had too many relationships from each sub-culture and I have had 4-11 males at a time per public "output" of my energy pursue me over life.

I'm not being cocky when I say I have a long line of "suitors" and its banked back about 50 men. it's been a thing I've avoided as it seems to grow based on my body shape, attitude, appearance, so I am currently out of touch with dating scenes, no interest to try that ANYWAY, given the fact that I have had so many LONG TERM relationships ANYWAY. I can't see another one going well, and at this case, I'm living with an ex but we never went on conventional and now our families label this 3 things: "asexual", "polyamorous" and "open relationship". I'm also "bisexual" but this all to humans outside, looks ridiculous on paper. (wild orgies and lots of swinging or some stupid sex magick probably is what J brother literally thinks we do).

bc humans are intrinsically designed to need to label things they don't understand. we share a lease, not a relationship, and fucking polyamorous, I WISH. there are no girl-girl-guy 3 some, or orgies, or sex magic parties.

this has changed the attitude and perception of this "relation' which Is non-romantic, non-sexual. he can date and likely, will, as can I , and I likely won't date.

I would say 14/15 have had ADHD, or other mental illness and or trauma. which means to me, nothing at all.

I think this "open book" non romantic relationship style of "friends and roommates" not sexual.

attachment is misunderstood by others but works well fro my adhd, meaning I'm not expected to marry, or be a wife in any capacity. he is free to do what he wants, as I am, and open communication is a novel frontier I brought into this in the start, and stayed with for the duration. we fight, but I fight with a lot of people in my life over many petty things. also down to my adhd, I believe, I have rejection sensitive dysphoria, which makes me hypersensitive to rejection, perceived or real.

im not sure if this is trauma or adhd or both. but

I have used sexuality as a weapon in many relationships but it cannot or will not be used here, so I have had to resort to uncovering parts of myself which I never knew, which will stay with me even if he decided to marry and wife up in 5 years, which I'm okay and expecting him to do, and I would much rather that then be trapped in a situation where I cannot be that "wife/mother archetype" as I'm too "femme fatal/other-woman/sex-laced seductress and siren" a "FWB, unicorn, drug buddy, hook-up where im a therapist" or "intellectual and cognitive mind-bender work-study obsessed woman".

both at once and many types of human, including one who is a full-time ceremonial magician of 7 years. I will drink, drug, fuck, fight like males and still be more feminine and high maintenance than 89% of women. I grew up a tomboy and don't mind getting into fun, adventure based situations, like hiking, or anything adrenaline, I would only be reluctant to eat weird shit.

I also have many "neurological" issues including ADHD, and trauma which causes a rupture in the average human and I dating.

I'll tell you how many men have said "you are the unicorn" and then realised what that means, I went as far as canvasing the PUA world back in 2014 after reading the game, a book on PUA, which is essentially, pick up artistry, based on NLP and hypnosis. I did this after reading the copy my ex in 2008 handed me before we dated saying "I gave this up for you". it took me years to open the book, buy when I did I truly believed the only way I would fall in love again, was through PUA. that failed in so many ways but gave me a training foundation for men who were candidates for that, I have trained up J, and the way that sounds is BAD. I know, but I got a lot of value myself, I just don't see it how I wanted to see it.

but that was my original intent, and I achieved this he knows that, knew it was happening and evolved for the best self.

I am thinking we can modulate this into a business model for how I was operating in the BDSM world was mainly psychological, not physical.

I get told all of is incredibly intimidating (I am told) to women and men.

I don't really care anymore, because people have always seen this part of me in the wrong way ANYWAY, but I own who I am NOW. which is what I needed ANYWAY. so it cannot be stolen again, and sexual healing has come from abstinence ironically.

I also don't care what or who is trying to tear up my relations, toxic or not toxic, all people around me will be on a healing journey by default, or cut out of my life, for I am radiating that energy so brightly its impossible NOT to feel that pull.

I will drag your shadows into the light, and make your secrets spin from your lips into my consciousness. its not what I do but its what is design.

I make your weaknesses mountains to climb over. you cannot hide from these in my presence, I won't be this controlling or obsessive female who wants 24-7 attention as I have a life full of meaning without love or sex. I don't want to be wined, dined or expensively gifted, unless specially requested.

I don't want love letters or romantic declarations, this isn't some femnazi bullshit, but it triggers me. I appreciate the efforts and won't make you feel bad about your insecurities, for mine are probably 30 x more pronounced.

I appreciate small things, that most males won't or don't know how to do. like remembering things I've said and being thoughtful. or knowing my silence isn't personal, or a game, but a protective wall. I've had songs sung too me, guitars played, songs written, or things made in ways that are heartfelt. but I've always had them used against me too. so it is the context. I value time, energy, conversations of depth and reciprocal exchange. I also value trauma understanding, my alters and fragments being accepted and valued as me as a whole and a person who is not afraid, or scared of stupid stuff like sensitivity, emotions, feelings as raw as my own. men feel intensely too, lol.

but will only give oral sex 100 times before I don't recieve it, I can communicate now so that wouldn't happen.

but I won't be a bitch about this stuff. I am extremely feminine and care in ways other people, do not, I forget nothing people tell me, so it can be a reward or reverse uno card pull in a fight, but I am not evil or deviant in my relations. I react, depending on how you treat me. I don't need your money, or providing source of income to be okay as I am my own queen, however sharing resources is okay to build something. I don't need to be seduced, but will need to be shown a person is trustworthy.

few cross that.

that will always be time-endurance and testing. there are ground rules I don't play with, or play games. or like being forced or forged into something I'm not. I know abusive and I know safe, and I am a psychology expert, trained psychotherapist and study humans for fun, so I'll always be analysing things.

and I know red flags and I know ego, I know how to placate and please and pleasure, but will only do so, for a bigger and better reason than the mere act of seduction. which is without value and transactional to someone like me, I won't lie.

and I know every tactic in the book, for the book was written by someone like me, many lives ago, and my karma is being burnt for that book.

in terms of walls, I have many, may it be called a maze. or labrnyth.

I will teach you things you never thought you'd know, and change your life in ways you won't ever be able to go back to before. I will blow your mind, sexually, emotionally, intellectually, on all levels, and I'll make your friends and family love me.

I'll bring your walls down and you won't be able to understand this, because you don't understand me, and thats ok.

but I'll always understanding you and make your life better because thats what I do anyway, and people talk to me about things I will never share, as I keep secrets. I am jealous, of everything but, only because I am attached in a disorganised way, and working on that.(I won't even mention how man women or men don't know basic psychology of themselves). I also am a therapist , for my friends and family too.i should not be , but I am. I care, I listen, If you think I'm not listening, I'm still listening. sometimes I interrupt, because I have ADHD and I am horrible at resolute planning, or being "normal". but I don't want to be normal anyway. I need you to recognise and understand my shit, for that is what I do for everyone in my life, and I have helped more than I receive.

I'll probably accidentally give you therapy, but thats fine, because you will uncover your depths and find meaning in this. it's not something that goes bad unless you are fundamentally, evil, even the most abusive relationship I was in, was benefited from this process. yes he's still narcissistic, but he is self-aware. and did I benefit, never, just know the anatomy of self-proclaimed narc and I still can't hate him. will get my civil claim one day.

I will fuck your mind without meaning too. but thats because I fuck my own mind. but the meaning is made in the man- some find this highly offensive or personal (its not). I fuck minds by my own overthinking, or over perception on many levels of reality. so join the ride, or don't come along at all. because once the rollercoaster is in motion, I have no control of what may or may not happen. it's purely experimental.

I am experimental.

and the women who are judging me, are not any better.

look within, and shut the fuck up. self-improve and quit this jealous divide and conquer bitchiness. I HATE gossip, bitches, snitches and fakers.

I look to other women who are intellectually, physically and spiritually "individual". and find value in superior status to my own, which is something my narcissistic ex taught me.

I look for mentors, and teachers and people who will teach me how to improve myself, which I am fearful to reconnect after something is amazing and I can't give anything back of positive value. I am sorry I am working on that.

I won't devalue those below me, but I also need to be mutually benefiting from a relationship.

I dont drag people down, I may disappear if I feel I am doing this by mistake. I am flakey as fuck, and sorry for that. its anxiety and lack of perfectionism, so I am wrong and bad for this. I can change. will change.

if you can find value with my relation, personal professional or romantic, we can move into a symbiotic beneficial agreement based on mutual "terms". but many won't or cannot see this, nor do I impose my bullshit into the lives of randoms at this age.

I don't care if this is cruel, it's real.

I value loyalty, compassion, self-insight/awareness, someone who understands all parts-spirituality, metaphysics while still having intellectual & logical & analytical brain-sight.

I enjoy music, magick and learning new things.

I do not care about appearances I dont think ive dated based on one time. I do value connections and chemistry which is far-few between, I hate fakers. I smell insincerity miles away. but I do respect women who are well-presented, or beautiful, with hair beauty and makeup, I can't do this shit well, so I look up to those who are in professions who do it like art. I find them to be genius level queens who scare me.

I call out bad behaviour and make people uncomfortable if they are repressed. I will change you without even meaning too, I don't even need to date you. its just my presence, over time, amplified by the intensity of the dynamics.

I don't want simplicity, but I also don't need over complexity.

I value passion, independence, creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, deep-disscussions, shared adventures and some occasional risk-taking (lol), sensuality and sexuality for a common cause beyond physical pleasure. I like being taught but not micromanaged. I need my own independence, and need to be trusted with that. I hate being scolded for that like a child, or being pushed to change my ways to conform to societal values. which I will push back and refuse to do. which is not healthy. I don't adult like many others do, but I try to proceed in other ways. and learn to adult like normal people, accept me.

I also value myself, and how I can be celebrated, enhanced and improved vs. the opposite.

I give space, and have boundaries, and understand human psychology, sexuality and relationships in ways few others unless they are trained, can do.

I value MY time. so you can have space to value YOURS. I dont need to be in anyones pocket for a long time. I love being alone, and being around people who are stimulating, but draining people will be drained out of my life quicker than I intend. I am sorry for the people who felt I disappeared, when I was only trying to be 'fair', if I feel I'm a bad influence, I will work on myself until I'm not. I'm still working on it.

I also use this psychology awareness, to enhance communication, connection. you may or may not become an accidental guinea pig. I will be upfront that I am experimental, but that is part of the buy ticket and take the ride. lets work together. not apart.

I am coming from a place of love, and love is what I feel for my animals, which you will be adopting as children.which I want to stop experiments being done on. I love love, in all ways, but hate cruelty of animals and children, violence and suffering. I dont advocate justice, because I find life is fucking cruel, unfair and unjust. by default, so I focus on myself. what can be changed, and what I am able to do in my own locus on control. I will always find myself drawn to the outsiders, the misfits, the vagabonds, the misunderstood. I want to help people who are society, or socially, disadvantaged by trauma and mental illness, but only when I have ability to help myself.

it's a journey.

I will not date anyone who is cruel to animals, outside of specify magical sacrifice, there is not any place for that. nor will I date or fraternise with anything or anyone linked or associated with pedophilia. I won't judge anyone on anything that are outside animal cruelty and pedophilia. I don't and haven't. I keep on good terms with every ex, bar 1 whom I only apologised too this year. it felt good to do that. I change my behaviour.

I am open, but also highly attuned to both logical, factual, empirical , scientific worlds, and spiritual, intuitive, psychic and the "collective unconscious". I walk in both these realms, and I am "conventionally attractive". which puts a lot of pressure on me, to be "stupid". I am always dumbing myself down to fit into normality, but I look ridiculous if I do that so I peacock my intellect.

only to be misconceived.

I give up because I no longer care how anyone but MYSELF can see ME. I won't dumb myself down , but I can enhance you UP. prepare yourself for graded education, evolution and self-growth on mass scales.sorry not sorry.

that sucks for the people who want to be living vicariously through me, for making up to lost trauma years, for family who sold me out for the success I'd bring home, or fake trauma enmeshed friends, or whatever they want or need from me. I value my time and energy, and have given that in abundance, and if you want to be with nut only "one part of me that is alters". I can't provide that now. not sorry.

I have to work on something or not be in a dynamic at all.

I no longer can switch on demand to adapt for you, it will not be effective and that upsets a lot of people. especially now I'm sober. harder to handle this, as I see the world for its ways and why it is, more vividly. I haven't had alcohol for almost 2 months, although, I could drink, I haven't.

I can't do it, anymore. it, being, faking, my selves fronting to impress. I can't. I have no more left to give, and I'm expected by everyone to be a way I can't do it in the way they want.

I will go to another year long outpatient DBT, followed by 10 weeks of A-C-T therapy, and however many ECT OR TMS may or may not help. I'm told it won't (ect) work. but TMS, is something I am open too. but I am telling you, none of this psychotherapy, that will be based on dbt skills, day therapy, intensive skills training, recommencing my studying, and resuming "life worth living" will or can wipe the traumas I've "recovered" memories for.

I will also shut the fuck up, and tell nobody about this if you leave me alone, I told that to my family, and this is open letter to the watchers, stalkers and perps who read this openly as I track the hits on here and have 200+ visits a day every day for the last month. globally. no idea how or who you are but I think its the same people who called the police for the "ayreon song lyrics" seen to be a suicide not last October.

thanks for that wake up call, I have shut the fuck up, since December, more so now. I will burn the journals, or lock them up.

my recovery is not linear, not yet fully integrated and I trust nobody so I don't think my psychotherapy will be deep, I focus on things like ADHD AND my EDNOS. and dbt skills. I won't be talking about sexual traumas.

enjoy the update, and thanks for the "attention".

I have my goals, my work, my meaning and what my life should and could and will look like, but I will not share that with anyone. that means everyone right now.

I've been tested, traumatised and terrorised to the point of not-tolerant of anyone who may bring that back, and banish the fuck out of my sphere every moment I need.

take me as I am, or watch me as I go, which I will go, where I am not wanted I will remove myself, but I will find where I am celebrated because I create that.

I will rise up against all adversity every time but that is survival and that created a resilient and brave woman, in me. who will not be destroyed or decomposed by humans who are fundamentally fucking evil.

I gift you my truth, in progression, and give up the pain of the past.

[dudeandduchess]

Sanemi x F!S/O: Slow Burn (Modern AU, SFW Scenario)

Summary: Sanemi wants to get married immediately for personal reasons, and it just so happened that a feisty woman at a restaurant caught his eye. Little did he know that she was going to be his future boss— and even knowing that didn’t stop him from wanting to pursue her. Cue (Y/n), whose siblings are all meddlesome and bratty; enough to tell their father that she had a boyfriend, just for laughs. Not wanting to disappoint him with the thought of her living the rest of her life by herself, she sets out to find the perfect fake boyfriend. Note: This was written waaaay back in 2017, but it never saw the light of day. But I rewrote it for Sanemi, and here it is now. This is only the first part, since i initially planned it to be a three-part fic. But, enjoy, bbys. Hopefully I get to writing part 2 soon. It really depends on your feedback. Haha. Words: 6,252

Warnings: This is more OC-insert than reader-insert. Weird kitchen terms will fly. Which is why I want to scrap the idea altogether, but not without sharing it first.

***

Being away from home was always hard; not only did the person that was away miss the people closest to them, but also felt like they were wedging a gap between themselves and all of their loved ones as time went by. The longer someone was away from home, the bigger the gap grew, and the clearer it was to them that life moved on without them in the picture.

It hurt— of course it did— because it felt like everyone that that person left behind had forgotten about them, like they had become insignificant. But life did go on, even for those who had been the ones to leave— still, that didn’t erase their longing for days long past when their world seemed a much smaller, and marginally simpler place.

Almost nine years had passed since (L/n) (Y/n) moved away from her home to pursue her dreams. She wasn’t going to sugar-coat her story and tell people that she struggled financially while studying at Les Roche International in Switzerland for her Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Management, nor was she going to lie and say that she got into the New York campus of the Culinary Institute of America after so many setbacks.

She had been, however, downplaying her lifestyle after getting her associate degree for culinary arts at CIA. It was like she was leading a double life that the friends she made, while flitting from kitchen to kitchen, didn’t know about.

At 25, she had moved to Tokyo by herself to work at the city with the most Michelin Stars in the world; and now that she was at the cusp of turning 27, she was still in the same city, and the same restaurant, with the same one Michelin Star award— but she was a chef de partie now, which just meant more work for her.

Her one-year experience spent working in America after culinary school was a walk in the park compared to working for her current restaurant— well, three restaurants, if one were to be technical about things. Back at her old kitchen in the west, there was a full staff— and a very low employee turnover rate; in fact, it was rare to have people quit back there.

But her current place was— most possibly— worse than what everyone imagined when they heard the term ‘hell on Earth’. It was so bad that it was a regular sight to see people on the line quit on the spot, once they were so deep in the shits during service. She could have always left along with the others before her, but she found a perverse sense of joy from surviving in such a toxic workplace.

Not to mention the fact that she got to rub elbows with some of the best chefs from all over the world, when they came in as guests for one of the three restaurants.

The breakdown of the restaurants was the fine dining restaurant (where the Michelin Star was awarded), a gastropub, and a sub-kitchen for the events that they catered— as well as for those guest chefs that came in once a month for an entire week. The restaurant was huge— spanning 14,500 square feet, as well as a having a basement level where all the nitty gritty parts of the kitchen were.

When she first started there, she felt so exposed in the expansive open kitchen, that allowed the guests in the gastropub to see the hot line in the kitchen; while the pastry and garde manger stations were tucked away behind the wall, that separated the kitchen from the fine dining restaurant.

She couldn’t find a perfect way to describe the layout because it was just that big but, basically, the fine dining restaurant was tucked away from all the commotion— and people had to pass through a tunnel of sorts to get there.

While the gastropub housed both an open bar and the open kitchen, the event spaces as well as the sub-kitchen were hidden away at a loft-type space. It was so confusing to get around at first, but she eventually got used to it.

And now here she was, enjoying the last five minutes of peace of her supposed lunch break standing at the sauté station— her new station— and staring at the 22-quart Cambro filled with freshly-made Mornay, that she had almost shouted at one of the sous chefs about.

She was just lucky that she came in three (unpaid) hours early for work, because she wanted to get ahead on her prep; so she had enough time to squeeze in making the mornay with the other hundred things she had to do.

With such a big kitchen and a lack of people, everyone ended up stealing each other’s prep— whether it was for a VIP, or a party, or basically whatever that needed to be made. As long as it was in the walk-in fridge, it was fair game.

She was just happy to finally have been taken out of garde manger because— even if the station was meant for two people since it was prep-heavy (four if you count the two other people needed to take care of the parties)— she had been stuck working it by herself for the past five months.

“(Y/n), did you go on break yet?” The executive sous chef yelled from the pass— which was basically the area where their executive chef stood and expedited food during service; and just behind the pass was the stairs leading down to the basement floor. They also had an elevator, which was extremely helpful… when it wasn’t out of service.

“I am on break, chef,” the (h/c) haired girl answered with a laugh— when she just wanted to punch the guy square in the face, since he was the one who had used up the 14 quarts of Mornay that she had in the upstairs walk-in fridge yesterday.

“You know you shouldn’t be working, right?” The man asked her with a sardonic tilt of his head, that made (Y/n) want to scream. Just because he was higher up in the ranks than her made him think that he was the shit when, in fact, he was just shit— shit at his job, and shit as a person.

I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. She repeated her age-old mantra in her head, and then answered, “I know, chef. I’m-” the apology was about to slip from her lips when she caught it. “It won’t happen again, chef.”

“Make sure it doesn’t.” One of the banes of her existence called out before going down the stairs.

“Oui, chef!” (Y/n) cried, gritting her teeth afterwards, so she could hold back the snarky comeback that was threatening to spill from her lips. Really, she loved her job, but it was pricks like that who stressed her out.

And so, she took a deep breath and exhaled it in one strong gust— refocusing her mind so that she would be ready for the five parties up in the lofts, as well as the 250 covers that they had in the fine dining restaurant.

*** 

“Fire trio!” The executive chef, a 37-year old man from Florida (that used to be fit when he first arrived at the restaurant a year ago), called out from the pass— marking the ticket in his hand and tucking it into the slider bar mounted to the steel shelf that was mounted to the ceiling.

Everyone called out a loud chorus of ‘Oui’ in response.

Trios were there appetizer, and those got sent to the table before anything else, so it was synonymous with ‘another table just sat down’.

(Y/n) kept on making the orders that she had on her board, often moving from her stove to the Josper oven to put sauté pans with food inside. She was running out of burners on the stove, and it was starting to piss her off.

From behind her, the ticket machine whirred to life and started printing out an extremely long ticket. She internally groaned, before picking up one of the sauté pans on her stove and giving the mushrooms in it a little toss.

And all of that was happening while she had another ticket in her hand— memorizing all of her items on it.

“Order in! Four soup, two kale salads on the fly!” Whoever was serving the table on this ticket must have hated her, because she was already in the shits without any orders of their version of vichyssoise. But they just had to recommend the fucking thing now.

“Oui, chef! Four soup on the fly! Give me three minutes, chef!” (Y/n) yelled in a gruff voice— letting her frustration out in a non-hostile manner as she practically threw the pan of mushrooms in her hand, into the Josper behind her to cook them further.

Her brain was buzzing with so many things that she had to remember— the mushrooms in the Josper, the pan of broccolini she put in before the mushrooms, the truffle gnocchi that she still had to make in the next five minutes, and all of the other dishes from her station that needed to be up for the next table.

Sometimes even she amazed herself when she managed to finish a busy night, without getting yelled at even once.

“171 up at 15,” the executive chef yelled once more, and (Y/n) clicked her tongue as she hurriedly heated up the soup, while simultaneously plating her orders on that ticket— since it was already 7:14, so she had only a minute to get that done.

“Where’s my soup!? How long here, chef?”

“One minute, chef!” Her head was pounding with so much stress, but she pushed through it by taking all the food she had for table 171, and parked them beneath the heat lamps at the pass— calling out ‘hot, behind’ frantically at almost the top of her lungs.

“Fuck my life.” (Y/n) grumbled under her breath, as she plated up the dry components for the soup. She then grabbed her quenelle spoon from its secluded bain to make rochers of whipped crème fraîche. And once those were done, she poured the soup into four tiny, ceramic pitchers, before putting everything up at the pass. “Soup at the window, chef!”

No answer came, which was normal, so the (h/c) haired girl kept on cooking whatever was printed out on the new tickets that came in. It wasn’t until she picked up one of the pans on her stove that she froze.

She wanted to scream and let go of the pan because she had forgotten that she had just taken it out from the Josper, yet she couldn’t let it go, because it was filled with the truffle gnocchi. So, she slammed it down on the steel countertop beside her before she waved her right hand around.

There was a nice, clear burn mark where the piping hot steel handle had touched her skin, and she clicked her tongue as she resumed working; trying to ignore the pain as she put up ticket after ticket.

***

Shinazugawa Sanemi had been watching her all night from his table, that was a mere few feet away from where she was working.

The moment that he sat down and turned to watch the show inside the kitchen, his gaze instantly gravitated towards her. She didn’t stick out because she was a woman, no, he was used to seeing women not being forced into gender roles now— but she stuck out because of the way that she moved in there. She held herself with so much poise and grace, that it looked like she was gliding across the floor at times, all while yelling in a brusque tone.

He took a sip of his beer and licked his lips— eyes never leaving her. It was so obvious that she was getting overwhelmed with the influx of orders bombarding her every second, but he was impressed with the way she handled all of that pressure with a mere furrow of her brows here and there; until she burned her hand.

Sanemi expected her to stop the show to ask for help, and he chuckled in mild disbelief when she merely shook her right hand, before picking up where she had left off.  It was as if nothing had happened.

That woman was really something, and his curiosity was piqued.

Sanemi had to admit that he had been lacking female company as of late, because of four things; namely:

He had gotten tired of sleeping with his flings, because they always expected more than one night.

No woman had a personality that kept him interested for longer than a week, as every single one of them had a heart like a marshmallow— too soft and sweet.

No one could put up with his abrasive personality, and most importantly…

He wanted to get married. The sooner, the better.

Part of his desire to get married was because his younger brother, Genya, was already engaged and getting married next year— so he wanted to get another thing over his brother. He had been taught better than to think of a life commitment as a means for a competition, but he simply didn’t care: he wanted to have what his brother always said was unparalleled happiness.

But the more pressing issue was that… he was starting to feel lonely. He didn’t make a habit of getting jealous, but he found himself going green with envy whenever his married staff— both from his previous company and the new one— mentioned even the simplest night with their respective wives. He wanted that for himself as well.

Hell, he was prepared to pay any amount to any woman that could keep up with him, just so she would marry him. But maybe he was doomed to stay single forever— he didn’t know.

So, there he was— out drinking beer by his lonesome self on a Thursday night, because he didn’t want to be alone in his apartment.

He had thought that it was too small for his taste at first but, as time went by, he realized that it felt cold and empty without someone to share it with. After the party was done and all the bottles of alcohol were picked up, he was always left with a cold feeling of emptiness weighing him down.

“Would you like another pint, sir?” One of the waiters asked Sanemi as they were passing by. He didn’t even realize that he’d finished the whole glass.

The silver-haired man shook his head even though he wanted nothing more than to get plastered, so he could just amble home and instantly fall asleep on his bed. “No, thanks. But… could you get me a menu?”

It didn’t take long for the waiter to get back to him with a menu booklet in hand. He briefly thanked the man and browsed through the pages; lifting his eyes up to the (h/c) haired woman every once in a while. Based on what he had observed, the dishes that she was making wasn’t on this menu, so he flagged down another waiter.

“Are you ready to order, sir?”

“I was wondering if I could order some soup to start?” Sanemi asked in a no-nonsense manner, that he hoped would let him order something that clearly wasn’t on the menu for that part of the restaurant.

The waiter cast a glance over at the kitchen, and seemed to hesitate before nodding. “Of course, sir. Our soup is our chef’s version of a vichyssoise-” The young man drowned his voice out then, only half listening as is gaze flitted back to the woman. “Do you have any allergies or specifications?”

“No, no allergies.”

“Would you like anything else to go with your soup? A steak, perhaps? Or our truffle gnocchi; it’s one of our best sellers.”

He vaguely remembered her using truffles, so he found himself nodding in agreement. It didn’t even matter to him that he had no clue what gnocchi was. “Sure. And I’d like to send a glass of red wine to one of the chefs— the finest you have.”

Again, he didn’t know a lick about wines or any of the fancy food that they served. And since he was more of a beer and anything-with-rice kind of guy, who was trying to get her attention, he had to play it up. He did have the money for it, so why not?

“Very well, sir. To which of the chefs would you like me to give your present to?” The waiter asked graciously, and Sanemi pointed over to where the woman was still working.

“To her.”

“Oh, I… uh…” the guy stuttered uncomfortably, hesitating a bit as Sanemi raised his eyebrows at him. “Yes, sir. I’ll give it to (Y/n); may I tell her who it’s from?”

“No. Just tell her that it’s from a new admirer— and that she should get that hand checked.”

***

“Chef, I have tomorrow and the next two days off, okay?” (Y/n) chirped as she popped her head into the chefs’ office, only to see the higher ups filing last minute orders and double-checking inventories for the night. It was always like that every night after service; everyone on the line would clean up in the kitchen— consolidating their mise and storing them in the upstairs walk-in chiller— before scrubbing everything down and doing their own little tasks for their stations.

“Why?” The executive chef asked, turning his chair so that he was facing her. “When did you ask me to give you that off?”

“Two weeks ago, chef. Remember?” She rolled her eyes with a sigh, which she never would have gotten away with during service. But after she was off the clock was a very different story. “I even wrote it down on a blue sticky note— right there!”

The man laughed. “I’m just messing with you. Have fun doing whatever it is that you’re going to do.”

“I wish I could, but I know that it’s going to be boring as fuck.”

“You can always work.” He offered with a grin.

(Y/n) laughed and shook her head. “Nice try, chef. But no. My attendance is a must at this family thing.”

“You’re going home to Osaka?” The sous-chef asked, turning his chair as well, so that he could look at the (h/c) haired girl standing in the doorway.

“No. If only Chef Jason would let me have a week off, right, chef?” She turned to the executive chef— Jason— with an innocent grin. “But alas, he’s going to miss me too much.”

“Your station’s going to crash and burn without you,” Jason griped with a huff.

“You’ll manage, chef. It’s only three days. But please don’t burn through all of my prep. I already stocked up on the things I could stock up on, and the rest of the gnocchi is in the freezer. I also finished doing my prep list. So, I’ll be going now! Bye, chefs!” With a wave, (Y/n) hightailed it out of there before they could tell her to get a jacket on and help them with party prep for tomorrow.

Like hell she was going to let that happen again. Fool her once, shame on her; but fool her twice… then she was dumb as fuck.

Once she made it out of the restaurant, she slowly made her way up the street— thinking about whether she should call an Uber to drive her to her condominium building. It was only three blocks away, but her feet were already killing her.

In the end, she took out her phone and sat down at the nearest bus stop to wait for her ride.

She looked down at her hands under the dim light above her, sighing heavily as she took note of how her cuts and burns stood out starkly against her skin. What once used to be unmarred and flawless— the envy of her friends back in high school— were so different now. Ugly as fuck for everyone else, but for her… “It gives me more character.”

A quiet laugh escaped her lips at that, and she heaved another sigh when she was reminded of what she had to face tomorrow at Nanafumi’s 50th anniversary party. Had it been any of the other companies in the long string of companies under her family’s ownership, she wouldn’t have even bothered to show her face, but since it was her family’s flagship company in Japan, attendance was a must.

Nanafumi was the crowning glory of her father’s empire— and it was the closest to his heart, because it had always been his late wife’s dream to become a big player in the Japanese market. Fifty years later, and the company that she had helped build was still one of the biggest players in the business world.

Along with the news of how the upcoming anniversary was going to be extremely fancy, there were so many talks going around that (Y/n) was the one who was going to be taking over the company. Since it was a food manufacturing company, many people thought that it made sense for her to take over.

But she didn’t want to take over the company; not because she was being rebellious, but because she wasn’t born with her father’s business acumen or her mother’s sharp business mind. Her sharp tongue, yes, but her mind… not so much.

Hell, there were six other siblings of hers to choose from, and all of them were just as qualified as she was to run Nanafumi. She could run it, but she would be running it into the ground.

(Y/n) was shaken from her reverie when a car pulled up in front of her. She checked the plates, and once she confirmed that it was her Uber, she hopped in for the quick trip to her building.

Suffice to say, her living quarters were… more than adequate for one person to live in. It used to be where she and her family lived when they spent month-long vacations in Tokyo, and her dad had given it to her as a present… along with the building itself.

She didn’t want to accept it at first, but she was a reasonable person. Not only was the unit already fully-paid for (which meant no rent to think of), but she also used the profits from the building itself (from the commercial spaces on the first three floors, to the monthly rent that some residential tenants paid) to pay for her own expenses.

She was basically set for life, but she didn’t want to just sit back and be a bum for the rest of her existence. Her mother had raised her better than that.

Even though both of her parents came from old money, they were pretty decent people. They didn’t look down on others, and made her and her siblings know the value of working hard for something you were passionate about. She liked to believe that all seven of them turned out to be well-rounded individuals.

And they were. If only her four older brothers and two younger sisters weren’t batshit crazy.

If she were to be honest, her family was like a pack of wild animals when all of them managed to get together. Everyone was so rowdy (sometimes even herself), but all of that was due to their closeness with each other; not because they fought or anything like that.

Yes, they did fight, but that was only when a good number of them were drunk as fuck.

She was just about ready to collapse when she managed to enter her place, swinging the door shut behind her, as she kicked her kitchen clogs off in the foyer. With a sigh, she walked towards her phone and pressed the button to hear all of her messages.

In this day and age, only her family would still use landline phones, and leave messages on answering machines.

“(Y/n), don’t forget the party tomorrow. It’s at seven.” Her father’s deep voice rang in the cavernous living area, making her smile as he spoke in their native Kansai dialect. “And bring your boyfriend with you— Miko told me that you got one over there? Is he husband material? (Y/n), you’re already 27, it’s time you got married and had kids.”

A loud groan escaped (Y/n)’s lips, as she pressed stop on the machine. She was going to kill Miko— her youngest sister— tomorrow. But tonight, it was time to eat something for her first meal of the day, get showered to get rid of the horrendous kitchen smell, and then get some much-needed sleep.

There was a stigma about people who worked in a kitchen: that they always had time to eat because they had access to so much food, but that was a laughable rumor.

They didn’t even have time to breathe, because they were always so busy doing their prep for the day. The most that she could eat on busy days was a French fry, or maybe a piece of raw tuna, but that was it.

And there was that time, about two weeks ago, that she got a glass of wine in the middle of service. The waiter didn’t say who it was from exactly, only that it was from an admirer— someone that knew about her burning her hand.

It was weird, not to mention creepy, but she took the glass with fervor and raised it up to the dining room— thanking whomever had sent her the alcohol, before downing it.

It certainly wasn’t her most refined moment, but she needed alcohol in her system at that time— and that more than did the trick for her. She had a slight buzz going, which emptied her mind and made her work more efficiently, so whomever it was that sent her that glass of wine had saved her from losing her sanity that day.

The wine kept coming every other day or so for a whole week, until it just stopped. She was bummed at first— because hey, it was free alcohol— until she had almost completely forgotten about it; until that moment.

She grabbed a pack of instant ramen from her cupboard stash, and promptly set out to make it.

Another misconception about chefs was that they always ate the best kinds of food— even at home, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Most chefs— especially those who worked full time in a restaurant— ate junk when they got home. The quicker it cooked, the better.

So all those last-minute aglio olio dreams, that some people imagined that chefs ate at home were just those: dreams.

The irony wasn’t lost on (Y/n), though. She spent her days making some of the best and most expensive food for people, but she always ate like a broke college student at home. Hell, broke college students even had time to order pizza— and she could have done that, if she didn’t get out of work at 11 or 12 at night.

Still, she loved what she did. After all, she also had a little of the crazy gene in her.

 ***

Dresses weren’t really high up on (Y/n)’s list of things that she liked to wear. Not anymore, anyway.

When she was in university, she loved dressing up and putting so much effort into her make up, but when she entered culinary school (where everything that wasn’t an ingredient was a food safety hazard) she let go of all the make-up, and the dresses, as well as the high heels that went with them.

There was one thing that culinary school helped her with, though: her confidence. When before, she had a hard time talking to people and had to force herself to be sociable at parties; after culinary school, she was so used to being the center of attention, because some of her mentors had a knack for yelling at their students in front of the entire class.

Hell, in the restaurant industry, people tended to treat everyone like shit— so she had basically been through a few mortifying situations that toughened her up enough to be somewhat shameless.

A downside to being toughened up by the kitchen was the potty mouth that came with the territory, though. And so, it took quite some effort for (Y/n) to keep herself from slipping a few casual ‘fuck’s, ‘damn’s, ‘shit’s, and a few other choice words into regular conversation, like she was adding salt to a bland dish.

“(Y/n)!” Her second-oldest brothers— twins— chorused as she entered the expansive events hall.

“Hello, motherfuckers,” (Y/n) greeted with a grin, which made a few heads turn to look at her, because of her language. Frankly, she couldn’t care less. She then hugged her brothers tightly and kissed their cheeks. “I haven’t seen you two in forever. How’s life in sunny Australia?”

“Really hot,” Yoshio, the older one of the twins, answered— fanning himself with his hand to emphasize his point.

“Lots of kangaroos,” Ren, the younger one of the two, piped up with a laugh. “Some even find their way on campus.”

“And you didn’t bring one for me? What kind of brothers are you?” (Y/n) asked with a chortle, before making eye contact with Yoshio. He hadn’t been trying to be discreet with his perusal of the faint scars that littered the backs of her hands.

With a brief shake of his head at his twin, Ren vocalized his thoughts, “It’s part of her job, bro. And haven’t you gotten used to seeing them on her already?”

Yoshio didn’t even have time to answer, because he was suddenly tackled in a hug from behind. The same happened to Ren, and (Y/n) just about laughed, only to be cut off when a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around her in a bear hug.

“Akio-nii!” (Y/n) managed to breathe past her lips, and her older brother set her down once more. She whirled around to face him, and was about to hit his chest with the back of her hand, when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pressed an affectionate kiss to the crown of her head.

Out of all her siblings, she had to admit that she had always been the closest to Akio. They were the closest in age, but that played very little with their closeness. When their mother died a few years after Miko was born, Akio was the one who had doted on her. It was as if herself and her siblings had become self-sufficient once the matriarch of the house was gone.

The twins took care of Miko and Chiasa— which explained why the girls were clinging on to each of their brothers tightly. And while Akio took care of her, their eldest sibling— Masaru— served as their father figure, as their actual father was almost always away on business.

In line of birth order, it was Masaru, Akio, Yoshio and Ren, then her, which was followed by Chiasa, and last came Miko.

People were starting to stare at their sizeable group, but they paid the prying gazes no mind as they all caught up with each other’s lives.

“Where’s your boyfriend, (Y/n)-nee?” Chiasa asked aloud. Her curiosity wasn’t even veiled with any sort of pleasantry. It was plain as day that her younger sister wanted to meet this nonexistent boyfriend that Miko had been talking about.

“Boyfriend? There’s no such person?” (Y/n) answered with a glare at Miko. Her sister frantically shook her head and raised her hands up in mock surrender.

“It wasn’t me. It was Ren-nii that told me about it.” Miko replied in her defense.

All five pairs of eyes swiveled over to the man in question, who only balked before shaking his head. “It was otō-san. He told me you had a boyfriend.”

“But he left a message telling me that it was Miko who told him.” (Y/n) quirked her eyebrows at her sister, and then added, “Miko, tell the truth.”

“It really wasn’t me. I swear!” The youngest (L/n) pleaded earnestly, which made (Y/n) sigh and shake her head in mild irritation.

“(Y/n), there you are.” Masaru’s familiar voice rang out over the din of voices inside the ballroom. And all six of his siblings turned to look at him, as he crossed the room with an envelope in his hand. “Dad wants you to deliver the speech. Just read this. Come on, the program’s already starting.”

Her eldest brother didn’t give her much of a choice after that, as he took her by the wrist and dragged her over to where a stage was set up. She couldn’t even look over her shoulder to see their other siblings’ expressions, since she was too busy trying not to do a face plant on the floor.

It didn’t take long for her and Masaru to reach the side of the stage, where a lady in a pantsuit was waiting rather impatiently. She looked a bit frazzled already, so she didn’t want to add anymore to her stress. She knew what being under so much stress felt like, and she wasn’t going to be the reason why someone had a breakdown.

“I just need to read this, right?” (Y/n) snatched the envelope out of her brother’s hand.

“Yeah,” Masaru answered with a slight smile. He then wrapped his arms around his sister and pressed a kiss to the top of her head; which was an easy feat considering how tall he was. “Dad would do it, but he’s running a bit late. He said that he wants you to do it.”

That just sounded off to (Y/n), but she remained quiet. Now wasn’t the time for protests about taking over the company, or anything like that. If that wasn’t heavy implication coming from her father, then she didn’t know what was.

And with that, the lady with them explained her cues, before practically pushing her up the side stairs of the stage. She listened attentively to the host as he went on about useless drivel concerning the party, and then some of her background information, before finally introducing her to the crowd.

Gingerly, she made her way to the podium that was set up to the right side of the stage, and smiled at the crowd. She couldn’t exactly pick out who to smile at, since the spotlight practically blinded her, but she didn’t dwell on that fact as she opened the envelope and read through the speech that was written inside.

“What the fuck is this?” She whispered to herself, as she quickly skimmed through the contents of the speech. It sounded so impersonal and generic, even to her.

So, with a suppressed sigh of irritation, she folded the speech up and set it down on the podium. She reckoned that anything that came from her mouth would sound more sincere and personal than the drivel that was written in that letter.

“Good evening, everyone. It’s nice to see all of you celebrating with my family and I tonight,” (Y/n) began hesitantly, but eventually gathered up the courage to push through with her sudden change of plans. She just had to remember not to curse, and she would be good. “As all of you may know, Nanafumi was my parents’ dream fifty years ago. It used to be called Mochifumi, as my mother loved mochi very much. But it was changed around nineteen years ago, after my youngest sister was born. That made seven of us, hence Nana in the name, and Fumi— as in Fumiko, our mother.”

From the corner of her eye, (Y/n) saw her father enter through a side entrance by the stage. He even had the gall to grin and offer her two thumbs up, which made her chuckle and shake her head. Her old man had always been a sly one.

He had planned this; down to the shitty, pre-written speech.

***

To say that that speech had taken a lot out of (Y/n) would be the understatement of the century. She felt as if most of her energy was sapped the moment she got off that goddamned stage. And one measly glass of champagne wasn’t going to cut it; which was why she was already on her third one when he came up to her.

“That speech was quite something,” Sanemi hadn’t meant for his words to come out as mocking, but they had, and he already wanted to slap himself. Initially, he was surprised to find out that the lady that he had been so hard-up for at that restaurant was his boss’ boss’ boss’ daughter; but he had gotten over that initial shock and had carefully crafted a plan to get her to go home with him.

Or maybe even make out with him in a supply closet somewhere. Anything to get her to think about him enough to make her interested.

“Thank you, but… do I know you?”

Sanemi had to admit that the comment stung, but he wasn’t going to let that deter him from getting the (h/c) haired woman where he wanted her; preferably in his bed.

[dyinglaugh]

The place I work at is an international company that looks super great on paper and shows the best face to customers and the outside world. In fact, they suck ass. Like a lot. They want to have robots do thier work and such for them but instead have humans that they work like slaves. No, really. I am not exaggerating. If you are unable to complete a shift, you get points/time taken and when you're in the negative you're fired. Sounds reasonable but when you have medical problems or family emergencies you're still penalized and not excused (you have to use time you have to cover any missed shift time). I have medical issues that can be accommodated but the process is such with this company that it makes you just throw your hands up and quit, so I havent tried (the process is convoluted and arduous on purpose to make workers not want to do this). I have stories from friends who also work here that will make youre blood boil.

1: My coworker has a daughter that is now 7-8years old. When she was 4, she had gotten very sick and needed to go to the hospital and stay for a while to get better. My coworker, upon getting that call at work went to management and requested to leave early as this was at the time an emergency. He didn't have time left (idk why) but wanted to be with his 4 year old child to make sure she was OK. When management noticed he had no time available all they said was "you can go but you may be fired for leaving early with not enough time" (paraphrased). He couldn't leave his job there as getting fired meant no money to buy food, pay the hospital, pay bills, etc. So he was then forced to continue working while his child was sick. (She's ok now though.)

2: Another coworker had gotten a frantic call from her daughter that the family dog (that was in my coworkers life before her daughter was even born) had been hit by a car, dragged by the car, and is now fighting for its life to see its owner before it died, needed her home to say goodbye. My coworker, crying/sobbing that her best friend for many years was going to suffer in wait, went to a manager and explained the situation. Upon seeing that my coworker had no time left to leave early, the manager then made her follow him around to talk to other managers to "see what they can do". The dog died in the street, without her human (my coworker) because the managers decided to dawdle and make her walk with them knowing full well what they were doing. At some point my coworker called her daughter to find out that the dog died while she being dragged around the warehouse with a manager who was "looking for a way to help" when in reality all that was accomplished was a waste of time and a life lost.

3: In order to enter the warehouse, you have to go through security and the turnstiles and then get your temp checked by a thermal camera. The second you open the doors to get to the turnstiles, there are 6-7feet tall industrial style fans to cool your skin temp before being checked. So if you have a fever and enter the building, your temp is reduced by these fans enough so that you can continue to work and make the company profit. They said that its to cool the building down but there are literally hundreds of fans everywhere to do that. So why do these ones need to be placed specifically by the doors?

4: We are encouraged to tattle on coworkers when we see a "violation". Such things include sitting anywhere besides the breakdown or lunchroom. We stand for 10.5 hours. The entire fucking shift. And get in trouble for being in pain caused by this. Also, if we need a bathroom break, we have 6 minutes to do that. This includes getting to a bathroom (2mins), doing your business, and then getting back to where you were. Many people have been written up, including myself (lactose intolerant=bad night) for being "off task " for more than 30mins that shift simply by going to the bathroom a few times. Drink less? The warehouse is typically between 75-90 degreesF (winter versus summer) and quite a few people EVERY WEEK pass out due to heat stress or dehydration, so less water isn't an option.

I dont have those types of problems at the moment where a life will be lost or is in trouble and i hope it never happens. I had heard these stories from my coworkers and I suspect that managers get reprimanded for trying to be lax about the more ridiculous rules. I myself am going through the problem of not being able to apply for medical leave. I'm in the negatives with time as I type this because every single person I've been emailing to fix my system issues in the portal to open a case, has blown me off. I dont know why this company treats the workers so shitty, except they are worldwide and literally every single person uses thier services. I won't say the name since id like to not be fired but I will give the hint that its an online store with the same name as a big tropical jungle. I've talked to managers there that i can tell hate the policies that work against the workers (alot of the policies do) and the good managers are frustrated too.

The system designed by the company is basically like this: low-level worker is promoted slightly and given 50%-100% more work than before with promise of a better pay and such and all they have to do is enforce the policies and step on people to do exactly that. They themselves are still being trampled by the higher ups while being promised that they will get bigger boots to stomp on low-level workers the better they work.

I despise this company so much that I tell every single person the horrors the company will do and will cover up in order to deter them from using thier services. I understand that prices found through this company are better than almost every other company so its just cost effective with people. I dont condemn people for using that company at all actually. Just those who, despite knowing the hardships and harsh treatments of the workers, laugh and still use it saying, " if its so bad why not leave?"

I'll tell you why. Because the company pays ok enough and offers ok enough benefits that we the workers feel trapped. If we leave, who will hire people that have very few skills since they spent years in a warehouse? If we leave, how will we find a better or equal paying job ($15-16/hr starting)? I have hunted and searched for such a job because of my frustration and found absolutely nothing. This company traps workers in a way that makes it so impossible to leave that many fall victim to depression or other mental/physical illness.

Speaking of, I have heard in the half year of working there of at least 3 people almost killing themselves- thats right SUICIDE- due to the stress. In response, the company sends out information and messages and notifications about Suicide Awareness and Prevention. AS IF THEY DONT KNOW THAT THEYRE THE CAUSE. I personally have thought, " if I kill myself, the company can leave me alone. I wont have to work here anymore and suffer almost every night through inconceivable pain without hope of going home". See, I have chronic migraines that put me out of commission for 20 out of 30days a month. Not only have I worked while sobbing and not being able to see or breathe (one of many symptoms I have) I've been forced to continue working until my illness has progressed until I can no longer function. I can't move or see or breathe or hear or anything at that point. I can only focus on one thing and its typically forcing myself to CONTINUE WORKING because the company doesn't care enough to let me leave early. I end up having panic attacks in the bathroom and vomiting due to the pain. This company, as far as I've heard through people I've talked to everywhere, hasn't officially killed people. Unofficially, i had talked to someone that had almost overdosed in order to be free of the company.

Now, I dont include names simply because I'm not a rat or snitch or whistle blower or etc. and because I dont want them to get in trouble for speaking out. I am posting this here because hopefully, its anonymous enough that I dont get in trouble either. I just hope that before anyone chooses to use this company (that has the same name as a jungle), they remember this post. I hope that this is spread everywhere so that everyone knows the horrors the workers have to deal with. I hope so much that someone reads this and chooses to spend that extra dollar on a different website to not add to this billionaires' pockets. Please, repost. Spread this around and add stories of your own because you're not alone. I promise.

[ghostburs-blue]

Lost and Found

Part Six

The next morning, Aiden woke up to an unfamiliar room. Instantly, her senses were on high alert as she looked around, then relaxed as she remembered where she was. She walked into the bathroom and found a new toothbrush waiting for her on the counter, along with toothpaste, a hairbrush, and some lotion. Aiden smiled, then noticed a little note left next to the items.

Ask F.R.I.D.A.Y. to take you to the 2nd floor for breakfast. We should all be down there until around 10:30, but if you wake up late that’s fine. You had a long night and need rest.

Love,

The Avengers

Aiden grinned at the note, then got ready with all the products they had left out. Checking the time, she saw that it was 9:30, meaning that everyone was still down there. Walking out of her room, Aiden asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to take her to the 2nd floor, just like the note said. F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave her directions to the nearest elevator, then took her to the designated floor.

Stepping out into the living room, she was met with a… messy sight.

Someone had cooked pancakes (Aiden guessed Tony if the Iron Man shape was any clue), and while decorating them, things seemed to get out of hand. There was whipped cream in Sam and Bucky’s hair, maple syrup on Steve and Peter’s shirts, smoothie splatters all over Clint and Tony, and fresh fruit strewn across the room. The only ones who were relatively clean were Natasha, Wanda, and Vision, who were simply watching the situation with an amused look on their faces.

Steve was standing up from his spot on the ground when Sam thought it would be a good idea to throw a glob of whipped cream at him; he ducked, and it hit Aiden square in the face.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched as Aiden slowly wiped the whipped cream off. She looked down at the white substance in her hand, then up at Sam’s terrified gaze. Without a second thought, she charged.

--

One intense chasing around the building later, Aiden and everyone else had settled down enough to eat breakfast. Halfway through the meal, Aiden raised her head and asked, “So, what are we doing today? I know Petey over here can’t really do anything,” she stopped and nudged Peter, “but I really want to have a good training session today.”

Tony opened his mouth as if to say something, but Nat beat him to it. “I actually want to see you in action, and I’m sure all of these guys do too.” There was a chorus of murmurs and agreements. “Tell you what, train with me, at 2. The rest of them can watch. Then we can judge how advanced you truly are and maybe even what you can do for us.” With that, Nat put her finished plate of breakfast in the sink and walked away, leaving Aiden staring at her, eyes wide.

Finally, she sputtered out, “Wha- What does she mean do something for you guys? Someone! Give me answers!” She looked around the table as everyone just laughed and shook their heads.

“For such a smart girl, you really are an idiot,” Sam snickered, promptly causing Aiden to punch him.

The rest of the day until two in the afternoon went by too slowly for Aiden’s liking, so she decided to explore the tower, wandering around every floor. She quickly learned that every Avenger had an entire floor to themselves, even Peter. She had been staying on Wanda’s floor. The tower was separated into sections: Tony’s lab, Bruce’s lab, the medbay, the workshop, and all the “business” floors were at the bottom. Then came the common floor, where they had group movie nights and where the common kitchen was. After that started the floors housing the Avengers. Every floor had a huge master bedroom, an attached master bath (also huge), a smaller guest room, a kitchen, and a living room. Above all of the residential floors were the training floors, filled with gym equipment from treadmills to boxing cages.

Much to Aiden’s delight, she discovered a pool and jacuzzi on the roof, and that’s where she decided to spend the rest of the day. It had been a while since Aiden had spent a day at the pool, so with the accompaniment of a bunch of stolen snacks from the kitchen, she relaxed in the pool, letting the cool water soothe her body.

No one bothered her, making it the perfect time for her to think about everything that had happened in the last 12 hours. She had discovered Peter Parker, the shy boy next door, was Spider-Man, saved his life by stitching him up, met the Avengers, eaten breakfast with them, and is now going to train with them?! Her life had literally turned upside down overnight, and Aiden was happy for it to stay like that.

At around one, Aiden decided to get out of the pool and get ready for training. She quickly dried herself off and made her way to her room, showering and putting on a sports bra and some athletic shorts. She walked over to Wanda’s room next door and knocked, waiting until it swung open to reveal a pleasantly surprised face. Two, actually. Nat was lounging on the bed and looked up as Aiden walked in.

“I really need to talk to you guys,” Aiden started, and it was obvious that she was flustered. Wanda frowned and pulled her onto the bed. Taking a deep breath, she started, “I- I think I like someone. No, I know that I like someone.”

Wanda and Nat both exchanged a knowing look, then, at the same time, stated, “Peter.”

Aiden hung her head and nodded. Then, she looked up. Confused, she asked, “How did you guys know? I thought I hid it well?”

Nat and Wanda both laughed. “Girl, it’s obvious! He likes you too, and he’s probably talking to the guys about it right now. He trusted you with his life, Aiden. You mean a lot to him, and it’s obviously reciprocated. Just, give yourselves some time to figure everything out, okay? We don’t want to see either of you getting hurt because of some stupid miscommunication. Just be careful,” Nat told Aiden, reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder to comfort the girl.

Aiden smiled. “Thanks, guys. We should probably get going to train now, huh?” Wanda and Nat smiled and nodded.

Making their way up to the main training floor, Aiden felt the nerves start to settle in. She felt her palms getting clammy and she started fidgeting with her hands. When Nat noticed and asked if she was okay, Aiden lied and said she was fine.

A few minutes and one hidden nervous breakdown later, they made it to the ring where they would be fighting each other. Aiden and Nat both started stretching before anyone else made it up to the room. Nat headed over to the punching bag and started warming up, while Aiden stood at the bar, deepening her stretching while watching Natasha’s fighting style.

Nat swung hard and fast, but her stances weren’t defensive. Aiden, on the other hand, was much more graceful, using her past experience as a ballerina and a gymnast to her full capacity.

Finally, everyone filed in and Nat and Aiden headed over to the ring, climbing in.

Suddenly, Aiden’s nerves disappeared and she calmed down, settling in her element. Peter noticed the shift and called out, “You’re going to do great Aiden!”

Looking over, she took her gaze off of Natasha, sliding it over to Peter. Nat took advantage of her distraction and threw a punch, saying, “Rule number one: Never take your eyes off your oppo-”

She was cut off by Aiden turning her gaze back to Nat and grabbing her fist. Aiden twisted it and flung Natasha to the ground, successfully pinning her arm down. Nat used her other hand to punch Aiden’s stomach, but Aiden rolled out of the way. Unfortunately, she let go of Natasha’s arm, and they both sprung back up, circling each other.

Again, Nat rushed towards her, attempting to push out the legs from under Aiden. Aiden backflipped, straightening her legs to kick Nat in the face, causing her to stumble back. Aiden landed in a crouch and immediately rushed forward, jumping on top of Nat’s shoulder and bringing her arms down on her head. Nat fell back onto the rings of the fighting cage, causing Aiden to tumble off of her. Natasha smirked and walked over, pinning her down.

Nat opened her mouth to say something, but Aiden grabbed her arm and flipped her over, throwing Nat onto her back.

Both of them simply lay there, breathing heavily, until they remembered that they had an audience. They sat up and looked out to the rest of the crowd; they were all staring at them with shocked faces.

Then, Tony stepped forward, slow clapping. “Holy- Steve, cover the kid’s ears- shit. That was incredible.” He turns to Aiden. “Kid, you got tons of potential. I mean, you managed to take out a trained assassin, and you’re what? 15? 16? That’s absolutely insane.” He pauses. “Tell you what, I want you to train with us. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll come on missions with us. But I see the spark that’s in you; it’s the same that I see when I look at Peter. I’m not letting you screw this up for yourself.” He points to Natasha, Bucky, and Steve. “I want you three to train her, okay?” Then he points to Aiden. “Every day after school, I want you to come here with Peter. You can do homework and whatever shit here, I don’t care. But now? You’re part of the family Aiden. Enjoy it.” He finishes with a smirk, arms wide. Everyone stares at him in shock, including Aiden. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Tony walks towards the door, then turns around as he grips the handle. “Oh, and by the way, we’re hosting a karaoke party tonight. Be ready by 8:30, there’s going to be a ton of celebrities there!” And with that, he’s gone.

Still in shock, Aiden turns to Natasha. “What in the fucking world just happened?!” Even Steve was too stunned to tell her to watch her language.

Nat just shrugs with a little smile on her face. She places a hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “That’s Tony for you, unpredictable as hell,” she smirks, then walks out of the room. Slowly, everyone trickles out until only Peter and Aiden are left in the room.

Aiden jumps down from the training cage and makes her way to Peter. He just grins like a madman and holds his arms out for her.

Still not thinking straight, Aiden walked into them and gripped him tightly, feeling him tense up at the movement. Her heart started beating fast and she placed her head in the crook of his neck. They stayed like that for a while, until they heard the click of a camera. Startled, they jump apart and turn around to find Thor, Scott, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha. Thor and Scott both have their phones out, pointing them in the kids’ direction.

Scott gives them a little thumbs up and grins, calling out, “You’re doing great sweetie!”, causing both Peter and Aiden to double over in laughter. Natasha turns and gestures for everyone to leave. Right before she steps out and closes the door, she turns around and glares at Peter, giving him an If you hurt her I will murder you death stare while Aiden isn’t looking. Peter gulps and turns to Aiden.

“So, do you want to hang out until we have to get ready?” He asks.

Aiden nods, saying, “Sure, since we have to be ready by 8:30, I’ll probably have to start getting ready at around 5. Nat, Wanda, Pepper, and I are getting ready together so it’ll probably take a little longer.” Peter just nodded, pretending to know what she was talking about.

For the next few hours, they hung out and talked, feeling like two normal teenagers for once. Then, 5 rolled around, and Aiden left to go get ready.

A few hours later, everyone was ready. Aiden was dressed in a gorgeous red skater dress, with a bit of a plunging v neckline and a slit on one leg. She wore sneakers underneath, already too dressed up for her liking. Wanda had gone all out with Aiden’s makeup, making her look like a goddess. Pepper gave her a clutch that was small enough to put her phone in, but not much else. Natasha wore a small black dress that accentuated her curves, with Wanda wearing a small silver silk dress. Pepper wore a blue-grey strapless dress with a fitted waist and a flowy bottom. With that, they were all ready to go.

The party was in full swing by the time they got downstairs, and the boys were all sitting at the bar, drinking. Peter, of course, was drinking orange juice. Aiden smiled a little at the sight.

Tony was the first to notice them, letting out a whistle when he saw Pepper, practically drooling. The rest looked up, and Aiden saw Peter visibly suck in a breath when he saw her. She grinned at him, and he grinned back. The group of girls stuck together until they got to the bar, where Wanda left to go find Vision and Pepper wandered off to the dance floor with Tony.

Aiden walked over to Peter and sat next to him, asking for water from the bartender.

Peter looked flustered while he looked Aiden up and down and finally managed to stammer out, “You- uh, you look really nice! Really pretty, I mean.” Aiden smiled and pulled him into a hug, kissing him on the cheek.

“You look really pretty too, Peter,” she said, earning a laugh from Sam who had been eavesdropping. Aiden turned to him and flipped him off, before settling her gaze on Peter again. They talked for a while until Tony and Pepper came back with Wanda and Vision, insisting that it was time for them to eat and pulling them to a row of booths in the back of the room.

As they approached their reserved booth, Aiden caught the sight of someone in the one directly behind theirs. She froze, but when Peter noticed and asked if she was okay, she nodded and continued walking forward numbly.

Don’t notice him, Tony, don’t notice him, Tony, don’t notice him, Tony, she prayed. Of course, she never gets what she wants.

Tony spots the one person that Aiden prayed he never would have invited.

“Tom!” Tony calls out.

--

a/n - so I got a bit caught up in writing this chapter and it turned out to be super long but I just didn’t know when to cut it off, you know? Sorry for the cliffhanger but I had to, I think we all hate Tom for what he did oops. (Also, his face claim is Tony Revolori sorry not sorry).

[thanksjro]

Eugenesis Part Three, Scene Five: Rev-Tone Becomes My Favorite Character

Pull it together, Nightbeat. You can indulge in your fantasies of being crushed under the palms of an authority figure some other time.

So Optimus Prime somehow woke up in time to save the day, and now he’s performing life-saving surgery with nothing but his hands, as Nightbeat swoons in the background. I’m not even exaggerating, that’s literally what happens.

We’re approaching MTMTE Thunderclash levels of adoration here.

Even Nightbeat’s a little put off by how hard he’s crushing on Optimus, realizing that the Optimus he’d served under hadn’t been the “original”, but rather the Nebulan copy. Seeing original-flavor Optimus is akin to meeting Jesus Christ, apparently.

Nightbeat’s team looks like they’re all going to pull through, thanks to Optimus Prime being friggin’ perfect. He’s not even asking any questions as to why he’s in the future, or why there’s a wormhole, or why the sky is full of Trident ships, or why why why why why, like any other normal sentient creature would in this position, although Nightbeat is really wishing that he would.

That’s it, I’m kink-shaming Nightbeat. He’s going to jail for being way too horny for his boss’ attention.

After working his medical magic, Optimus finally, finally lets Nightbeat bust a nut asks just how he got where they currently are. Nightbeat explains what’s going on, more or less, and Optimus gets real amped up about getting everyone else to the future with him, before he has to be shut down, since that really isn’t the plan. Then Optimus has what can only be described as a very brief nervous breakdown, before Hoist wakes up and starts chumming it up. The others quickly follow, flocking around the Prime like anime schoolgirls around their senpai.

Meanwhile, back at the bombed-out remains of Autobase- I told you, they got fucked hard by the Quintessons- Prowl’s Autobots watch as their forcefields break down and the Quintesson ground forces begin to move in.

Rev-Tone’s not dead yet, somehow, and meets up with Kup. They open a hatch to the world above, the door raining severed limbs onto them momentarily before they climb up. Also, Quickswitch is dead. So that’s neat, I guess.

I’m getting flashbacks to MTMTE #15 here. Roberts, I’ve seen how you treat your OCs- don’t do these boys dirty, they don’t deserve it.

He sees Quark- thank fuck- and starts blasting, defending him from a swarm of Sharkticons. Quark yells at him for not being in the medibay, but notes that his twitch has disappeared. This is starting to feel like a quasi-Chromedome/Rewind dynamic here. I bet if it hadn’t been 2005, these two would be conjunxing it up. As it is, there’s this feeling of “thou doth protest too much” in how often Roberts refers to them as ‘friends'.

You sure fucking are.

But enough of the not-romance, it’s time to check in on our Quintessential Flying Fucks™! Jolup- who isn’t an OC, but an honest-to-god character with dialogue and everything in the comics- has been screaming the entire time they’ve been flying, because, really, who wouldn’t be shrieking with delight after going from feeling literally nothing and seeing nothing to being able to fly? He’s also been doing barrel rolls. Jolup is very relatable.

Jolup casually suggests that they kill the general and take control, but Sevax- another canon character- just kind of brushes him off. Surely this little conversation will never be revisited.

The three QFF land in a massive crater and decide to investigate.

These three are a delight! I can’t believe we haven’t spent more time with them before now.

They’ve found Mount Edeus, and decide that this will be where Phase Two will be set up.

…Yeah, I’m just gonna keep calling them the Flying Fucks, if it’s all the same to you.

They enter an abandoned building inside a hollow mountain, deciding to turn it into an Autobot/Decepticon concentration camp.

And Megatron wrote a book called My Struggle.

And there’s this whole thing about the Quintessons wanting to keep the “sparkline pure”.

I’m just not sure that a novel about giant cartoon space robots, who will allegedly get knocked up at some point, is the best place for all these Holocaust parallels.

Back with Team Prime, the boys are getting ready to hit the road, locking up on their way out of the temple. Optimus is busy taking in the scenery and having an existential crisis over the fact that this fucking war is still going on. He knows why they brought him back, and he’s already sick of it. He’s going to be so pissed with Prowl, I guarantee it.

Meanwhile, on the Conquest, Xenon’s still mad about Thunderclash’s little prank. The Matrix is essential to the next part of their plan, so they need to find Rodimus- fast. He tells Quantax to figure it out, then hangs up without saying goodbye. Rude.

This book is laying it on pretty thick now.

Drift ghostwrote this part.

The dawn has arrived, and everyone is still fighting, though at this point it’s more because they have to than any real sense of self-preservation. Sideswipe sidles up to Prowl, tells him what he’s going to do, doesn’t take no for an answer, and does what he pleases, because Sideswipe doesn’t respect Prowl, nor should he. He splits the forces in half, allowing for at least half of the troops to escape back underground while the others provide cover. Brutal. Sideswipe for Prime 2012.

Rev-Tone and Quark get a comm. One from Prowl, one from Sideswipe. Quark’s been chosen to stay behind.

Rev-Tone gives the doomed lovers trope a big double bird, scoops up Quark and bolts for the underground.

While Rev-Tone does for Quark what IDW Chromedome wishes he could have done for Rewind, Galvatron’s in a body harness in the Quintesson Fungeon. Hope he didn’t forget the safe word.

My mistake, it’s called the executive torture suite.

Haxian walks in, pops an Inhibitor Chip into Galvatron’s head, then reverses the polarity on the energy-drain machine Galvatron’s strapped into. Newly invigorated, he’s ready for some good old-fashioned torture.

Xenon shows him some of that aqua fortis that makes up the oceans of Aquaria. He pours a little onto Galvatron’s leg, as a demonstration of just what it can do to a Transformer’s body. He tells Galvatron that if he can transform in the one minute he’s given, Xenon won’t flood the room with the stuff.

Yeah, that doesn’t happen.

[scratchybeardsweetmouth]

Iain Glen Knows Why You're So Thirsty For Jorah Mormont on Game of Thrones

By Madison Vain April 29, 2019  Photography [and Videography] by Tyler Joe

Excerpt:

Ser Jorah Mormont crossing the wide terrains of Westeros on horseback is a familiar sight for fans of HBO's Game of Thrones. But for actor Iain Glen, who’s played the role now for seven-plus seasons, it’s hardly his favorite mode of transportation. “I always find a bicycle,” he says, sitting in a Midtown Manhattan green room, speaking about how he prefers to get around since the show catapulted its cast into the stardom stratosphere. It’s simply the most practical—not to mention safest—way to travel, these days. In some locations, especially Spain, he notes, fans don’t hold back when they spot the lovelorn lord. “They’ll attack you,” he says. “They’ll just grab you and start snogging you without invitation.” It's not exactly a violent response, but it does make getting around difficult. “They just want to hold you,” he continues. Cue: a set of wheels. “I don’t know what it is,” he admits, “They stop looking. They don’t associate actors with bicycles. So [I] just always sneak out the back, get a bicycle, and find a hickey restaurant on the outskirts of town. That’s my modus operandi.” New York is a bit easier, and he insisted on arriving at our April interview on foot even though a few blocks away fans have been camping outside of the hotel where the Thrones cast is staying for the premiere of Season Eight. Fans in the city recognize him, but let him get on his way. “It's lovely, actually,” he admits, laughing. “It reminds me of London.”  Historically, the attention has been confusing for Glen's younger children. (He has one son and two daughters.) His youngest is six and, as the actor says, frequently taken back by the approach of strangers. He chuckles, recalling her questions: Do you know that person? Why do people keep speaking to you? Why are they calling you Jorah? But for Glen, it's welcome. He says his wife actually put it best: “Who would not want someone to pat you on the back and tell you you're fantastic a few times every day?” For many of Glen’s young costars, Game of Thrones marked the very beginning of their careers. (Bella Ramsey, who plays Jorah’s cousin, the spunky Lyanna Mormont, hasn’t even seen most of the series on the account of only being 15 years old.) But the 57-year-old Scot has been working consistently across film, television, and theater for decades. One of his fondest memories of New York, he says, almost wistful, was when he and Nicole Kidman starred in Blue Room on Broadway in 1998. He lived near Central Park and spent his down time perusing the Met, freely.   “It’s a great deal to take on when you’re that young,” he says of co-stars like Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner who began filming as young teens. “But they all seem to be managing incredibly well.” And, as only an actor seasoned by years of rejection can, he quips, with a laugh: “And, if I’d been Kit’s age or Maisie’s age when I started, I certainly wouldn’t be complaining!” A wizened perspective actually made him more measured in his acceptance of the role, initially, he recalls. “When you accepted the job, you had to commit for, I think it was four years,” he says. “And they wouldn’t tell you if you were gonna die.” Glen said his team pressed HBO for details: “I asked for a breakdown, going forward, season by season.” His quest turned up few details, but something about the little he learned inspired him. “Listen, you go out for stuff, and there’s some things you really want and some things you don’t,” he says. “I really wanted this. I remember saying to my wife that I had a funny feeling about it. I felt like it was going somewhere.” As we all know now, he was right. The show is watched obsessively, by millions. (The Season Eight premiere drew a record 17.4 million viewers, making it HBO’s biggest night ever for streaming.) And in the age of Netflix binges where watching on your own time is the norm, it remains a can’t-miss, Sunday night event. That reality is a treat for the cast, as much as the viewers, assures Glen. A long career means the actor is exponentially more aware of how special it is to have been involved. “It’s very unusual to come back to something again and again and again,” he muses. “The life of an actor is very ephemeral. That’s what we’re used to; getting thrown with a bunch of strangers and getting to know each other really quickly and then saying, ‘Right, I’m gonna completely forget about that and now I’m going to jump into something else.’ Certainly, in my experience as an actor, I’ve never done anything like this. And to come back to something that everyone is saying is just going fantastic, that’s a very binding thing in itself. That was very winning.” much has been made over the years about some of the brutal shoots the cast has had to endure each season. (See: the Battle of Winterfell, which required 11 weeks of freezing, night shoots.) But for the most part, Glen was lucky. “In the early seasons, I was part of the Dothraki/Daenerys storyline,” he explains. “We were always on the move, always traveling. But we were always coming into rather fantastic, gorgeous, sunny warm spaces. We were filming the bit that the crew always looked forward to each season, before they went back to shitty, wet, cold weather.” And then came the greyscale. When the disease had gotten to its worst, Glen spent eight hours with the costume department, getting a full prosthetic outfitted on him before each shoot. “It was like coming in at midnight and being ready to shoot at eight, to then do the ten-hour day,” he recalls. “It reminded me of some of the drugs I’ve taken. At university, I was pretty spaced out—but in a nice, helpful, acting way.” It was also during this time that Glen thought his run on the notoriously deadly show was coming to an end. “I thought my number was up,” he admits. “[Creators] Dan [Weiss] and Dave [Benioff] really enjoy fucking with the actors—not giving them any sort of clues. So I asked them both individually, because I couldn’t get the answer.” He still came up short. “One of them said ‘I’m not saying.’ The other, when I said, ‘Do I survive the greyscale?’ said, ‘You do this season.’” (Turns out, the actors know just how you feel, wondering about their characters’ fates.) Ser Jorah is not Jon Snow. He doesn’t have a hero storyline and he's not a contender for the Throne, so it wasn’t a give-in that he’d earn such a passionate fanbase. And yet the Jorah fan accounts on social and thirsty fan fiction on the internet has run wild over the years. Glen attributes it to his devotion to Dany, the Mother of Dragons. (Even, yes, when he betrays her.) “In a chaotic, mad, dangerous, and violent world in which people are generally out for themselves,” he begins, “the purity of his desire to support her—to be there for her—is a nice contrast to the rest of the show. For the first two, three seasons, it was about this desire to express that from his point of view, but never doing it.” He follows up, “Do you know what I mean?” Um yeah. Jorah as the head of House Friendzone is the material that’s spawned, to be exact, a gajillion memes since the show’s 2011 debut. The way he looks at her, even now, oozes with a desperation that viewers can’t help but melt over. “I think they modulated their journey really beautifully throughout the seasons,” he says of the writer’s attention to Dany and Jorah. “I think they found a really compelling root through it, where for you, as an audience, it's hard to stand from the outside. And I'm not the best person to ask, but people tell me, that you have such a mixture of emotions watching. At first you think, ‘Oh please, go on and say it!’ But then very quickly it's, ‘Oh god! You shouldn’t have!’” On a show that has to divide time between so many characters each week, there’s an inevitable risk that some storylines will feel one-note or under-developed. Glen’s refuses this in his portrayal of the former slave owner mightily, instead bringing a weightiness as well as a readiness to recognize internal conflicts to his turns on screen. “It’s like real life,” he says of his careful approach. “Isn’t it? With people that we fall madly in love with, there’s always a moment of, ‘Fuck, I never realized you were such a shit when I fell in love with you.’” It’s been a delight, truly, for audiences. But Sunday night, the pensive stead’s run finally came to an end. After leading legions of troops into the Battle of Winterfell, near the end of the one-hour, twenty-two minute episode, he fulfilled his final mission: protect Dany with his life. He lasted as long as the battle and Dany held him as he drew his final breath. For the fans who've loved him, they know it's exactly how he'd have hoped to go. [...] “I feel very happy with his story arc,” Glen tells me. “When we read all six episodes before we started at the beginning, in a big room in Northern Ireland—Belfast—I thought the writers had managed it incredibly well and thoroughly, in terms of looking after everyone. It’s one of the hard things when you write big, sweeping, epic dramas like this. How do you look after everyone’s storyline, individually?” We’ll continue to see as Season Eight continues its March towards a May 19 series finale. Glen is adamant that the sheer scale of the production will stick in his memory bank forever. “I felt like a kid, coming into set and seeing some huge, monumental fucking castle—and arriving at bases with so many vehicles, so many extras, so many horses. There’s a side to that which is just really thrilling.” But the moment he’s actually most fond of a shoot from Season Five when Ser Jorah, following a brutal journey with Tyrion Lannister, offers his life to Dany in the Fighting Pits in Mereen. It took several days—and five or six other fighters—to film, something Glen loves, but it was what was going on behind the camera that he enjoyed most. “My family was there,” he recalls. The crew dressed his then seven-year-old up as a mini Ser Jorah and let her call the shots alongside director David Nutter. “They put her in the gear and put scars on her face. It was so, just great.” Looking ahead, Glen joins the DC Universe. Earlier this month, it was announced that the actor would take on the role of Gotham City’s most notorious billionaire, Bruce Wayne, on Titans. It’s unlikely that that show—or any role—could eclipse Jorah’s rabid fandom but that hardly bothers Glen. “I’m proud of the product and I’m proud of any association with that,” he explains. “You can walk around thinking, ‘Didn’t you see my Hamlet?’ or ‘Where were you when I did Henry VI at the Royal Theater Company?’ but you’re wasting your time. [Thrones] is kind of the Holy Grail, to be critically approved but have a massive following? That’s the ticket.”

[welllpthisishappening]

A Request for Help, Version 2.0

Hello, hey, hi there. So, yesterday, I wrote, posted and then very quickly got rid of a thing about a story I am writing because it is my greatest fear that I will annoy the internet.

Like imagine me writing and somehow being both Ms. Piggy and Kermit: 

The problem here is that I still kind of need some help if said internet is inclined to do it. Basically I have been writing this time travel story for over a year. I have aesthetic boards, Spotify playlists, character breakdowns and color coded timelines. But! When I decided I wanted to go back and edit my first draft, I was like...this is a lot. There are a lot of moving parts and visions of the future and the color coding is really necessary. 

The edit has more or less become a full-scale rewrite. There are still a lot of moving parts, but the chapters aren’t 8K anymore, some things have been changed or taken out or plot points have been moved up. I think it’s going ok, and yet. My concern is that this story only makes sense in my head. 

The gist of it is our heroine, Scarlett, just turned twenty-five and discovered that the job she’s going to interview at isn’t so much a job offer as it is the bad guy (Carter Campbell) trying to use her to take over the world. Obviously. Because Scarlett Nolan isn’t just a normal twenty-five year old, she can control all five of the ancient elements and, by extension, time itself. Our love interest, Alex, tells her that after he shows up on the Subway. Alex has spent the last two years getting randomly tugged through Scarlett’s timeline, trying to find her at this one, perfect spot so she doesn’t go to the interview with Campbell. 

There’s lots more, but that’s the general idea, plus kissing because of who I am as a person. Now, what am I asking? You don’t have to read all 15 chapters I’ve written, but if you’re interested and want to read some early ones and let me know what confuses you or doesn’t or you think should be explained more, that’d really set my mind at ease. Like I said, I’ve been working on this story for ages, so it means a lot and I’m really trying to make it the best it can be. 

Words under the cut so, if you do want to read, you can see some more about Scarlett and Alex. Feel free to message me if you want to read or tell me to shut up about my own writing or want to know what songs I think go with what characters. 

“Uh, excuse me?”

Scarlett jumped, slamming her head into the door and no one else looked. “Ah, shit,” she hissed.”God damn, that hurt. I think I’m concussed.” The guy paled at the tone of her voice, crouching in front of her and Scarlett got the distinct impression he was trying not to reach out towards her. A curl fell far too close to his right eyebrow to be fair. “Fuck,” he breathed. “I--uh, oh fuck.” “Articulate, aren’t you?” “Sometimes. Not now, obviously, but I really don’t think you're concussed.” Scarlett’s jaw dropped, reaching up to press the heel of her hand into the back of her head and she was surprised to find that there wasn’t a baseball-sized lump there. “If that was your attempt at apologizing for scaring the shit out of me, it fell pretty flat.” He smiled. It was kind of like staring at—something big and important and absolutely life-changing. “I wasn’t trying to scare you,” he said, any sense of that previous tension evolving into what might have actually been misplaced flirting. “I...well, I had a question.” Scarlett made a face, she knew she did. She had a habit. A bad one. Owen teased her about it mercilessly and Ella told her she’d make a horrible informant because every thought that flitted through her mind, somehow, ended up on her face. 

“That’s what you’re going with?” she asked, doing her best to infuse as much venom into the question as possible. His smile wavered. “I don’t understand.” “Are you fucking with me? I mean, I’ll give you points for not giving a damn. But that’s what you're opening with? After the elbow thing—” “—That wasn’t intentional.” “And the staring thing,” Scarlett continued, barely breaking conversational stride, “Were you going to ask for directions and then casually drop in that you’re new in town and looking for some company later?” He blinked. The smile was gone. “I’m not new in town.” Scarlett couldn’t imagine a situation where she’d ever though the word husky, but it seemed strangely appropriate in the moment, his voice dropping low with an obvious sense of determination and—

Frustration. 

He was frustrated. And tired and overwhelmed and actually a little concerned about her head. Scarlett could feel it, the maelstrom of absolutely everything twisting around her joints and timing up with her pulse. “That isn’t what’s happening right now. It’s bigger than that.” “Excuse me?” “You were right about the directions, as, like, a starter, but I didn’t want this to be weird—” “—Oh, you didn’t want it to be weird?” He huffed, eyes widening and it was more familiarity that didn’t make any sense at all. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. “So you’re just a completely presumptuous asshole, then?” Scarlett fumed. “Sometimes. Not now. This is—it’s important, I promise. I’ve been trying to…” “To what?” His exhale was barely that, a burst of air through clenched teeth and that one piece of hair hadn’t moved. It was like it was taunting Scarlett with vaguely attractive and a bit of memory and she could feel his nerves. No, that wasn’t right. She couldn’t feel people’s emotions. Least of all some creep on the uptown-6. “Ok,” he said, pressing his tongue into the side of his mouth. “I’m going to tell you something and I need you not to punch me in the face or kick me in a variety of places.” “No.” “What?” “No, stranger on the train who spent an entire commute elbowing me in the kidney, I will not promise you that.” “Your kidneys are in your back.” “Get to your point, strange train person. Is this a kidnapping attempt? Because it sucks. And I don’t want to buy your candy or support your music career.” He laughed, the sound barely making it to Scarlett’s ears before he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not any of those things. And it’s Alex, by the way. Strange train person seems excessively wordy.” “I do not care. And I’m not telling you my name either. Was there a point to this conversation and anatomy lesson?” She was absolutely, one-hundred percent, no doubt about it, going crazy. His eyes were blue again. And Alex felt like a memory Scarlett couldn’t quite place. 

“There is, that’s what I’m getting at. I just—ok, please don’t punch and just...stop feeling things.” Scarlett breath hitched. “You need to talk. Now. Because I am getting off at the next stop.” “I know.” “Talk, strange train person!” “Alex,” he groaned. “We just did this. Alex Byrne.” “Words. Say them.” His laugh was shaky at best and terrifying at worst, hand finding the back of his hair again when he looked at her. Or, possibly through her. Like he knew her. Well. 

The train stopped, a station Scarlett needed to get out at in order to ensure some kind of future that also ensured she stayed in an apartment she was maybe only vaguely welcome in. Alex’s eyes bugged. 

Scarlett nodded once, popping her lips in annoyance and what may have been have actually been disappointment. She took a step to her left, fingers moving with practiced ease and he didn’t glance down when she pocketed his phone. “Alright,” she said. “Well, this has been as weird as my entire day so far, so, uh, it was not nice to meet you Alex Byrne, strange person on the train. Don’t be an asshole to other people.”

She didn’t wait for a response, the weight of his phone impossible to ignore in her pocket, and she almost felt guilty when she took a step onto the platform. 

Until she heard him shouting at her. He was shouting her name. 

He knew her name. Scarlett sprinted up the stairs, the cold air stinging her lungs when she tried to gulp it down as soon as she reached the sidewalk. And for as many emotions as she’d felt in the last twenty minutes, the one coursing through her was brand-new — a mix of fear and excitement and complete power. 

She tugged the phone out of her pocket, no passcode and only a few apps on the home screen. “Idiot,” Scarlett mumbled, slamming her thumb onto a social media app with three notifications. 

He hadn’t been lying about the name. It was right there, in black and white and photo evidence — a picture that didn’t look too old staring up at Scarlett and that one piece of hair falling across his forehead was apparently a trend. 

Alexander Byrne. Twenty-seven. Rhode Island native. No job listed. Less than one hundred friends. One sister. And a chat bubble in the corner of the screen. 

Scarlett clicked. 

She knew it was wrong, could hear the warning signs like that also didn’t prove how insane she was quickly becoming, but she was curious and something was wrong. About the whole day. And possibly her. 

She nearly dropped the phone. 

The messages were from a woman with thick-rimmed glasses and brown hair and they should not have existed. 

They were timestamped April...next year. 

“What the fuck,” Scarlett muttered, staring at the screen and waiting for it to change. It didn’t. Instead, she might have, the undeniable smell of smoke wafting up towards her and the phone screen shattered as soon as it fell out of her fingers. 

The same ones that had, quite suddenly, burst into flames. Scarlett couldn’t catch her breath again, dangerously close to hyperventilating on Madison Avenue when she heard footsteps and a quiet voice coming towards her. She screwed her eyes closed. He didn’t stop walking. 

It was raining. “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Alex whispered. “But you’re ok. I just—I can explain all of that. Please.” Scarlett shook her head slowly, not sure what she was objecting to, but her hand didn’t feel like it was burning and this had to be a dream. It wasn’t real. It hadn’t been before. 

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, “this isn’t going the way I thought it would at all.” Scarlett’s eyes snapped open to find him staring at her cautiously, flames flickering in between her fingers and he kept rocking into her space. Still not on purpose. “What?” “It’s not a trick, Scarlett. It’s—it’s the fate of the entire world.” She blinked once, trying to find the lie and coming up decidedly short. “Talk,” Scarlett said, and his fingers were warm when they wrapped around hers. The flames disappeared.

[medicallybl0nde]

26.03.19

so, 75% on that midsem, was not happy about it. 5% away from a HD feels like a total kick in the gonads. The class average was 50% and a lot of people did not pass so I know in my heart it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t get that HD, I was adequately prepared for a HD. maybe I could have been more prepared but I was definitely prepared enough for a HD. I hope the unit head looks at the class average and realises she screwed up. The next test for this unit is still about a month away, so I have time to pick myself up for that one and try figure out what she’s going to throw at us. 

I have two midsems coming up for med micro and molecular bio, one two weeks away and one 3 weeks away. I have a stats assignment due in 2 weeks that I want to get done by the end of this week so I can dedicate the next two weeks to midsem prep instead of stats assignment work. This week is a tute free week but since I’m doing my chem unit externally the next 3 days is full of intensive labs for me (literally 8am-5pm in 4 hour increments with one lunch break, I want to cry) so tonight I’m just working through the lab manual prepping for that. I also have a group oral coming up that’s pissing me off because a few of the group members are being little shits, and I need a HD, it’s on the physiology of SIDS cases and I’m considering just doing the whole thing myself. 

I had a psychiatrists appointment yesterday and he seems more interested in me going to med school than my parents do. He spent about 15 minutes lecturing me on how to mentally prepare myself for the gamsat and make sure that I don’t go into it with a half-ass attitude, he actually believes I can do it, which is weird considering he’s seen me at full had-to-be-hospitalised mental breakdown, like this guy had to admit me into hospital and now he’s sitting here with me genuinely lecturing me and giving me advice about getting into med school and I can see on his face that he legit thinks I have a shot at this, and i’m just like- if my psychiatrist, who went to med school himself and has seen me at my worst, thinks that I can get into med. Then I can fucking get into med.

Overall this is going to be a busy week and I hate chemistry so it’s going to be a busy PAINFUL week but whatever come at me

[aliyawyg20]

Dear dad,

Today is One Direction’s Ten Year Anniversary and I’m crying so much. I think about how we would’ve spent today reminiscing and listening to their music together somehow. I can’t listen to any of their music right now as it hurts too much. I think of how I wanted to bring you to Harry’s upcoming show so we could be fans together. I think of the night and day we met him in NYC back in 2012. It’s still the best day of my life. I think of your support and how I got to go to 5 of their shows -1 for every tour and 2 for the Take Me Home Tour. I think of my time at the FS with Zoë and Anamy and Caisey and how I came home with their movie productions notes and green room snacks. I think of all the dating rumors and how you supported my angst towards Taylor Swift (oops @ internalized misogyny). It’s weird to relate to these ultra mega superstar celebrities, the ones that take up the DVR storage that you refuse to delete because you know I’ll watch them when I come home. I relate to Louis and Harry as they have both lost parents and suddenly the veil of fame disappears and I understand that as humans, we all will face death one day. As a teenager who thought of their own death too often, I thank the boys for their music and keeping me happy about anything. Whether it was being in middle and high school and having a 1D backpack... and calendar... and Staples school supply line... and t-shirts, CDs, perfume, duct tape, a signed Louis doll, books, a bag from the official NY 1D store, 100+ magazines, headphones, toothbrush, bracelets, posters, and even a terrifying cut out, or simply being in the car blasting them through the aux with all the windows down and my head out the window, they gave me a lot, to say the least. It was Little Things playing for the first time in my first boarding school room where I melted and dissociated for the first time :’). It was a dormstaff saying they shot the Gotta Be You video at her school. It was every music video and tour video and interview and backstage clips and edits and AAoOD and award shows and talk shows and SNL and so much visual media consumed. Hours of listening to their music. Hours of my bedridden depression of 7 months being filled with fan theories just to give me something to care about. 9/10 years following this band, loving them every part of it. Crying in my mom’s arms after Zayn left. Crying the first time I heard Moments live at the Izod Center in 2012. Crying when I didn’t meet them. Crying when I listened to their new music. Crying when they disbanded. Crying today. Crying right now.

Dad, I saw you last night, or this morning. You were fully there, and Harry was, too. My English teacher was and so were Bella and Trey. But Harry talked to you and I said, “ Wait you can see him?” And Harry said, “of course!” as you two continued shmoozing. I was so happy he saw you. It meant you were really there. And he was, too. He had his mustache and all.

Dad, this was supposed to be our day to celebrate. My day to say thank you. To thank you for every time you supported me venturing out to the city to try to meet them. You always said that you followed the Grateful Dead around so you understood what it meant to me. You got how much it meant to me and fully supported that. That, itself, means the most to me. You really showed me what a passion for music and love for artists and love for me could look like. The way you unconditionally loved me. The way I unconditionally love you. Even when my love for One Direction got into some medical trouble... and messed with y’all’s marriage a little bit... and gave me a few breakdowns... unconditional.

I don’t have many pictures. I don’t have any of you and I related to the band. But I do have the memories. I could make so many puns because of their lyrics, but I won’t. This day was supposed to be our day. This day was supposed to be happy and full of “Omg! LOL” simple type of stuff. It was supposed to be happy. But I feel very alone in Colorado. I feel very much stranded from anywhere where these memories happened. The only ones in Colorado live through my phone in texts and calls. I delete all the calls in my history so it shows up just as yours as the most recent. I don’t want to lose you any more than I have and I grip to anything I’ve got. You’re really gone, Dad. And for a while it was just like Mom said, “he’s just away for a bit. He’s just not here right now.” But the permanence of it all is so disgusting. It’s humid and feels like molasses all over my body in 101° weather. Getting more and more used to this is sickening to me. Letting it settling isn’t heartbreaking. I hate everything people say about their grief. “It never stops hurting” or “time heals” or “it’ll hurt but differently”. You would never say such shite to me. I’m not sure what you would say. The first time I saw you cry was at your own mother’s funeral. It was surreal in that moment in the car. Maybe before was during an episode I had in middle school. After was when you said goodbye to me as I moved across the country away from you all to Boulder, Colorado. Then once again and again and again at most of our goodbyes here, but not this last one. You cried at Hutch dying. You grieved. You said there will never be a cat as good or fun or pure as him. Agreed. You cried at the gifts I gave you this Hannukah with pictures of him. And you know, you never tried to fix things like these other people try to do. You never try to tell me what the future will look like when I’m feeling the worst or most vulnerable. You would never say something as horribly shallow as “it gets better” or “stay strong.” Those are the phrases I would say on tumblr at 15 to my friends who were also self harming. What do those words carried when you yourself are saying them from pain? Nothing. But Dad, you never did that. Over time you learned to ask, “how can I/what can I do to help you?” and “what do you need?” You’d even pay for food to make sure I could eat while devastated over whatever it was that day. Always present. Never anywhere else but right here, right now. And that’s what I miss right now. It is hard to be both sad and hold myself through this sadness. It feels like too much for a one person team. You never let me be sad alone, even sometimes to my dismay. But never alone. I guess you knew that maybe time would heal things or one things would be better, but in the moments, you wouldn’t try to put a bandaid on my big wounds. You’d meet me at the same level of care that my level of pain was at. No one else does it like you do. I hope others will one day. I look for you every where. I’ll always look for you in the people I meet and the friends I keep and the loved ones I hold close. Your heart was my home. It was for so many years. It has grown to be my burial ground. It’s the pit in my stomach now and the way my teeth grind like they’re digging up the earth. It’s “how many times can I let people dig deeper into my wounds before I tell them to find somewhere else to go?” I wish for days less like today. Celebration, of course. But not like this. Not in a pandemic. I don’t even want to say the word anymore. You would cry when feelings came up. You would relax by the tv. I get so scared I’ll remember you incorrectly. I get so scared I’ll never talk to you the ways that I can. I get so scared because this is the truth now. This reality sucks. Sucks. One Direction can only bring so much out of me. The dark greens I see and the dark purpled muddily blending together in my body. I hope you’re having a good day, Dad. I hope the weather is nice and it’s not too hot. I hope the plants are getting watered and doing well. I you’re loving me and sending me messages.

I hope you come back soon. I hate that you won’t. “Live While We’re Young.” You know, that’s the sad thing with One Direction, too. They have a song for just about everything. I could do song association with just their music. I’m pretty tired now. I’ve been writing for 50 minutes. My little therapy session for today. I love you so much, Pops. I wish you were here, goddamn it. I’m here. And I love you forever. I love you forever. I love you forever.

“In the middle of the night when the wolves come out, they go straight for your heart, like a bullet in the dark. One by one, you try to take them down, they can run and hide, ain’t going down without a fight”

You always mentioned the Wolves song. I’ll replenish with a big golden sun. I remember bringing I Want To Write You A Song to 12th grade English class. Weird how I was allowed to do that. And the t shirt from the mall kiosk at Willowbrook that I still have. Aw man, dad. This is so sad and so fucked. Anyways it’s been almost an hour. I love you so much. I’ll talk about you soon and cry about you even more. I love you. Bye for now.

1:22-2:16pm July 23rd, 2020. Ten Years of One Direction

And I never made the video “I listened to every one direction song so you don’t have to 10 year anniversary video” smh

[karenemilne]

Ross doesn’t know what a hill is

Happy bank holiday weekend- I’m back! It is the last Sunday of the month, so as promised, here is my monthly blog to keep you updated on my weight loss (and to hold myself accountable to not eat everything under the sun). Since my last blog two weeks ago I have lost just over 1 1/2 pounds (0.75kg) taking me down to 69.05 and a current loss of 18 pounds! I must admit, I have not been very strict with my diet and I’ve hardly exercised over the past two weeks so I’m quite surprised I have any form of loss if I’m honest! So surprised that when I weighed myself on Friday morning and it said 69.05, I stepped off and back on about 10 times to check the scales had calibrated correctly! I am now only 4 pounds away from my next big target, which is to get to 10kg down from my original weight! I can’t actually quite believe that I’m nearly there. When I think back to the emotions I felt when I started this journey 3 months ago, I never really believed I would get this far without having a breakdown and giving up, but here I am!

 I am not going to go through what I did every day over the past two weeks as 1) it will bore you to tears and 2) I didn’t really do much to write about (in the words of Borat, “naughty naughty”). Instead I’ll just do a kind of general overview of the week!

Week 1- I started the week with a hangover on the Sunday, and if you read my last blog, you’ll be aware that I got an absolute feast from the Chinese (I’m talking £40 for two people kind of feast- worth it). To be honest, I just had a really busy week and didn’t really have the time to exercise. There were times when I thought to myself that I could have done a 15 mins HIIT video in my house but when I was so busy at work and then having to do stuff at home I just couldn’t be arsed really! I had S3 reports to write and I was playing at our schools Junior Young Musician competition so spent a lot of my free time learning piano accompaniments. It was also a week for celebrations as my new wee best pal, Baby Malone, entered the world (congrats again Vari and Kieran- he is amazing) and Ross got a new job. So the dilemma I found myself in was- do I go to the gym or do I cuddle a baby and go out for food/drink gin to celebrate with Ross? You can imagine that my decision took 0.03 seconds to make and the gym certainly didn’t win!! Other than that I went to Topolabamba on Friday night and ate A LOT (I’m talking 8 dishes between us and not a single crumb was left) and I also ate loads of snacks at my sisters on Saturday. At this point you’re probably thinking- ‘how the fuck have you lost more weight?!’ and the feeling is mutual! The only exercising I did for the full week was a 6am 6K one morning and I climbed Tinto with the school on the Friday. The 6K wasn’t even great because I had a belly full of the previous nights gin and I had to walk the last 0.5k in fear of vomiting all over the streets of Nitshill. So not the most productive weight loss week…

Week 2- Again, I haven’t really worked out much this week. I’ve had quite a bit of pain with my sinuses and a cold and when I’m feeling like that exercise is the last thing on my mind- all I want is a bath and an early night! I did go on a couple of runs though, including the killer one that Ross took me on, on Sunday. Ross had avoided taking me on this run for months as he said I wasn’t ready. Naturally, as a stubborn Capricorn, I took offence to this and wanted to prove him wrong at all costs but actually, he was completely right and had I tried that run even a couple of weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have managed it. I’m still not quite there in calling myself a ‘runner’. Before a run I am quite up for it and I actually like running in the morning but I really struggle mentally during a run. I have an on-going mental battle every single run. I am constantly in my head saying things like ‘you’re tired’ or ‘you’ll never complete this’ or ‘your legs are too heavy for this, you need to stop’ and it’s a bloody nightmare because then I have to actively make myself ignore what I’m thinking and just focus on listening to my music. In a lot of ways my running has improved- I’m faster, my recovery time is much better and I can run longer, but I don’t know how long it will take me to get past the constant negativity when I’m out- any advice is very welcome!! Anyway, back to the killer run! Now I do need to massively thank Ross for all of his support and encouragement with exercise because he is amazing and really motivates me. However, I am concerned that Ross doesn’t actually know what a hill is, as prior to the run he told me it had like 4 hills and only 2 were big. This run had upwards of 10. I’m not even kidding! The beginning section is a climb for about 7 minutes (of hell) and as we approached the top and I was like ‘yay, one hill down’, he informed me that he ‘wouldn’t really call that a hill’. For those who live near us, this is the hill left up from the Brigg Inn up to Gateside. It’s a fucking hill. So after about 4 other ‘mere bumps in the road’ (hills) we get to the first mountain. Thankfully he did acknowledge that this one was in fact a hill, but he told me that there was only one other hill and it wasn’t too bad. Once we got to the top of this mountain, and I was breathing out my arse he pointed over to a munro (not a drama queen…) and said that’s where we were going next (this is the one from the photo on Sunday).  Now I could lie and say I was like ‘yes, bring on the challenge, buzzing’ but I think I said ‘get to fuck’ and was very close to crying at the mere thought of it! You know a hill is steep when cars are revving beside you trying to get up it! BUT lo and behold, I managed it and the sense of pride and achievement that I felt made it worth it, and actually, once the ground levelled out and I managed to breathe again, I felt like I could have ran for another 7/8K on top of what we had already done. It has made me really determined to do the Glasgow half marathon in September- watch this space!! I didn’t really plan on ranting about that run, but here we are! Aside from that I did another 6AM 5K and went to the gym on Friday, which was actually really tough because I hadn’t been in a couple of weeks! At the gym I just did cross trainer intervals, curved treadmill sprints, intervals on the stair master and then did some back weights. Diet wise, I was good during the week and as always, ate and drank at the weekend. I even managed to stay up until 6 last night which is unheard of!! Today has sucked- Ross is out running and I’m not even going to make excuses, I just want to stay in my PJs and start fresh tomorrow!

 So another couple of weeks where I haven’t done much but have managed to lose weight through clean eating most of the time midweek! I’m at a point now where I can see the difference, and feel like some of my clothes are now a bit looser and I’ve got to be honest, I love that. I’m still not where I want to be but I feel so much happier and more confident in myself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- if I can do it anyone can! You don’t need to out there killing yourself. I still enjoy myself and don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything- it’s just been a total lifestyle change for me and I don’t think I’ll ever stop now! Anyway, the next blog will be in a month and hopefully I’ll be able to talk about reaching the 10kg mark, but I’ll play that by ear! Thank you as always for reading and supporting! X

[rockrevoltmagazine]

Ohio band A Sense of Purpose brought in the crowd for the release show of their new EP, Mend. Applause and cheers broke out as they approached the stage to set up their gear. Kicking off, the band brought awesome energy and life to their new songs; they played some new tracks mixed with fan favorites. Throughout the set, the crowd was incredibly lively; jumping and moshing to the beats. I had the opportunity to sit down with the entire band for a conversation about the band and their new EP.

  Why don’t you guys go around and introduce yourselves and your role in the band.

My name is Seth and I play bass.

I’m John, I’m the vocalist.

I’m Chris, I’m the guitarist and vocalist.

I’m Nick and I’m the drummer.

I’m Kyle and I play guitar and kind of yell at everyone I guess. Band dad.

  How are you feeling about the reception for your EP Mend coming out?

Nick: Haven’t seen any trashy things yet haha.

Seth: Generally I feel like it’s been well received, but that’s just based off of like, social media posts or people just coming up and talking to you about it.

John: Yeah, I guess that remains to be seen. Maybe we’ll find out tonight; we’re playing a lot of these songs for the first time.

Kyle: It’s kind of hard to really build I guess a concrete set of expectations too; previous singles do kind of okay, but we don’t really know what to expect in any real sense. Anything that happens is just a good feeling at this point.

Seth: Yeah, all specific responses I’ve gotten on it so far have been generally very positive, so I think that’s a good sign.

Good! Everything I’ve seen has been really positive. So, congratulations on that guys!

  All: Thank you!

Chris: Hey I own that hat [referring to the Sorry Mom hat I was wearing].

  Haha, everybody owns this hat. It’s a fantastic hat. It’s funny because I’ve had multiple people come up to me, and when they don’t know the band they see ‘sorry mom’ written on the back and they’re like ahhhh thats hilarious! I’m like ha yeah… it’s actually a band though you should check them out… Well… was a band.

  All: Yeah hahaha, RIP.

In writing this EP has there been any difference in your creative process from previous work to this new record?

  Nick: We did drums last this time.

John: Seth wrote more lyrics, I think.

Seth: Yeah, maybe just lyrically I kind of chipped in a little bit to take the load off of Chris with the recording process.

  Gotcha, so Chris you’re the primary writer?

Chris: Yeah. Writing this time around I tried to have a little more focus, direction, more cohesive song writing; a little less extravagant and progressive… Only a little haha. It still gets kind of proggy and technical, but I think the songs are just more focused, heavier emphasis on melody, more hooks, more singing than previous stuff. NO guitar solos, actually. We went from… a LOT of guitar solos to.. None.

Seth: Yeah haha, I think every track on our last record had one. All of them. Also no real breakdown-type parts on this record.

John: Yeah not really, it’s more groovy. It may come off as lighter to some people haha. Some kind of like, heavy purists have commented but like it’s all been positive.

Do you guys have any plans coming out for touring or have anything in the pipeline for future tours?

Seth: Well we just got picked up by Artery Global, and definitely they helped with booking. It’s our intent to put together a more aggressive touring schedule and agenda going forward; kind of build our resume.

John: As far as things actually booked, we’re doing a five day run with the release of Mend. It started last night in Columbus, and then tonight in Lakewood. Tomorrow we’re playing in Cincinnati, Monday is in Detroit, Tuesday is in the Chicago area. So it’s like the longest cohesive run that we’ve ever had haha. All the other ones have been broken up, they haven’t been consistent.

Kyle: It’s been kind of a tough break because the last tour we were supposed to go on the headliner ended up dropping because a lot of the shows were falling through. Through a variety of different factors I guess it was really unfortunate, but we were really excited about it.

John: It went from 12 days to 6 days to 4 days to like 3 days in the span of like a week and a half before it started.

  Damn, yeah that’s rough.

  John: Yeah like we requested off work and everything.

Nick: I lost my job for it hahaha.

John: Haha yeah so now we got like 3 days, only one of them is outside of Ohio. Shit happens.

  I know some bands are typically more touring oriented vs studio-based. Do you guys have a preference?

  Nick: I hate the studio because we’re paying for it.

All: Hahah yeah that sucks.

  Haha ok yeah that’s fair.

  John: Yeah it’s definitely a time crunch, at least our experience so far has been we haven’t had the luxury of writing in the studio or something like that. Most of the creativity is sort of precalculated, we do a lot of stuff outside of the actual studio to make sure that the time we spend in the studio is as efficient as it can be, just to keep costs down and stuff.

Chris: The recording process is really fun though and slightly challenging. I enjoy. Also, we haven’t spent a lot of time being a touring band, but I definitely think that’s our collective goal; to definitely be some road warriors for a while. We definitely want to get out as much as we can.

John: Playing live is such a different experience, obviously, for most bands instead of listening to a finished product. Listening to it in a live setting sets a completely different light.

Seth: It’s one thing to put music out there and have people listen to a recorded version and get response based on that. It’s another thing to be in the room with them playing the song and see the reaction.

John: It’s harder to fake too haha. We try but it’s harder to fake.

  Something I always like to ask people because they hate this question; if you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?

  Nick: Time traveling so I can win the lottery over and over.

  Ok, I like it, but I feel like you would get flagged, like I feel like they would be like “this guy has won like 6 times… what’s going on here?

  Kyle: I would do just teleportation. It would be so nice, you guys would leave and I’d be like “ok I’ll just see you later when you get there.”

John: Um… invisibility would be sick too, the standards, really.

Chris: I’d go with flying, honestly. It’s kind of like teleportation but fun.

John: Sounds dangerous haha.

Chris: Unless it’s like Harry Potter where you’re holding someone’s entire weight.

Kyle: Yeah you might have to work out a little to be able to do that haha.

Seth: I might have to go with Kyle on this, teleportation would be good. I just hate traffic so much.

  I feel that so hard.

  Kyle: It’s really telling of our character that we don’t have any nefarious purpose for teleporting, no its like “traffic fucking sucks, I want to teleport.”

Seth: Hahah yeah traffic is just the worst.

Nick: Yeah but no one in the band has to deal with traffic because I drive.

Seth: Ok so all four of us could teleport then Nick just has to drive.

All: Ahhh yes hahahah

Seth: Just by yourself with all of the gear.

  Ok those are good haha. If you don’t mind, take me through your writing process. Do you guys write a lot of material before you get those few songs that are great?

  John: Yeeeep. There’s more unheard music then there is that we’ve put out there.

  Would you ever release any of those? Like a demo and b-side record?

  John: Well, most of them are just working demos, not really worth releasing haha.

Seth: In our Drive I have probably like 50 or 60 songs, maybe 30 or so are completely written lyrically and arranged. Obviously they’d need some fine-tuning and stuff, but most of them are fully formed and demoed. Through funding the recording costs and trimming the fat we ended up with 6. For Mend we juggled around with what, 14 to 15 songs?

John: Yeah we easily had enough for a full-length and our manager pushed us to maybe pursue that, but in the self-funded realm without label support, its hard. When you’re funding it yourself you pay by like the song, generally.

Kyle: There’s definitely some songs that were around before this EP came out that I think we definitely still want to release.

John: Yeah absolutely. Songs that almost made the cut. We made some last minute changes right before we hit the studio.

Chris: When we were right about to go into the studio I wrote Numb. That song wasn’t even in our minds.

Nick: Yeah that song was written like a week and a half before we started recording.

Seth: I think Evergreen was pretty new too.

John: Oh yeah! I think with Evergreen and Numb, we were deciding on where to go. It changed the overall tone of the record. The songs we swapped out for those two were heavier.

Chris: Yeah we had a more progressive heavier sound, but when we added those we went with a more focused melodic sound.

Kyle: It’s kind of all over the place because Numb was very last minute, but by contrast we had the demo for Retrace in like, late 2016.

Chris: Yeah that song is old as fuck. Same thing with An Apparition.

Seth: Those are both the oldest songs.

Chris: Those are both from around September of 2016.

John: So that was post-Zoetic era. So our last record was like two years ago. Some of those songs are from around then. Yeah, there’s never a shortage of music haha.

Chris: …I write a lot…

  I mean I feel like that’s how you do it. Do you have any specific shows that stand out as memorable? Either as awesome or horrific?

  All: Ohhhhh we’ve got horror stories haha.

  Ok hit me with one.

  Chris: The senior center.

John: It was some hardcore festival, it was like 2 days and 20 bands or something like that.

Kyle: There was at least 10+ bands each day. But it was in some senior center in West Virginia.

John: It was in the absolute middle of fucking nowhere.

Seth: Hurricane, West Virginia.

Nick: We slept in a Walmart!

John: We got there so early so we could have a good parking spot. We got there hours before the promoters even showed up. The promoters ended up being like… teenagers.

Nick: It was a sick parking spot though.

John: That’s true, it was sick.

Nick: We sat there for like… 8 hours.

John: We got a bunch of alcohol and just killed time.

Kyle: It was some charity event, it was actually pretty impressive that some high school kids were able to put this together. We passed time just sitting there drinking Strawberry… something. Strawberita Bud-Light things.

Chris: AND it was in West Virginia so we got moonshine. It was fucking gross.

  Helllll yeah!

  John: They had like… old people rocking chairs in the space that we played. With pictures of old people on the walls and stuff. It was like some senior community center. We had to move all the chairs to the mess hall area, I think they all had those tennis balls on the legs and everything.

  Wait… you didn’t like, play for a bunch of old people did you? Was it a younger crowd?

  John: No! Not at all hahahah. It was a typical metal/hardcore crowd.

  Oh ok good! Shit I was gonna say… Jesus I don’t think they would appreciate that genre very much haha.

  John: Yeah it just happened to be IN a senior center.

  Ok, I got you, I got you.

  Chris: Yeah like Dorris broke her hip moshing too hard hahaha.

John: Yeah man, they throw down hard haha.

Seth: For all the gripes and grievances, as Kyle said, the people that put it together were teenagers. They actually did a solid job though.

All: Absolutely!

Seth: I mean when I was 15 I was like… putting my boogers underneath desks in science class and shit.

Chris: Just gettin high in graveyards, man!

Nick: The worst show was definitely Ruby Tuesdays in Columbus, though.

John: Noooo way.

Nick: I couldn’t hear myself at all! We got off time.

John: That was rough but it wasn’t that bad.

Kyle: My personal worst show was this house show in Akron where the basement that we played on, the floor or foundation was eroded or something. There was just dirt on the ground. As we were playing and jumping around it was kicking up into our faces. I was coughing and dirt was coming out of my nose.

John: We were blowing dirt out of our noses.

Chris: I was so drunk I didn’t even notice…

Nick: I actually almost puked because of all the dust.

  Yeah that sounds absolutely awful.

  John: We’ve done lots of basements, pizza shops, and basements of pizza shops.

  Wrapping up, do you have anything you guys want to say? Now’s the time to freestyle.

  Chris: Umm… my seventh grade reading teacher; Mrs. Caesar, she told me I read too fast. She can go fuck herself.

Nick: This is actually the best time to announce: Kyle you’re being replaced.

Kyle: Alright, peace.

John: So obviously, listen to Mend. We’re on all major streaming platforms. You can buy it if you want. It’s 5 bucks.

  Okay! That’s all I got, thanks so much everyone!

  All: Thank you!

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          Interview and Photos by Dan Cornelius, RockRevolt Journalist/Photojournalist

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A Sense of Purpose Interview: Tour with New EP “Mend” Ohio band A Sense of Purpose brought in the crowd for the release show of their new EP, Mend.

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Taking Hormones and Teaching My Body a New Language at 29

https://fashion-trendin.com/taking-hormones-and-teaching-my-body-a-new-language-at-29/

Taking Hormones and Teaching My Body a New Language at 29

I

’m 29 years old and going through puberty. My goatee is humble but hopeful. A few days ago, I got carded trying to buy a lighter (which means they thought I was younger than 18). But I’m also an heir to genetics that had my parents completely silver-haired by age 40. So, while I have a pubescent mustache, I also have half-gray, long wavy locks that make me look like a late-20s Poseidon. If this feels like a riddle, apologies. A lot of my life has felt that way, so you can deal for a little bit.

I am sitting in the doctor’s office on the exam chair with my feet dangling freely. This obviously makes me think that it doesn’t matter how big or grown or serious a person might be: If they sit in a place where their feet don’t touch the floor, they look absolutely adorable. There are no exceptions to this rule: Football players, supermodels, soldiers, reverends, rappers, I don’t care. Adorable.

I sit up straight when I see the nurse approaching and the big piece of parchment paper on the exam chair crunches underneath me. Her scrubs are eggplant purple. There are tiny daisies on her shirt. A small silver cross dangles from her neck when she leans forward. I list these small, uncomplicated facts in my own head. They calm me somehow.

For the last two months, a nurse has stuck a needle in my thigh every two weeks to inject an amber syrup that soaks into my muscle then spreads. This little liquid dose of testosterone is teaching my body a new language so that it can finally tell my story. A less poetic breakdown: I am a trans-man, a FTM (female-to-male) transgender guy, at the very beginning of my physical transition.

This little liquid dose of testosterone is teaching my body a new language so that it can finally tell my story

On this particular day, two months after starting on hormones, I am supposed to give myself the shot for the first time. My nurses know that I do not want to stick a needle in my thigh because when they told me I should, I said, “Hell no I am not going to do that.” I am not stressed because of the pain. I don’t care about that. But I am incredibly squeamish: I don’t like the concept of flesh when I really think about it so piercing a huge chunk of it with a sharp metal tool makes the back of my throat itch. But I can’t go to the doctor every two weeks for the rest of my life. So from this day forward, I will do this for myself and by myself. I have to be my own nurse now.

At my last appointment, the nurse told me to practice the injection on an orange. This made me uncomfortable, picturing the amount of force sticking a needle in an orange would take. I told my friend this story and he said, “No offense, I don’t think your quads are as tough as an orange.” I was indeed slightly offended, which confused me.

Today, my nurse finishes laying out the syringes and says “Okay! It’s time! Let’s do this!” When someone is chipper while you’re distressed, it can really go either way. I decide to let this go toward the “finding comfort and inspiration in your optimism” direction. I pull down my pants, proud of my underwear selection (purple with gold triangles), and the nurse uses two index fingers to demonstrate the motion of cleaning the surface: concentric circles out and away.

The nurse asks me questions to keep my mind occupied, but I am in one of those places where a simple question from a low-investment audience still sends me into an existential spinout. I know it is just social protocol, simple space-filler fluff, but “How are you doing?” is actually a really intense question to me right now. I just say to her, “I am excited and impatient and emotionally it feels like I have to pee all the time.” She smiles but I don’t think she gets it.

The nurse hands me the syringe and she gives me a half-supportive, half-“get over it,” half-smile with a half-raised eyebrow. Everything about sticking this inch-long needle into my own thigh is counter-intuitive. Everything about what it will do for me is essential. I shake my head no, but my hand is in cahoots with my heart and stabs my leg gently. (Update: It does not feel like an orange, more like a pear.) I pull back the handle of the syringe, then push the liquid in. I pull the needle out. I feel no different.

Today I told my doctor: Let’s up the ante, rev the engine, get this show on the road! I’m talking more milligrams, baby. Hit me! She blinked slowly at me and said, “You can’t rush this. Flooding your system with testosterone will not make your body instantly match how you feel. Puberty isn’t a two-month process. Neither is this.”

I try to stop myself but still, I have to ask: “Okay I hear you, but how long are we talking until I have a full beard?”

She half smiles and says, “Think about it this way. High school boys have the most testosterone of anyone on the planet and it still takes years for most to grow a full beard.”

No matter what dose, I never get to be a high school boy. No matter how quickly I physically transition and move forward into myself, I can’t go back in time.

I feel more of a pinch from these words than the needle in my thigh. No matter what dose, I never get to be a high school boy. No matter how quickly I physically transition and move forward into myself, I can’t go back in time. I don’t get to re-do my first puberty. And while the pubescent experience is a weird thing to long for, and being jealous of the 15-year old boys I see on the train is a strange thing to feel as an adult, it’s all real. These things just remind me of what I don’t get to be.

I won’t get to be a young boy, a dumb boy, a heartthrob boy, a varsity running back boy, an artsy boy, a mysterious boy, or the rabbi’s hot son, boy. I will have to make do with my real puberty now, at age almost 30, bracing for acne, proudly sporting a goatee that looks drawn on with a pencil, and already so horny I spent my subway ride home the other day picturing making love to the (quite stunning) 60-year old woman across from me on the 3 train.

My doctor told me to settle in for a long road. I said, “Fine, whatever.” Because it’s true: What change can be so instant? (Except the terrific and tectonic shift from alive to dead, capable of being catastrophically quick. Besides that, what transformation can we really rush?) We’re not fucking muffins. We cannot use the heat to make the leap from batter that can be poured and molded to something solid, of substance, that teeth can sink into, all within minutes.

This is magic, but it is not a trick. I am the rabbit and the hat.

I call my mother to tell her I gave myself the shot today. She genuinely celebrates my accomplishment, but she has a kidney stone so I don’t know which pain her voice is wearing.

A few weeks ago, she told me she doesn’t know if she will be able to call me her son. I said, “Okay, I don’t care, just don’t call me your daughter.”

She said, “So what do I call you?”

I asked her why we are so concerned with what we are called. I guess the thinking is: If we are not called something, then how do we know we exist? If the idea of us does not find itself in the bed of another’s brain, to later rise and get dressed in that name, how do we know who we are?

I am practicing dressing myself in my own name.

My mother said she feels every single thing I feel. I told her that sounds exhausting and insane and she sighed. “So, what do I call you? Not my child, because you are grown. Not my baby, even though you are my baby. How about my bunny? Or just, my T.”

I told her, “Yeah, just tell people, ‘this is my T Bunny,’ that will really clear things up for them.”

I tell my mother she has to call me “he” even if it takes work. I tell my mother I will call her and I don’t. I tell my mother they call me a monster and she roars. I tell her they call me a freak and she cries. I tell my mother I am here, no matter what sounds we wrap around me, no matter what body I hang out in. I am here, now more than ever.

T. Wise is a writer, comedian, and lyricist. Follow him @thatlittleboyblue and visit thatboyblue.com for upcoming shows.

Photo via Getty Images. 

[bobskiii87-blog]

People Told Us About Their Worst Drug-Related Injuries

It's a universally accepted fact that while drugs can be incredibly fun, they can also be incredibly dangerous, and make you say and do some very stupid shit. The spectrum of stupid shit ranges from texting your ex to thinking you can fly, but somewhere in the middle there is "sustaining a horrendous self-inflicted injury".

I spoke to some people who have caused themselves various degrees of pain or a life-long deformity while under the influence of narcotics.

DISCLAIMER: Obviously all of the drug use detailed below is wildly stupid and irresponsible. For some tips on safer drug use, read VICE's Safe Sesh editorial series or check out Safer Use Limits.

JESSIE, 28

I completely fucked my face up falling face-down at a rave in a tunnel in Glasgow. I'd ingested about a gram of MD, washed down with a lot of Cava and vodka, and ended up breaking my labial plates and knocking my teeth out to the point that the back of them touched the roof of my mouth and the roots broke. I pretty much just broke my mouth. I went into work the next day because I was still completely fucked and hadn’t realised what had happened, or bothered to look in a mirror. I was working in a horrid chain coffee shop and they made me do the dishes all morning because I looked liked Genesis P-Orridge, but then they found me vomiting into the dishwasher and my manager decided to drive me to A&E. I have a strong memory of "Better Off Alone" playing in the waiting room.

The roots have died, so it's basically an unknown time bomb in terms of my teeth – they were like, "Either tomorrow, in five years or maybe ten, you will get extreme pain and your teeth will turn black." I made my orthodontist cry because I'd had two operations, ten teeth out and years of braces – a work of NHS angelicism – and then I went and got fucked and spoiled everything.

WATCH: The Truth About Ecstasy

GAVIN, 23

I fucked up my back trying to do death drops to Drake's "Nice for What" while coked up. I don’t even like the song that much, but for some reason after a smashing my way through half a bag of coke I decided it was imperative that I do a perfect death drop to the bit where it goes "watch the breakdown". Seeing as I have absolutely no experience with death dropping, past binge-watching RuPaul's Drag Race, I was essentially just repeatedly slamming into the floor of my friend's house while screeching at her to rewind the song on YouTube to get to the right bit. I remember, while doing the cocaine, having a fleeting thought about feeling pain the next day, but I thought it would be because of the drugs and not because I would spend my evening fucking up my back to the point that it now hurts to get up. It's been a month.

TOM, 30

I was living in Norwich and just doing the standard weekend warrior thing – working in the week and then beer and packet till I die, or at least until the comedowns get too brutal – on the weekend. One night, me and my mate were stumbling back from the club really mashed when we spotted the Tesco bins were open and decided to have a look inside. Managed to get a few loaves of bread and some doughnuts, I think – was decent. As we were stumbling home with our arms full of bread, my mate said something really funny and I laughed so hard I fell backwards over a very high wall and landed on my head.

I don't really remember falling or landing, I just remember a white noise in my ears and sitting on the floor with bread around me, until my mates' screams permeated my head and I realised I must have fallen over. I got up and we walked back home, but the back of my head was pretty much open according to my mate, so he panic-called an ambulance eventually. I got to the hospital and had like eight stitches in the back of my head. I still have the scar on the back of my head today.

MAYA, 26

I was at an 18th birthday party in a community hall. It was actually quite a civilised affair, with the birthday girl's family there and everything, but I had a small to middle-sized drug problem so I was sneaking off to do ketamine in the toilets at regular intervals. At some point later in the evening, me and my boyfriend at the time – who had also been taking ketamine – decided to participate in a piggy-back race. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t go well, and he slipped, causing me to front-flip off his shoulders and land on my collarbone and left arm.

I hate attention, so I waved everyone off and told them I was fine, and pushed through to the end of the party. It wasn't until the ketamine had worn off and I tried to get into bed that I realised how much pain I was in: it literally took me 15 minutes to lower myself from a seated position to lying down. I woke up the next morning and cried to my mum until she took me to A&E, where I found out I'd sprained both my collarbone and arm. I spent the next month in a sling.

DANNY, 23

I had too much ket and K ciders at Printworks and I fell and smashed my face on the floor. My teeth went through my lip and broke. I got taken to A&E by ambulance and was just sitting in the back picking pieces of tooth out of my flesh. My teeth are only chipped, but they have to be removed at some point because they're dead. I'm going to get tooth implants at 23.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

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