#i gave myself a deadline yikes!

[scrim256]

Lost Things Teaser | Sims 4 Machinima Series

[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

Hey everyone! Feel Less will be going on a short hiatus... but we're not going anywhere!

Allow me to explain~

So, I gave a similar explanation last time, but because I'll be introducing some new characters, I need some time to finish all the art. I thought I could do it last week, but the extra week I took only allowed me enough time to finish Anna's sprites and cutscene graphics from the latest update, which I hope you enjoyed~ but I have to be honest with myself, and admit that in order to finish everything I want I need to take way longer than just 1 extra week.

You see, things in Feel Less are about to get fuuuuuuuuuucked up real interesting! [REDACTED] isn't the only character that's getting introduced you know~ The Some Things Are Better Left Unknown story route includes at least 3 other characters that could potentially join the party! And they're not gonna draw themselves lmao. Besides the new characters, there's also some very important story beats that are coming, which will also require original art. I could of course do everything with the sprites and backgrounds, but that'd be sacrificing some of the quality of the comic, and I don't want the story to suffer just to get it out on a self-imposed deadline, you know? This is not to mention the backgrounds needed for the new locations so... yikes! This is definitely gonna take longer than a week! Especially because I have a job besides posting comics online (sadly, I wish I could just do this full time aslkdmakldmml 😭)

Another important thing to note is that we'll be disabling player interaction for a bit, at least until all the important story points have been covered, which I think should be the next 3 updates.

Now, what do I mean by "we're not going anywhere"? Well, because this blog won't be going radio silent until everything's done, like I used to do in the past! I'll be streaming most of my art process on my twitch channel! I usually play games on there, but I'm going on an Art Stream Marathon until all the art for Feel Less has been completed! (I really, really want to prioritize this. Neon White can wait.) For those of you who don't know, I stream every Thursday and Saturday from 2:30 pm EST, to around 5:30pm. I'll be posting links to the streams on this blog every day I do them, so come say hi! 💖 There will be slight spoilers for character designs, but not plot points, so dw~

I want to close by saying that, to be completely honest, I never enjoy putting my works on hiatus. Keeping momentum going on a webcomic is difficult, but I have to make sure Feel Less is 100% something I can be proud of and not a rushed product. There's some cool stuff coming, and I want it to have the impact it deserves.

As always, thank you all so much for your support! The fact that you guys take the time to read my webcomic makes me so happy~~ 🥰 Also, important to mention that while the story's on hiatus the inbox will be wide open! So feel free to send questions and stuff, I'll still be here~ See you all soon!!!

-Yui Wrong 💖

[mejomonster]

Okay so

1. I read today that the james bond writer did his books in 2 week stints. By trapping himself in hotel rooms where he had nothing to do. Idk if true but lets imagine it is. I guess first, wow, go off. Second, i mean i guess it makes sense in that it works.. eliminate distractions, you might get more done.

I once wrote like 170,000 in about 2 weeks, 10 hour writing sessions, Xions Theme from kingdom hearts on loop (its the only song i can reliably use to focus with), and like fuck did i forget to eat or sleep but i sure did manage to write. Caveat: i was super determined to finish the story asap, i had a self imposed motivating deadline, and i had an entire plotted outline already done so i didnt have to do any plannign work i only had to flesh out my outline summaries into actual full scenes. I could not replicate it (cause honestly it was yikes for my health probably). But i could probably do 30,000 words in 2 weeks with the same isolate and avoid distractions method (since thatd be more like 4 hour writing sessions). Still, it would require focus im not super gold at unless gold strikes and i hit a period of adhd where im managing to hyperfocus om specifically writing and utilize it fully before it runs out (hence the whole 10 hour writing sessions until i finisjed and was so burned out i didnt write again for like a year) that said...i imagine even with focus issues, if i was trapped with no internet, in a hotel room with no car, yeah Id probably manage to eventually write even if it took hours first to focus and write in small bits.

And 2! Happy news, my new writing goal to get a sustainable habit built is going good still. Today I managed abput 1000 words before midnight! And lile 3000 words just free journaling in the morning. Im really happy about the night accomplishment im particular though, because in the long term Ill be able to write more often in the evening if my day is busy. So if i can manage to do it morning (like ive been able to) OR night, hopefully a habit will be easier to stick to.

Interesting for me, is the permission I gave myself to work on ANY wip, or even just story notes, is helping to get over the perfectionism motivation hurdle I had. Before this, i was pressuring myself to like "stick to one and write Chapters and finish it." Amd thats still like the Long Term main goal. But now that the pressure is less stiffly on focus on ONE and on only Final Scenes, im able to start up writing easier. Then once i start writing, its easier to get myself to focus on more writing.

[kaydeefalls]

2021 fic in review meme

@lindstrom2020​ tagged me - thank you! I genuinely love reading everyone’s year-in-review memes, it’s part of my end of year closure. :)

Total Number Of Completed Works:

Twelve fics and one vid. Which means I averaged exactly one fic per month, which feels good and achievable for me. (It didn’t pan out that neatly, of course, but the overall average is comforting.)

Total Word Count:

152,227 words. My highest annual total so far, according to AO3 stats! Although does feel a little like cheating, since my first fic of the year was 43k and written almost entirely in 2020.

Fandoms I’ve Written In:

Only The Old Guard, this year. That IS unusual for me -- when I’m actively writing, I tend to be more multifannish, even if I do generally have one primary fandom in any given year. But skipping out on Yuletide again means I didn’t even have that random one-off. Whatever, I really love this fannish verse and I’m happy to stay here.

(Oh, it occurs to me that technically I crossed over with the 007 fandom for four full fics, so...honorary mention?)

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected?

More than I have in a LONG while, I can tell you that! I did sort of set myself a tentative one-fic-per-month goal, which I’ve managed overall.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year?

This answer varies from moment to moment, but The Pride Pact was the purest form of id-fic for me, and it still makes me very happy.

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year?

...not particularly? I mean, I've got a decent amount of variety amongst the fics I posted, from Ye Olde Crusades-Era Joe/Nicky Origin Story to modern AUs to fusions to a five things historical fic about Nile, but nothing that I'd consider risky.

Do You Have Any Fanfic Or Profic Goals For The New Year?

Finish my damn Finn/Poe WIP just so that I can properly close the door on that fandom. Continue averaging about one fic per month. Um, finish writing the two exchange fics and one vid that all have January deadlines, yikes.

Most Popular Story Of The Year?

lessons exquisitely crafted, by every possible stat. I’m so glad that one found an audience, I’m really fond of it.

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion:

Shockingly enough, fandom gave very few fucks about Awakenings, the Nile-centric historical fic. Which I genuinely think is one of my better fics overall, but yeah. I’m not at ALL surprised by this, just ruefully resigned to it.

Most Fun Story To Write:

There are a few contenders for this, and no clear winner. Right now I’ll go with you know my name, because it was a fun version of Quynh’s voice to get into my head (and accidentally spawned a whole series).

Most Unintentionally Telling Story:

The Pride Pact, for obvious reasons. Nothing unintentional about that, I'm afraid.

Biggest Disappointment:

Hmm, not sure what to go with here, "disappointed" is not really my default emotion. I'm a little bummed that my female-centric fics got noticeably lower stats than any of the boys did, but not, you know, surprised by it.

Biggest Surprise:

Following directly from the previous answer, I was genuinely expecting what we let fall to land with a thud, since there are very, very few Copley-centric fics in the fandom, but it did okay! It certainly wasn’t a runaway hit, but my expectations were SO low that I was very pleasantly surprised. (And a little rueful to learn how much more popular even Copley is than Nile, apparently, at least the way I write them.)

My Favorite Part Of Fandom This Year:

I feel like I’ve found my own quiet little corner of the community, and that’s nice. There’s a lot of toxicity in TOG fandom (which is certainly not unique to TOG - I’ve been in a wide variety of fandoms for a good long while at this point, and there’s always plenty of ugly to go around), but I’ve managed to avoid the worst of it and find the parts that bring me joy, and hope to continue to do so.

Tagging anyone and everyone who’s in the mood, genuinely! I love reading these when they pop up on my dash.

[gardenerian]

Mel 😊 Always a pleasure, never a chore, some questions for someone I truly adore:

1) What is the best study/work snack? (For me it's apples and peanut butter, I've gotten whole acts of congress passed on apples and peanut butter)

2) What would you say is your most effective method of communicating?

3) Have you ever been to a protest or a demonstration and what was it for? (if you are comfortable saying.)

Mel ily2 💚

howl, my treasure. what a treat, i always feel like i'm on inside the actor's studio every friday 😌

1. it depends on the project. when i was cramming or thesis-writing, it was always - always - sour patch watermelons. now i get stressed when i see them in the store bc i feel like i'm about to miss a deadline 😭 if i'm just snackin and workin, i like a pb&j, strawberries and/or grapes, or some trail mix. snacks are crucial component of my productivity.

2. yikes. i’m an excellent verbal communicator... until i’m put on the spot. i am the kind of person to immediately cry when faced with unexpected conflict. if i'm mad or upset - tears. even if i'm not that upset, it's just an instant reaction. i tend to get very worked up, very quickly, and i usually can't express myself well that way. so i usually turn to writing. when i was a brooding kid, i used to write letters to my parents after every single moody fight. i was much more able to explain what happened/what i was thinking/what i needed that way. these days i write cards to my partner after our major conversations/life events or arguments.

3. i have! quite a few, for different causes. i’ve been thinking about this one a lot lately - i helped put together a gsa club at my high school, got elected president. parents flipped the fuck out and it was a whole fucking thing. terrible time. absolute insanity, culminating in some giant school-wide meeting run by the worst people you’ve ever seen. grown ass adults, trying to fuck with kids who just wanted to find a place. but we were all there, and we gave our side with way more grace than a pack of teenagers should have to. we ended up having to give up a lot of what we wanted to do (including the word GAY in our literature), but we were able to stay on campus. at the time, it felt like a victory. very hallmark movie. looking back: horse shit. absolute horse shit, and i wish i could go back and make more of a scene. fuck that. the school later got called out on the national stage for some other bullshit and it was incredibly vindicating. ah, to be young and full of trouble.

[wistfulwatcher]

Hello I saw your tag on that "im 25 and dying post" please tell us how it got better for you. Im 26, still living with parents, currently having a fight with my boyfriend, and i still have a year until I get my bachelors. The comparison to everyone younger than me is killing me.

I'm really sorry to hear that you're struggling, but I hope you can take some solace in the fact that that post has a lot of notes and you are absolutely not alone in feeling the way you do! I can certainly try and share my experience, but unfortunately I think the biggest factor is just time (and like, a buttload of self-reflection).

I moved back home after college and worked full time at an administrative job I was doing during school breaks. I majored in psychology and anthropology in college, and was planning to eventually go into forensic psychology, but wasn't interested in going straight into grad school. So I did that administrative job for about a year, and tried to find something that was a bit more stable and at least semi-related to my field. I did end up finding a new job when I was 23 - stable, semi-related to my field (a psych/research background was required), and decent pay (especially as I was still living at home). Exactly what I needed, since I still wasn't ready to start looking into grad school.

I was doing pretty well, until I started getting comfortable at that job, and then I started getting hit with the "I'm not doing enough," and "I need to look into grad school," and "will I ever find a boyfriend?" (friendly reminder that 23-year-old me thought she was straight, yikes), "how will I afford to move out, I have to save my money and do it soon!", "I'm not doing anything but watching TV, I'm wasting my life," "I'm lonely, but I'm too tired to try and make friends," etc., etc.

But it wasn't constant. I'd have a flurry of those questions and fears, and then days where I was just living life and doing my job and taking care of my dogs, without any of that. And I don't think I felt good or particularly comfortable those days, it was more like I just wasn't actively thinking about it, like when you feel "good" after a physical pain goes away and you're just normal.

Eventually, I started thinking about all of these concerns I had, and the fact that it felt like it was URGENT whenever I thought about them. It felt like I needed to get my shit together immediately. I also started to acknowledge that there was this big sense of guilt around those concerns; I was too old to be living at home, I was too old to be single, I was too old not to be starting a career. I felt like I was wasting my life (cue the guilt), and I realized that part of why I felt like I was wasting it was that I felt like I was missing milestones I wouldn't be able to do at a later time because the older I was past "normal" the more humiliating it would be to try (cue the shame and embarrassment, hard).

I also started to doubt that I wanted to go into forensic psychology. More importantly, I started to seriously doubt that I wanted a "career" at all. My job (as I kept that same semi-related to my field one) was absolutely a job, not a career. And I think this was a huge tipping point for me, because a career had always been a given in my life. I'm passionate about what I'm interested in, so it literally just never occurred to me that I would be content with a job. I also started acknowledging that I had some messed up associations about being content with a job meaning that I was lazy (because the only way to be ambitious is with a career and, more damaging, a lack of ambition is fundamentally bad).

Now, I need to clarify that all of the above occurred over the course of years. I was constantly seeing "friends" (i.e., of the facebook variety) go to grad school, start careers, get married, buy homes, etc. And with all of that alongside the entire mess I've outlined in the above paragraphs, it was really, really, tough. It gets hard to find a foothold in better thinking, I believe, when seeing all of these people (some younger) doing things "right" was really just compounding my guilt and shame. (I feel like it's worth mentioning, too, that I was always "an individual" growing up, march-to-the-beat-of-my-own-drummer, yada yada. I feel like that's worth pointing out for others who may be in the same boat, because I think it can lead to another layer of shame in comparing yourself to those around you - especially if it's a big part of your identity that you DON'T do that, because I think it's inevitable as you get older, and you're looking to reach these milestones that prove you're an adult.)

So, here I am, acknowledging that I feel guilt and shame about what I'm not doing. And suddenly I ask myself my first really important question: Do I want a career? The question hot on its heels is: Do I want to go to grad school? Honestly, my answer is no. There is nothing in me that's excited by the prospect. But what, does that mean I'm just going to work my job for the rest of my life? How is giving up going to make me feel better about Not Doing Enough?

As I'm opening this door (remember, years), three things happen: 1) I realize I'm gay, 2) I watch Dirty 30, 3) I start playing D&D.

First, realizing I'm gay. Woohoo! Not only was this exciting because girls are amazing, but it made me seriously look at myself. Realizing I had spent 25 years assuming one thing about myself that turned out to be completely wrong made me question everything for a while. I started to ask myself, "Do I really like this?" more often, which seems like a really obvious question, but I'm not convinced that it's one people ask themselves consciously all that often. But once I did, I realized how freeing it was to answer, "No," and move on to something I did like.

Second, I watched Dirty 30, the Grace Helbig/Mamrie Hart/Hannah Hart movie. It feels dramatic to say that it changed my life, but the older I get the more I honestly think it did. Mamrie Hart's character is a dental hygienist who is freaking out about turning 30 and feeling very much like that text post I reblogged. But (spoilers), at the end of the movie, she decides that she loves her job (job, not career!) because it's comfortable and she has fun at work, and that it makes her happy. She has other things going on, but the idea that a character in a film is content with her job and choosing to "settle" into her life as-is and she's genuinely happy about it? I honestly can't think of a single other time I've seen that happen on-screen. I still think about that ending very often. And after seeing it, I started to ask myself another question regularly: "Am I happy?" Again, this feels pretty obvious, but I think there is something incredibly empowering about making sure you are happy on a regular basis, instead of just assuming that you're fine until something hurts.

Third, I started playing D&D. This is not a plug for D&D! (Well, maybe a little.) One thing that happened to me when I started to get into the urgent-guilt-shame-confusion mess of my mid-20s was that I got very much into a routine of go to work, come home, sleep, go to work, come home, sleep, be totally brain-dead on the weekend, repeat. I found it very difficult to feel creative because I was just wiped, and as all of my creative outlets (gifs, fanfic) are self-motivated, it was really easy to brush them off. I ended up starting Critical Role (this is also not a plug for CR! well, maybe), and I wanted to give D&D a try myself. (I was VERY lucky - my best friend happened to be listening to the Adventure Zone at the same time I started CR, and she wanted to try to run a game. The stars truly aligned!)

I started playing, then DMing, and found that it was a great fit for my interests. I used to be a theatre kid, and I was getting to act again (something I didn't realize I was missing). I was getting to build and flesh out characters, which is what I love the most about writing fanfic. I was also discovering that I was stretching myself - world building and plot had never been my strong suit, but as a DM it became the majority of my creative effort. It gave me soft deadlines with people I didn't want to let down, and it made me truly social again for the first time since college. Essentially, it was filling in all of the gaps of what I felt lacking in my life. This isn't a D&D plug because it wasn't D&D specifically, but rather a hobby that satisfied what was missing in my life. For example, I didn't realize how isolated I was before D&D until I had regular interactions with friends, and that isolation absolutely made the urgent-guilt-shame-confusion worse.

D&D gave me that final push to realize that I was OK with having a job and being passionate about hobbies instead of trying to fit myself into a career, because I was getting out of that hobby what I had been convinced I would get out of a career. I started to really value that I could punch out and go have fun doing exactly what I wanted to do. (It feels so obvious as I type this, but it took me a long time to get here! Sometimes it really is that simple!)

The above is specific to my job vs. career struggle which may not be in the mix of things you're struggling with. But what I do think is universal/can be your take away, is that sometimes you just have to actively choose to let go of the pressure to be doing things. Which, I know, sounds so much easier than it is (and part of why I think it just takes time/is part of growing older). But I think it's something that can be worked at over time, by checking in with yourself about what you feel, why you feel it, and what you need to make yourself feel better in the present.

It's been 6 years since I started that semi-related job, and I'm still there. I still live with my mom. I'm still single. My circumstances have not changed since 24, but honestly? I'm OK. When I check in with myself about it, I do enjoy living with my mom and our dogs (even though I'm 30 and "real" adults move out). I am happy more often than I'm not (much more, actually!). I have a job that allows me to be done after 8 hours, and I have hobbies I look forward to doing each night (and the energy to do them, most of the time). My weekends are free to play D&D with my friends and laugh until I cry. That is what I've worked out as my definition of what I want life to be right now. You'll notice it includes none of the "milestones" that those younger than me have hit.

As I noted on that text post tag, I still struggle with this. I definitely have days where I think, I'm a mess, I'm not DOING anything. It's hard. But time does help, those days become fewer and farther between.

I know that was probably a hundred times longer than you wanted it to be, but I did want to illustrate just how much of a process it is. It takes time. My summary advice is to check in with yourself often, be honest about what you want and what you need, do not let anyone else define where you "should" be. And if you aren't living life how you want to be, identify what you can do (however small) to make yourself feel like you're getting closer.

[frecklystars]

Time to PIN a POST!!

HOWDY Y’ALL I’m so sorry for being so distant for like, the entire month of December. I have a lot of messages and DMs to catch up on; I signed up for some art gift exchanges, and two of them moved their dates (one of them even said we’d have a month to prepare, then they shortened it to under one week, yikes), so I ended up needing to rush. Which was fine, I enjoy drawing and I’m glad these events gave me the push to keep drawing even on days when it was the last thing I wanted to do, but my work schedule has been burning me out like crazy and I still have two deadlines within one week.

However!! I got one of my friends to cover a shift for me this week. It was going to be a long one and I would have made over $80 that day, but for the sake of my mental health I really needed to take at least ONE day off this week.

I’m still going to be on-and-offline here for a bit, until the drawing deadlines are complete, then I can completely devote myself to socializing again. Thank you so much to everyone who has been so patient w/ me, especially those who I haven’t replied to in over three weeks!! I promise I’m not ignoring anyone, I am just very, very, very, VERY busy and December was the busiest month of 2020 for me. But now it’s January 2021 and it’s had a weird start but I’m very excited to chat w/ my friends again!! :D

Good morning! Goodnight! I love u!! Be safe!! 💙💙💙

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #321

i’m exploring the deepest recesses of tumblr to unearth super old surveys, so you can expect an onslaught of ‘em.

When someone is tailgating you, do you drive faster or slower? I drive the same speed, even though it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. What place outside of your own home do you spend the most time at? My sister's place. Have you ever been snorkeling? No. Do most of your relatives live in the same state/province as you? No; only my parents and immediate sisters live here. Have you ever participated in a medical study? No. Is there a food you hate that everyone else seems to like? Especially where I live, fried chicken. It's disgusting. Have you ever had to evacuate from a natural disaster? No. Do you have any family members who are cancer survivors? Numerous, actually. Do you have any licenses other than your driver's license? I don't even have a driver's license, never mind anything else. What job does you significant other have? I’m single. When you were in elementary school, what was a typical afternoon like once you got home from school? I did my homework right away; well, after having a snack. After that, I was most likely on the computer playing Neopets or Webkinz, or something on the PlayStation. Is your favorite movie part of a series? Yes. Have you ever played in a water puddle? Sure, as a kid. I loved that. Have you ever played in a mud puddle? I don't think so. Have you ever kissed someone (outside) in the rain? Yes. He did it purely to be romantic, lol. Have you ever lost control of your car in the rain? No, thank fuck. Have you ever had to attend summer school? No. Have you ever experienced a summer where the temperature exceeded 120'F/49'C? Yikes, no, not that high. The highest we usually get is below 110. Do you live in a hot or cold (normally) climate? Hot. It sucks. Has your community ever had a “smog alert”? No. Have you ever raked leaves, and then played in them? Oh, absolutely as a kid. Dad would rake a pile just for us kids. Have they ever cancelled school because it was too hot? At least once, yes. Have you ever had to shovel snow? No. Have you ever experienced “cat’s breath”, where the wind was so powerful it took your breath away, literally? Yep, especially when I visited Sara and we went on a walk. It was fucking outrageous. Safe to say I didn't last long on that walk. Has your/or have you been in a car that was stuck in a snowstorm? No. What does your MySpace profile look like? I haven't seen it since that site was still "a thing." I do remember, however, that it was COVERED in meerkats, haha. Pictures, facts, etc. And my page song was "Pocketful of Sunshine" by Natasha Beddingfield lmao. Do you like living in the country or city better? Country, 100%. I'm not a city gal by any means. Do you have a big backyard? No, it's very small. Not used to that at all. What is your favorite Adam Sandler movie? I don't know, he's in too many to choose lmao. What was the last thing that surprised you? Apparently a rocket crashed today after launch. What color hair did your first crush have? Brown. Have you ever visited your state’s capitol building? No. I... didn't even know those existed lmao I feel dumb. Who was the last person that said something that warmed your heart? I'm not sure, but I'm quite certain my niece or nephew would be involved there, haha. What is your favorite park? I don't have one. Have you ever felt an earthquake? No. Do you believe anyone is asexual? ???????????? Yes???????????? Were you abused? No. Have you ever missed a deadline? Yeah. Can you tell Mary-Kate and Ashley apart in pictures? I haven't seen them in an eternity, idk. Describe your fondest memory: I don't really want to... but I'll entertain the question. It's hard to choose, and they just about all include Jason. I think what I hold closest though was our dance to "Stairway to Heaven" after prom in the headlights of his car in my front yard. It's something that physically hurts to remember. What song makes you cry every time you hear it? Let's set aside my "trigger songs" for this. "Terrible Things" by Mayday Parade does it very easily. How often do you break your promises? I almost never do. I don't bullshit around with promises. I've only ever broken ones I'd forgotten I'd made, if my memory serves me right. How long do you take in the shower, on average? Not even 10 minutes. Do you have your MySpace/Facebook profile set to a "friends only" setting? Yes. Did your last kiss mean anything? Why or why not? Of course it did. I care very, very deeply for her. Are your summers usually boring and relaxing, or busy and interesting? "Summers are hot and miserable." <<<< mood Tell me a crazy thing you did as a child. I don't really think I did anything "crazy" as a child, just weird. Like pretending to be a father penguin arranging rocks to mock a nest. I was fuckin weird. How many best friends do you have? One. When you’re upset, who do you wanna talk to the most? Either Sara, Mom, or nobody. Opinion on Daughtry? They're nice. "No Surprise" is positively beautiful. Do you like country music? Noooooo. What’s been the most awkward situation you've been in? Okay, possible TMI. Basically, Jason's parents arrived home way, way earlier than they were supposed to and my panicky ass couldn't find my clothes quickly, and when I finally did, I had to dress as quickly as possible in his tiny-ass closet while he distracted his mom and dad lmfao. I'ma just say it was a very close call to me melting into a mortified puddle. I look back on it and laugh now, but the absolute, throbbing fear I felt was NOT funny back then lmfao. Don’t you love that feeling when you look at someone and you just melt? <3 That is genuinely one of the best feelings in the entire world. Do you prefer male or female singers? I have no preference. So what are you planning for this summer? Nothing, really... Who knows where the Covid situation will be then. What’s a good book? In general for absolutely anyone, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. It is a book about pacifism that is so very deep and emotional. For women, I highly recommend The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. As a woman myself, the concept of the book is terrifying, to be reduced to reproduction machines without rights, so it's something you can really feel as a female. It's a book that definitely makes you want to fight for women's rights. Is it awkward for you when your parents talk to you about boys etc… No. I'm a grown woman. Now if she asked about my sex life (if I had one), I'd feel a bit weird, but not very. Do you like it when guys play with your hair? Yeah. Ever cried when you had to say goodbye to someone? Well of course. Over multiple people. Have your parents ever hated one of your boyfriends/girlfriends? No. Have you ever dreamt of someone you barely know? Indeed. Do you have a blood donor’s card? Yep. Have you ever taken a pregnancy test? I had to before surgery. Has anyone seen you naked in the last week? No. What kind of doctor did you go to the last time you went? It was via phone, but I talked with my psychiatrist a few days ago. Does your ex still think about you? I'm sure Sara and Girt do, as they're my good friends, but idk if either think of me romantically. I would hope Jason at least remembers me with some degree of care in his heart... As for Juan, Aaron, and Tyler, idk if they do and I don't really care. What has been bothering you a lot lately? My weight. Are you trustworthy? I think so, yes. Did your parents teach that white lies were ok? Yeah, but it definitely depends on the situation. Which literary character would you dress up as, if you had to choose one? Speaking of The Handmaid's Tale, for Halloween one year, I really, really want to take some cool photos of me dressed as a handmaid with a (obviously fake) blood splatter over my stomach. What (or who) is the best thing that ever happened to you? Being born with the mom I have, probably. I have no idea. None. Of where I'd be without her. Do you miss college? Sigh, sometimes... but I'm not going back. No chance. Dropping out three times due to my mental state hints at a clear pattern. Have you ever called a teacher “mom”? Yeah, accidentally. Except with my physical science teacher in HS that eventually became my "other mom" and most recently our landlord, even. I call her "Mama" sometimes. What was the name of your first imaginary friend? It was a wolf whose name I don't remember. What color was your nursery when you were a baby? No clue. What is your favorite arcade game? I desperately wanna go to a location that has Silent Hill: The Arcade. :/ That's on my bucket list. It's very rare. Are you allergic to grass? No. Do you remember to water plants? I don’t have any plants to water. What is your favorite fall drink? I don't drink any "fall" drinks. Favorite winter drink? Hot chocolate! Favorite spring drink? There are "spring" drinks? Favorite summer drink? Gimme a nice, cold margarita. Name three creative people you know. Sara, Tez, and Mini are some of the most creative people I've ever written with. Name 3 YouTubers you aspire to be like. Mark in like a million different ways, I look up greatly to Jeffree Star's work ethic (say what you will about him personally, but holy shit does mama WORK), and Emzotic for her incredible growth after trauma that's left her more confident than ever, and she's amazing with animals and just a darling overall. Does anyone know who your current crush is? Yeah, I'm pretty open about it. Have you ever been scammed? Not successfully, no. Which song describes your life? I relate to "Get Up" by Mother Mother a lot at this point in my life. If someone dislikes you, what is most likely to be the reason? Probably because I open up so slowly/am very secretive of myself when someone might be trying to get close. People have also criticized my laziness. Where did you meet the last person you swapped numbers with? YouTube. At least I think Tez was the last person I gave my number to. Who was the last person to add you as a friend on Facebook? Hunter, my neighbor growing up. Who was the last person that asked if you were okay? My therapist. I had to leave group due to severe abdominal cramping. It was just my period, but he just wanted to check. What was the last thing you bought from a vending machine? Probably a soda back when I was still in school. Has anyone given you butterflies recently? Actually yeah; I had a memory of Sara that caused 'em to revisit me. What was the name of the first person you ever had a crush on? Why did you like them? I'm going to exclude my puppy-dog crush (Dylan) and talk about my first "real" crush, Sebastian. I liked him because we had very similar interests, he was really friendly, nice, and funny, and he clearly trusted me a lot because he actually confided in me regarding the relationship he was in that was struggling and causing him a lot of pain. I thought he was attractive, too. Ngl, I wonder sometimes where we could have gone if he hadn't been dating the girl, because I'm 90% sure he was into me, too. In current times, he very recently got engaged! Super happy for him. Which parent do you identify with the most? My ma. What do you think you cook or bake the best? Scrambled eggs, I guess. That's just about all I CAN make, haha. My family likes 'em. I always use American cheese, salt, pepper, and a bit of hot sauce. What embarrasses you the most in front of other people? Admitting I RP. If you had to choose one thing you were most passionate about, what would it be and why? Of actually important things, gay rights. If we're talkin' passionate about anything, then the answer's meerkats, duh. Who are you most envious of—real or fictional—and why? A rival photographer that lives here. I absolutely hate admitting that, but yeah, I'm extremely envious of her. She gets way more traffic than I do by a long shot, even though I, from a completely modest and honest standpoint, genuinely think I do better work than her. It's just frustrating. All about who you know in this business. How old is the most expired item in your fridge? Supposedly our milk expired on the 1st, but it smells just fine? And mind you, I am very cautious with expiration dates, and I've found milk typically starts to smell bad a few days earlier than the date to me. This jug is an outlier. What are your favorite style of underwear? I'm a fat old lady that likes high-waisted underwear. What’s the saddest song you’ve ever heard? Maybe "The Ballad of Dwight Fry" by Alice Cooper. I could name tons, though. How about the sweetest song? Maybe "Easy to Love You" by Theory of a Deadman. Another song I struggle to listen to because it was one of mine and Jason's "songs." Do you know how to play dominoes? No. Are you proud of what you’re doing with your heart and time right now? Not in the least. Why or why not? I'm just wasting time. Doing nothing with true meaning, and I seem unable to get over this low point I'm in. How many bones have you broken? One. Well, I was told "fractured," but apparently that's the same thing as broken? Have you ever won anything? Big or small? Yeah, multiple things. What food will you absolutely not, under any circumstances, eat? Animals like cats or dogs. Pets, basically. I would feel WAY too weird. Has anything/anyone every saved your life before? Yes. What is one thing you’re embarrassed to admit you want to try? If I'm embarrassed by it, why would I share it with whoever reads these? What is the most important memory you have and why? When I decided it was truly time to move on from Jason. Why that's my most important is obvious: it changed my mindset and life in general. Is there something you wish you had said sorry for but never did? God, I hope Jason read my apology email I last sent him. I finally accepted I did wrong, too, and I want to know that he knows that. Who was the last person you know to have a birthday? My youngest niece's first birthday was mid-February. What’s a musical instrument you think sounds really beautiful? The violin. Do you play that instrument? I wish I could. Do you have a favorite type of pasta? (like a shape of noodles, not dish) Just spaghetti noodles, ig. How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Once. Who sent the last e-mail you got? My PHP therapist sent me the Zoom link to our group session. Do you have a favorite shape? Out of basic ones, circles. What’s the last song you bought/downloaded? I don't recall. Probably something by 3TEETH. Have you ever been on a trapeze? Hell nah. Do you buy chocolate after Valentine’s Day when it goes on sale? No. Do you personally know anyone who is an author? I met a poet at the psych hospital once. I also have an old friend who had something published in a magazine, I think. Do you own a polaroid camera? No, but I'd love to to take more ~aesthetic~ photographs sometimes. What is something you think is underrated? Snakes! :( They're not scary or gross, nor do they in any way deserve to be killed. I wish the worth of snakes was seen much more clearly. They are spectacular, intriguing animals. Around what temperature do you consider it to be too hot outside? Once it hits like 65*F, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. In what ways do you expect your life to be different one year from now? I hope beyond hope that I have a job I enjoy. And that I'm driving again. What’s a hobby you used to have, but don’t anymore? I used to loooove video editing, but I've lost all motivation for it. Do you have any exercise equipment in your home? Somewhere we have this one stretchy thing that I have no idea what it's called, then there are two sets of small weights somewhere. Where is the farthest north you’ve traveled to? New York. Farthest south? Florida. East? Well, ya can't go more east in NC unless you want to drive into the ocean... lol. West? Illinois. If you have/want children, will you raise them similar to the way you were raised? If I had kids, I would in some ways, but in a lot of other ways, no. Do you have any unusual decorations in your home? Nothing strange, no. What is the highest level math class you’ve completed? I don't know. Not very high. Do you have an ebook reader? (iPad, Kindle, etc.) No. What kind of natural disaster is most common where you live? Hurricanes. Have you ever had an animal get into your attic? No. When was the last time you started a “new chapter” of your life? 2017, ig. What is the last random act of kindness you did? I guess you could consider a loving text to Sara a random act of kindness?

[minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong]

Sweet Dreams Chapter Two

Lucid dreaming: The process of being aware that one is dreaming. Some researchers believe that in lucid dreaming, the individual may be able to change the outcome of the dream or control their degree of participation in the imaginary (dream) environment.

Description: Lee Eunbyul has been plagued with hellish nightmares since she was a child. Not the sort of nightmares you may be familiar with. There are no monsters to evade, no serial killers to outrun, no auditoriums of classmates in front of whom to stand naked. Instead there is just…darkness. Endless darkness. With professional help, the dreams come less frequently. But after moving away from home to live with her sister, Eunbyul’s nightmare returns, only this time it’s different. This time…she’s not alone.

What would you do if you had the chance to change the outcome of not only your dreams, but your life?

Genre: Romance, Drama, Fluff, Angst, Slow Burn

Pairing: Namjoon x (f) OC

Word Count: 7.3k

Tags: Non-Idol!Au, Producer!Namjoon, Bookstore Clerk!Seokjin, Potter!Jimin, Producer!Yoongi, Dancer!Hoseok

Warnings: Frequent mentions of mental illness, infrequent swearing and mentions of alcohol

A/N: Hello! I’m trying out links for this chapter to see if Tumblr eats it, since I don’t know if links are working now. But anyway, here’s chapter two! Thank you guys for reading and I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please don’t be shy and send feedback, critique, questions, theories, and comments my way. I’ll be sure to respond to all asks I receive within a day of receiving them!

And again, if you want to follow my Twitter, my username is @/plzpunchmebts. I’m super active over there and hopefully in the future I’ll do some livestreams/chats with you all!

- Mercury

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Masterlist

Weekly updates: Sunday, 1PM (PST)

Namjoon

I rubbed my eyes as the breaking morning light filtered in through the swaying curtains beside my bed. Sighing, I pushed myself up onto my forearms, then onto my legs, then onto my feet. I padded over to the window, stifling a yawn, and grabbed the frame. I’d left the thing open all night, having fallen asleep too suddenly to remember to close it properly, and now mosquitos flew in lopsided circles around my lamp. Also left on overnight. I groaned and pulled the window shut, shooing the mosquitos with squinted eyes. I checked the clock on my black wall. 4:03 AM.

Quietly, I followed the scent of coffee and sauntered out into the living room where Yoongi sat, legs crossed on the couch, flipping through a book on Greek mythology with one hand and holding a mug in the other.

“Morning,” I said, like every morning.

“Mm,” he replied, like every morning.

I suspected Yoongi hadn’t even bothered to go to sleep, and the purplish bags beneath his eyes didn’t help. The apartment was spotless as usual. Yoongi wasn’t one to let mess pile up, and I was grateful at least for that. What he lacked in socializing, he made up for in peace and cleanliness. I slipped along the cool wood floor and wandered into the kitchen, pouring myself a generous cup of coffee from the pot Yoongi had left on.

“Crazy dream?” asked Yoongi. I found the heart of his question in the words he didn’t say. You never wake up before noon. You okay?

I hummed and settled down at the table, running my finger along the polished trim. Everything in this apartment was pristine, lined with precision and placed with care. That’s how Yoongi was. Even before we met at his studio, he struck me as the diligent type.

I guess I felt like I could learn something from someone like him.

With a sigh I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t remember.”

“Hm,” said Yoongi with a gruff cough, pausing to flip the page in his book.

And that was that. With a few words exchanged between us, I was left to watch the morning sun arc across the blemishes sky outside the wall of windows facing the ocean. I was left to think.

Sometimes I wished he was more talkative…

The bus rattled down the sun-drenched street and I watched buildings pass by in silence. Normally, I’d have worn headphones but at Yoongi’s request, I’d left them behind so he could work on a beat at home. I rested my head against the window and shut my eyes with a heavy sigh. Why don’t you just talk to him? Those were the words replaying in my mind. Hoseok always was startlingly astute, in an oblivious sort of way. Of course, my friend of twenty years could say something so blasé like that without knowing what it meant for me. Tell him you wanna write music.

Just tell him.

A pang rang through the bus, signaling the approach of my stop, and I gathered my backpack and cell phone, standing with my hand on the rail overhead. “Ah, sorry,” I mumbled as an older woman stood beside me, stumbling with the unsteady stall of the bus.

She turned to me with a weathered smile and patted my arm. “Thank you,” she said, gently sliding down the aisle with both arms swung out as if she could fall over at any moment.

I watched her, uneasy, as she made her way to the exit. But as she exited, someone else entered and in their haste, they brushed a shoulder against the old woman’s chest, knocking her back slightly. I jumped, rushing to catch up to her, as she grabbed hold of the rail beside the exit. I placed a hand on her forearm to steady her, and again she offered a smile.

“Hey,” I shouted, turning to see the perpetrator was staring at the scene, eyes covered with a ball cap, short, curling black hair sprouting from underneath.

Upon closer inspection, the hapless bus-rider was a young girl, although with her face downturned it was hard to tell much about her beside her unimposing height. I scanned her from head to toe. Narrow shoulders, drowning in a shirt three sizes too big, shorts just barely visible underneath the hem, tanned legs and dirty tennis shoes. But my eyes lingered on her hands. Small, balled into fists, her index fingers were digging into the skin of her thumbs, picking as she stared at the old woman in the exit.

“I-,” she began, and her voice was almost too soft to hear over the engine.

“You gonna pay?” asked the bus driver, eyeing her impatiently.

The girl jumped and turned to him, swiping her pass and shuffling with her shoulders pinched and her head down until she found an empty spot. The spot I’d taken before. I sighed and stepped down toward the woman, offering my arm to help her out onto the street.

“Oh thank you, son,” she said once the both of us were safely on the sidewalk.

Sparing no time, the bus sped off down the road. I watched it for half a second before returning my attention to the woman with a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, bowing. “Sorry about that,” I added, and I wasn’t sure why I apologized for that stranger. It wasn’t my apology to make, anyway.

She shook her head. “No, that’s alright,” she said with a simple smile before turning on her heel and waving goodbye. “Take care, sweetheart!”

I returned the smile along with the wave, but something wasn’t sitting quite right with me. As I turned on my heel towards the studio a block down, it hit me.

That girl on the bus was oddly familiar.

“How’s the project coming along?” asked Jisoo as he stood over my shoulder, gazing at the monitor with his specs sliding down the bridge of his nose.

I cleared my throat and nodded. “It’s good. The music will be automatically triggered when the player walks past this line, so I made sure to line it up properly,” I said, pointing with an index finger at the screen.

Sound design in video games was laborious work, and even more so when the sound is music. Footsteps, fighting noises, slashing sounds: those could be left to the programmers without a second thought. But music? That was the sort of thing that had to be implemented by somebody who understood dramatic tension, timing, placement. Of course, should the programmers decide they don’t need the help of an indie commercial freelance company for their music design, they could probably do a great job. But contracting us was a convenient way to take nonessential work and pass it to someone qualified to handle it.

In my case, overqualified.

“Good,” said Jisoo, but it was clear he was only half-listening as he stirred his coffee with a grimace. “That scene gonna be ready by tomorrow?”

“I mean…,” I began. It was the first I’d heard of such a short deadline. Quietly, I settled my nerves and met Jisoo’s eyes through the glare of his glasses. “Sure,” I said, reluctant.

His face split in a smile, wrinkles around his lips deepening as he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Great,” he said, patting my shoulder once. “We’re counting on you, Joon.”

Joon.

I swallowed hard and cleared my throat, turning back to my computer with a tense smile. “I’ll get to it then,” I said as he gave me a thumbs up and meandered down the hallway, out of my tiny, shared office.

I sighed, resting my cheek in my hand, and stared at the screen. Tiny characters idled in a wide, green field, awaiting my command to test if I’d placed the song correctly. I already knew I had. Of course, I should have been grateful to have a job in the first place. Albeit unfulfilling, the work gave me a steady income and despite the well of disappointment in my chest whenever Yoongi left to work in his own studio with real musical artists, I shouldn’t have been sighing all the time.

“Yikes,” said Jungkook from beside me, a young programmer who’d snagged the job at our company straight out of college.

He eyed me from his desk, only feet away from mine, and pushed his headphones back to rest against his collarbone. He was still a kid, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to work on games for the rest of his life. Really, working with a producing company was probably the best option for him. And every day you could see it in the way he moved that he was passionate. His round, inquisitive eyes were always landing on something new on his monitor, nimble fingers always typing away.

I doubted the kid had ever been apathetic about anything in his life.

“Yeah,” I breathed, glancing out the window to my right. Fresh sunlight poured in from outside. A fine day…

“You really gonna get it done in time?” he asked, refocusing on his screen as he popped a convenience store sausage in his mouth. He chewed on it, never looking away from the monitor, eyes alight.

I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. “Guess I gotta,” I said, still watching the day. In the distance, just below the horizon, I watched the train tracks as the afternoon train chugged by, windows glinting in the light. “It’s a crime to be inside on a day like this, though,” I remarked with a sigh.

Jungkook chuckled. “That’s what old people say,” he said, still munching.

I rolled my eyes and propped my headphones back up against my ears. “Everyone seems old to you,” I said. “Because you’re still a baby.”

Jungkook furrowed his brow and shot me a petulant look. “I’m a grown man.”

I chuckled and nodded, waving my hand to dismiss him. “Sure thing, big guy,” I said, continuing to set the music trigger just so.

The evening sun had long descended by the time my feet hit the pavement outside, and my hands and mind were exhausted. I wrung my wrists a little as I sighed into the nighttime air. The city was quiet, quieter than Seoul at any rate, and as I meandered toward the bus stop the simple sound of my cell phone ringing had me jumping. I fumbled with the phone for a moment as I fished it from my back pocket and slowly peered down at it.

Hani, displayed the screen and I raised my brows.

“Hello?” I asked as a white hatchback sped past, kicking up dirt on the street.

“Joonie,” she whined, and I could tell she was drunk. “I miss you.”

I gripped the bridge of my nose and nodded once, shutting my eyes against the yellow glow of the streetlamp overhead. “Uh-huh…”

“Come get me?”

I felt my chest constrict just a little. My mistake for answering in the first place. My mistake like always. “Where are you?” I asked carefully.

She mumbled something, words slurring together, before returning her attention to our phone call. “I’m at that bar by the beach. The pretty one.”

I knew the one. Sighing, I nodded. “Be there in ten,” I said, not awaiting a response as I pocketed the phone and began jogging down an alleyway, following a straight path to the shoreline.

Hani was right about one thing, anyway. The bar was pretty. In the summertime, when the air is fine and the clouds don’t linger too long, the beachside bar opens its windowed doors and extends its seating to the patio, right along the sand. The entrance was nestled deep beneath a canopy of light, sun-bleached wood beams and curling greenery, twinkling lights glowing on strings that wrapped around the entire patio.

Didn’t need to be a genius to know where she was. Quietly, I maneuvered around dancing bar patrons milling about in the gaps between tables and lounge chairs and made my way inside. The interior was dark. Not my style, really. But Hani always liked it here, which meant I spent plenty of drunk nights here. I approached the bar on the far wall and that was when I saw her.

Back on display from the low cut of her black dress, her brown hair waved over one slender shoulder and I saw her smile in profile. Perfect teeth, full cheeks rosy with alcohol and youth, eyes half-shut as she slapped a man’s arm. Gently, I approached her from behind and placed a hand on the small of her back, creating a wall between her and the man beside her. Her bright eyes landed on me and her smile went wider. She laughed, a loud, reverberating sound that pierced my ears even over the bumping music. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and held tight, standing to her feet.

“You’re smashed,” I remarked as I smelled the alcohol on her breath.

She giggled, running her fingers along the skin of my neck. “Hm…,” she mumbled, eyes shut as she swayed in front of me. “Let’s go walk on the beach.”

I placed my hands on her upper arms and guided her hands back to her sides, fixing her with a pointed look. “No, Hani we’ve gotta get you home-,”

“I wanna walk!” she shouted, the famous Hani pout on her ruby lips.

I swallowed hard. “No-,”

“I’m walking with or without you.”

And with that, she swung around in a grand circle and, with crossed arms, stomped across the bar and onto the patio where she paused, back still turned, and waited for me. Of course, she didn’t mean it. She just wanted me to go with her. And she knew how to bend me to her will. She always did.

I sighed, pressing my index fingers firmly against my temples. I didn’t need this today. Or any day, really. But as I opened my eyes I saw her peering at me over the slope of her shoulder and was powerless once again. Wordlessly, I rolled my eyes and followed behind her as she giggled and led the way out onto the sand.

It only took her a few steps to remove her strappy heels and fan her long hair out behind her with a huff. “Too hot,” she mumbled, adjusting the strap of her silk dress. “I’d go naked if I thought you wouldn’t hate me for it,” she teased with a glance my way and a cheeky grin.

“I wouldn’t hate you for something you did while you were drunk,” I said, crossing my arms as I matched her slow, stumbling pace.

The beach was serene, only a few people wandering through the sand. We walked parallel to the crashing, navy blue waves and each step took us further and further from the businesses lining the north side of the beach. We were getting close. Just around that cliffside, if we clung to the rocks, we’d emerge on the other side. All alone there.

“Joon?” she asked, staring up at me with round eyes.

“Hm?”

“Did you hear anything I said?” she asked, furrowing her dark brow.

I clamped my mouth shut and let my eyes fall to my feet on the sand. “I…sorry,” I said with a sigh.

“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” she asked with a nod. “I’ll forgive you this time because we’re almost there.”

I inhaled sharply through my nose and turned my eyes toward her. She was bathed in silver moonlight, fair skin glowing. Beautiful. “Why were you out drinking?”

“Am I not allowed?” she asked with a smirk.

I sighed. “It’s a weekday, Hani.”

“And I don’t have work tomorrow so what’s the harm?” She groaned and shook out her hands with a disgruntled huff. “You’re so stiff. This is why I broke up with you.”

There it was. “Hani, you need to go home.”

“And you never fight back,” she mumbled. “Making me the bad guy for saying anything in the first place.” She examined her hand for a moment, pouting.

“I don’t think it’s good for us to keep seeing each other,” I said carefully, choosing my words with care. I watched her expression go from sulky to petulant in a blink. She turned to me, eyes sharp. “It’s not healthy.”

She scoffed. “Why not?” she asked. “We were friends before we started dating, weren’t we? Why can’t we be friends now?”

“Because I don’t see you as just a friend and I think you know that,” I said, scanning her.

She opened and closed her mouth like a hinge before settling on closed and turning her head toward the shoreline. She stopped walking, crossed her arms, and watched the water for a long, silent moment.

“They’re finalizing it,” she said quietly as her eyes went distant. “My parents.”

I blinked at her. “They’re…really?”

She nodded. “That’s why I’m out tonight,” she said, voice soft against the water. “Mom called this morning and told me. Like it was nothing for her.”

“Hani…”

“Like it’s easy,” she said, wiping beneath her eyes with her free hand. “I texted Sooyoung but she didn’t reply. She saw it though. Just…didn’t reply.”

Gently, I came to rest beside her. I thought about wrapping an arm around her small, trembling shoulders and holding her close. But the intoxicating scent of her rosy perfume even from this distance was enough to keep that idea at bay. Instead, I simply rested my palm against her back and gave her a pat.

“I’m worried Sooyoung is gonna start up again,” she said with a sigh as she scratched her nose. “Like she did last year. I dunno…a divorce is a big deal for someone her age. She’s sixteen now, you know? Did I tell you that?” she asked, peeking up at me with glassy eyes.

“I know, Hani,” I said, smoothing my palm against her back.

She sniffled and nodded. “Yeah.” She sighed. “I don’t want her to be stupid like me.”

“You’re not stupid,” I said softly, shaking my head.

She smiled, but it wasn’t all there. “You don’t have to lie. I make stupid choices. Like tonight. Calling you. I just…I want her to grow up without making the mistakes I made, you know? I don’t want her to be twenty-four, drunk, crying on the beach with her ex-boyfriend.” She shook her head. “Or worse.”

“Stop thinking about all that, okay?” I said, patting her back once more before dropping my hand. “You need to get home.”

She eyed me sidelong, long eyelashes stained white against the moonlight. She was calmer now, more reasonable. Softly, she sighed and nodded her head. “Okay,” she said.

I nodded and turned back toward the bar, but I’d only taken one step when I felt her small hands wrap around my sides, clasping at my stomach. She rested her cheek against my back and my whole body went stiff. I felt her chest against me, her arms firm around my torso. And just like that, she held onto me. Like a life preserver, keeping her afloat. And it might have felt nice if it wasn’t so cruel.

“Thank you, Joonie,” she said softly against my back.

I cleared my throat and patted the top of her hand. “Let’s…let’s get you home.”

Hani: Thanks for everything tonight, Joonie.

I stared at my phone screen, holding it right above my face as I lie on my back in bed. I sighed and let my felt hand fall against the comforter, squinting at the phone. The message sat like an omen before me, like the promise of something I didn’t dare to hope for. I knew better than to respond. I knew better than to answer her call in the first place. I knew better than to meet her for coffee or dinner or movies after we ended. I knew better than to respond.

Namjoon: Of course. You know I still care about you.

Hani: I know. I care about you too :-)

I felt my chest constrict. How stupid. I slid my phone to rest on my nightstand and caught the time out the corner of my eye. 11:15. I had to be up early tomorrow to work on the game. Really, I should have been asleep an hour ago.

And here I was. Still stuck where I’ve always been.

I shook my head, giving my chest a few hard pats. If I thought about it too long, I’d end up moping. Instead, I simply stayed there, resting against the plush of my pillow, staring up at the ceiling until my heavy eyelids drifted shut and my breaths came more slowly.

Huh. I glanced around the depthless blackness and blinked a few times. Lucid dreaming again? I furrowed my brow and gave my jaw a scratch. Well, Hani hugging me probably did something weird to my brain. I stretched my torso this way and that, cracked my knuckles.

“Good timing,” I said to myself as I took a sweeping look around. “What’ll it be tonight?” A smile crept across my lips as I rubbed my palms together.

“Namjoon?”

I jumped, a scream escaping me from someplace deep in my chest, and whipped around in a half-circle towards the source of the voice. And that’s when I saw her. My eyes went wide, gaping, as the memories came flooding back in a wave that nearly bowled me over.

Standing in a baggy sleep shirt and too-big patterned pajama pants was the girl from the night before. Eunbyul. Her hair was a mess of black curls waving around her chin, furrowing her strong brow at me. Like the night before, she possessed a sad, quiet kind of charm. With slightly downturned eyes and clothes that looked like they might swallow her whole, she was the sort of person you wanted to take care of. The kind of person you worried didn't take care of themselves.

She pushed round-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose with a sniff and gave me a squint, face flushed. Had she been crying again? Was she scared again? She remembered my name, but did she remember everything else?

Suddenly, my heart was racing and so was my head and anxious questions began swirling around my mind, impossible to ignore. But when I spoke, none of them came out. Instead-

“You’re here again,” I said, unable to stop myself.

She blinked at me and for a long moment, we simply locked eyes. Neither said anything, perhaps both of us being too wary of the other to speak. But after an endless silence, she cracked a crooked smile, revealing bright teeth and a pleasant pinch in the apples of her cheeks.

She chuckled, rubbing the bare back of her neck. “Ah, uh…yeah. I guess,” she said, voice soft. She had a peculiar sort of voice, breathy, almost uncertain. I was certain I’d recognize it anywhere.

I opened and closed my jaw a few times, struggling for words, before simply settling for a laugh. “Well, uh…hi,” I said with a smile.

She returned it, albeit hesitantly. She crossed her arms over her torso and her eye went hazy with thought. “Say, did you remember the dream from last night?” she asked, brows knit as she met my eyes once more.

I shook my head. “Not until I saw you.”

She set her lips thin and fixed me with a serious upward glance. “Same here.”

“Huh…”

She paced around in the dark for a moment, mouth pursed in thought, pausing every few paces to adjust her glasses. “I wonder why…”

I chuckled. “Well,” I began, taking up the space beside her and matching her pace, stride for stride, “the memory is unreliable. Some people can’t remember their dreams at all unless they write them down right away.”

She halted her pacing and crossed her arms, looking up at me. “This feels different though, doesn’t it? Like…I don’t know, like the memory of the dream just got wiped completely.”

“If you’re gonna keep getting hung up on all the details that don’t make sense, you’re gonna be here all night,” I said, then laughed. “No pun intended.”

She scoffed. “How can you be so blasé about all this? Aren’t you…freaked out?” she asked, voice getting quieter as she lost her steam.

I shrugged. “None of this adds up anyway. So why not just enjoy it?” I asked, cocking a brow with a smile.

“It’s…it’s not that easy, you know,” she said, then sighed. “You’re…I guess you’re more adaptable than me.”

I paused a moment, scanning her. Her somber eyes were set on the nothing beneath her bare feet, arms wrapped around her torso like she was holding herself together at the seams. I swallowed hard and thought for a moment, focusing hard on a memory.

When I opened my eyes we were standing in the middle of an empty footpath, blooming trees and bushes creating a blanket that stretched on before us. Vibrant pinks, oranges, and yellows dotted the foliage that sloped downhill before us, like a mural. Down the path, a pond and a few traditional buildings. The sun was tempered by gently rolling clouds, and the sky felt limitless overhead.

And there were no people besides us.

After all, my brain couldn’t conjure all the faces I saw that day.

She blinked at the scenery around her, wind rustling through the trees, caressing the baby hairs along her temples. Her eyes went wide, lips forming an O, and her hands fell to her sides as she whirled around a few times, looking at the view from all angles.

“What-,” she began, then looked back at me, wild. “Namjoon, what’s all this?”

I smiled and stretched my arms out wide, embracing the abundance around me. “The Garden of Morning Calm,” I said. “I came here when I was a kid. Back when I lived in Sangdo-dong.”

“You lived there too?” she asked, brows high.

I nodded, taking a few easy steps down the path. She jogged to reach me, still staring up at me, imploring. “Yeah, when I was young. Anyway…I just…,” I began, feeling sheepish under her disarming gaze. I glanced away, toward the horizon line, and cleared my throat. “This place makes me feel calm, so I figured maybe it would do the same for you.”

She slowed down a little, watching me from behind for a moment before catching up once again. She stumbled a little over her pajama bottoms. “I-it does,” she said, catching herself before she tripped. She kept her eyes down, watching her feet carefully, as she found her pace beside me. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I know I must seem…kinda nonchalant about all this but….” I shrugged and took a deep breath of the fresh, autumn air. “I dunno. This place…it’s pretty incredible.”

“Funny,” she said with a soft chuckle. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of this dream but…you’ve been enjoying it, huh?”

I smiled. “It’s like a little vacation from life, I guess,” I said, and I almost regretted it. Way to go, I thought with a cringe, saying something sad like that to a stranger…

But to my relief, she simply offered a pensive hum and a nod. “I never thought of it that way.”

I blinked at her, silhouetted against the fall foliage and vibrant sun, and saw in her expression nothing but a pensive quietude. Like I could have said anything she she wouldn’t have thought I was strange. I felt my cheeks warm a little, and cleared my throat.

“Up here is a gazebo,” I said, pointing up ahead.

She squinted down the path and smiled softly. “Nice,” she said.

I chuckled. “Those glasses…you weren’t wearing them last night,” I said, reaching out to guide them up her nose again. “The nose pads are too far apart.”

She jumped a little at my touch before settling and squaring a look at me. “Well, they’re old,” she said with a little purse of her lips, crossing her arms as we neared the gazebo. “I didn’t want to be a bother when I got them fitted, so I just said they were fine.”

She led the way inside, ducking her head just a little as she crossed the three-stepped threshold into the structure. Crawling greenery stretched out across the exterior, and some of the vines reached through the cracks in the ceiling, but it felt nice in the shade. Gently, she took a seat and exhaled, patting the tops of her pajamaed thighs. She glanced up at me as I stood in the center of the rounded room and raised her brows.

“You gonna sit?” she asked, taking a peek at the space beside her on the dark wood bench.

“Ah…sure.” I quickly joined her, aware of the slightly awkward space between us. Despite being in this dream together, we were strangers after all. What could we really talk about?

“I had an appointment today in Sangdo-dong,” she began, watching her bare toes. “With my therapist.”

“Therapist?” I asked, then shook my head. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.”

She chuckled. “Not like either of us will remember this in the morning anyway,” she said with a shrug. “But…yeah, a therapist.”

I inhaled fresh air and sighed slowly. I knew I shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t pry, but she was right anyway. What’s the use in holding back in a situation like this? “What for?”

“Anxiety,” she said with a sigh. “Since I was young. Before the dreams even.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. I eyed her, careful not to say something insensitive, and saw again that thoughtful, distant look. “How did it go?”

“Not well.”

“Oh…”

“I told him I’ve been struggling trying to figure things out, and he told me I needed to spend more time thinking on it,” she said with a scoff. “Imagine that. Thinking more about something I think about all day.”

“What’re you struggling with?” I asked, and regretted it right after. Too far, definitely. She’d fix me with a glare and we wouldn’t speak anymore. She’d be rightfully put off.

“Trying to find something that makes me feel like a person,” she said with a single nod.

And with that, my heart rate slowed. Such a simple sentence, but it packed a punch. “I understand that,” I said.

She glanced at me. “How?”

“Well…sometimes it’s easy to get swept up in the swing of surviving and forget what it is that makes you feel alive,” I said, and against my will my mind returned to the beach last night, staring at the slope of Hani’s shoulder, her eyes glittering. I cleared my throat and leaned back.

She smiled. “Seems like you need to talk more than I do,” she said, raising her brows.

I swallowed hard and focused on my clasped hands. “Just…someone from my past.”

“You don’t have to be vague with me,” she said with a laugh. “Like I said, I won’t remember anyway.” She seemed…lighter tonight than she had before. Almost like something bobbing in the water, coming up for air and staying there, suspended.

“My ex,” I said, sighing. “She’s…she’s difficult.”

Eunbyul raised her brows. “You fighting?”

I smiled. “No, no. Nothing like that, just…we can’t seem to get a clean break, you know? Like…we can’t move on from being around each other. Even though it’s unhealthy,” I said, then shook my head. “I’m sure you get it.”

“I don’t,” she said, stretching her torso this way and that before settling and meeting my eyes, innocent. I furrowed my brow, and she maintained her gaze. “I’ve never dated.”

“Huh?” I asked, surprised.

She laughed. “I don’t really know how to interact with people,” she said with a nod. “Or maybe…I can interact if there’s no pressure. Like right now. If I don’t feel like I’m in the way or being a burden.” She waved her hands. “Anyway, tell me more so I can understand.”

I blinked at her, at the round, flushed apples of her cheeks, the flashing whites of her eyes as she turned her head to look at the trees swaying before us. “Um…,” I began, thinking. “Well…we’ve been friends for a long time. So breaking up was tricky, you know? What was our relationship supposed to be from then on? Did we go back to friends? Did we cut ties? Did we slowly distance ourselves?”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “I see.”

“I think…for me, the healthiest option is to completely remove her from my life, you know? It’s no good for me to keep spending time with her.” I wrung my hands a little and sighed. “I can’t figure out where the boundaries are anymore.”

“Have you talked to her about it?” asked Eunbyul, poking her big toe against the wood floorboard.

“I…kinda.”

“Kinda isn’t really good enough,” she said, still poking, eyes transfixed on her foot, hands gripping the bench seat. “In relationships, you have to be explicit to avoid misunderstandings. Communication is the most important thing,” she said, then chuckled. “Although I’m not the authority on all that.” She paused her poking and met my eyes with a gentle, knowing smile. “If you don’t know where the boundaries are, you gotta place them yourself.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but my thoughts evaded me the longer she looked up at me, strands of waving hair falling behind her glasses, touching the tops of her eyes. It looked like she expected something from me. Not a response or a reaction, not really anything like that.

It seemed like all she expected was for me to understand her.

I nodded. “That’s…shockingly astute,” I said with a laugh, rubbing my jaw as I finally broke the tense eye contact.

She smiled and leaned back against the bench. “I wanna try showing you something,” she said, standing to her feet and padding gently toward the center of the gazebo. She turned to me. “Just…try to see it in my head?”

“See it, feel it, hear it, smell it,” I said, then smirked. “Taste it, if you can.”

She laughed and nodded. “I’ll…I’ll try tasting it then,” she said as she shut her eyes tight.

For a moment, nothing changed. Just the same gazebo, the same scent of damp wood and crisp air, the same sunlight stretching in shafts between branches. But after a few moments, I saw something on the horizon. The sky was bleeding from cerulean to navy blue, stretching slowly overhead. The scenery went fuzzy before disappearing entirely and emerging again, morphed. The geological features began to sharpen as Eunbyul simply stood there, eyes shut, a charming wrinkle between her brows as she concentrated. And, before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of a desert I didn’t recognize, midnight sky above and orange sand underfoot. I scanned the area and saw open space in every direction, rock stacks eroded over time standing erect around the horizon. In the sky was a portrait of stars, so many I couldn’t possibly count them, and small shrubby bushes punctured the iron-red ground as it extended endlessly.

Eunbyul opened her eyes and, without sparing a single moment, broke into an infectious grin that pulled her eyes nearly shut and exposed her canines. She turned around a few times before laughing and clapping her hands. “No way!” she exclaimed, and her voice echoed through the canyon.

I smiled. “What’s this place?” I asked.

She turned to me with a wild, breathless smile and I felt my heart kick up. Just a little. A warm desert wind swept through the valley and kicked up dust, playing with the ends of her dark hair. “I went camping once on a vacation to the US. With my family. This was my favorite night. Nobody around, just us,” she said with a nod, bending her neck so she could stare right at the sky. She pointed. “See all the constellations?”

I raised my brows and glanced up with her. Indeed, it seemed the stars, although innumerable, were positioned perfectly. I recognized the Big Dipper, dangling in the sky like it was pouring stars onto black and blue canvas of sky.

“Do you know a lot about constellations?” I asked.

“Gaeul taught me on this trip,” she said, grinning, then snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Sorry, Gaeul is my sister.” She was still smiling like mad, and her eyes were alight for the first time since we met.

I nodded. “Tell me something about them,” I said, smiling gently as I sat down on the dusty earth.

She joined me, holding her knees close to her chest, and pointed at the sky. “That’s Ursa Major,” she said, and I followed her eyes to the big dipper. “The ladle is just part of the bigger constellation, you know? It’s supposed to look like a bear.” She laughed, and the sound was soft, almost like an exhale. “In Roman myths, it’s all about Jupiter and Callisto and jealousy and turning into bears, but I like the Korean myth better.”

“What’s that?” I asked, dropping my eyes from the sky to her.

“There was a widow who had seven sons, and became fond of a widower across the river. Her sons wanted to help her cross the water, so they each put down a stone for her to walk across. The mother didn’t know her sons put the rocks in the water. But she was grateful so she blessed the stones and when her sons died, they became stars,” she said, smiling so softly it was barely there. Just a tilt of her lips.

I watched her as she spoke, barely lit by the moon and the stars, eyes aglow. It was familiar, like before with Hani. But this felt decidedly different. Everything was different.

If only I could remember it in the morning…

“That’s a beautiful story,” I said with a smile.

She turned to me and nodded. “I think so too,” she said, then sighed and gave my shoulder a pat. “You’re a good person, Namjoon. I can tell.”

I chuckled. “And you’re not as bad at socializing as you think you are.”

She smirked. “I told you,” she began, leaning back on her palms with a sigh. “Low stakes make it easy to say what you want without being scared.”

“I wonder why we keep ending up here together,” I pondered idly.

She smiled. “You’re the one who said not to get hung up on the details that don’t make sense,” she said, then turned her head to look at the stars again.

“You seem awfully easygoing,” I remarked with a laugh.

She grinned and her eyes went small again. “I see what you mean now,” she said, sighing. “About this being like a vacation from life.”

I watched her for a moment before I felt something tugging. Just like before. And, from the way her eyes got round and her shoulders pinched, I was pretty sure Eunbyul felt it too. We locked gazes, neither one saying anything, and struggling against the pull in my chest, I reached out my hand, extending it toward her.

She blinked at it before, wordlessly, she took it in both of hers and shook it up and down. “Until next time,” she said with a serious look my way.

I nodded, letting my hand fall against the dirt. “Until next time.”

I awoke with heart palpitations. Blinking rapidly, I rubbed my face and patted down the sweat that had begun to dot my forehead. I glanced toward the clock on the wall. 4:03 again. Grumbling, I turned over onto my stomach and smashed my face against the pillows, yanking my blankets over my head.

“Stupid brain,” I mumbled into the sheets, exhaling long and slow.

I tried to force myself back to sleep, tried to will my brain to power down like an old desktop computer. I rolled onto my side, curling my legs up toward my chest. When that didn’t work, I thumped over onto my back once more and spread my arms wide, like I was physically begging for the embrace of unconsciousness. Long seconds ticked by, marked with the sound of my clock, always ticking like a metronome.

“Ugh,” I groaned, sitting upright with a frown. I glanced around the room and saw my phone still sitting on the charger. If I wasn’t getting back to sleep, the least I could do to sate my hyperactive brain was scroll mindlessly through Twitter.

I grabbed for the phone and unlocked it, but before I could tap the little blue app icon, I noticed a new text message in the bottom corner of the screen. I raised my brows and opened it. Sent at 2:39 AM.

Hani: Call me please.

Panic.

I jumped up and sat on my knees, typing her number in by heart. I pressed the phone to my ear and listened with bated breath to the dial tone. It was taunting me, every painfully slow drone and the endless pauses between. I counted five rings before they stopped altogether and I was met with nothing but radio silence.

“Hani?” I asked, frantic, breathless.

She sniffled on the other end and I collapsed against my bed with relief. “Hey.”

“Jesus, what’s wrong?” I asked, words stumbling into one another like a clumsy line.

“Sorry, it’s just…,” she began, then sniffled again. “It’s Sooyoung.”

“Fuck, Hani, is she alright? Is she safe?” I asked, heart hammering.

“Yeah, yeah she’s fine,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry. I keep doing this.”

“Hani what happened?”

She paused a moment before taking a shaky breath in. “She called me drunk.”

I was silent, just listening to the arrhythmic pattern of her breath. “Hani…”

“It’s fine, I called my folks and they found her in the basement. But…fuck, I dunno I got, like, a glimpse into her future,” she said, then paused. “And it looks a lot like mine.”

“Hani, are you alright?” I asked carefully, resting against the pillows with furrowed brows. “Have you slept?”

“Can’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Joonie,” she said with a sigh. “I just…Joon, could I…could I maybe come over? Watch a movie or something?”

I stiffened. Bad idea. Horrible, terrible, really bad idea. Blurring more lines, crossing more barriers…at this rate, I’d be heartbroken until the day I died. It wasn’t like I was her only friend. She’d always been popular, and even when we were dating she’d go to Joohee before she’d ever go to me with a problem. Why now did it seem like she needed me so profoundly?

If you don’t know where the boundaries are, you gotta place them yourself.

I felt my stomach pang a little. Where had I heard that? Gently, I patted my chest in the hopes of settling my heart down. I knew what the right decision was. It was painfully obvious to anyone that I couldn’t let her come over, let her cross the threshold and reenter my intimate space. I knew the implications.

I sighed and braced myself, holding the phone close against my hot cheek. I shut my eyes, ran a hand through my unruly hair, and nodded my head. “Um…,” I began, opening my eyes only halfway to stare with disappointment at the clock across from my bed. “Yeah, Hani. Of course.”

[ikesenlemonadestandstories]

Yearning

Hey there honey bees, here’s today’s short for MC dealing with shaving in the Sengoku. Dis one is for Mitsuhide. Hope you like it! 

Question for the peanut gallery...who do you wanna see next? Message me! send in an ask...I”m going to do them all eventually but thought I’d see what the people want (^.^)v

My other Ikesen works are hanging on my page. Click Master List to see them all conveniently compiled in one place!

Much love,

Admin T~

[YN]

Usually you felt better after a meeting or a meal surrounded by your new Sengoku family. They had done a great job of helping you acclimate to the time period and you would never be able to thank them for that, never; but sometimes you still just missed home. Certain aspects stuck out, like the immediate forms of communication, photos, endless libraries of information and piano music all at your fingertips, running water, soap...the little things like the woosh of traffic as you walked on busy sidewalks, the ding every time someone entered a convenience store, the clicking of your coworkers diligently typing away as they worked toward a deadline, the soft thunk of a lock when you came home from work, the sound of zippers, hell you’d even kill for some velcro if it would help you feel better; but you didn’t and couldn’t. So here you were stuck knowing that you would feel just as terrible if you were back in the present without all of them, but still wishing it wasn’t quite so hard some days. There had to be something to help add a semblance of futuristic normalcy back into your daily life. Anything.

“That’s it!”

[Mitsuhide]

The first few times I saw them carrying the bucket up to their room I thought nothing of it. Maybe they were just doing a bit of extra cleaning, or it had to deal with something they were sewing. For about a month I had been purposefully cutting holes along the bottom edge of my haori, in an attempt to see what there were using it for, but to no avail.

When that didn’t work I tried teasing it out of them, but they weren’t having any of it. With each passing encounter the bucket of water became a normal oddity. I had decided that the next time I saw it I would not hesitate. I was just going to barge in.

I had planned for the worst, but no part of me was prepared to see them sitting on their writing table, feet dipped in the bucket running the edge of the blade up their legs. Mild annoyance sat in their normally cheerful features as they looked over at me from the corner of their eyes.

“Why do you even knock if you’re not going to wait for an answer?” they sighed

[YN]

Thanks to your own ingenuity you had devised a makeshift razor and had taken to keeping your legs and underarms pretty neat. Making time at least once a week to collect a bucket of water and bring it back to your room to shave in peace. It wasn’t like anyone would notice, seeing as you were pretty much always in a kimono, but something about it helped you feel normal, like you weren’t totally removed from everything you grew up with.

You had been successful at avoiding the warlords so far, but you must have looked shifty because he had been following you around asking about your bucket all day and now you weren’t even halfway through your right leg when there was a knock on you door and Mitsuhide slid it open. There was no time to even try to hide what you were doing, not to mention if you had it would have just added to you looking suspect.

“Why do you even knock if you’re not going to wait for an answer?”

“My apologies.” He may have apologized but why didn’t you believe it…

“So then what can I help you with? Need me to patch your haori...again?”

“No, not this time.” he paused, for a second you thought he looked nervous but it passed as he continued “Might I inquire what you’re up to?”

[Mitsuhide]

Shave? I knew most people did it on occasion to keep unruly facial hair in check, but I had never considered it a possibility elsewhere.

“Why would you go to such lengths to have the legs of a small child?”

Apparently that was a thorny subject. My attempt at messing with them had ill-intended effects, unlike their normal reaction of sputtering or turning bright red only to talk themselves into another set up, they glared.

“Funny...if you don’t need anything you should try that wonderful humor on Hideyoshi. I’m sure it would be equally rewarding for you.” they suggested

“I have an equally entertaining idea.” to which they raised an eyebrow at me “Just hear this one out. You tell me why you’re shaving and I wont tell Hideyoshi I saw you sitting in your room playing with a knife.”

“...”

There was a long pause before the gave in and looked me directly in the eyes.

“To feel normal.” they said

And all of a sudden I regretted it, there was a look on their face, I was filled with an emotion I try hard to keep in check, I sat on the tatami by their bucket.

“Nothing about you has ever been normal.” they paused only for a moment before continuing on up their leg “you are quite possibly the only person I’ve ever met to request more work. You routinely yell at the lord-liege who employs you.”

“He deserves it, usually...”

“Agreed, but you don’t see anyone else doing that. You talk freely to everyone, and show all of your emotions plainly on your face. You’re not normal but that’s not a bad thing. How would this make you feel normal, and why would you ever want to be?”

[YN]

Yikes...a child, really? I know it’s uncommon but was that completely necessary? You shot a look his way, you really didn’t feel like dealing with his toying today...you felt homesick enough already. If that’s how he was going to be it may be time to suggest he take his leave.

“Funny...if you don’t need anything you should try that wonderful humor on Hideyoshi. I’m sure it would be equally rewarding for you.”

“I have an equally entertaining idea.” you paused knowing if you didn’t you would definitely cut yourself when Mitsuhide's ‘idea’ reared its ugly head “Just hear this one out. You tell me why you’re shaving and I wont tell Hideyoshi I saw you sitting in your room playing with a knife.”

Was he really threatening to tell on you just to get the information he wanted? Yes...yes he was. You didn’t need to ask aloud because the look on his face said it all. Figuring it was better to just come out and say it then deal with mother hen you looked at him.

“To feel normal…” you didn’t sugar coat it, or try to hide how you were feeling under a smile, if he really wanted to know you’d tell him...what he did with the information was up to him. 

He responded rather cautiously...picking his words and you decided you must be dreaming because he had just paid you a very solid compliment. You could tell he wasn’t teasing, if he was he would have stayed closer to the door to ensure an exit.

By the time he was through attempting to make you feel better you had finished your legs. Running the sand you had been collecting from the lake shore over your wet legs to exfoliate, you covered them with clay from the riverbed. You told him about how this helps ease your homesickness, why it may be odd to them but it had a funny way of making you feel just a tad better. After you washed it off you took to drying your now smooth legs which was when he reached over and slowly ran a hand up your shin all the way to your knee.

[Mitsuhide]

“Where I come from, it’s a social norm. When I found myself feeling homesick missing things I would never be able to get here I tried brainstorming all the different things this time has to offer and how I could use them to ebb these feelings” she looked thoughtful as she spoke.

“So you decided this was the best way to do that?”

“Mmmh, it was part of a routine; Something I did so frequently I didn’t realize it’s impact until recently. Personally I used to shave my legs once a week...armpits ever three days or so. In the winter all bets were off but that’s just because it’s cold and I wanted to hibernate anyway.” they giggled but their eyes were still distant thinking about times past.

“There’s no showers here, the closest thing would be a waterfall and I’m not exactly brave enough to stand under one of those naked...There are no cars, no switch locks, and no phones, this was the best solution I had. A bit of futuristic pampering.”

It was interesting, a wave of emotion came over me and, with what I would try to play off as intrigue, I reached over and ran my hand up their leg. It was different but not in a bad way, stopping at their knee. Skin as cool as fresh silk from the water now bloomed with heat where I rested my hand.

“See, doesn’t that feel nice? Now imagine it against new fabric or fresh bed sheets.” They were smiling again. Good.

“Only if I can imagine you in both?” Flushing red with the reaction I loved so much, they bat my hand away averting their gaze.

“Maybe...but only if you ask nicely.”

tagging @little-mini-me-world because always :) and @forallyourikemensengokuneeds because it involves her best ikemen Mitsu

[espressostudy]

[Days of Productivity: 3/100]

Wow, I am so sorry for all of the crappy pictures of my book and coffee! I am still doing my ap lit assignment, but I gave myself the deadline of Saturday before the concert. So starting then I should be providing some better quality pics lol.

For now, coffee. I’m up to chapter 19 and I’m almost up to the 16th page on my word doc (yikes!). Today I worked at the lab and I’ve also done half of two chapters, and I plan to do the second halves of 5 chapters and proofread the last 13 chapters before bed (lol yeah right, sydney). Then, in theory, I’ll have 9 chapters left, which means I’ll be 2/3 done with this part of my ap lit assignment!

Wish me luck, and happy studying!

[ayankun]

Writer's Log: Day 1

Day 0 was yesterday; pooped out like 750 words.

Style is already Different Than Expected. But in an I Can Deffo Work With This kind of way.

(future goal will be to be able to Decide On and Then Execute a Particular Style on demand; the main reason why my two favorite Flash fics are my favorites is because I was able to go into both of them with a stylistic idea in mind, and was successful in achieving exactly what I wanted. Never before and never since lololol)

Curious to see if I can under-wordsmith this. The first Zombies is such a sharply plotted story, maybe I can rein myself in a bit and just keep it to the critical stuff. Give it real clean lines, simple and straightforward.

(in the first movie, this sequence is SO SHARP: BAMM! into Addison making inroads with Zed's friends and family into Someday (Ballad) into Officer Gus just trying to go home. 10 solid minutes of Cannot Look Away, with excellent forward movement on the plot and emotional stakes. It's entertaining, funny, charming, heart-warming, UGH it's so good I want to do that.

Let's look at 1500 words per scene, I could do a scene a day. Two weeks to finish. Doable?????

So even though I gave myself a whole mission statement yesterday, once the opening scene was pooped out I realized I had still failed to appropriately set up Zed's internal conflict. Luckily, I have an extra Thinking Hour in the middle of the night that I was able to use to think about how to fix this. Will fix!

Also fun to note, good sign that the brain keeps churning from where I left off, like an autonomous bodily function. I really really need the process of storysmithing and wordsmithing to be autonomous and unavoidable?! The second I have to sit and work is the second I start to walk away. Thanks, brain!

(the moral of the story is to actually do some amount of work, though, so that over time all the Effort To Be Good will be internalized into Gut Instinct and then it's all fun and no work down the line)

Here's what I'm stressed out about though:

Two weeks of October free time will be spent on this, minimum.

A full weekend in October needs to be spent on re-reading All The Glitters draft before NaNo.

Gotta finish Zed cosplay before Halloween.

Gotta get started on Christmas Shopping (no mental time in November)

Still need to get my kitchen sink fixed, still need to do dishes/laundry/cooking/work out at all the appropriate intervals (eats into writing time, or writing time eats into chores time)

REALLY stressed about finding time for my annual AoS rewatch, which I haven't been able to start because all summer my brain was on Disney mode. I possibly could put it on during the work day in November, but I'm super hesitant to muddy the brain waters before the Zombies fic gets done. I fully believe that the second I start the rewatch, all my free time and ALL my free brain time will be sucked away from anything else I care about at this particular moment.

136 episodes, 6 episodes a day, 22.6 weeks. Ain't nobody got time for that!!!!! Not in October or November, anyway. Yikes. I should at least be able to get a start, and finish in December. YIKES YIKES YIKES DEADLINES SUCK

Long story short, if I prioritize Zombies fic RIGHT MEOW, I'll have accomplished something I really do want to accomplish, and clear up some mental space for other stuff, which is also important.

LET'S GOOOOOO

longshot that I get a stupid amount of free time in the immediate future, tho, lololol what a crazy random happenstance that eventuality would be

[enesjay]

update: I’m still alive and ‘ever yours’

「Huh, you’re still alive?」

Apparently so. Let’s just say this – second year was a wild ride. The first half of it things just ‘got too real’, and the second half of it nothing felt real. In between them were some transformative personal experiences for me on top of the university workload which as usual, was brutal. 

The first semester, I found myself working on two essays simultaneously, back to back, like a clockwork just to keep up. It was tough, and I just have to record somewhere in writing – I’m quite proud of myself for pulling through in spite of many things. December 2019 will go down as one of those ‘rock bottom’ moments but it was one that I’m glad I experienced – I came out of it much stronger than I was before.

And then, second semester was... a mess. The first five weeks was alright, and then by late February the universe just threw the kitchen sink in: strikes, coronavirus, deadlines. Suddenly it was all chaos – 0 to 100 real quick sort of situation. Funny enough, that moment came mid-March, right around my birthday – not exactly how I envisioned how my official entry into adulthood(tm) would look like. 

So, it’s only right that I return to the very thing I’ve been desperate to get back to. Am I making excuses for not working on the novel? Possibly. But I also realised that taking time for myself was important. I did beat myself up a lot for struggling, which I shouldn’t have, because all it did was make me feel even worse. 

In spite of it all, I’m happy to say that I’ll be entering third year with another solid first! The next year is looking challenging for sure, and essentially we’ve turned into a massive online school (yikes). And of course, that 10k words dissertation is just around the corner...  

But enough of uni for now – onto the novel!

「'Ever Yours’?」

I did mention a change in working title from ‘A Certain Task’ to ‘Ever Yours’. But why? Because it’s more relevant, that’s why. 

After spending some time cooped up in the archives last summer and reading through many, many old letters (and failing to understand most of them because I’m rubbish at palaeography), there’s one thing I’ve noticed: everybody had a unique way of signing off letters. I think that that’s pretty cool, and we should 100% bring it back. (I’m guilty of using the pretty safe but flavourless ‘kind regards’ to sign off my emails, but that’s beside the point). 

What I particularly love is that nearly all the sign-offs express sentiments along the line of ‘affection’ and ‘duty’. For William Pitt, it was was ‘Ever Yours,’ (sometimes with ‘Affectionately’ in between, but most of the time he didn’t even bother to write those two words properly, to begin with). Here’s an example: 

[Image: William Pitt to William Wyndham Grenville (April 1789), Add Ms 71587 f.33, The British Library, London, accessed 29 June 2019]

A bit squiggly, but you get the idea. For me, it made sense to switch up the title, but the decision wasn’t immediate because I thought “well, this sounds a bit too romance novel-y*, doesn’t it?” but after surveying some of my readers, they didn’t seem to think so. So there’s that. A decision was made. 

(*I’m not saying there’s no romance in the novel – but this isn’t a romance novel per se so I’m trying to avoid false advertisement). 

「Reworking」

Another fairly difficult decision, but for the best. When I started writing Ever Yours, it was written in first person present-tense. LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF HOW I’VE BEEN WRITING MY WHOLE LIFE. HELLO. I think I was trying to do something different, but I felt like that was a mistake. 

Transforming the novel into a different perspective/tense has been a challenge of its own (given that I’ve already written about 20k words in the previous style), but it also gave me an opportunity to tidy a few things up as well so I’ll consider it a win. 

「Final Thoughts」

A note from myself, to myself: don’t stop working on this. By ‘this’ I mean the blog, the novel, anything related to it. I have a bad habit of not seeing things through or never finishing anything, which is why I keep disappearing for aaaages, but I know that I can’t be like this forever if I want to get things done. So I’m back – remind me to get my butt back onto this blog if I disappear! 

And to the people who reading this: I hope to be sharing some of thing things I’ve been working on soon! Maybe some excerpts and tidbits from/about the novel, or some good research stuff I’ve been keeping in my notes! I have a couple of things in mind, even a post drafted so look out for them! 

Farewell, for now :) 

[greatdrams]

The Story Behind My Book The GreatDrams of Scotland

With The GreatDrams of Scotland, my inaugural book, having finally been released, I have collated a bunch of answers that I have been asked about the journey to getting published, the pride of having written something that hopefully thousands of whisky lovers and learners the world over will enjoy and what’s next. I felt it only fitting that as well as these answers being published into magazines, newspapers and websites all over the place, that you, my faithful and loyal GreatDrams readers should get to read a bit more about the journey too.

The GreatDrams of Scotland is available to order now on Amazon, Waterstones and GreatDrams at this link:

[embed]http://ift.tt/2imSkak]

How long have you been interested in whisky?

Since I was about 19, my father had just passed away and I knew he enjoyed the stuff so I set about discovering what I could about the drink and trying to find what flavour profile worked for me; he was very much a Bell’s, Johnnie Walker Black and Teacher’s drinker; I wanted to see what else was out there… but even now I still come back to a couple of his favourites from time to time.

What is it about Scotch in particular that appeals to you?

The people, the diversity of flavour and the legend around the drink; what other drink has so much storytelling and chat around it? I think you’d find it pretty hard to match whisky’s prowess in myth, legend and passion. The people are extraordinary; I used to work with design agencies on FMCG brands in the homeware, personal care and soft drinks categories… all owned by mega brands, and even the brands in whisky owned by the ‘big guys’ are still operated, produced, marketed and sold with a passion that smashes other categories out of the park.

Are you a fan of whisky books?

Love them, I have tonnes of them at home - from the hardcore technical side of things to the beautiful photography books and the light reading ones. There is something special about them that capture a moment, a way of thinking and a selection of the best products at that specific time.

How did you want your book to differ from others?

I just want it to be enjoyed; it is not a tome to mark the nth degree of detail, neither is it so light-hearted it is flippant, it is something very personal to me as it collates my tales of enjoyment through understanding whisky and making pilgrimages to the various distilleries, and the brands that have made this spirit so great and so loved the world over.

Can you remember where you were /what you were doing at the moment you decided you wanted to write a book?

I’ve wanted to do it for ages, was actually the 18th September 2014, I sat on the black Chesterfield in my old office and sketched out the look and feel I wanted for the book on Post-Its, then the rough chapter outline and what I wanted to achieve with it… then I mapped it out, but it was about a year later that I started writing properly, and was in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in London with some hearty single cask whiskies to kick start the creativity.

Are people as important as the liquid when it comes to whisky?

Massively; more in some cases as it is their passion that enables you to feel a dram, feel the sense of place, the provenance, the work, the longevity behind the process that you cannot just get from the liquid, the packaging or the website.

Is the published book the same as you originally to set out to write, or did you change your mind along the way?

Pretty much, although I originally had lofty thoughts and desires to cover all the distilleries in Scotland, then realised pretty sharpish that that was going to be way too much to keep the momentum, energy and attention of both myself and the reader going, so I selected a few brands and distilleries that meant a lot to me.  And this way I might do a second edition with all new distilleries and brands… you never know.

Would you ever want to make whisky yourself?

I have considered it several times, I own a few casks now and yeah am tempted to make the stuff, but the investment is incredible, and would mean not being able to do that I do now so I would prefer to JV or bottle some whiskies independently… watch this space…

How did you choose which brands to feature?

They have all either touched me through their storytelling, their people or I have had a genuine moment with them that has left a mark and reminded me why I love what I do and why I love this great drink.

How long from start to finish did it take to write and publish the book?

Hmmm, from first word to being in print it was about two years… the writing side was around six months of that though! Working with the publisher, RedDoor, and designing the book took much longer than anticipated, but for the right reasons. I’m incredibly proud of this piece of work and hope others enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it.

What feedback did you receive from other whisky professionals and influencers while writing the book?

Mostly that it was a great thing to do and that it sounded like a great concept … which was nice, and kept me going!

How would you describe the written style of the book?

The stories are my experiences with, and interpretations of the brands’ hard work in creating amazing drinks for people the world over to enjoy so telling the stories honestly, hopefully interestingly and with some level of authority is what I was aiming for.

Are visuals a crucial aspect for your readers?

Definitely, they create that sense of place that I cannot do unless in front of people actually reading the book to them, each should tell a tale in its own right and aid understanding.

What was your travel schedule like?

Mental, in a word. In 2015 I visited 33 distilleries, 2016 I saw 28 I think, and thus far in 2017 (at time of writing, September) I’m up to 24 for the year, despite a two-month ‘grounding’ around my son’s due date and the weeks after Archie’s arrival, this year I have spent an average of two days per week travelling to distilleries and meetings for both writing missions and to see my consulting clients… busy times, and I would not have it any other way. I’m actually typing this at 30-thousand feet on my way to Toronto for the launch of the new Glenfiddich Experimental Batch #3, all about using otherwise ‘dead time’ to be productive… on this flight alone I have this to write / compile, two other articles to draft and fifteen YouTube videos, and to build propositions for two new NPD launches going into production in 2018 / 2019… it is NEVER dull at GreatDrams.

How challenging is it to write a book?

It had its moments; I find writing very therapeutic, but I have to be in the right headspace, and not have deadlines or the consulting side of the business on my mind… Per above, I actually wrote most of the book on trains and in the air (on planes) as they are the only real places I have no distractions from the vibrant world of the GreatDrams social media channels.

What is the most fun part of writing a book?

Speaking to the people behind some of my favourite whiskies, and visiting the places they are made too… that and hitting word count targets! When the word count, proofed, fact check spreadsheet showed all green cells indicating they were done and sorted, that was a nice feeling… then came editing, design, bottle shots, cover design and of course the nervous, yet super-exciting moment when I green-lit the printing process. Yikes.

Are all the whiskies in your book on your blog?

Nope, and that’s the beauty of it, it is a hybrid; many of the brands are covered on the site, but quite a few are ones I’ve not had the chance to spend time with before so this gave me the chance to get intimate with them in a different context.

Why did you want to go offline to write a book when your blog is such a successful award-winner?

To appeal to a different audience, to also be able to say ‘I did that’, and also to have created something physical from scratch, a real product, something I’ve wanted to do for years. Articles, PDFs and digital files only give you so much satisfaction after a while…

What is your next project going to look like and will there be another whisky book?

Yep! About 65% of the next book is written… and various other things I cannot talk about, but all very exciting (but I would say that, I try not to work on boring things). Oh and I have a limited edition whisky out too:

[embed]http://ift.tt/2imdwxh]

The GreatDrams of Scotland is available to order now on Amazon, Waterstones and GreatDrams at this link:

[embed]http://ift.tt/2imSkak]

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="27518,27519,27520,27521"]

The post The Story Behind My Book The GreatDrams of Scotland appeared first on GreatDrams.

from GreatDrams http://ift.tt/2gTviYd Greg

[skeletonbook]

You know you are on some GrEaT medication when you literally forget to eat the ENTIRE DAY and then feel like the World War 3 of anxiety attacks is going at any moment. YiKeS

I tried to complete my script for History Day today because I gave myself that deadline but I just couldn’t. I’m tired, I haven’t eaten and the motivation just wasn’t here today. So I am gifting you with an art piece update.

But, I did send in my availability for work, washed and folded 4 loads of laundry and put clean sheets on my bed (and complete the chores my dad asked me to do) so at least I crossed those things off my personal to do list.

I will hopefully post my spread for tomorrow before I go to bed tonight and tomorrow will be another day to try again.

Self-Care: I painted my newest art piece and it was nice. Song I Just Listened To: I got the tune by Chinese Man

[whiteclericmaris]

I felt like someone was asking what it is I do that I am so rich in treasure in my vault.

I set up a system as there is a reason why Arialya is my Banker (because during May I spent all my treasure on Arialya's apparel to the point of being broke in one day)

Now doesn't it suck after you purchase X that you are below the daily bonus of 2000 treasures? (Oh yeah it always sucks after I make a payment for Lair space except when I sold the Phantom Gene where I had 100000+ left over.)

As one person in the forums wrote it better "As Arcane we are among the poorest because we don't dominate often and almost always have to pay Lair Space in full price" (Although we have the some of the highest members we each have to exalt much more extra compared to other flights).

So what did I do? Set up a system on how I spend treasure and Vault.

Originally this was the treasure I would set aside in order to purchase a Glimmer Gene for Treasure in AH for my Progen but now that I have the treasure I ask myself if it is really worth paying up for that Gene when it is basically the price that Lair Space is now. That's why I would save between Treasure and Gold to see which one would make it to the goal first.

So first: I put 100000 treasure in the vault and I always have to do this regardless of which day it is. (Originally my deadline was Saturday because Sunday starts the week again but now the deadline is as fast as I can)

Just to clarify it's not 100000 per day (No, and I don't recommend doing this).

It's 100000 per week.

Next up is purchases.

Although I do have my down days where I impulsively spend treasure when not feeling well. The gist is: I can only purchase 1 thing for the week that is above Lucky Streak.

Things that are under it? Like 50000? Yeah. 40000 yeah. It just can't be over 75000 from lucky streak.

"But then how will you finish your gene projects?"

Hahahahahahaha

Dude. I've been on this site for 3 years.

Staff updates with unexpected genes in some months. I know this because most of the dragons I buy for Festivals are based on genes that were recently added (hence why I buy dragons more for aesthetic with genes than to overdress them in like 20 layers of apparel) I buy them based on the gene I don't have or was recently added and by the time the festival starts too much breeding has been done with those genes to lower the price value of some dragons that are triple gened. I don't need to hurry up and gene a dragon right away and spend treasures when then I look at the update and scry my dragon with new gene and *weeps* it's so much better *cries*. (Like thank you staff for giving me a better gene I love for my earth week project. Please give a better tert for modern breeds too).

If I wasn't just loging in, feed, dragon, and actually gave my progens genes already? I would have been weeping when the genes they have now took a span of one 1-2 years for it to be released.

As I said before. The only constants in this game that don't change no matter what is: Lair Space and the addition of the Hibernal Den now.

You can change the dragons or get new ones as much as you want but in the end Lair Space and Hibernal Den are the must have and no matter what will always stay the same after you unlock all slots, tabs, (nests are optional for me because I don't have many breeding pairs and went without breeding for years on purpose because I didn't like having to exalt the babies since all I did was log in gather and feed dragons.)

Is it slow? Yes... but... my lair has no lore. All it has as lore is dragon's daily tasks and the objectives for the week. I don't really like showing off scry plans although I do list the genes I need for the dragons because I forget the scry plans a lot. That and an apparel that I have to wait for Night of the Nocturne to brew if it comes back because that price is yikes even if understandable.