#let's see if i have other things i've observed to note down later

[bakerysnake]

considering my recent experiences with burnout, i'm gonna have to convince my dad to give me one hour of laptop time a week (or at least two weeks) in 11th and 12th

[sebscore]

gen-z driver chaotically taking over martin’s grid walk? thank you!!

KEEPING UP WITH THE GRID

pairings: f1 team principals, drivers and ex-driver x driver!reader (im too lazy to name everyone im sorry)

warnings: swearing. christian horner. mention of a nipple tweak.

author's note: anon, you are a legend for requesting this! I'm not too proud of the writing, since I wrote this in the middle of the night and my brain doesn't function normally then. but i hope you like it anyway, darling! let me know your thoughts!!

masterlist

• • • • • • •

Y/N was mindlessly scrolling through her phone when a sudden loud voice interrupted her peaceful time. ''How are we feeling about today, Y/N?'' Martin bent his knees, so he could hold the mic up to her face as she sat on the ground. 

''Oh my god, you scared the shit out of me.'' She cursed, quickly covering her mouth as she knows she isn't supposed to swear on Sky Sports. ''Uh, I'm feeling pretty good about it, I'm starting on the second row, so not too bad.'' The driver answered his question, smiling sheepishly. 

''You like having alone time before a race?'' He continued, a grin on his face. 

Y/N shrugged her shoulders. ''I just happen to be alone right now, sometimes I'm chatting with my team or with some of the other drivers.'' 

''Martin, you look a bit tired, you want to sit down?'' She patted the space next to her, feeling bad that he was crouching down while she comfortably sat on the grass. 

The former F1 driver held a look of surprise on his face. ''In all my years I've been doing this, no one has ever offered me to sit down.'' He gave the camera a glance before slowly letting himself sink to the ground. 

''You know, people always wonder 'Where is Martin?' But no one ever wonders 'How is Martin?' We need to take better care of you.'' The man seemed clueless about what she was saying, but he was amused either way. 

''I'm alright, all that walking takes a lot of energy.'' He responded, pretending to wipe sweat off his forehead. 

Y/N chuckled. ''Yeah, I mean, you've been doing this longer than I've been alive, so I understand that you're tired from all the walking.'' She never let the oppurtunity slip to make him aware of their age gap. 

''Well, let's not talk age,'' he sighed, making her laugh, ''anyway, I think I might just hang around here for the entire segment.'' Martin concluded. 

An idea popped into her head as she heard his words. ''Can I do it? I've always wanted to do it.'' 

Martin was surprised for a second time since joining the young woman. ''You mean I let you go around the grid and talk to people?'' 

She nodded. ''Yes, I love bothering people with my presence.'' Y/N said, matter-of-factly. 

The Brit looked at his cameraman, who adamantly nodded his head to the idea of letting the driver do her thing around the grid. 

Martin let out a deep breath, but handed his mic and headset over. ''Just don't get me fired,'' he said, trying to sound stern, ''and don't curse!'' He quickly added. 

''I won't, I promise! I'll see you later!'' She got up from the ground and put the headset on, slightly altering it so it fit her head perfectly. ''Alright, let's make some controversy.'' Y/N exclaimed, pulling the cameraman along. 

She glanced around the grid, trying to find some interesting people to talk to. ''So, I just need to find a person and ask them questions about whatever I want?'' The athlete asked the cameraman, who simply nodded his head, making the camera shake as well.

''Oh, I love this program!'' She giggled into the microphone, doing a small jump out of happiness. 

Y/N observed the grid, knowing her first ''guest'' needed to be a good one. ''Okay, I've found someone!'' She let the cameraman know, pointing in the direction she wanted to go. 

''Alright,'' she tapped the person's shoulder, having them turn to the camera in confusion, ''the first guest on Y/N's grid walk is the team principal of Mercedes… Petronas… Benz…,'' she tried remembering the full team name, ''Whatever, his name is Susie's husband! Welcome, Susie's husband.'' She introduced Toto. 

The Austrian man was incredibly entertained by the young woman's antics. ''Hello, Y/N.'' 

''I have to ask you- how does it feel to be married to the greatest woman alive?'' She asked him, glancing around to find the woman in question. 

Toto laughed at the question, but proceeded. ''It's great, Susie is an amazing person who has done countless amazing projects and campaigns- I'm a very lucky man.'' The sincere smile on Toto's face when talking about his wife brought a smile to Y/N's face. 

''That's so cute- where is she? I only came over here, because I thought she would be here.'' 

''Unfortunately, she's not here today,'' he told her in a sad tone, ''I know that upsets you, Y/N.'' The driver's girl crush on Susie had been an obvious thing for many years, amusing everyone involved. 

Y/N pouted at his words. ''Well, yeah… that upsets me a lot actuall-''

''What is going on here?'' A British accent interrupted her interview with the team principal. 

''Go away, Russell George! I don't want you on my show.'' Y/N teasingly dismissed George, slapping his arm to get him out of frame. 

The Mercedes driver feigned offense, placing his hand on his heart. ''Why not? I thought we were great friends, Y/L.'' 

''Crikey, crikey, crikey! Don't you have shirtless pictures to post somewhere? Bye bye!'' She quickly got away from the Mercedes team, practically running at one point. 

Y/N let out a big sigh into the mic. ''Martin was right, this is tiring,'' she momentarily stopped in her steps, her hand on her waist, ''OH! Look! It's Charles Lechair!'' Her tiredness from a few seconds before was long forgotten as she strided over to her Monégasque friend. 

''Charles, hello, Charles!'' She put her hand on his back, guiding him to the camera. ''How are you feeling about the race today? What are the strategies? Do they know that word at Ferrari?'' She teased the red team. 

''Uh, we're feeling optimistic today and yeah, I'm ready to give it my all.'' He smiled, putting up his tv-friendly facade, not wanting to trash talk his team on television. 

Y/N raised her eyebrow. ''You're so cute being all positive! Keep that attitude, Perceval!'' She patted his shoulder. ''Thanks for talking to me and good luck!'' She bid him goodbye. 

The young driver walked in all sorts of directions. There were many people present on the grid, yet Y/N had quite a hard time finding people to talk to. It was when she walked by the Red Bull team that she found her next victim. 

''Christian! Christian Horner, hello, welcome!'' She and the team principal didn't have the best history, but she knew the viewers would enjoy the interaction as they knew said history. 

''Everyone, I'm joined here today by Red Bull, uh, Orange, Racing or whatever, F1 Team's team principal, Christian Horner.'' She butchered the team name again, although it was one purpose this time. 

She turned towards the man. ''Christian, I won't hold you up too long, but there is one question that our viewers have been dying to ask you and I think this is the right time to finally do it.'' Y/N build the question up. 

''Yes?'' He seemed a bit nervous, attentively listening to her words. 

''Can you say one nice thing about Y/N Y/L?'' 

The Brit visibly looked relieved at the question, thinking it would be something controversial. ''Of course, she's, uh, a very talented race car driver.'' He nervously smiled at her. 

''You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen, Christian Horner thinks Y/N Y/L is the most talented driver in the history of Formula One!'' She overdramatized his response. 

''You know what they say, keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer.'' She patted Christian's shoulder. ''Thanks for the talk, good luck and I hope you don't win.'' Y/N told him before walking off, hearing him laugh behind her. 

''So far, I've talked to Toto Wolff and Christian Horner,'' she said to the camera, ''enemies to, uh, even worser enemies, I guess.'' 

''Guys, we're here with Yuki's boyfriend, Pierre Gasly.'' Y/N stood next to the Alpha Tauri driver, shoving the microphone in his face. He took his airpods out of his ears, already chuckling at the girl's actions. 

''How are you doing?'' 

''I'm-''

''That's all the time we have for you, I'm sorry.'' She didn't let him finish his words and walked away from him, quickly giving him a smile so he knew she was entirely joking. 

She stepped further onto the grid, continuing to look for people. ''A bunch of green outfits, not very fashionable- oh, it's Aston Martin! Let's find Sebastian!'' Y/N mixed herself with the Aston Martin team, trying to catch the German driver. 

''Seb! Seb! Can I ask you a few questions?'' She eventually reached the man, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. 

His signature bright smile covered his face. ''Yeah, but where's Martin?'' 

''Me and Martin made an agreement, I get to do the grid walk and he gets to drive my car later- although, he never won any races, so that might not have been a great decision on my part.'' She told Sebastian, who seemed confused and fascinated at the same time. 

''Well, I think you're doing a great job as reporter.'' He deflected her words, not wanting to get in trouble by saying anything about Brundle's lack of GP wins. 

She smiled. ''Thanks, anyway… I know qualifying didn't go too well for you, but are you optimistic about the race?'' 

''Yeah, quali wasn't what we were hoping for,'' he sighed, ''It's gonna be difficult today, but we're gonna try our best to get as much points as we can for the championship.'' Sebastian finished his answer with an encouraging nod. 

''That's great to hear! You've been- oh my god, is that your dad?'' Y/N had glanced away from Sebastian's face for one second and saw Norbert watching them, waving at her once he noticed her looking at him. ''Okay, bye Sebastian! I'm gonna talk to your dad now.'' 

She walked past the Aston Martin driver to approach his father. ''Can I ask you some questions? I swear it's very short.'' She didn't want to burden him for too long. 

Norbert gave her a thumbs up, not minding being interviewed for a short time by her. ''It's okay.'' 

''Amazing! I mean, you're a legend of the paddock, Norbert! The drivers love you, the fans love you, everyone just loves you! Do you feel the love every time you attend a GP?''

Y/N had a good relationship with him as he and Sebastian would sometimes attend her karting tournaments together. Norbert had given her parents advice on how to support the young girl as best as possible. In a nutshell, the Vettel family were some of the greatest people she had ever met. 

''I do feel it, it's a great feeling and everyone is so nice to me.'' He wasn't very confident in his English, so he kept it short. 

Y/N smiled at him, delighted she got the chance to talk to him. ''You're always super sweet to everyone, so it's only right that we reciprocate your kindness,'' she nodded, ''okay, last question! Apart from Seb, who is the driver you're rooting for today? Is it someone you know very well? Or someone who is standing next to you and is asking you amazing questions?'' She played with a strand of her hair, pretending like she wasn't talking about herself. 

He laughed at her words. ''I'm supporting you, of course!'' He exclaimed, his arm going around her shoulder. 

''Oh! You're the best, Norbert! You're my favorite Vettel for a reason!'' Y/N said extra loud, knowing Sebastian would hear it that way. 

''I'll leave you alone now, thank you so much and I'll see you after the race.'' She gave him a brief hug and he wished her good luck, which she thanked him for. 

The cameraman had difficulties keeping up with her, used to the slower pace of Martin. Y/N noticed this and slowed down, sending him an apologetic look. ''Alright, I've talked to Seb, so I feel obligated to talk to Lewis now.'' She commented, trying to look for the 7x World Champion. 

''Where is he? He shouldn't be this hard to find…'' The athlete always saw the Mercedes driver hanging around the grid, chatting with his celebrity friends or getting ready with Angela. 

Y/N frowned. ''I should lore him or something…,'' she thought for a moment, ''vegan food, I have vegan food! Uh, free skydiving session! Oh my god, is that Roscoe on the track?'' She tried making him appear, but the only thing she got was weird looks from bypassers. 

However, a certain blond man caught her attention instead. ''Okay, I can't find Lewis, but this person knows him very well… or used to at least.'' 

''Britney Spears! Can I interview you for the highly respected tv-show, Y/N's grid walk?'' She snuck up to the former Mercedes driver, catching him off guard, but he played it off. ''Sure, I'm very honored.'' His monotone voice almost made her cringe. 

''First question: is it alright if I call you Britney? I don't know how you feel about the nickname.'' 

Nico chuckled at her. ''You can call me that, Y/N.'' 

''Ooooh~ I'm getting special privileges! I like it!'' She was impressed by Nico's answer, not being sure if he would go along with her humor. 

''Next question! How does it feel to be a Monaco based Youtuber? Do you enjoy the influencer life?'' 

The former World Champion snickered at her question, not expecting her to bring up his Youtube channel. ''It feels great, I'm, uh, yeah, enjoying the influencer life.'' She could tell Nico was doing his best to come off as positive as possible. 

''Nice, good for you, dude! Anyway, this was Britney, the man who beat the 7x World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, in equal machinery in 2016!'' She quoted the meme that was often made online when people talked about Rosberg. 

Y/N didn't wait for Nico's reaction, a bit too scared if she was honest, and made a run for it again. ''I've talked to three German guys- wait, is Nico German? He said once that he doesn't drink beer, so I don't know if he's considered German.'' She rambled on, not even listening to the words that were leaving her own mouth. 

''There's Jenson.'' She caught the Brit talking to his Sky Sports colleagues. ''You know what? I've embarrassed myself enough already, I'm not making it any worse.'' Y/N went in another direction so as to not cross paths with him. 

''Too bad he doesn't drive anymore, I would have loved to give him a lucky nipple tweak.'' Martin and Jenson used to have this running gag of the older man giving him a nipple tweak for good luck before a race. 

Y/N didn't see where she was going and almost tripped over someone's foot. ''Oh, shit!'' She loudly exclaimed, balancing herself so she wouldn't fall. ''Oh, fuck I can't swear- wait, shit! Ugh!'' She pulled the microphone away from her face, that way her curses wouldn't be picked up. 

''This isn't live, right? Cause then I'm in trouble, I think.'' She glanced at the cameraman, who mumbled a small ''It is live.'' 

''THIS IS LIVE?'' Y/N gasped, looking absolutely horrified at the thought of thousands of people watching her at that moment. ''Let's find Martin then, I think I've done enough damage.'' 

She headed back to the place where the presenter had approached her. ''Martin! Where is Martin?'' The driver glimpsed around, but no Martin in sight. ''I have oatmeal!'' She yelled, before making eye contact with the camera. ''Old people love oatmeal, right?'' He simply chuckled, not wanting to shake the camera too much with his laughing. 

''Oh, there he is!'' Y/N spotted the man and made her way over to him as fast as she could. ''I definitely didn't say anything controversial or cursed throughout the entire thing.'' She greeted him. 

Martin looked relieved as she handed his microphone and headset back over to him. ''I was out of my element for a while,'' he joked, ''did you have fun, darling?'' 

Y/N nodded her head. ''Yes, I'm even considering changing career paths.'' She chuckled. 

''That's great,'' Martin smiled, confident she made some amazing television, ''well, I think you're gonna have to go, cause I can see your, uh, coach not looking too happy.'' He pointed towards her performance coach staring daggers at her. 

''Oh, fuck, yeah, bye Martin! Thank you so much!'' Y/N quickly thanked the man for letting her take over his segment and she dashed out of there, hoping her team wouldn't be too upset about her disappearing into the grid to ask everyone ridiculous questions. 

''She's a special one for sure.'' 

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[inklessletter]

Since I can't draw tonight, here's a steddie prompt for you:

Steve runs away from home once he becomes eighteen because his home environment is absolutely toxic. It's all yelling, and spitting insults, and constantly hearing that he is such a disappointment, so he decides to hit the road and go some city away from everyone he knows and just start over. His trauma response to loud, aggressive spaces leads him to accept a job managing a school library.

And he finds out it is his dream job.

He sees all these teens studying, sharing glances, romances beginning, stress increasing as midterms come closer, annoyed faces, giggling girls gossiping, kids vandalizing his tables... And he feels an observant. A watcher.

And he imagines. He imagines their lives, the tall jock with the widest smile going soft for the sarcastic redhead. The quiet thing blossoming between tose two boys who give longing glances when the other is not looking. The oddest friendship between the meanest eleven year old he's ever met and the most cynical kid to ever set foot in that school. He sees and he imagines, but he's silent.

Because silence is a precious shield that protects his imagination. Silence will never hurt him.

His first real friendship begins in silence. This girl, Robin, passes him a note with a poor drawing of him falling asleep on his desk. It made him laugh. She laughed too. That was enough.

They play this game together in which they both exchanged the craziest theories they could think of about other people's lives.

That one is a Russian spy.

That one runs a secret lab.

That one has mind powers (okay, that was maybe too crazy).

That one is an former cop.

"That one is a rockstar," Robin said pointing an absurdly good looking guy that was checking out a couple of books.

"He does looks like one, though..."

Robin was going to reply when she noticed Steve's rosy cheeks. She just smiled. She noticed the guy looking briefly at them, and then he grinned.

"Metal is more my scene, but close enough," he said.

Shit.

The guy approached them and Robin, the traitor, bolted away. The guy, all dimples and soft hair lent Steve two books and his library card (Munson, Eddie), that he registered and gave back to him.

Steve tried hard not to be an awkward mess, he barely managed to.

"I do actually play in a band, uh, on Tuesdays," Eddie said. Steve looked at him with a twist in his stomach. "And today is Tuesday. So if you want to come, I would gladly buy you a drink."

Steve felt a lump in his throat, and looked down.

"Uh, I—I don't—"

"Oh, sorry, I just—"

"I don't do well with loud noises," Steve said quickly. "I'm sorry."

Eddie nodded.

"Good luck tonight," Steve said, not wanting to leave the conversation in a rejection. He pointed the book. "This one is really good."

"Have you read The Lord of the Rings?"

"Yeah," Steve smiled. "I've got time and silence here."

Eddie looked at him with something hidden in his pupils meant to be discovered by Steve.

Eddie left the library.

There were a few days and a lot of conversations with Robin about that Eddie guy. Steve let himself imagine again, about him. About Eddie. He fantasized a lot, ignoring deliberately the sting in his guts knowing that he blew up his chance.

Two weeks passed and Eddie was there to return the books again, with a small guitar case hanging in his back, and Steve tried his best not to look like a kicked puppy.

"I can do soft noises," Eddie said, out of the blue. It earned him a look from both Robin and Steve. "When do you, uh, have a break?"

"Right now," Robin chimed in, quickly. "He's having a break right now."

A few minutes later they were in the rooftop. They found a comfortable spot with the best views and Eddie took out an old and battered ukulele. Then he looked at Steve.

"I am not a silent person. I exist in noise, and busy environments, and awful high pitched laughs," he said with a smile. "I can't change that, but I can change the noise."

Eddie caressed the tiny guitar strings, and the sound sent goosebumps through all Steve's skin.

"I can change the noise for you," Eddie said, low and soft, and he started playing a song. "If you let me."

His first real love began with music.

[jojo-oliver]

How to tumblr for artists… my own version

A collection of things that have been working for me, but may not work for everyone

~~~ your posts ~~~

!!!reblog your own stuff!!! you need to reblog your own stuff, there is nothing morally wrong with reblogging your own stuff regularly. in fact, it is morally right to allow the chance for more people to see your artwork.

~~~ queue it!! ~~~ my queue is 500 posts strong. maybe don't try to make your queue hundreds of posts strong in the same day omg but like… once every month or two i'll go through my whole blog and just scroll and "add to drafts" to every one of my own posts i have. then i'll use the "mass post editor" to add content warning tags. and add to queue, and shuffle. and then I write down what the date was for when I last added my posts to be reblogged on queue. this is helped by turning on timestamps for posts in tumblr "dashboard preferences" settings.

queueing is necessary and life saving for me. It takes out so much work with decision fatigue and the anxiety around posting. It also guarantees that even if I suddenly need time off or away from my phone, I don't just disappear and lose all traction. It also breaks the instant-gratification cycle that you expect when you finish an artwork. It's hard to keep creating when you post something and, when you're expecting to get that gratification, you get none... If you queue your new artwork to come out at a later time, you've separated that expectation - with time. It hurts less and contributes to a more consistent gratification thing instead of peaks and troughs.

~~~ tag ya stuff ~~~ when you're making a new post, the first 20 tags are what gets put into the searchable tags. do not feel shame for using lots of tags. shame is the mind-killer. tags are hard. hard to know what to tag a post with. hard to remember the tags. so I found some ways to help myself. maybe they'll help you too. dedicate some time towards just figuring out what tags you want to use. i have a list in my phone notes that i add tags to and reference whenever i'm making a new post. i have the phone right beside the laptop while i'm tagging so that i can just look at it and scroll. tags are the only way for people to find your artwork, other than people manually coming to your blog because they saw you somewhere. there is no algorithm. posting without tags, until you have an established fanbase, is throwing something into the void.

When I'm doing tag research, I look at what people seem to use - when you put something in the search bar, tumblr recommends you some that have a higher following, typically. Looks like this on desktop:

if you like one tag, look at what other people who use that tag also tag their posts with. Observe and learn how this tag is used. search through a bunch of them and write them down.

here's what i got in my notes, for the specific kind of art I post and look for:

these tags are sort of specific to me and the kind of art I make. You'll want to research your own tags, but this is an example of how I keep them organized to make posting more effective. I generally only write down a tag when it's got more than 2k followers. You might be tempted to use the tags with millions of followers, but I've actually found those a lot less functional for small artists. If your stuff doesn't immediately get a bunch of notifications, you're drowned out and pushed to the bottom much faster. But the bigger tags are better than no tags, so I keep them if I can't think of anything else to tag something with.

~~~ post at the right times….? ~~~

fridays and saturdays is when I post fresh new things... usually. every website has it's own peak hours, and you can find those hours in many different online articles that try to sell you social media growth services. tumblr is unique in having later hours.

here's some random graph from google images:

please don't over think this. please don't let this consume the idea of when to post, preventing you from posting at all. it doesn't mean too much - if you post during very active hours, maybe your art would just be pushed down the feed faster. if you post at the end of hours, maybe everyone's going to sleep… if you post at inactive hours, maybe there's less 'competition'… if you post at the beginning of active hours, maybe that's just more time for your post to circulate for the day, if you have enough people reblogging it once it drops....

this also is in EST. So fuck the other time zones, I guess. I'm over here in europe knowing that the "best" time to post would be like 2-3am or something. It's like this for most english-speaking majority sites - higher traffic in north american time zones.

it's also worth mentioning that this is scattered as heck, compared to other social media sites. and it's not like, the activity times of your followers. it's not the best time to post for your niche. this is just tumblr, broadly. all of tumblr.

~~~ Plan ahead for annual dates ~~~

Your artwork will get more circulation if it's posted on a celebratory day. You could just put them on your calendar and if you're wondering what to make, look on the calendar for what's coming soon. For example, asexual awareness day, trans day of visibility, location-specific holidays, etc. Here's my phone notes thing with my own recorded annuals:

I got these dates from googling and reading different articles, but I find that I still miss dates, and then I add them for next year. If you know of some I missed, tell me and I'll add them please <3

~~~ reblog other people's stuff ~~~

tumblr is sorta about ecosystems. things get passed around within groups of people that are all following eachother. to enter this ecosystem, you must engage and reblog other people's stuff too.

if you reblog other artists' stuff, sometimes they'll come over and reblog your stuff too. sometimes they'll follow you back. this is called becoming a mutual. I'll search specific tags for the kinds of people I want to follow and the kind of art I like - those are listed in the screenshot of my tag note under "Tags for finding new people".

I see a lot of blogs out there that are very clean, posts are tagless, and are only for the artists' content. like scrolling through a portfolio. I imagine this is good for people who are migrating to tumblr but already have their own established fanbase from elsewhere.

you don't need to do reblog other people's stuff on your art blog, you can do this on a separate blog. but if the two don't look very closely correlated, it's hard to tell who you are when you're interacting. and hard to make sure people know that you are the same person as your art blog. and you gotta remember to promote yourself on your personal blog.

~~~ have an art tag ~~~

make your blog easy to search!

if i go to your blog, and you've written 'artist' or 'sometimes art' in your bio, i wanna see it… it make me so sad when i don't get to see it. i want to reblog it. please let me reblog it :(

to make a tag on your own blog searchable, you don't need to repost it to add a tag. you don't even need to reblog it. you can actually just go back to the original post and edit it to add your tag. I've seen post people just have their art tag be something like #(blogname)art . you can see my own in my tags image above. if it's very unique, then it'll work tumblr-wide. I think that's good, since the tumblr search function is really weird. Otherwise it should still work if it's not entirely unique, people just have to make sure they're searching specifically your blog to see only your stuff.

I like to have a link in my pinned post where people can click to have immediately searched for my art tag. Convenience is king. Keep in mind that most people are on mobile, and if something isn't immediately clickable, they often won't find it.

~~~ be consistent and be patient ~~~

!!!this time will pass anyway!!! how many notes you have is not correlated with how good you are as an artist. wanting to earn something from your art means you essentially have two jobs. two potentially full time jobs. this shit's difficult. most of the job is promoting yourself. don't undersell how hard it is to do… don't feel bad for not immediately succeeding. I would write about how hard it's been to promote myself, but it would just be long and sad I think.

This isn't a full guide, please feel free to add more!!

I'm sure in another year I'll disagree with a lot of this, it will become irrelevant with time, and I'll have a lot of different opinions. Chip in and share what you've been doing? Teach me? This is very overwhelming. Don't do it all at once, just like, try one thing at a time, and see how it works for you. Your niche might be different. One size does not fit all. If you're confused about some of the things I talk about in here, you might be on mobile. I do most of my queueing and posting from the desktop browser version.

I will update this with more as things change, but I think you'll have to click through to see the updated post

[dragon-chica]

Wednesday Addams General NSF W Headcanons

Fandom: Wednesday

Warnings: Rough sex and kinks, fully consensual harm, idealization of death, it's Wednesday.

Bloodplay is one of her favorite activities. She loves seeing your skin covered in beautiful crimson and licking it off of you, the way your breath heaves as she becoming enamored with a simple cut and her blown pupils staring up at you while her tongue swipes across it.

"I've always enjoyed the phrase 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.' don't you agree?" she says eyeing you up, a hint for later perhaps.

Choking. To the point of where she's about to/may pass out. She imagines you're really ending her, in the throws of bliss and dying by the hands of her true love.

Flogging or whips, she doesn't care for spanking but loves the marks or sometimes welts left behind.

Gods does she love to torment you, but she takes as well as she gives. From drawing everything out as long as possible to literally tormenting you.

She's not one for marking where others can see, and isn't happy when you happen to leave visible marks on her, but she's incredibly possessive and believes it should already be clear that she doesn't share.

You two switch regularly. Even if you usually are into bottoming, there's something about the way she's so prideful and stubborn that goads you into giving her a taste of her own medicine, and reveling in how she eventually crumbles for you.

She is a brat. You're not entirely sure if she's trying to piss you off into taking it out on her, or if she really thinks herself to be so high and mighty trying to talk down to you while she's pinned and handcuffed and your mercy but you remind her soon enough.

Overstimulation. Pain and pleasure, pleasure until it becomes pain is her favorite part. Bringing you the relief of a hard won orgasm then not letting up until you're begging her, that's it's too much. That it hurts. But you were just pleading for her not to stop? To give you more? She's only doing as you asked.

When you do the same to her it's so satisfying to watch her crack. It takes time and patience to make her fall apart but you've learned her weaknesses as well as she knows yours.

Very sarcastic and sadistic, talking down to you.

She's not into voyeur or other's seeing or knowing what you do together. You're hers. To know and have. You're dating an Addams, and that means devotion.

Her hobby of experimenting with sex largely includes her love of torture methods. Slightly adjusted for your enjoyment, but she's willing to try the real thing if you'll do it to her. She can take it. She gives you a challenging stare if you falter.

Honestly you probably find some of the things she's into pretty concerning. You trust her to not truly harm you, which shows a lot, but she wants you to do some hardcore things to her that are hardly sexual and just seem like she has a pain kink that's a little too far.

Waxplay. Specifically with vampire tear candles, but red will also do. She likes it to be candlelit anyway so it's convenient as well.

Wednesday can be sort of clinical in her observations at times. She likes to know exactly what makes you tick and will makes notes from time to time. You're scared to know what's actually in that book.

Bondage. Probably the biggest thing you do is tying each other up and having your way. From intricate shibari to antique manacles that hang in her room presumably for 'decoration'.

If you have a dick she would be ruthless with cock and ball torture. If you don't have a pain kink, you likely would soon without ever having expected it.

She loves the intimacy of knowing exactly what makes her partner tick and plans to learn everything about you.

I lied. I said I was going to work on other characters for a bit. Here's this. I'm sure I could go on, but that's all for now.

[cupidjyu]

kiss me awake pt 3

(98 line) when you wake them up with a kiss~

genre: flirty juyeon, a lot of cuddling, sleepy cuddles, slight drunk changmin the night before?? lol notes: changmin biting the other members when he was drunk is the craziest thing I've ever heard of.. hope you enjoyed this series!! soon, there will be a full fic for my beloved #1 fan ~ word count: 1.2k

juyeon

you yawned, staring at the mirror for a minute too long before finally deciding to exit the bathroom. it was early in the morning, really early. you had work that day while juyeon, your lover, had his own day off. you sighed.

you also had an important event that day, so you dressed up quite a bit. when you walked back into the room after touching up your hair, he was still sleeping, curled up all alone on the bed. oh, how you wished to join him and go back to sleep. 

you knew he didn’t like sleeping in so you walked over to him. you leaned down and pressed your lips against his. he stirred in response and he almost immediately knew it was you.

his lips formed a cat-like smile as he blinked his eyes open. 

you laughed, “hi, handsome.”

he was actually cute at that moment, with his messy bed hair and slightly puffy eyes. he turned to you and sat up, rubbing his eyes. his droopy eyes looked you over with a glint in them.

“hey, pretty.”

you shoved him slightly, making him fall back on the bed, “don’t be a flirt.”

“why?” he propped himself on his forearms to look you over again, making you blush. then, he leaned forward and hugged you, burying his face into your stomach. “when you wake me up looking like this, i can’t help it.” 

his eyes were big now, peering at you through his eyelashes.

“okay, okay,” you smiled, leaning down and pressing a kiss on his forehead. “see you later… handsome.”

you turned around to leave for the day. but, you paused at the door when you heard his quiet, deep voice from behind you.

“i’ll be waiting for you, pretty.”

kevin

“has anyone seen kevin?” you peeked into one of the rooms. your friend shrugged.

“he said he wanted some alone time so, he’s probably in that room,” they pointed to the door. you walked in and you noticed that he seemed to have fallen. his eyes were closed and his whole body was relaxed on the bed.

you smiled and walked over. 

“hm?” you noticed, that in his hand, his phone was on. he had searched for something on it. you leaned closer and read the words: cute gifts for your s/o.

your heart practically soared and you immediately pressed a kiss to his lips without giving it a second thought. he startled and panicked, looking around quickly.

“hi kev,” you greeted, hiding your shy smile.

his eyes landed on you and he visibly relaxed, “oh, y/n. i missed you.” then, his head whipped to where his phone was gripped in his hands, still on. he hurriedly shut it off before you could see (though you did).

“so!” he laughed nervously. “d-did you see anything?”

“nope,” you held in a laugh. “nothing at all.”

he smiled and let out a relieved sigh. then, he pulled you in so that you were both lying in bed facing each other. he observed your features, smiling sweetly. you smiled back, your heart thumping.

“for your information…” you started.

“i think that a handmade bracelet would be a cute gift,” and you couldn’t help but let out an amused laugh at his shocked expression. his eyes widened and he gasped.

“so you did see!”

“see what?” you looked at him innocently.

he poked your cheek, glaring playfully, “don’t try to act dumb. but thanks for the idea." he winked before kissing you.

chanhee

you yawned, stretching your body after spending so long cleaning the whole place for the guests coming over. then, you remembered that chanhee was working on editing some pictures on the couch, so you decided to check up on him.

you paused when you saw him. he fell asleep, with his computer on the table as he laid out on the couch, his eyes closed and peacefully.

you leaned over and poked his cheek with your finger. he didn’t stir. so, you decided to press a kiss to his cheek, just to test if it works.

and then he woke up.

he peered at you with droopy eyes, “did i fall asleep?”

you smiled with amusement, “what do you think?”

“agh,” he pouted, getting up from his lying position. “i was literally almost done and i just had to fall asleep…” he grumbled.

you waved him off, sitting next to him. you wrapped your arms around his side, hugging him warmly causing him to relax and melt.

“it’s okay,” you simply replied.

“why?” he whined. he glanced at the date. “i’m pretty sure this was due a while ago…”

“yeah but…” you reached a hand up to caress his cheek, turning him to face you. he slightly flushed at the close proximity. “you looked really cute just now.”

chanhee stared at you with wide eyes, completely silent. then, he pushed you away, his ears red now.

“don’t… be ridiculous. you're the one who kissed me to wake me up. you can't just do that!"

you crossed your arms, “i’m being serious. and why not? i love kissing you.”

he laughed shyly, “in that case,” he thought for a moment. “this can wait another day.” he grabbed onto you to lie next to him as he latched onto you like a koala. “i’m going back to sleep.” and just before he fell asleep, he pressed a light kiss to your nose.

changmin

you took in a shaky breath, your eyes staring straight at the bowl of soup in your hands. you were incredibly focused on not spilling it. finally, you made it to the room where you knew changmin was having an incredibly deep slumber.

you placed the bowl on the nightstand. and then you leaned in to press a kiss to his lips. he groaned as he slowly woke up. when he opened his eyes and caught sight of you, he smiled tiredly and grasped your wrist to pull you into bed with him.

you yelped.

“you kissed me awake,” he observed.

you nodded. you let out a sigh when you felt him attach to your body in a tight, possessive hug.

“changmin,” you called out.

“hmmm?” he hummed lazily.

“how much did you drink last night?”

he paused, silent for a moment before finally croaking out an awkward, “i drank enough.”

you tsked, “you drank enough to run around and bite eric and i.” you swiftly escaped his hold, making him whine cutely.

“come on, let me feed you,” you urged him. and to your surprise, he happily got up, listening to your orders. he was still sleepy but he looked adorable with his messy hair. and before you knew it, he had flopped back down on the bed with a groan. 

“i have a headache.”

“yes, so you have to drink this.”

“but-”

with one hand, you pulled him back up. he stared at you with absolute awe.

“woah, you’re strong,” he looked at you with lovesick eyes, making you giggle.

but you still shrugged, ignoring him as you began to feed the soup to him. he smiled at you fondly after each and every bite.

“you’re so caring,” he suddenly whispered. his eyes began to get teary as he sniffed. “i love you so much…”

you stared at him in disbelief.

“changmin.”

“hmm?”

“are you still drunk?”

[rans-baby]

when you get sexually harassed

a/n repost now that i'm free from tumblr jail ♡

tw // sexual harassment, men (ew), dissociation, blood, implied murder, idk what else lmk if there is anything else!

RAN

he knew how friendly you could be, even with strangers 

what he didn't know was the extent of your kindness

you tended to have a regular schedule: walk to the gym, come back and get ready for work, have breakfast, work, and then maybe go for a walk 

he should've recognized that the regularity of your schedule could leave you vulnerable but you'd never complained to him before so he didn't really think about it

which is why when he heard about your predicament, all he could do was internally berate himself

"apparently he said he's seen me on the way to the gym in the mornings and told me that he thought I was pretty and when I told him I had a boyfriend, he wouldn't back off"

all he could do in that moment was hold you as he watched your eyes become unfocused and your expression turn blank 

he let the other executives know that he wasn't going to be able to work for the rest of the week and let you fall asleep on his lap 

the next morning he decided to go on the same route as you, trailing behind you nonchalantly just far away enough that people wouldn't associate you guys as being together

he watched as a man approached and from the way you were curling in on yourself he knew that he was the one 

he took long strides towards the both of you, gripping the man by the shoulder and for some reason the man thought it'd be a good idea to talk back

"oh this your bitch? you should keep her on a tighter leash with the way she's dressed"

he didn't respond to the childish taunt, just taking note of the man's appearance and stalking off with your hand in his

he sent a quick text to his brother asking him to track the man down, deciding to deal with it at night. he wouldn't want to scare his baby

later that night, he watched as the man struggled in the chair he was tied up on, shivering from the AC that was cooling the inside of the warehouse to seemingly sub-zero temperatures (but maybe it just felt like that to him since he was half naked and bleeding out)

"maybe that'll teach you to respect baby ♡ or not, I guess it won't really matter in the afterlife"

IZANA

my possessive KING

he knows you're your own person, he gets that but you're still his property at the end of the day and anyone that'd try and come between that would pay 

you guys regularly went to the gym together, it was one of the only consistent times that he knew he could spend time with you 

you each tended to do your own thing though, not really feeling the need to do the same things 

he'd like to say he was a pretty observant guy, which is why his ego took a pretty big hit when he saw a man approach you claiming that he'd seen you before 

"I've just been wondering who that sexy girl that trains so hard every day was"

you just stared at him, mouth AJAR at the audacity to approach you and the lack of common sense it took to start a conversation with possibly one of the most disgusting pickup lines you'd ever had the displeasure of hearing 

izana heard as you explained to him that you had a partner and his mind blanked out when he heard the man's response

"he doesn't need to know, it could be our little secret. you know, I'm in a relationship too"

he absolutely despised disloyalty, remembering the hurt from his past and he hated the idea of you being the one to betray him even more 

he watched as your panicked teary eyed gaze met his and he knew in that moment that yup, I might go to jail but this is so going to be worth it

now normally, izana was a pretty calm and collected guy his anger only showing in the tiny nuances of his expression, but never fully revealing the depth of his anger but the crazed look in his eye let you know that this man was not about to make it to see the next day

"mind going to hell together?" and before he knew it the man was on the floor, not quite knocked out yet because he wanted to make it hurt

it was a good thing that everyone knew who he was and minded their business as they saw everything go down 

izana dragged him by his t shirt, calling up kakucho and letting him know that they had some business to take care of

"hey princess, why don't you wrap up and head home I'll probably be home for dinner but don't wait up ♡"

[nahoney22]

Honeyyyyyy🥰

congratulations on hitting 4000 followers! Thats huge! Honestly, no one deserves it more than you. Thank you for all the wonderful things you have requested throughout the years💕

I would like to request a Jesse x Fem!Reader, where reader gets discharged from a lengthy hospital stay and gets to go home, where her partner Jesse picks her up and takes her home and cares for her. Its a very self indulgent request i must admit. It can be sfw/suggestive or nsfw if you like, but mostly i‘d love some caregiver!jesse 🥺

ilysm 💕🌸🪷

Relief

Jesse X F!Reader

word count: 781

After being discharged from hospital, Jesse shows you just how much he missed, cares and loves you.

warnings: 16+ as there is implied sexual content but nothing explicit. female reader, mentions of hospital visits and reader having a bad autoimmune system, slight angst but fixed with lots of fluff and comfort. Established relationship.

Authors note: thank you for the support always bestie. Enjoy, sorry it’s a little on the shorter side. ily 💜

After what felt like an endless cycle of blurred days and nights, the comfort of home beckoned. Your autoimmune condition had warranted an extended stay at the hospital, and although the memories of long hours and less-than-stellar meals lingered, there was a beacon of hope waiting for you on the other side.

You had been with Jesse for just over a year now and never had you been so lucky. He was the perfect blend of kindness, humor, and of course - undeniable good looks. So, it wasn't surprising to find him eagerly waiting for you in the lobby, his foot rhythmically tapping the floor. But when his eyes met yours, any signs of impatience melted away, replaced with a beaming smile.

"There’s my girl," he greeted with a joyous grin, leaning in to plant a tender kiss on your cheek.

Mustering a weary yet content smile, you replied, "Here I am." Your smile widened in delight as he gracefully unveiled a bouquet of your favourite flowers from behind his back. "Oh, Jesse," you murmured, "you really didn't have to."

"No," he smirked, arm confidently linking with yours, guiding you as he flagged down a cab, "but it made me happy to."

With a content sigh, you both settled into the taxi, heading towards the sanctuary of your home. The mere idea of being enveloped in the soft embrace of your own bed was enough to make you feel more relaxed. Jesse's eyes were fixed on you, tenderly observing the visible signs of your exhaustion. But, he was smart enough not to voice his observations. Instead, he pulled you closer, letting you nestle into his side for the duration of the ride.

A short while later, the familiar setting of your home welcomed you. Stepping inside, you inhaled deeply, reacquainting yourself with its comforting aroma. Overwhelmed by the warmth and familiarity, you sank into your couch, releasing a sigh that echoed your longing. "I've missed this so much," you murmured, gazing up at the ceiling. As your gaze wandered, a realisation dawned. The place was spotless. Not a single trace of dust to be seen anywhere.

Catching your surprised expression, Jesse chuckled, "Thought I'd do a bit of tidying up."

Your laughter joined his as relief washed over you. The realisation that he'd taken it upon himself to do every little chore that was pending made your heart flourish.

From the laundry to the dishes, from taking out the trash to scrubbing that stubborn grout in the kitchen sink you'd been meaning to tackle – everything was done.

"Jesse," you whispered, admiration and affection swelling within you. Although you two didn’t share a home, mostly due to Jesse's commitments with the GAR, seeing the lengths he'd gone to care for your space during your hospital stay only deepened the bond between you.

Jesse's face lit up with a touch of pride as he then pointed towards the fridge. "I also prepped some meals for you." He admitted with a sheepish grin, "Though, I won't guarantee they're gourmet quality – cooking isn't exactly my specialty." His hand instinctively went to the back of his head, a gesture he often made when slightly embarrassed.

“Anything would be better than the dirt they serve in there.” You shudder at the cold gruel you were offered.

Overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, you responded, "I can't begin to express my gratitude." He settled down beside you on the couch, wrapping an arm around you protectively.

"You could start by resting and taking it easy," he said with a playful smirk, his lips gently brushing your temple. His fingers began to work magic as he moved them into your hair, massaging your scalp and making you sink further into his embrace.

"That sounds perfect right now," you admitted, stifling a yawn as relief washes over you. Curling even closer to him, you whispered, "I love you."

"And I love you," he replied, ensuring both of you were covered with a throw blanket before starting a holomovie, the volume just low enough to be comforting. Cherishing moments like these was essential because they were so rare.

That evening, Jesse managed to whip up a surprisingly delicious meal. The two of you shared stories and laughter, catching up on all the happenings you missed while you were away. And as the night grew deeper, he effortlessly lifted you, a hint of mischief in his eyes, and carried you off to bed. Even as passion ignited between the two of you, kisses turning into heated dances and breathing turning into soft moans, Jesse's touch remained gentle. And his whispers held promises and love that saw you through the night.

Oh, how you missed him.

Requests open until the 15th of October 2023 ☀️

Kofi 🧋

Masterlist

Tags: @andyoufollowyourheart @whore4rex @imperialclaw801 @temple-elder @mysticalgalaxysalad @littlefeatherr @kaitou2417 @eyecandyeoz @captxin-rex @jesseeka @ashotofspotchka @theroguesully @ladykatakuri @jambolska-grozdova @arctrooper69 @padawancat97 @rain-on-kamino @either-madness-or-brilliance @staycalmandhugaclone @ko-neko-san @echos-girlfriend @fiveshelmet @dangraccoon @plushymiku-blog @chrissywakingup @kixs-husband @pb-jellybeans @nunanuggets @sleepycreativewriter @erellenora @zippingstars87 @tech-aficionado @grizabellasolo @therealnekomari @tech-depression-inventory @brynhildrmimi @greaser-wolf @tinyreadersmur @seriowan @by-the-primes @the-bad-batch-baroness @kaminocasey @marvel-starwars-nerd @ladytano420 @ladyzirkonia @raevulsix

[st-danger]

aahhh hello diaper anon here! Thanks for being so open minded and I promise I will love anything you write!!

My main thoughts were rain being made to wear them by a ghoul of your choosing and said ghoul conveniently locks all the restrooms. Then rain thinking he's being subtle when he's uhmm relieving himself but everyone notices and teases him for it - horniness ensues.

But seriously take it in whatever direction you want, you're a saint (pun intended) <3

(Quick little note that I'm really pleased this Anon trusted me to write this kink for them, and if you don't like it or you're gonna be squicked by it just don't fuckin read it but I'm not going to tolerate any rude comments towards this kink if it's not your thing so don't even go there. ANON I'VE NEVER WRITTEN THIS BEFORE I HOPE IT IS TO YOUR LIKING THANK YOU FOR TRUSTING ME)

Rain stares at Mountain's outstretched hand.

More specifically, what is being held in said hand. It takes him a quick moment to realize what it is, the puzzle slowly slotting together, and as it does, Rain feels funny. Weird. All over.

"Go on," Mountain says, and Rain doesn't have to look up to see the sweet smile on his face, so evident in the tone he takes. "Put it on."

He starts reaching for it, but stops just before he lays a hand on it, hesitating. This is new. They've talked about it- well. Mountain's talked about it before, mentioned it a few times. Last week, actually, when he had held Rain close and kissed his ear and told him to let go and get his lap soaking. Would you wear one? he'd breathed. Make you go in public and it'd be our secret. Mountain doesn't flaunt his kinks quite so brashly as the others do, but he's just as deviant as the rest of them. Everyone knows what everyone likes, but Mountain still makes Rain feel like what they explore is clandestine. An arousing little hush-hush thing just for the two of them.

Rain's stomach twists as he lays a hand on it, takes it from him. It feels like sealing his fate, a little point of no return. An escalation that crosses some kind of line. Mountain is leaning down, cupping Rain's face in his hands and kissing him before he has a moment more to think. He lets himself be kissed, thoroughly and deeply, arms hanging uselessly at his sides, one hand clutching the diaper a little harder than before.

"Our secret," Mountain breathes against him, gentle and coaxing, like Rain wasn't going to agree to this from the beginning, regardless of the strange feelings it evoked. He gives Rain's lower lip a teasing little lick, and then rubs their noses together, so affectionate.

"I can't just wear it," Rain whispers, and Mountain knows what he's asking.

"You need to use it," he tells him, and Rain feels the oddest shiver, the most pleasurable little hit of nervousness that he thinks he's ever experienced.

He's not sure how he's supposed to keep it secret; standing before his mirror, the dawning realization that his pants are too tight to hide the shape... and the sound. There's a distinct crinkle and there's part of him that knows that Mountain was aware it wouldn't be entirely quiet. At least the bar will have enough noise to cover it. Its the cab ride over he's concerned about. He grabs a sweatshirt, ties it around his waist. Crosses his fingers.

It's not enough.

Not enough to evade the way Swiss seems so observant, looking over at him from the other side of the cab. Mountain sits in the front, a low drone of conversation between him and the driver. Rain does his best to sit still, keep his face nice and neutral, but when he looks over at Swiss, his cheeks heat. Casual, he pulls his phone out. Texts Mountain.

I think he knows.

The reply comes a moment later.

It was his idea too.

Rain flushes hot and cold and turns the screen off as fast as he can. He does not look back over at Swiss, even when Swiss runs a gentle hand up his thigh, closer and closer to where something plastic is stuffed just underneath- the hand withdraws and Rain feels his cock give up an interested twitch.

It's worse, having two of them aware. The bar noise as expected covers any potential sound, and he keeps the sweatshirt tied firmly around him. The way Swiss and Mountain watch him, the way they know what he's hiding, why he's pouring himself a glass of water in between his first and second beer is exhilarating as it is nerve wracking. His cock has been plump since the cab ride, but he feels the pressure in his bladder ever more insistent. It's a strange headspace, to realize he isn't sure if he wants to be hard or not. If he should be hard or not. If one of those options seems dirtier than the other- all swollen from the humiliation of it all, the secrecy, or limp and seemingly suffering through the degradation of it in order to please them. Obsequious and servile.

He's barely been sitting down in the corner booth before they join him. No rest for the wicked, he supposes, scooting over to allow Swiss to slide over, pressing their shoulders together. Not even the extremely wicked.

"How much longer are you gonna squirm for?" Swiss asks, voice light and conversational.

Until, is the answer.

"I don't think I can do this," Rain admits, leg bouncing, running a restless hand through his hair. He lets out a huff of a laugh, a disbelieving little thing, cheeks pinking when he brings his eyes to meet theirs, looking back and forth between them. He knows his eyes are a bit wide, and that Mountain loves the conflict he sees in them. He knows Mountain and Swiss are going to praise him for this later on; all he has to do is let go and they're going to take him apart after this, use their fingers and their tongues and their dicks to make him cry and cum until he's a pathetic heap, willing to do it all again if it means the same reward.

Swiss slings an arm around his shoulders as Mountain reaches for his hand, holding it. Rubbing his thumb soothingly back and forth over the knuckles.

"Deep breath, Rain," Mountain says. His thighs tense- he's not sure why he's trying to hold back now. The beer and water have caught up to him and he knows it's an inevitability. He doesn't want to be too uncomfortable, but can't find it in him to relax and let it happen. Logically, he knows the others are all absorbed in their own conversations and drinks, that Mountain and Swiss are the only ones privy to what Rain is wearing. What he's about to do.

It doesn't feel that way.

It's such a thrill.

"Do it," Mountain orders, "and look at me."

He tries looking calm. Placid. He manages it through the first few drops he feels begin to leak out, but he instinctively clenches, and stops, a wave of sensation blooming out from where he's tensed. The muscle in his jaw jumps as he grits his teeth. He squirms again, and Swiss's hand squeezes dramatically on his shoulder.

"Relax," Swiss murmurs, barely audible over the ambient noise around them.

He tries to keep his face calm, but his eyes flutter and lips part when he feels the flood of warmth, the electrifying embarrassment. Mountain's hand tightens around his, looking back at him with a disbelieving, hungry look and- the heat of it, the squish of it should be deeply weird, but instead it's soft and gratifying and Rain quivers ever so slightly the entire time he wets himself.

He feels the tension Swiss carries beside him, feels the neediness in the way Mountain squeezes and releases his hand over and over, sees in the pained crease between his brows.

"Cirrus!" Swiss waves up at her, and she slinks over. Swiss begins grabbing the sweatshirt around Rain and yanking if off, out from underneath him. Rain stares, dumbfounded while Swiss hands it to her.

"Thanks," she says, and shrugs it on. "Been cold all evening."

Rain watches her rejoin Cumulus by the counter, watches his only saving grace as it were slip out of reach.

"How about another round?" Mountain smiles.

[fookinavocadosman]

Let’s Hurt Tonight {HS}

It’s Harry’s birthday and Y/N has something special planned for him but will he ever find it out?

warnings: a bit fluffy but pure angst at the end

note: this is what harry’s wearing later in the chapter

word count: 3.1k

“Harry stop!” I yell through my laughs as he presses kisses and raspberries to my stomach, trying to push him away.

“Okay okay.” he stops his attack, laying his cheek on my stomach, his eyes connecting with mine as a soft smile lines his face. “I love your laugh so much,” he says to me and I feel my cheeks heating up as I cover my face with my hands.

“Stop it,” I mumble, letting a smile grace my face. We sit in silence just observing each other. Harry and I started dating a little over a year ago but we’ve known each other for years.

Let's say we're the poster children for the cliche of childhood best friends that have feelings for each other but are too scared to admit it to either one. Harry’s alarm blares bringing us out of the moment and he lets out a groan moving his face completely into my stomach.

“I don't want to go.” his voice muffled, sending vibrations up my body. I reach down and scratch at his head playing with his hair.

“I know,” I whisper back to him. He sits up turning off his alarm and turns his head to look at me. His hair is messy and his skin is glowing from the sunlight.

“I'll see you later, my love. I love you,” he whispers, leaning in and giving me a soft kiss. Kissing Harry feels amazing. Every time we kiss my body tingles with electricity and a smile never fails to break out on my face. It sounds dramatic, like something straight from a romance book or movie, but it’s true.

Harry gets ready and leaves me alone in my bed after leaving a quick kiss on my forehead. After getting acclimated without Harry I grab my phone texting Anne and Gemma to make sure everything is set for tonight.

Harry's birthday is today and I've been planning a party for him. It's hard trying to surprise him and plan things that will knock him off his feet because with just a press of a button he could have everything he ever wanted.

Perks of dating a world-famous musician I guess.

We're back in our hometown for his birthday so I've been planning with Anne and Gemma to surprise him with our friends from school and some of his more famous friends. I spend the rest of the day in bed and once I finally start feeling productive I get his present for tonight ready, it’s not big or flashy but it has meaning.

It’s a pale blue box, with one of my favorite quotes from our favorite movie to watch together. In delicate cursive, it reads, “It was no ordinary friendship. We were inseparable, constantly being separated. I’ve realized that no matter where you are or who you’re with, I will always truly, completely love you.”

When Love Rosie came out I sent it to Harry and told him he had to watch it and every time we would see each other that was the movie we watched. Maybe we loved it because it represented us but no matter the reason, it’s a huge part of our relationship. Inside it has some memorable items from our years as friends and even the start of our relationship as well as a photo album of photos of us throughout the years, family photos, selfies, candids, and even some photos of us from award shows made the cut.

I smile as I put it back under the bed and I begin to get ready for our “date”. I told Harry that I planned a special date for his birthday and we’d be going to his favorite restaurant but I needed to run over to his mum's to pick something up for after our date tonight.

As I'm doing my makeup Harry comes home knocking lightly on the bedroom door as he opens it. I turn my head over my shoulder to look at him and he sends me a smile coming up to me.

“You look, beautiful baby,” he whispers, placing a kiss on my lips. I mumble a thank you against his lips, he places his hands on my shoulders pulling away and pushing his cheek against mine. We look at each other through the mirror for a moment and he turns his head placing a kiss on my cheek before pulling away from me.

“What time is the reservation? I’m going to go take a shower,” he asks me as he gets undressed.

“8:00 but we got to stop at your mum's first so I can get something for later.” I remind him and he nods his head heading into the bathroom. I finish getting ready and text Anne asking if everything is coming out okay and she tells me to stop worrying and that she has it under control.

Harry comes out a few minutes later dressed in an opened button-down shirt that has flowers and squares on it with a white bandanna around his neck and his signature black skinny jeans. He runs his hand through his hair as he walks up to me, placing his hand on my waist and spinning me around slowly.

“You look amazing love,” he says, keeping his eyes glued onto my outfit. It's a simple black dress that hugs my body perfectly paired with red heels.

“Thanks, H, you don’t look too bad yourself.” I compliment him and a smirk begins to cross his face. He pulls me closer to him so our chests touch his hand pressing on the small of my back as mine falls onto his waist.

“What if we had my birthday dinner later this week? I don't think I want to leave,” he asks, leaning into me and I shake my head, putting my hand on his chest, and pushing him back.

“No way it was a bitch to get these reservations, later, promise,” I tell him and he groans, pulling away from me.

“Fine, let’s head out mums is about 20 minutes from here and another 20 to the restaurant,” he says and I nod, grabbing my purse and phone texting Anne that we are leaving. When we arrive Harry pulls into the driveway turning off the car.

“Come in, I'm sure your mum wants to talk for a second while I get what I need,” I tell him and he nods, opening his door. We walk to the door, his arm slung around my waist and I open the door pushing him in front of me.

“Surprise!” yelled everyone and Harry stands shocked looking between everyone and then back at me.

“You didn’t.” he smiles, turning to face me.

“I did.” I smile back at him and he lets out a breath pulling me into a hug.

“Thank you so much.” he squeezes me tight and I mumble anything for you into his shoulder. The party starts and Harry goes around greeting his friends as I deal with making drinks and catching up with other people.

A while passes and I haven’t seen Harry in a bit so I wander from the kitchen to the living room. I stop by the doorway when I hear my name, seeing Harry on the couch with a beer in his hand as he talks with some guys we went to school with as well as his band members. I lean away from the doorway so I'm out of sight.

“I still can’t believe you’re with y/n! Just imagine if that bet never took place we wouldn’t be here right now.” I recognize the voice as Michaels and I hear Harry chuckle in response.

“Yeah you’re right, I never would’ve thought I’d be here now.”

“What bet are you talking about?” Louis speaks up and I lean closer to listen. My heart beats faster as the silence is prolonged.

“At the beginning of year 9, I made a bet with Styles that he wouldn’t be able to get with the “weird girl” in our year by the end of GCSEs, and all of a sudden by the end of December they were best friends. You technically still lost though cause you never hooked up with her by the end of GCSE’s.” Michael explains and I feel my heart drop.

I back away from the doorway as my hand is placed on my mouth to cover the sharp breaths trying to escape me. I slowly place my drink on the table in the hallway as Gemma comes up to me, startled by the way I'm acting. I shake my head, heading towards the stairs going into the bathroom, and locking myself in there. I try to hold the tears back but a couple slip out as I begin to rethink everything.

I was just a bet?

I was so confused when Harry came up to me that first day and sat with me and we ate and talked and as the days passed I felt a connection with him.

Was any of it real?

A knock at the door breaks me out of my thoughts and I hear Harry asking if I'm alright. I sniffled a bit, wiping my eyes and face clean of the tears and I put on a smile opening the door.

“Yeah I'm fine, just felt a bit ill for a second but I'm okay now.” I smile at him and he looks me up and down trying to read me. I keep my fake smile plastered on my face and he finally nods leaning in to kiss my cheek. I push in front of him and his lips skim my cheek making an excuse that I have to go back down to the party and help Anne with something. I make my way to the kitchen. With each step, I feel my heart crumble a bit more.

“Hey Anne, can I ask you a question?” I lean against the counter close to her and she turns to face me, her contagious smile beaming.

“Of course my love, anything at all!”

“What are you supposed to do when you find out someone close to you has been lying about something for a long time?” she stops cutting the food she was preparing, places the knife down, and turns to me.

“You found out didn’t you love?” she asks me and the last bit of my heart that was standing crumbles.

“You knew?” my voice cracks as my eyes well up with tears.

“I did sweetie. He was talking to one of his friends about it around the beginning of it and I gave him a lecture and told him to tell you immediately but he refused to say anything because he didn’t want to risk losing you. I'm so sorry you had to find out this way sweetheart.” Anne explains and I drop my head letting my tears fall.

“Oh come here love.” she pulls me into her chest and I let the sobs rip out of my chest.

“Why?” I ask. I know she doesn’t have an answer and she just holds me closer.

“What’s going on?” I hear Harry and soon feel his arms on my shoulders and I immediately tense.

“She's not feeling well at all honey, I think you should take her back home.” Anne saves me from talking and I hear him mutter an okay telling his mum to tell everyone we're sorry for leaving early as he pulls me out of her grip heading for the door. He gets me in the car and I keep sobbing as he tries to comfort me but it’s not comforting me.

It's hurting me.

He eventually gets me back into our room and I just sit on the bed as he kneels in front of me rubbing my knees as he tries to get me to talk.

“Baby you have to tell me what’s hurting or what’s wrong so I can help you.” He continues to try and help and I shake my head.

“You lied to me.” I make out in between sobs and I feel his hands tense on my thighs. “You lied to me about everything.” I lift my head from my lap making eye contact with him and he shakes his head.

“No baby I didn’t lie to you my love.” he tries to defend himself and I remove his hands from me as I stand up from the bed.

“Stop lying to me!” I scream pointing at him as I walk away from him leaving just the bed between us.

“What have I been lying to you about? Please tell me!” he raises his voice and I throw my hand up pointing between us.

“Everything! The reason why you even became friends with me! It wasn’t because you thought I was interesting or “cool” it was because of a fucking bet!” I tell him and his face drops.

“How do you know about that?” he asks me and I let out a bitter laugh.

“I went to go find you and heard you talking to Michael and when I went upstairs I assume Gemma sent you because she passed by me as I was holding back fucking tears and after I found your mum she just confirmed everything that was said and that’s when you walked in.” I ramble, the tears starting to dry, my sadness slowly being replaced by anger.

“You have to know as soon as we started becoming better friends I called off the bet! Michael didn’t accept it but it wasn’t a bet to me anymore I promise!” Harry runs his hand through his hair, tears starting to well up in his eyes and I lose it.

“No! You don’t get to fucking cry Harry!” “You have been with me countless times when guys were only with me to fucking use me! You were there picking up the pieces and you never once fucking thought to come clean with me! Our entire friendship was built on the fucking fact that you were just making your way up the ladder to sleep with me!” I scream at him as I take a deep breath.

“Sure I would’ve been fucking mad at you in the beginning but maybe I would’ve gotten over it real quick right now I don’t think I can because all I can think about is if any of this is real!”

“It is real! I promise y/n! I will call Michael right now and have him tell you exactly what I told him when I called it off, everything has been real I swear!” he continues to try to explain but I let out a sad chuckle shaking my head.

“Your promises don’t mean anything because I don’t trust you, Harry,” I whisper his eyes connect to mine and his tears begin to fall.

“Please y/n how can I make it up to you? I will do anything to fix this. Please.” he begs me and I shrug my shoulders.

“I don’t know if you can fix this, Harry.” I whisper and he begins to walk towards me but I hold my hand up stopping him. “I’m going to go change just please leave me alone,'' I tell him and he nods his head.

I walk into the bathroom after grabbing a pair of pajamas and let the tears fall freely as I wipe away the ruined makeup and think back to all the memories in the front of my head. When I walk out he’s still in his clothes sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. I clear my throat and his head shoots towards me as he stands up.

“Your birthday present is under the bed. I'm going to the guest room. Happy birthday Harry.” I send him a small smile, grabbing my phone and leaving the room as he stands still watching me walk out the door. I lay in the guest bedroom letting myself cry until I couldn’t anymore.

As my eyes closed and the sun rose, the light from the sun shone through the cracks, but not the cracks of the window, the cracks in the darkness of my heart.

The cracks he made.

the

Harry’s POV:

I stand frozen as she walks out of our room. My heart seizes with every step she takes farther from me. It was never meant to go this far. It was a stupid fucking bet that meant absolutely nothing to me once we became friends. I drop down onto my knees lifting the duvet, seeing a pale blue box tucked carefully under the bed.

I pull it towards me sitting back on my knees as I admire her handwriting on the box. “It was no ordinary friendship. We were inseparable, constantly being separated. I’ve realized that no matter where you are or who you’re with, I will always truly, completely love you.”

My heart drops more as I open the box and look through all the mementos and photos of us throughout the years. I’ve royally fucked up big time. That night I slept on the floor of our bedroom, feeling the guilt of my actions coursing through my body.

I spent all day trying to figure out if there was anything I could do to fix the wounds I'd made but nothing seemed to work. There's a light knock on the bedroom door and when I look up I see y/n walking through.

“We need to talk,” she says, shutting the door behind her. Her cheeks are puffy, her eyes are red and swollen, and she’s been tearing herself apart. It hurts even worse knowing I'm the reason for her pain.

“I don't know what I want anymore Harry. I need space and time to think things through.” She speaks up, ripping off the bandaid of where our relationship stands. My heart crumbles just a little more but I nod my head because this is her decision and I'm not going to fight her.

“I’m going to go stay at my mum’s for a little bit, once I get through all these fucking thoughts in my head and can tell you what I want I’ll come back, but right now, I can’t be here, I can’t be with you.” her voice wobbles and my throat tightens as tears well in my eyes.

I nod my head once again, unable to form words. She packs her bags and by nightfall, she is ready to leave. I follow her downstairs and once she makes it to the front door I stand frozen at the bottom of the staircase.

“y/n.” I speak up and she looks up at me, her grip tightening on her suitcase.

“Please take your time. Don’t worry about me, make the decision for yourself. I will support whatever you decide.” I tell her and she nods her head giving me one last look before she walks out of the door.

And just like that the moon split in half and the stars crumbled, falling like fireworks into the sea, I watched my world fall apart the day my love left me.

[minnieposting]

i want to talk about robins trailer again!

following up from this post + a cool thread i saw earlier compiling lots of details i didn't notice in the trailer! (and the morse code post)

mostly really interested in the fact that this whole thing is filmed and directed by sunday

(sc from twt thread)

i said earlier that robin must feel like she doesn't want to let down both sunday and the family, both as his sister and the "pride of the family". but this clearly shows that he's the one pulling the strings, or at least one of them.

(as i type this out, i realize the usage of "pulling the strings" could relate back to the imagery of puppets we've been seeing. they are present in robin's trailer and also seen in the 2.2 penacony trailer)

(and of course, another puppet on strings...)

not sure where i'm going with this because tbh i got side tracked because i had the realization while writing. just some cool consistent puppet imagery, obviously symbolic, just don't feel like thinking about this rn lol

ANYWAY, my original train of thought was going towards sunday being a huge pressure on her, whether intentionally or not, he's clearly got his own shit going on... but i also feel like this gives new meaning to something else i pointed out a bit ago (post)

sunday is always right behind robin! she's always in the spotlight while he looms in the shadows. another thing tho, the same person who posted that twt thread i linked to pointed out that our bird friend is seen in the corner watching robin perform (x)

in the upper right corner!

(though, ive seen speculation that the bird is not sunday's but the dreammaster's! either way, sunday is still the most involved with her in the context of my post...)

now, going back to what i really want to talk about in the first place - director sunday. i do think this is more symbolic than anything, and coming from robin's perspective as this is her trailer.

sunday is a perfectionist obsesed with control and robin's public image may not be spared from that. she may feel that sunday is essentially breathing down her neck, whether or not sunday is aware he's making her feel like this. i've always thought that sunday's perfectionism and his obsessiveness have bled into his love for his sister and their relationship as a whole. again, she clearly does not want to let him down specifically, especially when they're supposedly working towards a childhood dream.

it's just! this whole thing about freedom, or the lack of it. robin is a caged bird and that's become explicit in her trailer. who knows wtf sunday's deal is, but he's also clearly under SO much pressure, he's the head of the oak family and ALSO needs to be nothing less than perfect. dude had a whole speech about it. i also imagine they both don't talk about any negative feelings related to this, maybe even wanting to keep up appearances around each other too.

i feel like i dont have anything else to say. i just mainly wanted to talk about some observations and stuff. i am very much looking forward to 2.2 coming out later, im SO excited to dig into sunday because he is the most intriguing and mysterious to me. their relationship is just so so so interesting, im so excited to see it in all of its glory later.

and mandatory note bc i am an anxious person, i do a lot of talking out of my ass and this is just exactly that.

(uh i scrolled up to read this post over and saw i linked back to a morse code post and didn't talk about that at all. well there's SOS morse code in robins trailer! that's fucked up! what else can i say)

[suhjihanma]

☩ 𝕲𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝕭𝖔𝖞. ☩

☩Kink (5) : Sex toys / Stretching ☩Pairing: Suguru Geto / Female ! Reader. ☩Word Count: 929 (Drabble format) ☩Content Warning: Sex toys, submission, submission play, dirty talk, slight implications of gentle femdom, anal play, vibrators, praising, slight degradation, neediness. ☩Author's Note: Minors and kink shamers DNI. Morning drabble before I settling down to sleep. I was working on this on and off before I got tired. Hopefully, I'll play catch up with my kinktober fics. Unfortunately, tumblr decided to hide my shit under the tags so later on, I'll be uploading a link to my blog regarding the fanfiction that I've already written. As always, Geto has the submissive dog in him. Likes and reblogs, comments are always appreciated. Happy reading.

Geto’s body was only yours.

It was only expected of him to be fully stretched out.

Nowadays, people only describe it as being ‘slutted’ out.

“Beg.” A voice raised with demand as you slowly got on your knees and faced the man who was tied on both ends of the front and back frame. The sound of faint squeaking arises when writhing in frustration occurs by you slowly inserting a well-known toy that he uses in the bedroom with you. He wants you to stop yet, you wouldn’t let him off so easily. 

Deep inside, you knew he loved to submit to every chance that he got from you. To eat at the palm of your hand while begging to be punished or something in particular that will take his pride away. All he knows is that by sprawling his legs, providing you the consent to act on unforgivable things to his body, it was entering a world mixed with heaven and hell.

“I can't.” A wounded-like cry came out from Geto as he resisted the urge to escape from the restraints, including to lose control from holding the orgasm that could fall and take over in any mere minute. The miserable man. You want to end his struggle early, but the sadistic side in you merely want to bask in it more. A strong-willed man like Geto turns easily into a person that begs for more. To be fucked with over and over, teased towards the point of insanity, and being praised for how ‘good’ he was while being under your control. 

No one but you could see this side of him, and it was a very damn good side of him. 

“Then you’ll just have to do it yourself then. Poor, Slut.” The tormenting antics grew to be too much for him to handle yet, you were loving every minute of this. An anal bead that was used for stimulating a certain area inside him started pumping slowly in and out of him. Observing how the wet and red hole swallowed every inch of a bead made the view more erotic than it ever was. Not to mention the sounds of him wailing out for more, begging to be touched rather than something made of random material. To push his limits even further, you then saw one of the miniature vibrators laying across the edge of the bed and grasp it in reach. Pushing random buttons that the vibrator was meant to function with, a low guttural sound came from Geto’s pursed lips. “No, please.” One of your eyebrows raised up in false confusion as you slowly brought the vibrator to his heavily weighted balls, teasing the settings that made him spill out mewl after mewl, while the other hand was occupied with removing the anal beads and thrusting it back inside him, causing him to let out a desperate whine. 

“Oh? Does my little boy not like this." Cooing your words only escalated Geto’s problem as he furiously shook his head in an attempt to disagree.

."I love it, but-" Geto’s whining was only given as a response to the condescending atmosphere. 

 “But, what? After all the things I did for you, you’re still complaining? The hand slicked with precome moved from the toy was now placed on his highly sensitive cock, moving at a vigorous pace almost enough to make Geto cry out in agony. The gentle hands caressed the heaviness with pressure along your strokes.With each pump that moved from your hands, the cries of the man under you grew to be more lewd. 

"No, Baby. Please!" “Please, what?” The sounds of irritation spat from your tone of voice as you looked over to see the man flushed in a shade of pink with sweat beads rolling down to the sides of his temples.

 “I need to come. I need to come so fucking bad, baby.” A devilish smirk grew across your face as your pace went faster, causing the worn out man to scream out in frustration before giving into temptation and growled out a feral-like tone before dropping into the sea of pleasant bliss. “Fuck…” The words slowly drawled out on his lips while a cover of white mess continually splashes over your hand. No matter how hard he tried to hold back, your hands were too good for him. A sense of satisfaction conflicted with the sense of disappointment in your consciousness as you look over at the now tired Geto, flinging his head back in relief while the visible contractions of muscles were shown in his arms and legs. You were amazed at how well he held his own, surprisingly enough to make it this far. 

Guess that meant those little 'lessons’ with him grew to be quite the help. “Such a shame, baby. I thought you would hold out longer than this."Joining him in his personal afterglow, you gently run your fingers through his hair, not aware of the fact that he was sound deep asleep due to the intense moment of his orgasm. A sympathetic smile crept on your face as you kissed him on the forehead while continually massaging his scalp. "Maybe you could last longer with a vibrator on your cock." You spoke to yourself in the room, pressing a gentle kiss to his flushed cheeks. From that moment, you digressed about the plan, but that little sadistic side of yours had you wrapped around her finger. You just pray that hopefully Geto won’t think any less of you in the bedroom.

[turtlesandfrogs]

Tips for foraging inside city limits!

For those who don't know me, I've been foraging my whole life, and while I started off down a gravel road and backed up to timberlands, I now live less than a block from a strip mall.

The first thing to know about foraging in city limits is that there's way more wonderfully tasty food growing for free than you'd think.

The second thing to know is that you'd better wash your food and make sure you're not harvesting from a superfund site unknowingly.

The third thing to know is that there's a little more networking involved than when you're foraging "undeveloped" land.

Getting started:

There are two keys to successful urban foraging: you need to get to know the area, and you need to get to know the plants.

I strongly recommend developing a walking (or wheeling) habit. As a forager, you're going to want to get familiar with the individual plants in your area, and you just can't do that at the speed a car or bus moves. Make note of the potential plants, and watch how they're growing and yielding from one year to another (pear trees, for example, are famous for being alternate year barers- meaning if they have hardly any this year, they might have a bumper crop the next).

You also need to learn the plants- in urban areas I tend to focus on foraging from invasive species, and agricultural species that I know grow prolifically where I am. Check your local invasive species, and see which are edible. In my area, Himalayan blackberries are very invasive, and pretty darn good. No one is going to mind you picking Himalayan blackberries, because they are so prolific that there will always be more. Different areas will have different edible invasive species, and it pays to learn them.

I recommend going to a plant nursery and seeing which fruiting trees, bushes, and shrubs do well in your area and bare prolifically. People often plant a tree, and then years later, they realize it produces enough for five families, and they'd love for someone else to come pick. Or someone planted a tree decades ago, and now someone else lives there and doesn't care for the fruit. Sometimes, they even pick the fruit for you and put it out with a little free sign. I've also had great luck asking. Usually, people are more than happy for you to take some because to them, it's just a mess. I've also had good luck posting to local gardening groups on Facebook, or buy-nothing groups, or Craigslist, or putting up flyers that say something along the lines of "I'll come pick your fruit and leave you a portion" or "let me pick your fruit and I'll make you a crumble". That usually gets me more than I want.

Places to forage:

Peoples' yards: While you're wandering around, observe which fruits and nuts in your area are so prolific that loads go to waste. Here, it's usually apples, pears, figs, blackberries, raspberries, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns. Complement (authentically) people on their yards when you see them, gardeners are enthusiastic and generous and love enthusiasm from others. Be authentic in your appreciation, though, and don't expect anything. Part of what you're doing is building connections and recognition. If they offer you something, be excited and thankful, and they might tell others about you when excess food comes up. I've indirectly gotten apples, figs, peaches, plums, and walking onions this way. I've also written notes and left them in mailboxes before, and I have had some success just straight up asking about figs and apples. I've even gotten foraging permission by being an enthusiastic young person at a gardening club, class, or show.

Back alleys, overgrown fences between public and private spaces, corporate grounds that someone planted and forgot about: is obvious when food isn't wanted or cared for. If there are pounds of fruit or nuts laying on the ground, and some has already gone bad, and it's in a public area, I say go for it. I'll often pick up the bad ones too, and bring them home to compost, just to make the area nicer for others.

College campuses: often edible species get planted because they're pretty, and no one cares if you pick up the nuts or fruits. It pays to learn some unusual edibles. I've gotten strawberry tree fruits, edible dogwood, and ginko this way. Sometimes they've got demonstration gardens, and they want people to take the food. It is worth it to ask.

Some examples from within short waking distance of one bus route in a town:

These are Himalayan blackberries.

These are everywhere. These are very prolific where I am, and if one section is picked clean, there's another 100 feet away that's still loaded.

This is a plum tree.

Actually, it's several plum trees, because plums come true from seed and this one has been dropping plums for years. This is in a public park, and probably got started in the neighbor's yard. Every year, I pick dozens of plums from the ground and tree, and every year there are hundreds more that don't get picked.

This is a pear tree:

I've gotten permission to pick from this tree before, but this year was a bad year for it. Next year it will probably be loaded, as it has in the past.

This is yarrow.

A lot of eco-concious cities are starting to add yarrow to their lawns, because it's drought tolerant, native to North America, and tolerates mowing and foot traffic very well. Also, my city doesn't spray herbicides. Yarrow makes a lovely tea. Also, if you go to the edges of the lawn area, up against trees and shrubs and such, they often don't quite get the edges so you can get the flowers, too. Just be cognizant of how many dogs are likely to have been doing their business and try to pick an unpopular spot.

This is a red currant that someone planted, and someone else did a terrible job of pruning:

It's in a volunteer park, where people want you to pick the food. I have snacked often on this plant.

These are acorns:

I'm only competing with non-native squirrels for this one. I'm going to try to make something from them this year.

No matter what you're harvesting, never take more than you can use. Learn some ways to preserve the harvest too- freezing and drying are probably the easiest, but canning, jams, and jellies aren't that hard. You will probably end up with more than you need or want if you're anything like me. In that case, buy-nothing groups, gardening groups, and mutual-aid networks are a great way to share the bounty and sometimes set up trades, or get future foraging opportunities.

Hope that helps!

[loathsomeloner]

Down by the Harbour

Cove Holden x Gender Neutral Mermaid!Reader

Summary: A reimagining of the Our Life Beginnings & Always prologue where the MC is a mermaid now!

Word Count: ~6k

Warnings: None other than probably OOC Cove, I'm not confident in my abilities to write characters that I didn't create so-

Authors Note: RAAAAH THIS IS FIRST FIC IVE EVER WRITTEN- This was supposed to come out last week but work absolutely demolished my energy and then my writing got too out of hand and this became so much longer than I anticipated. This was supposed to be a fun little fic but 20 pages and 6000 words later here we are, whoops? Also idk if this is even a bad thing but this fic ended up being a little bit more MC centric than I inteded it to be, as in Cove doesn't really show up until a little bit into the story, apologies if that annoys anyone you can just skip ahead if you wanna see Cove meet the mermaid MC that badly. OH ALSO if anyone is interested in the funky mermaid lore I imagine this universe having feel free to let me know! I'd love to ramble about it! Anyways I've gone on long enough, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the story!!

Likes, Comments, Reblogs, etc etc are very appriciated!!!

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When you were just a tiny fry, you found yourself in a gorgeous coral reef that’s become your beloved home. You loved to explore the reef and discover just what was out there in this vast habitat. You especially loved to scour the seafloor and find any items that caught your eye, “treasures” you called them, whether preciously valuable or utterly useless, if it interested you, you’d always pocket it to add to your collection. Finding treasures became your favourite pastime and now as a fingerling you like to consider yourself a “professional scavenger”.

One kind of treasure you especially love to find is those funny little objects that the humans from the surface would leave behind. Your coral reef seemed to be near a human habitat as very often you’d see humans exploring the coral reef similar to how you would. While the humans incredibly intrigued you you always hid away and kept your distance to only observe them from afar, then when the humans left you’d come to collect the treasures they’d leave behind.

While the coral reef was a vast habitat, over the years you’ve learned that even if the reef is safe there are still places you should always stay wary of. One such place was the place you called the threshold, the threshold was where the waters became empty of any healthy coral or fauna and the water became murky and hard to breathe in. All that was left was an empty wasteland that’d send chills down your fins. The threshold was luckily small enough to easily be able to exit if you ever found yourself there, however, what lies past the threshold was the one place you never wanted to find yourself in.

Because that place is where all the monsters sleep.

Sometimes whenever humans were exploring the reef they’d bring these giant monsters with them that would stay at the surface of the water, while they had never caused you any direct harm they still deeply scared you. The monsters would make these awful sounds that’d shake you to your core, and sometimes they’d drop down giant nets that’d steal away the fish and bring them up to the surface. Once in the past, you had gotten curious enough that you nervously followed the monster once it began moving and found yourself deep in the threshold, at some point through the murky waters in the distance you could see more monsters all at the surface. You put two and two together and deduced that whatever this place was was where all the monsters lived, then at that point, your fear got the best of you and you got out of there as fast as you could.

After finding out where the monsters lived you went back home and decided to give yourself a rule to never cross the threshold and never make contact with the monsters lest you find out where the monsters take all the fish they steal. Since then you fell back into your usual routine of scavenging for treasures and hiding whenever humans came near, your comfortable routine lasting for years up to the present…

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On this bright and sunny day, you were currently making the rounds across the reef searching the sands for treasure. Earlier today a huge amount of humans visited and explored the reefs, they did bring a monster with them but luckily it was quieter and it didn’t decide to steal any fish. Because of the sheer amount of humans that had visited there were so many treasures you saw them drop, it felt like for every one treasure two more would appear just nearby. You found so many things such as cans, bottles, lines of wire, those masks that the humans would wear, you even found those beautiful silver rings you’d see some humans wearing on their fingers! You’d hit the jackpot today!

Just as you were packing away a pretty net you could use as a shawl you found something had moved in the corner of your eye, when you looked over to see what it was you saw a manta ray tightly wrapped in plastic. The manta ray was shakily swimming through the coral, clearly struggling to navigate due to the plastic restricting its movements. You gasped then put down your bag and quickly darted toward the manta ray to help it, unfortunately, you had moved too suddenly as the moment you got close enough to reach out the manta ray got spooked and quickly began to flee. You called out to it to try and get it to stop but the animal didn’t listen so you swam after it.

Despite being hindered by the plastic the manta ray proved to be a very slippery catch as every time you got close to it it’d slip right out of your grasp and continue fleeing. It was honestly very frustrating however you were determined to help the poor frightened animal. You laser-focused on catching the manta ray which caused you to not notice that the coral and plants were beginning to become less present and that the water was becoming increasingly murky…

Finally, the manta ray seemed to tucker itself out as it slowed its efforts at swimming which let you finally catch it, you smiled in triumph as you finally reached the manta ray and carefully laid your hands on its fins. It thrashed around to try and escape your grasp again but you quickly shushed it while gently stroking its back which thankfully made the manta settle down. Once it was calm you began to get rid of the disgusting plastic, tearing it apart with your sharp claws.

As you tore the last bits of plastic off a deafening rumble had suddenly come from behind you, you barely had enough time to wonder what that noise was until a large shadow ominously passed over you. The shadow made you look away from the manta ray and finally take in your surroundings properly, the waters were a vomit brown and the seabed was completely barren with no pieces of coral or fauna in sight. Horror seeped into your bones and you began to panic as you realized that you had swam straight into the monster’s territory.

You looked above you and lo and behold a monster was moving directly above you, you felt like screaming but clamped your mouth shut in fear of the monster hearing you. This monster was the loudest one you’ve ever heard, making a deep yet scratchy rumbling sound that shook the ground below you. In your fear, you almost forgot about the manta ray until it slapped your hands with its fins before quickly swimming away. You went to get up and follow it but as you did the ground shook under you and suddenly you were scooped up into the largest net you’ve ever seen.

The monster had caught you.

You screamed and tried to get out but the monster’s net had completely engulfed you. Rocks, garbage, and even other fish were caught in the net with you as it dragged across the ocean floor, kicking up sand as it drove on. In your state of panic, you flailed around and got your tail stuck through one of the holes in the net, adding fuel to your panic. You tried everything to get out, but the more you struggled the more trapped you became. 

As the monster continued moving and catching more things in its net you began to hear more monsters in the distance. Not even wanting to imagine what the monsters were going to do with you you doubled your efforts in trying to escape. In your desperation, you had begun to viciously scratch and bite at the net itself to try and break it, even as bits that you’d chew off got in your mouth you spat them out and continued. Finally, you had tugged, scratched, and bitten the net enough that it finally tore and you tumbled forward. You must’ve put much more strength into your escape than you thought as when you broke through the net you caused the entire net to break and nearly snap off, even the monster stumbled a little.

Very unfortunately however, even if you tore through the net a large piece of it was still wrapped around your body. You tried to get it off however the net was tightly wound around you and you were being thrown around by the currents that all the monsters were creating. The entire world was spinning both figuratively and literally, so much so that you felt like you were gonna vomit, and it didn’t help that you were already so disoriented and panicked from the adrenaline before. You felt the net tighten around your body more and more but before you could try to escape again your dizziness had become too great and everything went dark…

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How did this day go from great to absolutely horrible in mere minutes???

All you wanted was to just add some new human treasures to your collection but now here you were, washed up on jagged and uncomfortable rocks with your body and tail twisted in all the wrong ways because of this stupid human net! One of your arms was twisted backwards and pinned to your side while the other was bent painfully and pressed into your chest and neck. Your tail meanwhile was bent and twisted in various directions while being simultaneously constricted by the net. Everything felt sore and even the slightest movement would cause shocks of pain to burst throughout your body.

So right now all you could do was just lie there on your back, you still felt exhausted from before so your mind still felt too sluggish to think of a logical escape plan. You huffed and laid your head back against the rock, your mop of wet hair splaying out under you. You seemed to have washed up under some small wooden structure as when you looked above yourself you only saw a bunch of wooden planks lined up together and extending outwards into the sea, so much for trying to pass the time by cloud gazing…

Judging by the little amount of sky you could see when looking to your side it must’ve been pretty late in the evening right now, the sun had been pretty high in the sky when you first got caught (at least you think it was), just how long were you out for?

You felt the ocean water gently wash over the end of your tail, relieving the soreness but only for a brief moment before the tide went back down. A whine escaped your throat, you couldn’t help but wonder if the ocean was deciding to taunt you now, showing just how close to home you were despite being unable to move. Were you… going to be stuck here forever? You could only count the number of times you were on land with one hand, and even then you’ve never been out of the water for this long. Would something happen to you? You had no idea, and that made you increasingly nervous.

You probably shouldn’t wait long enough to find out if something would happen if you were on land for too long, but you were at a loss as to what to do. Your body still hurt and you still couldn’t move, and even if you could move and shimmy back into the water your arms were stuck in a position that made scratching at the net impossible and last time you check you can’t make your neck grow longer so biting the net was also a no go. How were you supposed to get home???

As you wallowed about your predicament the silence was suddenly broken when you heard a loud thumping from above the wooden structure. You immediately stopped what you were doing, your fins flaring out in alert to focus on whatever the noise was. It moved from the start of the structure all the way until the end of it where the sound stopped.

What in the world was that??

Quiet as a guppy, you listened carefully for any more noise to try and figure out what that was. You’ve never heard a sound like that before in the reef, was it a surface thing? You racked your brain to try and think of whatever it could be... Could it be… a human? What would a human be doing here? Aren’t they supposed to be with the monsters? Oh no… What if the human was looking for you to bring you to the monster you escaped from earlier?! You couldn’t let the humans or the monster take you again! Subconsciously the tip of your tail that was sticking out the net silently flailed as you feared being discovered. You need to get out of there right now-

*Hic- Hic- Sob…*

Wait… What was that..?

From the end of the structure was a different sound from before. The noise was quiet, almost like a whisper, you heard something taking in gasps of air in very quick succession along with sniffling and whimpering. Was the human… crying..? Why? What are they so sad about? Your previous fear of being discovered had begun fading away and was now being replaced by great sympathy, you never liked it when things were sad and it was no different with humans. You almost wanted to speak out to the human but you were unsure if revealing yourself would be a good idea.

The human’s cries continued while you quietly listened until a particularly harsh tide rolled up the land and crashed over you and dragged you downwards. You slid down the rocks before abruptly stopping before fully being in the ocean again. The jagged rocks scratched at your back and the sudden movement made your twisted limbs burn with pain and soreness, you couldn’t control the pained cry that left your mouth. Writhing from the pain you had rolled onto your side without realizing, as your bit your lip to try and stop your crying. The pain slowly cleared from your head letting you tune into your surroundings again, it was then that you realized the sounds of crying had completely stopped.

“..H-Hello?”

Oh no.

The planks of wood creaked above you as you assumed the human was moving around after hearing you.

“Is someone- hic- there…?” The human said again, their words briefly cut off by a hiccup and sniffle.

You stayed completely silent, not moving a single muscle. The human seemed to be doing the same thing as you couldn't hear any more noise coming from them, well, except for the sniffles and hiccups they still let out. As this silent stand-off continued you found yourself starting to consider properly speaking up to the human.

Back when you’d seen humans in the reef you never really got to hear them speak, you always thought that since the humans were almost always around the monsters the humans would sound similar to them, but it seems to be the exact opposite. This human’s voice… was so… meek. They didn’t sound like a monster trying to find you, they sounded small and sad and… like a fingerling. Just like you.

And just like that the tiny bit of fear that lingered in your head completely crumbled. Gathering the strength you could you rolled to lay on your back again, weakly grunting as you did. Taking a deep breath you puffed out your chest and opened your mouth.

“H…Help..”, your voice came out much weaker and scratchier than you anticipated, you knew you hadn’t exactly spoken words–especially not human words–for a while but wow…

Scratchy and unused voice aside, you listened for any response from the human. However you were only met with silence, strange, did the human not hear you? You shut your eyes and called out for help again, saying it louder this time. Resting your body back down on the rocks you yet again listened for a response, and yet again you were met with nothing. Now you were really confused, they were talking before but were completely silent now, what gives??

You almost went to call out again until you saw a shape in the corner of your eye that wasn't there before. You quickly looked over and saw something peering down at you from over the wooden structure, but just as suddenly as it appeared it darted away. That had to be the human! You heard thumping come from above you until suddenly the sound dashed towards you, the human was running to stand right above you!

You barely had enough time to react when from your side something swung down from the structure. You jumped in reaction and looked over and immediately felt your jaw drop at what you saw. A body like yours, but with two legs dangling down from their hips, there was undeniably a real human being staring down at you.

The human dangled from the wooden structure using one arm to hold themself up, their other arm down at their side, strangely the arm by their side was wrapped in a weird thick pink… thing. You’d never seen anything like it, but the bright pink stood out against the night so much you couldn’t help but focus on it. After a few moments of silence, the human suddenly let go of the wood and dropped down to the rocks, breaking you out of your fascination with the human's strange pink wrapping.

The human stood completely still, they just stared at you with wide disbelieving eyes. They wore a thin white top and thick beige shorts, on their face was something that you’re not entirely sure of what the name is, it was one of those frames with glass in them that you remember finding sometimes in the reef. What really stood out to you from the human was their eyes and hair, both of which were coloured almost exactly like the sea. Looking into their eyes reminded you of the bright clean waters back at the reef, and their hair that gently swayed in the wind made you think of the calm waves you’d see during those rare days where you’d perch up on a rock above the water. Your curious mind almost wondered if they were a human version of the ocean itself, if so maybe that pink wrapping would be their coral.

After you observed the human, you tilted your head at them, the movement startling the human and making them gasp, the action almost making you giggle. The human shook their head then wiped at their eyes with the hand wrapped in pink (which you thought looked slightly uncomfortable) then looked back at you and gulped.

“... Are you real..?”, they asked tentatively. Their voice shook ever so slightly as if tears were gonna start falling from their eyes again at any moment.

You nodded your head in response to the question, even if you felt it was a tad strange, of course you were real! The human took a very slow and careful step towards you, mumbling something you couldn’t hear properly.

The human went silent yet again, but their eyes drifted from your face downwards towards your tail. Suddenly feeling quite bashful underneath the human’s stare, you slightly fidgeted your body which you quickly regretted as soreness sprouted in all your limbs. Right, you almost forgot the twisted state your body was in.

After seeing you fidget the human’s eyes widened, “You’re stuck.”, they thought aloud.

After a pause, the human suddenly walked closer and stopped just next to you. They still looked slightly wary and held their hands up in what you assumed to be a position that tried to make them look more docile. Even so, you couldn’t help but feel slightly intimidated by how the human towered over you and you felt your body shrink back. At that, the human sputtered.

“I-It’s okay..! I wanna get the net off you.” They crouched down so they weren’t ominously standing over you.

From here you could see their actual face much more clearly. They had chubby cheeks that had streaks of dried tears running down them, and when you looked up into their sea-coloured eyes they looked slightly red from crying.

The human looked away from you and instead looked over at the net wrapped around your body, they winced at how the net was digging into your skin and reached out. You tried to stay as still as possible as they grabbed a piece of the net with their not wrapped hand, cautiously sliding their fingers under the material to put some space between it and your body. Their hand was ridiculously warm against your cold skin, but they weren’t reacting to the temperature difference.

The human then grabbed another piece of the net with the hand wrapped in pink. They breathed out an “Okay” and suddenly tugged harshly to try and rip the net. Your body shook with the action and you yelped in a mixture of shock and pain.

“Ah- Sorry!” The human said, they continued tugging at the net but a little softer this time. It didn’t necessarily stop all the pain, but the gesture was sweet enough for you to try and keep your cries to a minimum.

Despite the human tugging on the net as hard as they could the net wouldn’t rip. After one extra hard try the human let go of the net and huffed, falling back onto their bottom to sit on the rocks, their cheeks puffed out in an angry pout. 

“I can’t break it.” The human grumbled, and you couldn’t help but sigh in disappointment with them.

You rested your head back on the rocks, then an idea came to mind. You looked back at the human, more specifically their hands. Just like you thought the human didn’t have claws like you did, that’s probably why they had more trouble with the net than you would. If the human didn’t have any claws that could tear the net, then they needed to find a substitute!

With some strain, you rolled onto your side which got the human's attention, they shuffled backwards and watched you to see what you were doing. With your cheek pressed against the rocks, you bent your neck so you could grab one of the jagged rocks under you with your mouth. Once you had one you looked back up at the human, who was just staring at you in confusion. With your limited mobility, you made a slicing motion with the rock in your mouth, and at that, the human got what you were trying to communicate.

“Oh! I can cut the net with the rocks!”, They looked at the rocks near them and almost immediately spotted one they could use. They grabbed it and ran their finger across the jagged edge of the rock, nodding in approval once they deemed it sharp enough.

They reached back down at the net but paused before they tried anything. They looked back at you for a moment.

“Um, please don’t move too much. I don’t want to cut you.”, You nodded and made your whole body go limp.

The human brought their attention back to the net and grabbed hold of it. They held the net with their wrapped hand and held the rock in their not wrapped hand. Very carefully to not cut you the human slid the rock between you and the net and pressed the sharpest edge of the rock against the net. Then very slowly they began to move the rock back and forth to slowly slice the net. The process wasn’t smooth by any means, the human had to adjust their grip multiple times and make sure they pressed the rock against the net hard enough to actually do something. But the human didn’t give up, and after what felt like ages of cutting, finally, the rock cut through the net!

Once the rock cut through you and the human let out a cheer of triumph, your tail moved in excitement and the human went back to cutting the net, though this time filled with much more vigour after the initial success.

Soon enough with the human's efforts they were able to cut through a large enough portion of the net for them to reach under and tear the rest of the net much more quickly. Once the net was torn enough for you to regain control of your limbs you cheered and rolled over onto your stomach, flailing your tail around to fling leftover pieces of net off of you. 

Finally, your limbs weren’t in pain anymore! Relief washed over your body so strongly you nearly felt like crying. To your side, you heard the human sigh and felt them grab the net from under you and throw it somewhere else. You sprang up from the ground and sat down properly, looking at the human with stars in your eyes you leaned towards them and smiled.

“Thank you..!!”, Your voice was still pretty scratchy but you made sure to sound as thankful and happy as possible.

At the sound of your voice again the human’s eyes widened before they nodded, “No problem.”, you swore that even in the dark you could see their cheeks turn red ever so slightly.

A silence fell over you and the human, both of you looked out towards the sea but neither of you made a move to leave. After the brief pause, the human spoke again while fidgeting with their fingers.

“So… um… You’re really a mermaid?”, they asked. 

You were slightly confused. Mermaid..? You’ve never heard that word before. You looked back at them and tilted your head in confusion.

“Mer…maid?”, you said, pronouncing it very carefully to try and get it right.

The human paused for a moment, they looked just as confused as you were. “You…”, their words trailed off as they looked down at your tail, they looked back at you, “You don’t know what mermaid means..?”

You shook your head to which the human scrunched his eyebrows.

“Never… Heard of… ‘Mermaid’… before.”, you shook your head. The human hummed and then looked out at the ocean before pointing at it.

“You live in the water, right? And you can breathe in it?”, they asked to which you nodded.

“Reef is… my.. Home”

The human mumbled then resolutely said, “So you’re a mermaid.”

You still didn’t understand what that word was, but you honestly weren’t sure how you were supposed to respond, the human had said that you were a “mermaid” so surely you felt like you kind of had to agree with them.

Without waiting for you to confirm or deny what they said you were the human spoke again. “How did you get here? And how did the net get on you?”

The topic change was slightly abrupt, but they did ask a question you could actually answer, so you did.

“A monster.. took me! Grabbed me in.. its… its net. I got away… Bit my way out. But.. my mind.. hurt… so I fell… asleep.”, you explained as best you could, trying to use the best human words you could in the way that made the most sense.

Luckily the human got what you were explaining and nodded along with your story. They turned their body to face the ocean instead of you and rested their arms on their legs.

“Mm. I got here ‘cause of my dad.”, they said, your fins perked up at the mention of the human’s dad. You looked at the human curiously, wanting them to explain further.

“Dad..?”

The human nodded, but before they began explaining their expression suddenly saddened and it looked like tears were gonna fall from their face again.

“My parents… They don’t love each other anymore.. And- hic- and I had to leave home and come to this- this stupid town!”, tears began to flow out of their eyes again after their outburst which left you internally panicking.

If you were being honest, you weren’t entirely sure what the human was talking about but you still didn’t want to see them cry. Wracking your brain for a way to make the human feel better you got reminded of the manta ray you had helped earlier today, more specifically how you got it to calm down so you could help it.

Hesitantly you raised your hand to the human's seafoam green hair. Then making sure to be as careful as possible so you didn’t spook the human you began to pet their hair. The second your hand touched their head they stopped trembling and froze like a statue.

“I’m sorry…”, you soothed. The human turned their head to look at you with pure bewilderment which made you self-consciously take your hand off their head and drop it back down to your side. Maybe humans didn’t do that to comfort their friends…

Thankfully the human didn’t look angry at what you did, just very perplexed. They sniffled and wiped the new tears from their eyes, mumbling a shy “Sorry” back at you. After that, you and the human settled into another moment of silence, the rolling tides of the ocean becoming comforting background noise.

The two of you stayed like that for a while, sitting next to each other and watching the waves. You could tell that both you and the human were getting tired, your body and mind felt more sluggish and out of the corner of your eye you saw the human yawn and rub at their eyes to try and get the sleep out of them. Yet despite the growing fatigue neither of you moved to leave. You both stayed put right there together, and neither of you really knew why.

“...My name is Cove.”, the human suddenly said. You had gotten so used to the silence that you almost jumped at the sudden noise.

You repeated the human’s–Cove’s–name, liking the way it rolled off your tongue so naturally. The name almost felt familiar though you couldn’t tell why. You smiled and said the name one more time.

“Coove~”, you said it in a sing-song way which made Cove look at you dazzled, and he couldn’t help but return your smile.

You then pointed at yourself, ready to introduce yourself. “You.. Call me-”

“Cove?!”, someone suddenly yelled from somewhere.

You and Cove immediately whipped your heads around to the sound. You didn’t recognize this voice at all, it sounded much older than you and Cove combined. The voice yelled out for Cove again, sounding very concerned, how did the voice know Cove’s name? Oh no, was it..?

Cove looked back at you with fear and a new sense of urgency, “It’s my dad!”, he gasped, confirming your suspicions, “I-I don’t want him to see you! You have to go back home!”, he urged.

Cove’s sudden sense of scared urgency immediately spread over to you making you panic. Even if Cove was sweet and had helped you out of the net that didn’t mean all humans were like that! Who knows what Cove’s dad would be like?? From what Cove had said and how sad he sounded, then his dad must be terrible!

Gathering strength into your body you began hurriedly shimmying further into the water. Cove crawled over behind you and placed his hands on your back, the sudden warmth against your scales making you jolt, though Cove either didn’t notice or didn’t care about your reaction as he simply began to help push you into the water. Eventually, once your whole tail was completely submerged you were able to let the incoming tide sweep you down into the water.

Letting yourself sink into the water, you felt nearly all the tension that had built up exit your body. It was so nice to be back in the water where you belonged. Or, almost where you belonged. You were still deep inside the monster's home and you had to navigate out of there, you could only hope that all the monsters were asleep. But that’s a problem you didn’t want to worry about right now.

Swimming back up to poke your head out of the water, you saw Cove still sitting there at the water's edge. He was checking behind him, presumably watching to see if his dad would show up. Hearing you poke your head out of the water he looked back at you, jolting a bit as you had startled him.

You smiled and raised your hand out of the water, “Goodbye Cove!”, you didn’t want to leave him without saying goodbye.

Cove nervously returned your smile and waved back at you with his hand wrapped in pink, rushing out a stuttered goodbye. After sharing your farewells, you quickly dived back down underwater, ready to finally make your way back home. The water was muddy and the environment was still depressingly barren, making it tricky to navigate, but you weren’t going to let that deter you.

As you were slowly but surely making your way back home, your thoughts kept drifting back to Cove, he somehow managed to feel so strange but so comfortingly familiar at the same time. Everything about him just made your brain go wild with curiosity. Humans had always intrigued you but they always felt too foreign, too invasive for you to gather the courage to speak to them, but Cove wasn’t like that. He felt… nicer. That’s the only way your young mind could put it. You wanted to find out more things about him, his personality, his hobbies, his fears, his dreams, anything you could uncover about him you wanted to figure out.

You wondered if you’d ever see Cove again, you really hoped you would…

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Cove stood at the edge of the ocean in a daze, he felt like he was dreaming. Did he seriously just meet a real mermaid?? There’s no way! That person had to be some sort of actor wearing a fake tail and makeup or something. But the tail didn’t look fake… and neither did their fins or gills… Oh jeez, maybe all of Cove’s messy feelings were really getting to him.

Cove was stuck in a tornado of events. First, his parents fighting more, then them breaking up, then his dad saying that they had to leave to somewhere else, then him being brought to this weird town where all anyone does is fish, and now on top of everything Cove has to meet a real mermaid??!! He barely knew what to make of all of this.

He looked to his side and saw the cut-up net he had helped the mermaid out of. When he first saw them all tied up he knew he wanted to help them, but he was so caught off guard by their appearance that he still froze. In the end, Cove was glad he got the net off, the net was coarse and scratchy when he tugged on it, there was no way being wrapped up so tightly in it was painless. The net must’ve come from one of the boats that he and his dad saw when they were exploring the harbour, they looked very similar. Hopefully, the mermaid wouldn’t get caught that badly again.

Cove sighed and kicked at the rocks underneath him, it was only a matter of time until his dad found him here. That sucks, Cove had hoped he could stay away at this secluded dock forever. At least the mermaid got away, Cove wanted them to be his own little secret, besides his dad would probably scare them away or something which could make it so Cove never saw them again. 

“Cove! There you are!”

Speak of the devil. Cove turned around and saw his dad hurriedly make his way over. Once his dad reached Cove he dropped to his knees and quickly gave Cove a once-over to make sure he was okay. Once he knew Cove was fine his dad pulled him into a tight hug and lifted him up. Cove tried to push away from the hug to no avail, groaning at the affection.

“I'm sorry, looking at the boats must’ve been too boring right? Let’s go check out the house now okay? You must be tired, I know I am!”, Cove’s dad laughed as he began to walk back to the main harbour with his son in his arms.

Cove grumbled but conceded, “Fine…”

Cove rested his chin on his dad’s shoulder and took one last look out to the ocean. He wondered where the mermaid was now, they mentioned ‘Reef’ being their home, did that mean there was a coral reef near here and that’s where they lived? Hopefully there was, Cove would love to visit. He had so many questions about the mermaid, but his growing sleepiness made it hard to focus on any of them.

Feeling his eyes finally droop close, Cove could only wonder if he’d ever see the mermaid again. He really hoped so, maybe they’d make this town a not-so-terrible place to live…

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Thank you for reading! Forgive me if the writing in this is kind of funky or flawed, I haven't written this seriously in months and I'm trying to get my groove and style back

If this gains enough traction and interest then I might continue this as a fun little series so once again any form of interaction is greatly appriciated and encouraged!!

[hillbillyoracle]

"Feel Your Feelings" Might Be Bad Advice

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the advice to "feel your feelings."

When I was in my BSW program, one of the things I consistently got flagged for was not having enough warm regard (which, fair hit) and not validating feelings enough. Which was odd because when I wrote out my transcripts of those sessions I see I'd done it multiple times using almost exact scripts from our lessons. But when I looked at people who weren't getting that feedback - they were validating almost every other line.

Which felt and still does feel insane to me personally.

An aspect I think gets overlooked when people give that advice, when programs train folks up in that advice, is that "feel your feelings" was radical for its time and place. The dominant culture of the first part of the last century was one of deep repression.

I personally question whether it's always the right advice in today's culture, where individual validation is dosed to us several times a day by technology companies largely in one valley. So much cultural discourse revolves about validation and who's valid and who's not. The places we spend large swathes of time are hyper optimized to produce and reward explosive emotion. And did you ever even have the emotion if it didn't make it online?

"Feel your feelings" was so helpful precisely because it went against the prevailing cultural climate. What if the advice we need today is "put your feelings to the side"?

"But Marz!" you say, aghast, "That's horrible to tell some to bottle their feelings up!"

I mean I'm not advocating for that either. I think there's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how feelings work that's been reinforced by our narratives of therapy and how our social platforms are structured. It creates the dichotomy of "let it all out" or "bottle it up".

Phenomenological discussion of feelings first, then the helpful metaphor.

Something that you can wind up learning through consistent and appropriate kinds of meditation is that what you consider "you" is actually based on two fundamental factors - perception and recollection. But when you observe them both in action at the same time, you see it's never possible for them to be totally in sync. It's impossible to perfectly recollect the moment that you're presently perceiving. There's always this slight gap. A skip.

You perceive a feeling arise it and then you recollect it. If you perceive an emotion but never recollect it, it does not arise to the level of sense of self. If you don't perceive a feeling, you can't recollect it and the same is true.

What you'll note is that I don't say that the feeling stops existing, just that if either part is missing, you cannot experience that emotion. They're not one in the same.

The misconception I see all the time is that if I turn my perception and recollection to something other than this feeling - then it doesn't exist. I've ended the feeling. Which means people either think they've dealt with the feeling by not perceiving it or that people are loath to stop perceiving it for fear that will equal repression.

To both groups I think it's important to hear that that feeling is a real thing that persists without your input. Emotions are an aspect of the mind - not of your consciousness. Which might be too in the weeds to get into here but just know you are not your feeling and you not perceiving that feeling does not mean the death of you in any way that matters.

Okay the metaphor.

A program starts up on your computer. You get a little window that pops up. This really isn't the time for it so you minimize it so you can come back to it later. But what's this? You left it for a while and the program shut all the way down - no more window. Then other times you leave the window for weeks only to find it's been there in the background the whole time.

That's a feeling.

You can choose to minimize it and come back to it later. By minimizing, I mean focusing your perception and recollection on something other than that emotion. That process isn't as easy as it is on a computer but with practice it can get much easier to accomplish than you might think.

Sometimes you'll come back later and the emotion is gone. Sometimes you'll come back years later and the emotion is still there. That's just how a brain do.

So why minimize it? For the same reason you would a window of a program - it's not useful to you right now, it's getting in the way, you're not a place where it's socially appropriate to explore that program - I mean really take your pick. It is a useful skill.

The mistake older generations made was that minimizing the window meant they'd closed it and it chewed up memory and overworked hardware in the background over time. The mistake I'm seeing today is people trying to run all the programs on the highest settings thinking anything less than that is to lose some fundamental aspect of the program on hardware that was not built for that usage.

Most ways to properly x out of that window usually requires some space and time to process what's in that window. Being able to minimize that so you can do that in a way that honors that feeling and doesn't crash your system is pretty key.

How do you x out of the window? There's lots of ways honestly. You sit and observe the feeling, noticing how it changes in intensity and sensation until it's no longer perceptible even with effort. You can see what an emotion has to say, what it believes, and decide what of that you want to listen to and take on. For intensely negative emotions, they're delusion is always in the mix so finding that root delusion and dispelling it often leads to the intensity lessening at the very least.

I just wonder if that kind of advice isn't more radical in a world where delayed gratification is getting rarer and rarer, where our ability to self validate gets atrophied by constant exposure to external metrics.

Put your feelings to the side and process them when and where you can do that better.

Neither constant repression or constant validation will ever lead to emotional resilience. All that's good is in the grey.

Anyways, I hope this is helpful or gives you something interesting to think about. I'm mostly just hope that by writing this it won't be ping ponging around my brain as much lol.

[paradoxlemonade]

Minecraft Characterization Notes

I've rewatched all the trailers and content I could find/exists (as of November 2022) that contains Steve, Alex, and any of the new characters to take notes on their characterization and quirks :] Information is taken from the playlist of animated trailers in the official Minecraft YouTube channel, caves and cliffs: the musical, and the announcement video from MineCon live. If I've missed anything, please let me know!

First up, Alex. They're first and foremost an explorer, always eager to dive into a new adventure. This manifests as a slight lack of impulse control, but things tend to work out in their favor anyways due to their natural luck. Their hunts give them pretty things to decorate with, feeding their apparent desire for aesthetics. They tend to take on a leadership role in most situations, either by taking charge when exploring with their best friend Steve, or directing the other players. Despite this, they're also a goofball at heart and have a penchant for practical jokes. They seem to have good storytelling skills and talent with redstone.

Next is the original, Steve. They're far more cautious than Alex, which is a good thing given their bouts of both klutziness and misfortune. They often have their head in the clouds and get absorbed into tasks, which results in them startling easily. They're practical by nature and tend to do more by-the-book mining. They love most animals and creatures but are scared of goats. Despite their sweeter, milder nature, they're just as much of a hardened, competent warrior as Alex is (especially when not caught off-guard).

Sunny is the first of the new characters I'll cover. They're a bit reckless but mean well (they heedlessly ran into the deep dark after a chicken). They later recounted this tale as a show of bravado, claiming to have escaped from the warden alive with the chicken (but it's unclear how true that is). Although they seem to enjoy living fast, they also like to slow down and enjoy some time boating on the water (though they may have just been keeping watch for Efe).

Wherever Sunny goes, Efe is sure to be close. They followed Sunny into the deep dark and aided in the recounting, but seemed to mostly play a secondary role in that situation. That's not to say they're any less attracted to danger—we see them fighting a hoard of drowned, using a Trident while underwater to do so. They appear to do this solely for the fun of it as Sunny keeps watch above (perhaps they're not supposed to be this adrenaline-seeking but choose to do so anyways?). Despite their brave nature, they get startled and run from a creeper immediately after. In the chase, they skillfully take to riding a pig at high speeds without a pause to mount up. This shows off their notable athletic prowess.

The last of the new characters to receive significant development is Noor. They're lower-energy than either Sunny or Efe, but not sedate. Their curious nature shines through. They also appear to be more observant than the others, noticing when Steve and Alex came back through the nether portal in the distance as well as the nearby Allay. While they love many creatures (catching a tadpole in a bucket and then later releasing it in a nice location), they have a particular affinity for allays and recall their experiences with the creatures fondly. They tend towards reminiscing and nostalgia. They're a practical person—they brought a bucket and spyglass on their boating trip, not just glowberries to snack on.

The remaining four do not have as many scenes or development, but I will do my best to get as much information from their scenes as possible. (Some of the following may appear to be a stretch for this reason)

The most developed of those who remain is Makena. They're first seen farming as Zuri runs by while being chased. They later show up again with an elytra, making skilled flight maneuvers to return the redstone torch to Alex. Seeing a problem and deciding to help speaks to a helpful and compassionate nature, and their flying abilities show their agile physical abilities.

As previously mentioned, Zuri was running from a creeper. They appear easily startled. Their coordination leaves something to be desired when they're distressed, so they are not likely a warrior.

Ari is another player seen flying with elytra. They accidentally stole Alex's redstone torch but dropped it when trying to activate a rocket to turn around. They appear to mean well but do not have the best hand-eye coordination.

The final character is Kai. Very little is known about them at this time, as their only animated appearance shows them farming. They're slouched over in the introductory promotion image and one might assume they're laid-back or lackadaisical, but that's conjecture at this point.

Someone in the YouTube comments on a reupload of the clip from MineCon Live went through and determined which characters were right or left handed.

[Image ID: A screenshot of a YouTube comment on dark mode. The comment is from SomeBodyKarens1 and has three likes. The comment reads: Freezing the frame on when they are all holding redstone torches (aside from Efe who is on a pig) I believe their dominant hands are as follows.

Zuri: right.

Sunny: Right.

Noor: Left.

Makena: ambidextrous (Even though holding a torch in the right hand, in the scene when running they are holding a bucket in their left).

Kai: right.

Efe: left.

Ari: right. End image ID]