#most of my job is just typing the same information 5 times in 5 different ways until the customers brain cells understand

[teepussilakana]

so stressful at work i have heartburn and my hands hurt from typing and i havent slept properly in three days i am so thankful i have two days off

also i really gotta get a better job i am not paid enough to deal with customers who apparently cannot READ

[icallhimjoey]

FINISH PART 5 NOWWWWWW ‼️‼️‼️

ALL RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT ‼️‼️‼️ Wordcount: 3.9K

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Mistaken, Not Stirred

part one - part two - part three - part four - part five

What the fuck were you doing?

You’d asked yourself this question about 43 times already, and each time, the answer changed.

He’d asked. And you had nothing better to do. He said he’d help. Would be rude to say no. Any excuse to hang out with him for a little bit, really. Especially now that you wouldn’t be able to see him at work anymore.

And you know what? Maybe there really was some magical way of getting your job back. Joe’d said he was going to talk to Martin and he had and then he’d sent an address. Told you to come over the next night.

So, you did.

You texted a picture of Joe’s flat and added, “this one?” and literal seconds later got a reply, telling you which doorbell to ring. Like a simple scroll up wouldn’t give you the same information.

As Joe buzzed you in and you stepped into the lift, you asked yourself again: what the fuck were you even doing?

You couldn’t have predicted what you walked in on. Not in a million years.

“Joe, what the... oh, my God...”

First of all, it was a little weird seeing Joe in a different place that wasn’t the bar. You had seen him in other places. Your own bed, for one. But still. It took a little getting used to.

Second of all, Joe lived in a fucking nice place. The type of place you would never be able to afford. Especially not now, with the loss of the job and all that.

And then thirdly, and what had you most shocked, his kitchen island looked like... it looked nothing short of an actual cocktail bar.

Bottles of liquor, all sorts, short fat ones and big tall ones, dark and clear, liquor bottles like the ones you used in the bar every day and then lots of others that you never touched. All of them full. Still sealed.

Amongst all of the bottles there were different types of glasses, a net of lemons, a net of limes, some large oranges, an actual blow torch, and not to forget, a full cocktail shaker set. All the equipment you needed to... well, to make cocktails.

“Welcome, welcome,” Joe said, walking around the island like he was stepping behind a bar and held his arms out wide. “Are you ready to get to work?”

You just stared at him. Stood in the middle of the doorway still, coat halfway down your arms, and you were more than a little confused. In shock too, maybe.

“So,” Joe clapped his hands together and was about to explain what you were looking at.

You had an inkling, though, and interrupted him.

“Shut the fuck up, this must’ve cost a fortune?” your eyes were about to pop from your skull. “An actual fortune– did you... please tell me you, like, I don’t know, you know someone who’s been able to bring this over and that you get to take it back later?”

He couldn’t have actually gone and bought all of this. Could he?

“Ah,” Joe let his held breath escape him as he bashfully smiled, looked at what was laid out in front of him for a second and their scrunched up his nose and waved it off. “Yea, ‘course I can. The unopened ones, at least.”

So, yea, he bought them.

From a store.

Great.

“Joe...”

“So,” Joe made big eyes at you, raised his eyebrows, and clapped his hands together again, shutting you right up as he went on to explain. “I talked to Martin, like I said I would, and he just... well, he just said that it’s a little difficult to have a slow learner on staff in a busy time of year, you know?”

You scoffed a little, couldn’t help the humourless smirk. Slow learner was... well that was one way of describing you.

“And, so look!” he gestured an arm across the island. Across all the bottles and the bar equipment.

“I... I’m looking,”

It was silly.

Joe was being silly.

Like this was going to work.

Like practicing making drinks would convince Martin enough to rehire you.

It wouldn’t. You knew it wouldn’t.

But, you took off your coat fully anyway, draped it across one of the stools on the opposite end of the island and walked around to join Joe where he was stood.

“Here’s the menu,” Joe said, picking up an actual menu from Hush-Hush.

“Did– did you steal this?”

“And here’s the Christmas menu,” Joe ignored you and just placed the stolen Christmas menu over the stolen regular menu in your hands.

You looked at it a second, thoughts going. You flicked your eyes up to scan across the bottles, then back down at the menu. Did he really... did he get every single thing you needed to be able to make every single drink from both these menus?

“Let’s start with the regular menu though,” Joe removed the Christmas menu from your still frozen hands and then moved an arm across to grab a martini glass. “And why don’t we begin with a dirty martini?”

Oh, this motherfucker.

“Hey– I know how to make one of those,” you took the bait immediately and turned your head to frown at him. He was stood... close. Gave you a mischievous little smirk that got you into all this trouble in the first place.

“I know you do,” Joe said, voice a low baritone that made you remember that you liked Joe a lot, and that you were in his flat and he was all close, and being sweet, and nice, and if you just leant a little closer you could kiss him.

It made you remember that last night when you’d gotten home you thought you’d never get to pretend to go and clean the surface of the bar again just to be closer to him, and now here you were, in his flat, and he was so close, and then he softly said, “I just really fancy one.”

Fuck off.

That made your breath go all wobbly.

Shake it off. Come on. You weren't this easy, were you?

“Well,” you started and had to clear your throat before continuing and placed fingers on the base of the cocktail glass Joe’d placed in front of you. You slid it over to him and finished, “You can make it yourself.”

It broke the tension and made Joe laugh as you started rolling up your sleeves.

Time to get to business, then.

Joe found his way around his island and sat down on one of his breakfast bar stools with his laptop opened in front of him.

And so it began.

Joe googled recipes. Googled how to step by step instructions, found video tutorials, and verbally coached you through making each drink, one step at a time.

Joe taste tested, just little sips, because he couldn’t let his mind get cloudy he said. But his mind got cloudy anyway. And fast too.

You were in his flat.

Mixing drinks. Mixing mai tais, cosmopolitans, old fashioneds, white russians, margaritas, mojitos and manhattans. Right there, in his kitchen.

When was he going to tell you that before you started working there, Joe didn’t go to Hush-Hush that often?

When was he going to tell you that sometimes he walked in and saw you weren’t on shift, he’d leave again?

When was he going to tell you that he doubled his tip on nights when you made mistakes that visibly annoyed Martin?

Would he ever tell you that he liked leaving rings on the bar just so you’d stop by him extra often to wipe it clean?

Probably never.

But maybe he would. Maybe he could get you your job back, and then later he could tell you.

Not now. He didn’t want to ruin what he was looking at.

You were in his kitchen, getting progressively dirtier as you spilled drinks and wiped sticky hands into your hair.

He loved it.

And Joe just got to look.

Pretended he was looking because he had to see what you were doing.

Had to check if you were making mistakes or not. So he could instruct.

It was just that... your face wasn’t what needed checking, was it?

Remember how he said you were lucky you were cute? Well... Joe was sort of lucky you were cute, he thought.

Joe watched you mix drink after drink, watched you turn his kitchen into a whole mess, watched as you tried to clean as you went, but instead clumsily knocked things onto the floor, only creating more mess as you went along.

After a while, after taste testing over half the regular menu, Joe grinned to himself and said, “It’s like I’m actually at The Hush.”

Because this was exactly what Martin would always do.

You grinned to yourself as you finished a vanilla chai tea white russian, one that Joe was already reaching out for, but, that looked so fucking good, you decided to go for a sip yourself.

“Oh, maybe not,” Joe huffed. “I usually get given drinks that no one else has taken a sip from already.”

You didn’t even care about Joe’s comment.

That really was fucking good.

“Holy shit,” you went for another sip, and got a loud, “Hey!” from Joe, whose reaching arm turned into two grabby hands. You easily let him take it from you and said, “That’s maybe the best drink I’ve ever mixed.”

Joe raised the glass to his lips and smelled it first. Then he held eye-contact as he took a small sip.

That small sip turned into a big... a bigger sip. A gulp. He was... oh, he was downing it. Drank the full thing in one go. Kept his eyes locked on yours the entire time.

And...

It was a little unfair that Joe looked sexier holding a drink. Like, he physically looked a lot more attractive when he had a glass pressed to his lips. When he made eye-contact with you as he drank. Especially when it was a drink you’d made. You didn’t know how that worked, it just was what it was, you know?

“Hmm,” Joe said, lips smacking as he put the glass down, now finally looking away. “I don’t know... good, sure. The best? Maybe not.”

You knew what Joe was hinting at, and when you saw him chance a glance at a martini glass, you rolled your eyes.

“If you want a martini, go for it, make your own, no one’s stopping you.”

Joe tried his luck with a sad puppy eye look thrown your way, and he so very nearly got you.

But he didn’t.

There were more drinks to be made. More cocktails to fuck up and fuck up again and then fuck up once more until you got them just right.

The mess in Joe’s kitchen grew.

And Joe got drunker with every taste-testing-sip.

But he was having fun, and so were you. Especially when Joe found a video of someone explaining how to do basic bar tricks and he convinced you to try and learn some, because how wild would it be to impress Martin with some insane bar tricks upon your return?

It had the two of you stood in front of his laptop, swinging glasses, twirling the shaker, throwing ice, and at one point, you were holding onto a bottle whilst trying to follow the steps on screen.

You giggled as you somehow tangled up your arms in the process of trying to get it right.

“No, look, he swings it– you’ve got to hold it like this,” Joe explained, like he was the expert here, and grabbed a bottle for himself to demonstrate. “And then you swing, under the elbow, all around, and then, into the gla–” Joe’s reflexes worked fast as he nearly dropped the bottle, nearly let it slip from his grip, both hands fumbling and catching it just in time, “Ahem, glass.”

“Wow, a true professional,” you sarcastically said, feigned impression that made Joe laugh.

“I promise it’s easy,”

“Hmm, yea, slow learner here, remember?”

“No, look, come here, you’ve got to...” Joe used the excuse of showing you, of helping you master a bottle flip into a pour, to pull you close. To pull you right into him, your back to his chest, his arms around you to manoeuvre yours into place.

With his head right next to yours, Joe spoke softly and kept you there until you got it.

Well, that was the plan.

But then you almost smacked the bottle into his face over your shoulder and he sort of had to abruptly move back to save himself from a black eye.

It had you both in stitches, and you loved the sound of Joe’s laugh.

You were having fun.

You were in Joe’s flat and he got you all this liquor to practice making drinks until you nailed them and you wondered when you were going to tell him that Martin didn’t just fire you because you were a slow learner.

When were you going to tell him that a guest claiming her phone had gotten stolen from her coat pocket made Martin look at the CCTV footage? That Martin had seen what had lead to you leaving the bar the way that you had that night?

It wasn’t just the mess you left, the key you hadn’t left in the letterbox, the loud music you left playing, or even the kissing behind the bar...

It was all of it added up.

All the standing in the way.

All the spilled drinks.

All the kind questions from guests, asking if if was just them or if their drink tasted funny and could it maybe be remade?

It all actively worked against you. And sure, you were cute. But it reached a point where cute wasn’t enough anymore.

Dropping a gorgeous limited edition expensive bottle of Dos Artes tequila had sort of made Martin see red for a second, and that had been it, then.

Martin had pulled you aside and had just listed reason after reason after reason of why keeping you on staff would be a bad idea. A mistake. He mentioned kissing guests behind the bar and you were mortified, went beetroot red, because you had no idea he knew.

Martin knew.

Joe, however, didn’t know. He didn’t know Martin knew.

And Martin hadn’t told him he knew.

Slow learner, Martin had said. You were just a slow learner.

Correct.

You were.

But you were also a cheap slag who had gone and fucked the one true regular of the bar instead of doing her job, weren’t you?

You probably weren’t going to tell Joe.

Or maybe you would. After finishing the Christmas menu, maybe.

But then you saw how Joe’s hands found his lower back, how he pushed his stomach out as he stretched a little, and you gathered that sitting on a barstool all night wasn’t doing his back any favours.

It was getting a little late.

“Why don’t you go and sit down on the sofa, and I will... I’ll just do the last couple of drinks, bring them over and get out of your hair, all right?”

Joe tried to protest, said if you thought he wanted you out of his flat that you were wrong, but you asked if his lower back thought so too, and soon after, Joe gave in and let himself drop onto his sofa on the other side of the open floor plan living space. From where you were stood, you could see the back of his head peek out over the sofa, and Joe tried sitting sideways for a second. Tried leaning into the back of his sofa with his side, but it really did feel nicer to let his back properly sink into the pillows, so he did.

He ended up turning the TV on and watched a little of a celebrity panel show before you came over and handed him a drink.

Joe took a sip, smiled with half-lidded tired eyes and said he loved it.

Made you blush as you took it back to the kitchen.

The same thing happened twice more, and every time you noticed how Joe was growing more and more tired. Was trying harder and harder to keep his eyes open still. Was inching towards sleep.

You watched his head slowly disappear into the sofa and couldn’t help but smile.

Joe was fucking adorable.

And Joe was the fucking best thing that came out of this job you had had for a few months.

And now you had his number and his address and he had yours.

But he was falling asleep. Had enough alcohol in his blood to just let sleep take him, pretty girl in his kitchen or not. You smiled to yourself and couldn’t get rid of it when you started tidying Joe’s kitchen as quietly as you could.

It took a little while. But only because you also decided to make him a dirty martini that you left on the coffee table in front of him.

With the kitchen somewhat tidy and somewhat clean, you grabbed your coat, stood behind the sofa where you carefully took the TV’s remote from Joe’s hands and turned the TV off for him. Couldn’t help bending over and pressing a soft kiss onto the top of his head, into his hair.

You didn’t need your job back.

You’d find a different job.

Plenty of places were looking. It was a busy time of year. Nearly Christmas.

You’d find a different place with a different boss and different things to drop. A different place with a different menu and different regulars that sat at the bar.

It felt kind of bittersweet, this acceptance of this being it as you switched off Joe’s lights and left his flat with butterflies in your stomach.

Sure, alcohol too. But butterflies, mostly.

A shame.

It would probably be a while before you’d see him again.

The next day, Martin called you.

Asked for you to come in for a chat.

You’d smiled to yourself and told him that it was extremely kind of him, that he was a good boss, but if he was going to offer you the job back, you’d decline. You thanked him, told him you’d treasure the experience of working at Hush-Hush for the rest of your life, but he’d been right letting you go. Should’ve let you go much sooner, probably.

Martin seemed confused, but didn’t ask further questions.

You told him to tell Joe thanks from you and said goodbye.

You thought maybe Joe would text you.

You thought maybe he’d even show up at your door, all bewildered, because what the fuck were you doing declining a chat with Martin after you spent an entire evening mixing drinks in his kitchen?

But no texts were received and no doorbells were rung.

Just as well.

It was Christmas and you were starting a new job and you had to put your best foot forward. This wasn’t the time to think of Joe. You’d think of him later, on those weird days between Christmas and New Years, where the whole world forgot what day it even was for a little while.

But Joe didn’t get it.

Martin had put down the phone and had looked at him and then said you didn’t want to meet. Didn’t want to come over. That you thanked Martin and also Joe and that you didn’t want the job back.

Joe thought maybe you’d text him.

Or that maybe you’d show up at his flat to explain.

But then he received no texts and no one showed up at his flat.

Should he text?

No.

It was Christmas.

There were other things to focus on. Like family. Gifts and food and family members he only really ever saw once a year around this time.

After an afternoon of opening gifts, Joe almost felt guilty for his wandering mind. People kept having to repeat themselves because Joe wouldn’t hear them the first time, his mind totally elsewhere.

With you, mostly.

You were probably also with your family, doing similar things.

Were you also thinking of him the whole time?

God.

Should he just text?

Casually wish you a merry Christmas?

Could he do that?

He could, right?

After that night?

After waking up to a lukewarm otherwise perfect dirty martini on his coffee table? One that he threw back before even thinking of breakfast, hair of the dog as his excuse.

Why didn’t you want your job back?

Was it him?

Had he done something wrong?

He couldn’t fucking shake it.

Couldn’t shake it when his mother told him to hurry because they were already running late, they’d miss their reservation if there were any more delays.

Couldn’t shake it when the host of the busy restaurant seated him and his whole family at a long table in the back, beautifully set for the sixteen of them.

Couldn’t shake it when they all got settled and a loud smashing of porcelain plates was heard from the kitchen, deserving a reaction from most tables in the restaurant.

And he grinned.

Reminded him of you.

Fuck it.

He was just going to text you.

Why not?

It was Christmas and he really did hope you were having a merry one.

Joe had his eyes on his phone when a waitress walked up to his family’s table, ready to explain the menu and take their drink orders.

“Good evening everyone, merry Chri–” your breath hitched in your throat when you saw who you were looking at.

Nearly made you cough, which caught his attention.

Joe looked up from his phone and couldn’t fucking believe it.

There you were.

His vision tunneled and his hearing went, because you looked absolutely beautiful, and he was just texting you, had just typed 'merry Christmas' and, there you were, saying the actual words, and God, what were the fucking odds?

You stared at each other a moment and you were unable to stop the corners of your mouth from curling upwards.

“Hi...” Joe mouthed, looking at you like there was no one else in the room, because for a moment, to him, there really wasn’t.

“Merry Christmas,” you finished, gathering yourself together as your eyes scanned his whole table.

It zoned Joe back into reality, and he listened as you explained the menu to his whole family. Listened as you answered a question his stepdad asked you. Sat back and watched you laugh at a stupid joke he made. Saw how you pulled a notepad from a pocket, clicked a pen and asked, “Can I get you started with some drinks?”

You caught how Joe stifled a chuckle. Saw him shake his head like he couldn’t actually believe it. Watched as he raised his eyebrows and grinned, eyes pulling away from the menu to look directly into yours.

Say it, you thought.

Fucking say it.

“I’ll um...” Joe pretended to hesitate. Took a moment to show you his stupid schoolboy smirk.

You realised you’d already started missing it.

Good thing he was here.

“I’ll have a dirty martini. Shaken, not stirred.”

---

The Taglisted

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taglist currently full, sorry

[himbos-hotline]

hi!! hihi I just wanted to say i commented on your fic yesterday too but you’ve fully rotted my brain with kenny as a did system (from one system to another, it’s hard to find good plural hcs for characters :/) so if you wanted to share any hcs or anything here that’d be so cool!!! :3

OKay okay so like!! I am also filled with brainrot

And when I tell yolu that I am totally right about kenny omega having DiD I mean I am competely right! For those that don't know what DiD is it stands for dissoctive identity disorder [formally known as MPD or mutiple personality disorder] affects about 1.5% of the population and its an trauma disorder formed during the early childhood stage [between 2-7 years old.] It is regularly caused by any cause of severe trauma [sexual/emotional/physical ect] combinded with the obvious stress that going through that stuff causes. Extreme childhood trauma causes the brain to fracture before the child can gain and/or form a connected sense of self being, this disconnect continues and every part of distinct "personality" becomes more and more disconnected and dissociated and slowly start to form their own existence and behaviour, thus becoming "parts" or "alters" or "headmates" that exist to protect the child as they grow and go through trauma rather than the child going through said trauma alone.

MPD was renamed DID in 1994 since it is a dissociative disorder [as well as a posttraumatic stress disorder] instead of a personality disorder. DID is often catagorised/explained as

(image description: A screenshot from a website that reads:"it is a disorder characterized by the presence of two or more identities or personality states that recurrently take control of the individual's behavior accompanied by an inability to remember important personal information … it is a disorder characterized by identity fragmentation rather than a proliferation of separate personalities")

Alters can take different forms, introjects [alters based on media- yes this can also mean real people], non human alters [things like animals, based on objects, demons and angels - this is common in DID systems since a lot of us that I have interacted with have religious trauma /told we were possessed]. anything really. Alters normally form for a job [for example, Hangman in our system is a caretaker, meaning they exist to take care of the body/headspace. Kenny in our system is a companion, which means he exists to be a friend] Switching [mostly involentary changing from alter to alter] can cause amnesia and theres three types of dissocitive anmenia:

Localized: meaning you cannot remember specific events, times, places

Selective: you can't details/events of a specific timeframe

Generalized: This is the least common type. You can’t remember anything about your identity and life history.

So how is it diagnosed and how does it relate to one Kenneth Omega? well looking at the DSM-5:

Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

This is probably the most strongest bit of evidence with Kenny having DID. Theres him; Kenny omega. the bright blue eyed, blond haired, dorky smile kenny who sings tina turner and drinks from bottles weirdly and wears onesies. The kenny we see during the early BTE, the days in DDT, vaguely around the same time with his early tagteam with Hangman. You know Kenny omega! we LOVE kenny omega!

And then we have the cleaner. That dark, evil hurtful one who doesnt care about anyone or anything just winning. that heartless, cold man who wears Kennys skin like a cloak. The first real time we see the cleaner [at least, in my opinion. and since this is my headcanon, my opinion is law /lh j] is just after Kota moves up to the heavyweight devision, leaving Kenny alone. He instantly turns into that coldhearted, empty soulless almsot killing machine whose so addicted to winning because thats the only thing that shows that he exists. With his black dyed curls and dark sunglasses and wild eyes. Theres, no Kenny omega left. Only the cleaner. Goofey in a way thats soulless, kind in a way thats manipultive.

If you need any proof that Kenny fucking LOOSES it before him and Kota reuinite. Just look at his eyes after he betrays AJ styles to become the leader of bullet club because theyre totally normal [lying through my teeth]

Also just this moment right after the formation of the elite, Kenny being the first one to drop the two sweet, almost like somethings just switch off in his body, the half open eyes. The twisted smile that looks almost like hes in pain? yeah...

Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events.

There isnt much like,. spoken about evidence about this at least what I can recall off the top of my head. Theres a few little bits where Kenny doesn't seem to recognise or remember bits about himself, his friends. The moment that I can remember off the top of my head, that makes me feel a little insane. If when Kenny and Hangman get their first wrestling figures. Kenny asks if Hangers figure has his "baby blues" to which Hanger replies "my eyes are green." Sure it could just be a little slip of his tongue, Kenny wrapped up too much in the excitement of having hi8s own little figure. But him and Hangman have known each other for *years* at this point. Wouldnt kenny remember something as trivial as hangmans eye colour? especially when hes right in front of him.

The person must be distressed by the disorder or have trouble functioning in one or more major life areas because of the disorder.

*agressively gestures at kenny omega* you think tha man functions?!

okay thats a little mean, and painfully honest. But I could go more deeper into this and I might because I do in fact, have problems when it comes to thinking about Kenny Omega. But theres two places where Kenny fails at existing and functioning. And thats his own health and relationships. We all know about his fucked up relationship with Kota Ibushi, its documented in enough essays and video essays and enough fanfic to not only sink a battleship but to also keep me awake at night. But the one I really wanna focus on because [suprise suprise, the hangkenny shipper wants to focus on hangkenny] i think its the biggest showing of his inability of function with relationships is his one with Hangman page:

Its..rocky to say the best, lowkey controlling at worse. and neither of them are really to blame. Kenny is struggling with the constant fighting between Hangman and the Bucks. Especially in this video [big thanks to @jacedoe Mars ily so much!!] Where the bucks are fighting over him with hangman and Kenny is litearlly being pulled from pillar to post. Not sure who to go to, much like a child dragged from parent to parent in a divorce. And you see him go from, midly tired and aching to upset and unable to control his emotions but at the same time so emotionally shut down that he just walks away after hugging the bucks.

Kennys relationships, romantic or otherwise shift and change so quickly that its almost like, he doesnt want to be loved, doesnt get it and thats exactly what it is, I personally think Kenny doesnt understand what love IS. He doesnt know what its really meant to feel like, like deep down hes never sure what it is. Hes never had it as a child.

AKA growing up with Don Callis, he mentions in his promo during all in that Don made him only focus on hockey, never having a birthday party/never being allowed to keep friends. that sounds like phycological/mental abuse to me. It sounds like mental abuse because it is. One of the most common malipulation practices for mental abuse is seperating people from anyone who can help them or see that its wrong. Now look at just how many times the Bucks have tried to show Kenny that Don is a peice of shit or that Jericho is only using kenny for his own uses before Kenny can be thrown away.

Callis also constantly putting Kenny down is also a sign of mental abuse. The half jokes when he smiles and pats Kenny on the shoulders afterwards why he just sits there...tell me thats not abuse.

The biggest, showing of the fact that Kenny went through abuse because of Don is the "vitimans." an uncessary and more then likely uncomfortable and invasive procedure on a child while Kenny hopes that itll bring him a little scrap of love? Its all a part of dons plan to keep kenny in the public eye but ulimately his.

what im saying is Kenny omega growing up with don callis, suffered horiffic mental and physical abuse [weve seen him hit Takeshita, so kenny would be no different] and thats impacted his ability to form and make relationships.

The disturbance is not part of normal cultural or religious practices.

I have nothing for this point, not knowing Kenny yknow. personally.

The symptoms cannot be due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (such as complex partial seizures).

Kenny doesnt drink or suffer from any blackouts as far as we know nothing worse than vertigo. again this is only that we know so like, I could be wrong

also just, this tweet from Kota, because who knows kenneth better than his golden lover?

[disclaimer: this is only distinctly talking about kayfabe. This headcanon isnt law and its all for fun, please dont send me hate asks.]

[eliteprepsat]

Think about how well you and your college counselor know each other. How often do you voluntarily talk to him or her? Counselors can be a tremendous resource of information and support beyond just enrolling you in classes, so if you don’t already, try regularly setting up times to meet with them.

To make the most of your time together, go in with strategic questions based on your curiosities and needs. Here are 6 questions to get you thinking:

1. HOW DO I FIND THE COLLEGES OR UNIVERSITIES THAT ARE BEST FOR ME? 🔍

The college or university that is right for you might not be the same one you’ve heard about from your friends, parents, or favorite TV show. Each school has a unique set of characteristics, and finding the one that best fits your preferences will set you up for future success. Imagine a place you would thrive in. Consider factors such as size, location, academic programs, extracurriculars, and overall campus culture. Your counselor can provide guidance for how to assess which schools best meet your criteria and are most likely to admit you.

If you already have a list of colleges that interest you, you can ask your counselor if your list looks balanced or if you could benefit from modifying it. He or she can also inform you of any upcoming college fairs where you can consult with individual college representatives.

2. WHAT SHOULD I BE DOING THIS YEAR TO PREPARE FOR COLLEGE?

Depending on what grade you are in, your counselor will have different recommendations for how you can best prepare for college. It’s helpful to devise a road map of sorts so you know you’re not missing any key steps. You can discuss topics such as choosing between the SAT or ACT, taking SAT Subject Tests, planning testing dates, stepping up your involvement in extracurricular activities, and making the most out of college visits.

3. AM I TAKING THE RIGHT COURSES? 📚

The requirements for which high school classes you must take vary by college and they may differ from your high school’s graduation criteria. For example, UC and CSU schools have what are called “a-g” class requirements, which stipulate the minimum type and number of courses you must take to be eligible to apply to these schools. Navigating these details with an expert can give you peace of mind as you piece together your schedule.

Not only can your counselor help you plan your class schedule so that you time everything appropriately, but he or she can help you choose the classes that will increase your competitiveness for college admissions. For example, if you’re thinking of applying with a major like engineering, you’ll want to take as many rigorous STEM classes as you can to demonstrate your interest and ability in that field.

4. HOW DOES MY SUMMER PLAN LOOK?

As part of getting to know you, colleges like to see how you spend your free time. Summers are a great opportunity to explore and develop interests and further your academic career. Your counselor can help you decide what to do this coming summer–whether it be an internship, enrichment course, paid or volunteer job, or academic summer program–and provide resources for finding such opportunities.

5. HOW DO I APPLY FOR FINANCIAL AID? 💰

College, as you may have heard, can be surprisingly pricey. Harvey Mudd, for instance, estimates the cost of attendance for the 2019-2020 year at about $79,539 per year. Fortunately, you can find plenty of financial assistance in the form of grants, loans, scholarships, and work study programs. Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application is the best way to ensure you qualify for as much of this aid as possible. The form can be a little confusing, so you might ask your counselor if your school offers any events that walk students and parents through filling it out.

Your counselor will also likely know about additional local or national scholarships that you may qualify for. Each independent scholarship has its own application requirements, so finding out early can help you budget your time and not allow any deadlines–aka free money–to pass you by.

6. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I SHOULD BE DOING TO IMPROVE MY CHANCE?

Especially if your counselor knows you well, he or she may have some additional tips for helping you get into your target colleges or universities. Perhaps you will be applying to schools that offer interviews and could benefit from interview pointers, or maybe your priority should be fine-tuning your college essays, increasing your GPA, or taking the SAT again to reach a target score. A great thing about talking with your counselor, rather than exploring the sea of online information alone, is that you get access to an interactive expert who knows you as an individual, able to tailor specific answers to your specific situation.

Hopefully you’ll use these six questions to get thinking about what topics you want to bring up with your counselor. Think about what areas you’re most unsure of, keeping in mind that the quality of the information you get depends on the quality of the questions you ask.

[cafeinthemoon]

Portrait of a Monk - Chapter XV

Chapter 15/?

Wordcount 3k

Title The Priest's Honeymoon (Part II)

Fandom Jujustu Kaisen

Pairing Geto Suguru X reader

Previous chapters

1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 . 14

Symbols

⭕ . ➕ . 🖤

Warning (s): Implied intimate/sexual activity; Geto continues to be overprotective lol

Tagging: @darling-imobsessed @wasurenagusaa I hope I tagged you correctly 😭 (if you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just send an ask or a message, or leave a comment on this chapter 😉)

A. N.: So this is just the continuation of the hot springs saga from the previous chapter lol By the end of this one, we will have a hint of what waits for reader in the next days. Also I know it's been hard to tell, but this is actually a dark story, with hints of mystery and thriller (I guess), but sometimes I wonder if I'm doing a good job in this sense. Idk it's jut something that comes to me from time to time whenever I sit down to work on it...

Anyways, hope you enjoy this new chapter ❤

The days you’ve spent at the hot springs were something you would define as a stay in a dimension designed for you, somewhere between dream and reality. 

The first reason for this was the place you were hosted: it was located in the middle of the mountains, and formed by a group of traditional buildings prepared to accommodate a large number of visitors with all the possible comfort; between one and another, there was what you would call a small marketplace with the appearance of an ancient village where all sorts of items were for sale, for all imaginable prices. About the baths themselves, though you couldn’t see all of them, you noticed they were of different types for all kinds of people or groups; Geto told you how each of them worked as you passed by their entries, and after being informed of their rules, you decided that the small, particular pool you had in your room was the only one you wanted to enter. The food was also wonderful, but you would almost always eat in your chambers, because you didn’t feel at will being surrounded by people during meals and your husband didn’t enjoy crowds as well. 

You would spend most of your time in your own room or taking walks at the secret gardens around your building, where only a few would stay (there was a little tax people had to pay to stay at the secluded parts of them, and Geto wouldn’t hesitate in giving up his money to have the trees and flowers only for him and his y/n-chan). You would rarely go out alone, and when you did, you would take a small, inoffensive curse with you that you should send back to Geto in case something went wrong; no one seemed to see it over your shoulder, except for one time when you were buying a souvenir at a tent and a child kept staring at you, and later when an elderly woman did the same, but in both cases, you just ignored them and didn’t say anything to your husband. 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

If right in the first day after your wedding night you had this sensation that Geto was having fun treating you like a doll, this feeling turned into certainty as the other days came. 

He would ask to do small things for you with no apparent reason, something that you didn’t see as unusual in the beginning – you were his disciple and lover, after all; but those favors became more and more frequent, regardless of your capacity of doing the said things. He would insist, for example, in feeding you just like he did in the morning of your travel, except when you were eating outside the room; usually, he would do it with you on his lap while you held the bowls and plates in your hands, but he wouldn’t mind placing you on the bed or the floor around the small table for quick meals you had at the bed area, keeping the recipients with him. 

Another thing he would do was to bathe and dress you up, from the undergarment to the shoes. At first, you hesitated in letting yourself exposed to his attentive sight, but you sort of let this feeling aside when you discovered those intimate, affectionate moments could be as enjoyable as the rest: the little noises of the warm water of the shower running down relaxed your senses as his hands would go across your skin, spreading fragrant soap and lotions while massaging your body, then rinsing it and taking you out to dry you with soft towels, his eyes glued on your curves; he would take you out of the bathroom nestled in his arms, wrapped in the towel, your face hidden in his chest, and put you on the bed as he prepared the clothes he would dress you with. There were times, while he was using the towel, when he would touch you with such insistence that he would end up laying you down and making love to you instead of putting you in your clothes. There was no way to know exactly when this would happen, but it wasn’t bad: after a mess of kisses, caresses and passion, he would carry you back to the bathroom and restart his session of care; then, back to the bed, he would lay you down again and take the place by your side, watching you fall asleep with a sweet numbness on your limbs. 

The moments when he would brush your hair and style it with the hairpins he bought for you in the previous weeks (you brought most of them with you) were also passionate, full of kisses and small, playful licks that tickled your neck and shoulders, when he would enjoy your timid laughter and the little startles you did when he approached to smell your hair as his fingers ran through it, dividing it in sections to make the styling easier. Sometimes, he would do your makeup as well, but in this aspect, he admitted to not be an expert, limiting himself to the place of an observer. 

Things were not different when you were together at the pool: sometimes he would enter the water first and stretch an inviting hand for you, who would accept it with modesty and take the place by his side, but other times he would take you in his arms and enter the water with you. He would use it to scratch your back and shoulders and massage your hands, but there was one time or two when he placed you on the opposite edge of the pool and caressed your feet; there were moments when you would just lay your head on his chest and close your eyes, after which you would only wake up on the bed, wrapped in soft blankets. There were also times when you would offer to caress his back and shoulders, when he would laugh at your worried observations about his muscles being too tense, assuming that stress must be the main cause for this, but he would prefer you to do this in the room, with the help of hydrating oils and lotions, just like you used to do at the temple before helping him out with the sacred garment. Honestly, despite your efforts in this sense, the only moments when he seemed to be relaxed were the ones when you were kneeling behind him, taking care of his hair, or the moments after he touched you. 

Regarding love, there wasn’t really anything you would complain about: despite his eagerness, Geto was never rude to you, neither he would insist in doing things you weren’t at will to try. You remembered this time when he was holding you too tight and you gave him a sign that you were finding hard to breathe, to which he relaxed his grip around you, covering you in kisses and apologizing right after; there was another day, after you woke up from a nap, when you said something about being sore and he immediately called an attendant to order painkillers and other necessary items, staying with you in his arms until you were able to go back to sleep without any discomfort. 

Unlike you did in your room at home, there you would spend most of the time in undergarments or baby dolls while Geto would stay in his robes: complete attire was almost reserved to the occasions in public. There were valid reasons for that, of course – the privacy granted by the distance from the people of the temple and the fact that it made it easier for you to undress for the hot springs being the main ones – but you were also sure that making the sight of your exposed figures something as casual as the air you breathe, facilitating the access to each other’s bodies, was the way he found to get you used to your new position as his wife. 

If it was a common thing in marriage about which people didn’t use to talk or just another eccentricity of your husband, you didn’t know, but it was working. 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

With the significant amount of people sharing the same space in the days that preceded Winter, it shouldn’t be surprising to notice cursed spirits of all sizes and shapes walking, crawling or flying around the buildings and the trees, but somehow you would startle whenever you caught a glimpse of them among the people. Maybe you weren’t used to see them moving with such freedom because Geto’s children would clean the temple’s surroundings on a regular basis, but would leave the stronger ones for your husband to consume, so they were never a real reason for worry there. 

The curses were as visible to Geto as they were to you, of course, but he was better in disguise it, acting like they were just part of the landscape; he would even tease you while you struggled to act normal. 

There was one time when you decided to have dinner at one of the restaurants near your building and spend some time at the place’s garden before going back to your room. You were passing by a small footbridge painted with red; you were in the middle of it, distracted by the water passing under it, when a hiss made you shiver: you looked up and found a curse which appearance resembled an insect upon the guardrail, a few centimeters of your face; the creature’s eyes were big, elliptical, divided in various smaller pieces like the eyes of a fly. You stopped for a few seconds, then stumbled back when you tried to keep distance from it, being supported by your husband, who held you in his arms and involved you in a tight hug. 

– Hm… what happened? – he whispered – Did some terrible monster scare my y/n-chan? 

There were some people approaching your spot at that moment, and you were afraid they would notice something strange when they reached you. 

– Geto-sama… why don’t we go back to the restaurant? – your cheeks heated up despite the cold air. 

He stared at you with the shadow of a smirk on his lips. 

– Back? Are you sure? 

The people were passing by you now. You glanced at them with anxiety, but they didn’t even look at your direction, nor seemed to sense the presence of the curse, that hissed at them with insistence. 

– Yes – you replied with low voice – My feet are hurting. 

Geto’s response was to raise a hand at the curse without looking at it. You thought he was going to turn it into a black orb, but he just made a movement with his fingers in a cutting movement; the curse let out one last, disgusting noise before exploding in the air. 

– Are they hurting this much, my dear? – he kissed the top of your head as his fingers caressed your nape – Do you want me to carry you back? 

You knew that one word from you and he would do as he proposed, but you weren’t uninhibited to the point of allowing this. 

– There’s no need for such thing, my Lord. 

He smiled with gentleness. 

– If you say so. 

You went back to the restaurant and he ordered some sweets to help you forget the episode. 

 

 

***

 

 

 

As expected, you weren’t taken to the hot springs only to rest: being that space a place built by the people and for the people of the outside world, as you used to think of anyone who wasn’t part of your community, Geto would obviously take the opportunity to teach you about the real nature of your relationship with them. 

The main role you had regarding the common people was to collect or to eliminate the curses inadvertently created and carried by them, in a sort of exchange of favors: you would refine your skills with the use of cursed energy and have an endless source of power at your will while they would be released from the suffering caused by the presence of the curses, aggravated by the fact that most of them had no idea of their existence. 

One evening, you left a restaurant and were taking a walk, as you used to do before returning to your room. You passed by a narrow path made of stones, surrounded by wooden benches on both sides. In one of them, you saw an elderly man alone, distracted by the landscape, holding a cane before him with both of his fragile hands; on the upper side of his back, there was a small curse sitting and holding him like a baby monkey carried by its mother. 

You looked at Geto and noticed he was observing the scene with vivid interest. 

– Remember when I told you about the people who will come to us by this time of the year? – he whispered without looking at you – Let me show you what we do in favor of them. 

With your arms entwined, you approached the old man. 

Your husband started the conversation using his sweetest tone, one that he used whenever he wanted to make sure the listeners would give him attention without sensing the contact as an intrusion: 

– Evening, my good man. It is a beautiful weather despite the time of the year, don’t you think? 

The man gave you both a tired smile. 

– Well, well, it’s really beautiful, just like the couple I have before me! And I’m glad I was able to stay here to appreciate it. I’ve been feeling so tired lately, you know? – and shrugging – It’s like I’m always carrying a heavy weight on my back. I don’t know what it might be, but it gets worse by this hour. 

You didn’t say anything in response, waiting for Geto to lead the contact. You turned to him and saw a strange glimmer in his eyes when he heard what the other man said, but the gentleness didn’t disappear from his voice. 

– Would you mind if I check it out, my friend? It’s really sad to hear that you haven’t enjoying your stay as much as you could because of this. 

The old man stared at the young priest with curiosity and a bit of suspicion, as if he couldn’t see how this stranger could do anything about a problem that he clearly saw as insoluble. 

– Really? –  and with a cunning note on his voice – Do you know some medicine for this, my boy? 

A slight blush came up to Geto’s cheeks when he replied. 

– Well, it’s even better. Now, just take a deep breath and relax… 

Without waiting for a response, he stretched a hand toward the man and absorbed the small curse, hiding the orb on his sleeve. It happened so fast that the man didn’t have time to question or to get scared by the gesture; instead, he moved on his seat and found out he was able to straight up his spine without difficulty. He even stood up with relative ease, despite depending on his cane for this. 

He raised his eyes to you two with surprise and joy. 

– What is it? It's... gone! – he touched his back and laughed – I’m feeling as light as a feather! I feel like I could fly! I have no idea what you did, my boy, but it seems a miracle! A miracle! 

Geto observed him with sympathy. You looked at that elderly citizen, once soaked in sadness but now almost jumping like a child, and something in his face made your heart warm. So, this was the work you were going to dedicate your time to in the near future – you were anxious and a bit insecure about your own role in it, but witnessing the good results of your husband’s act calmed down your worries. 

The man offered a good payment for the service, but Geto refused it. You said goodbye to him and followed your way back to your room. 

 

***

 

You were snoring softly with your head leaning on your husband’s chest, your legs surrounding his body while you rested on his lap, his arms keeping you warm, close to him, as a smooth hand massaged your lower back. 

Moments ago, Geto brought you back to the room, after which you were bathed and taken to the bed, where he made love to you. Now, he was leaning his back on a pile of pillows while having you with him, a bit tired from the walking and the subsequent, intimate activity. 

That time, you were the first to talk. 

– Geto-sama... – you called without opening your eyes. 

– Yes, my dear? 

– Why didn’t you accept that old man’s offer? – you asked with a sleepy voice – It’s your job, isn’t it? 

– It wasn’t necessary. That time, I just wanted to use the occasion to show you what to expect once they start coming to us at the temple. Besides, the curse wasn’t that difficult; in different circumstances, I’d just make it disappear. Now, I’ll probably use it as a vigilant or something. Wouldn't it be absurd to accept money for this? – he giggled – It couldn’t be even called a work, right? 

You chuckled. 

– Yes, probably. 

– The differences between what we did today and what is waiting for us in the next days are the quantity of curses we will have to exorcise or absorb and the variety of them – he continued – Some people carry more than one curse at the same time, and even more than one type depending on how they were born. There will be people desperate for help, trusting in everything we will say to them, while others will be coming for the first time, full of suspicions. In any case, we will do what we need to solve their problems, and they will pay us for it, and everyone will be happy. 

You sighed. 

– It sounds easy when you talk, my Lord. 

He laughed. 

– Really? 

– Yes, but I like it – you smiled, opening your eyes for a bit – It makes me feel safe. 

His hand patted your back and tickled your skin, making you shiver and smile. You sensed him inclining to kiss your hair. 

– And that’s good to hear.

[nythroughthelens]

(This is one of the most personal pieces of writing about myself and my snow photography that I have ever shared. It includes Cure lyrics, a smattering of beautiful painful memories, etc. It was shared 5 years ago when my book New York in the Snow made it into The NY Times.)

It's early morning. I am 10 years old.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table furiously scribbling details onto a blueprint that I've painstakingly drawn over the course of the last five days.

The blueprint is for my own chocolate factory fueled by my fourth reading of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The drawing and its details are etched onto blank newsprint sheets that my family refers to as scrap paper.

---

My father fell into his job as a union pressman for the Daily News out of necessity.

He had just moved to New York City with next to nothing aside from his wife, a suitcase full of clothing, and a few dollars.

Having only completed a Junior High School level education in the poor farming community he lived in growing up, he didn't have a lot of choice when it came to joining the workforce.

When someone introduced him to the newspaper Pressman's Union, his life changed. The union took him in and trained him in the brute art of loading printing presses endlessly.

He worked nights for the next 20 years loading printing presses for the Daily News. His knees and back suffered as did his general mood. He was an irascible character that I rarely saw. But he was an irascible character that kept a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs.

In 1993, he moved from loading printing presses for the Daily News to doing the same exact thing for the New York Times. This was a huge deal for him. Even though he was still breaking his back literally and metaphorically, the clout of working for the Times vs the Daily News was enough to make him smile (a rarity) and celebrate when he got confirmation of the upward move to the Times.

I grew up with an understanding that the New York Times was a paper that held weight in the minds of many. But it was the place where other people got mentioned and written about. It was a place to admire other people, not the people I grew up with or even people like myself who were living on the bitter edges of poverty barely eeking out an existence.

Because of my father, I grew up with newspaper.

I relished the large amounts of blank newsprint scrap paper that existed in our house. It was the kindling for my escapist imagination.

On this blank newsprint canvas I would scrawl out information about my endless Dungeon and Dragons campaigns and story arcs, and draw blueprints for my future fantasy wardrobes reminiscent of the one in Chronicles of Narnia.

---

It's a grim, rainy afternoon. I am 25 years old.

I have just celebrated my birthday and I am sitting on a couch I rescued from the trash at one point.

I have been living on my own for the last seven years having been disowned by my parents due to religious differences.

The only break in the loud silence of being disowned came in the form of a phone call from my mother when I was 20 years old. She called to let me know that my father died.

I start listening to a Sigur Ros album.

The music swells to an emotive crescendo. It's the type of crescendo that propagates self-reflection. I start to try to imagine my future and start bawling. It's not pretty tears that I cry but rather it's soul-wrenching ugly streams of futility and despair that pour down my face.

I've been working seven days a week in dead-end jobs for years and I am so tired.

My roommate and his girlfriend come home right at that moment. He sees me on the couch bawling and sits next to me. Without any words exchanged, we hug for a good half hour while I sob uncontrollably. I feel his ribs poking out and it reminds me of how fragile existence is.

I go to sleep that night the same way I have been going to sleep for years, recalling a blizzard that happened when I was a child.

My father had to stay home from work that night since the trains were not running. Our neighbors offered use of their sleds and my parents happily took them up on the offer.

As soon as my father stepped outside, his face erupted into a huge grin as he pulled me and my brothers on the sled through the streets of Flushing.

The wind kissed our faces and the snow swirled like confetti in a ticker-tape parade.

I looked up at the street lights and realized that in that moment, everything was full of wonder and magic.

And I returned to this moment every night for years when bedtime was the only thing I looked forward to.

----

It's almost midnight. It's the Winter of 2012.

I am feverishly checking the weather forecast to figure out when the first snowflakes will fall to the ground.

I listen to The Cure - Plainsong on repeat. It's my ritual before every snowstorm.

The chimes start and as the lyrics kick in, I get goosebumps:

"I think it's dark and it looks like it's rain, you said

And the wind is blowing like it's the end of the world, you said

And it's so cold, it's like the cold if you were dead

And you smiled for a second

I think I'm old and I'm feeling pain, you said

And it's all running out like it's the end of the world, you said

And it's so cold, it's like the cold if you were dead

And you smiled for a second

Sometimes you make me feel

Like I'm living at the edge of the world

Like I'm living at the edge of the world

It's just the way I smile, you said"

I have felt like I've been living at the edge of the world for what seems like an eternity.

It's these lyics I hear in my mind when I walk seven or eight miles in snowstorms trying to capture what loneliness, isolation, and nostalgia have felt like trying to survive alone in New York City.

I lose myself everytime I go out in the snow.

I lose the feeling of hunger gnawing its way through my stomach for years.

I lose the crushing feeling of futility I used to feel heading to endless dead-end jobs hoping to keep the lights on for another month.

I lose the years of wondering if my family ever thinks of me.

I lose the bits of myself that suffered the most.

I lose the anger, the sadness, the loss.

I am cleansed by the flakes as they flutter in the night air and land on my nose and eyelashes.

I am, momentarily, that child in my neighbor's sled looking up at streetlights marveling at the wonder of existence.

----

It's today.

I walk to the newsstand.

I open the New York Times and see my book, New York in the Snow, staring back at me.

I grin for what seems like an eternity.

----

(shared before another season of sharing my snow photography)

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Day 2: Cannibalism

(Trigger Warnings: descriptions of hunger pangs/cravings, eating/drinking, gore, implied murder, talk of death/dying, blood/organs, disembowelment/dismemberment/dissection, knives/surgical tools, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

(This plot is meant to take place before the Horror Route at the beginning of ISWM Part 2. A little while ago, I made a few EgoPats to act as parallels to Mark’s characters. One of them is actually part of this story. You can find more information about him here. And if you’d like to learn more about the mob he and Murdock work for, go here. Murdock/Murderplier belongs to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe, but if you’re interested in my personal headcanons on him, go here.)

Day 1  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5 Day 6  Day 7

It was very typical for one to be excited or impatient while awaiting a delivery. Especially if that delivery involved food.

Caliban knew that type of excitement and impatience all too well. Though he supposed those emotions weren’t the same as most people’s. His definition of “food” was much, much different than that of the average person.

He paced around his living room, feeling an odd combination of happiness and frustration. Following a normal diet eighty percent of the time may have been boring, but he needed to do so in order to stay healthy. Nights like this happened about once a month or so, and the goods he’d be receiving would last a nice, long while if they were correctly stored. However, Caliban could still only afford to satisfy his cravings a few times per week.

So, when nights like tonight came around, he always had to remind himself to savor them.

At the sound of rustling, Caliban turned his head to look at the hutch that took up nearly half of his living room. Setting it up could’ve very well driven a man to drink, but the struggle had been worth it. His little confidant deserved only the best.

Snare lingered by the entrance, standing on his hind legs to paw at the wire screen. Caliban sat down on the sofa, then reached over to unlatch the door and pull it open. The hare clambered out and easily leapt onto the sofa, curling up on his owner’s lap.

Caliban gently stroked Snare’s back. “Are you hungry, too? Don’t worry, he’ll give me the signal soon enough.” He sighed. “I wish I knew what was taking him so long.”

Though he’d never tried his hand at any drugs, his instincts told him that what he most craved was a lot like one. It was filling and savory, obviously, but whenever Caliban got to take care of that one part of his appetite, he just. . .felt something. For whatever reason, he couldn’t describe it, but he knew that the feeling had similarities to a high.  

The doorbell-esque sound of a cellphone ringing broke his meditation. As Caliban flinched, Snare bounded across the sofa to the end table, using his paws and nose to push the phone towards his owner.

“Thanks, buddy,” Caliban chuckled. He tapped the phone’s screen to read the message he’d just received.

I’m here. You gonna do your part of the job or what?

As if on cue, Caliban’s stomach began growling. (It’d actually been growling for the better part of the day, but he’d been trying  to tune it out.)

Caliban felt a frightening smile etch its way across his features as he typed out a reply.

Is Soylent Green people? Don’t worry your pretty head. I’ll be right down.

He gathered Snare up in his arms before he made his way down the hall to his bedroom, closing the door behind them. He entered his walk-in closet, pushed a few boxes aside to reveal a well-hidden door in the corner, and was suddenly maneuvering himself down the steep, concrete staircase that led to an area that had long-since been condemned.

The lights flickered as Caliban entered what used to be a security office. The desks and filing cabinets he’d found down here had been replaced by an oven, a refrigerator, a huge chest freezer, a chamber vacuum sealer, a utility sink, and a block kitchen island.

Three people were already down here, waiting for him (well, technically two people were waiting. The third one—who was lying on a tarp, currently being supported by the aforementioned island—wasn’t quite capable of waiting. Or doing anything, for that matter).

Murdock leaned against the wall. He twisted the chain of his necklace between his gloved fingers, turning the brass pendant into a blur as it spun to and fro.

“Finally, he arrives!” Murdock announced.

“You’ve only been here for a couple minutes,” Caliban pointed out. He set Snare down on the floor, then looked over the corpse on the island. His clothing was covered in bloodstains, the thick, red liquid still oozing onto the tarp. Caliban grabbed a few buckets from one corner of the room and placed them around the island, just in case the blood wound up making more of a mess than anticipated.

Murdock continued. “And? Time is precious! You can never get enough of it!”

“Well, is theirs almost up, or. . ?” Caliban drew closer, gesturing towards the person Murdock was standing beside. They were someone Caliban didn’t recognize; for some odd reason, their features were difficult to describe. They’d been sat down on a folding chair, very clearly unconscious yet not bound or gagged in any way.

Murdock shook his head. “Nope. They’re not for interrogation.”

“Then why did you bring them here?” Caliban asked, folding his arms across his chest. “Two bodies would’ve kept the pantry full for months!”

“For once, I wouldn’t recommend that,” Murdock smirked. “This is part of their training, not hazing.”

Caliban tilted his head, glancing at The Newcomer before he put two and two together.

“. . .Oh! Alright, my mistake,” he laughed. “If you were gonna let them tag along, why didn’t you tell me earlier? You know I’m always happy to help with demonstrations.” While he spoke, he went through the island’s drawers, producing oils, seasonings, a plate, a leather chef roll and a stainless steel case. He set a grill pan on the stove and turned the dials, igniting two of the burners.

“It was a last-minute decision on my part,” Murdock admitted. “The target managed to knock them out before I killed him. I did think about dropping them off at the base, but then I figured this would be more convenient for both of us.”

A startled scream suddenly tore through the air. Caliban returned his focus to The Newcomer, discovering that they were now wide-awake. He also discovered that Snare had apparently climbed into their lap and was currently nipping at their nose.

“Whoa, hey! No! Snare, get down!” Caliban commanded as he rushed over. “Heel, Snare! Now!”

Snare stopped biting in favor of hopping down to the floor. He obediently sat at Caliban’s feet.

As Caliban scooped up his pet, he gazed at The Newcomer, almost automatically meeting their deep, gray eyes (which would’ve sold for an absolute fortune, considering how uncommon that color was). The Newcomer braced themself against the folding chair, and it wouldn’t have taken a psychic to guess that images of a Monty Python movie were flashing through their brain.

“Sorry, sorry! I hope he didn’t scare you too much,” Caliban told them. “He usually doesn’t do stuff like that unless I tell him to.”

The Newcomer blinked at him. “Attack bunnies are a real thing now?” They eventually muttered, still breathing deeply.

“They are around here,” Murdock replied. The Newcomer craned their neck to face him, mouth gaping open in surprise.

“Murdock? How—what happened? Did he get away?”

Murdock chuckled, shaking his head. “You made a rookie mistake. But don’t worry; you’ll still be able to help out with this job.”

“Where are we?”

“You’re in my basement,” Caliban answered. “Well, okay, it’s technically not a basement, but it’s underground, so it kind of counts.”

The Newcomer’s expression shifted from panicked to confused as they glanced around the room. Their eyes caught the panel of glass near the door, which offered a good vantage point of the platform outside.

“Wait, hold on—that’s one of the old subway tunnels,” they proclaimed. “I thought they’d all been abandoned a long time ago. After that one flood.”

“Correct! Before my house was a house, it just so happened to have been built on top of this particular one,” Caliban explained. “Still not sure how the realtors could’ve missed the passageway that leads down here.” He glanced over his shoulder, nodding to the stairway.

The Newcomer continued to stare at him (or at Snare. It was hard to tell).

Before they could say anything else, Murdock placed a hand on their shoulder, prompting them to slowly rise from the chair. “You’ve been coached on taking out targets, but you still need to learn about what to do after the fact.” He then gestured towards Caliban.

“This is Cal. He’s the first guy I think of whenever I’ve got a body to dispose of.”

Caliban jokingly clutched at his heart. “Aww, ‘Doc! It’s one thing for you to bring me dinner every month, but now you’re thinking about me, too? Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

Murdock barked a laugh. “Ha! You wish!”

“Dinner. . ?” The Newcomer repeated. Their eyes widened as they looked around Caliban at the island, as they finally realized they were in the same room as a corpse. Their face paled as they slowly looked back at their mentor’s accomplice.

Caliban offered a toothy grin in response, wondering if they could see their reflection in the silver cap where one of his canines used to be. “There’s plenty of methods for making people disappear, but I personally think this one is the least wasteful.”

The Newcomer swallowed a lump in their throat. “‘Waste not, want not.’”

Caliban chortled as he set Snare down. “I like this one already!”

Murdock smiled, then cleared his throat. “Alright, that’s enough chit-chat. We’ve got work to do.”

“Right, right.” Caliban nodded. He swiftly crossed the room to wash his hands before donning the black gloves and pinstripe apron that hung near the sink. After that, he approached the island. Murdock guided The Newcomer over, gently pushing them to stand at the other side of the island, opposite of Caliban.

Caliban hauled a jacket off of the corpse, then carefully undid the buttons of the corpse’s shirt. As he’d suspected, an unnecessary amount of stab wounds adorned the torso.

“So,” Caliban began, peering back and forth between Murdock and The Newcomer. “How exactly did this happen?”

The Newcomer glanced at Murdock, who nodded at them. They then reached out to point at two lacerations on the corpse’s abdomen. “I got him in the stomach a couple times, but, uh, I guess I didn’t move away from him quickly enough.”

“That’s where I came in,” Murdock piped up. “After they went down, I went for his lungs.”

“I assumed so,” Caliban replied. “How long did he last after that?”

“Five minutes, I think.”

Caliban whistled. “That must’ve been a sight to see.”

Murdock did that thing where he was half-nodding, half-shrugging. “I wanted him to suffer, but I couldn’t drag it out as long as I would’ve liked.”

The Newcomer chewed their lip, gazing down at their shoes. “Sorry. . .”

Caliban opened the steel case while simultaneously unfastening the leather chef roll; the former revealed organized rows of surgical tools, and the latter exposed a collection of butcher’s knives. All of these instruments were clean, but the nicks here and there on the blades attested to the fact that they’d been well-used and well-loved.

“Let’s say you need to hold onto your target for whatever reason,” Caliban began. “First things first: you’ll probably want to remove the internal organs. They’ll just speed up the decay, and trust me, rot is a smell that will get you unwanted attention.”

He took a scalpel into his hands and held it towards The Newcomer.

The Newcomer began to reach for the scalpel, but hesitated. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

Caliban smirked, tilting his head. “You’re afraid of a little blood?”

“Obviously I’m not,” The Newcomer protested hotly. “I’ve just. . .never opened up a person before. And, well, this is your. . .food. . .for tonight, and I don’t want to mess anything up.” They trailed off sheepishly.

Always one to appreciate sass, Caliban snickered. “Well, thank you for being considerate.” He paused, thinking. He fished around the case before bringing out a Satterlee saw. “How do you feel about division, then?”

The anxiety left The Newcomer’s face with disturbing speed. “Oh, yeah. I can handle that.”

“Great! That’s the second rule for messy work: a body is relatively easier to hide when it’s been cut up into sections.” Caliban beamed as he passed the tool over to them. “Go ahead and start on the arm and leg on your side. Once I’ve gotten my entree out, I’ll get out of the way so you can remove the other two.”

As The Newcomer followed these instructions, Caliban glided his scalpel about the body’s chest, making a deep Y-incision. He pulled the flesh back until it was hanging like the sides of a book with a broken spine. The pinkish-red muscle he exposed glistened under the light.

He took his trusty (yet uncreatively named) rib shears, hacking at the bones it was meant for and placing the pieces of said bones off to the side. Upon sight of the heart, he grinned, licking his lips. He used a pair of metz scissors to sever the atriums, aorta, and superior vena cava. Once the arteries were removed, he hurriedly carried the organ over to the stove, where it landed against the grill pan with a sizzling splat.

Caliban paused, then went back to the corpse to collect its thymus, which he soon put beside the heart. (He would’ve liked to prepare it more—sweetbreads were typically best after being marinated—but his jaw was itching and his stomach was churning and he needed to eat some pieces of a human-person and he needed to do it soon.)

The grilling would take some time, so Caliban could afford to go back and forth between the stove and the corpse. He dug through the island’s drawers and brought out a handful of large plastic bags. As he began slicing away at the liver, he called over his shoulder, “‘Doc? Could you check the buckets, please? How full are they?”

“Sure,” Murdock replied. He paced around the island, then declared, “There’s a good amount in one of ‘em.”

“Can you get my drink started, then?” Caliban asked.

Murdock gave a melodramatic sigh. “Oh, fine. But only because your hands are full.” He took one of the buckets and carried it across the room, pouring some of its contents into a silvery, odd-looking machine in the corner. The device whirred and rattled at the press of a button.

“What’s that?” The Newcomer, who’d looked up just in time to watch, inquired.

“A gift from my partner.” Caliban remarked as he shoved the dripping liver into one of the bags. “She commissioned some underground mechanic to make special adjustments to a blood collection mixer; now it can process blood until it’s suitable for digestion. She gave it to me on our elopement anniversary.”

“She also apparently calls it The HumaniTea 2000,” Murdock pointed out, snickering.

Caliban sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yes. Yes, she does, and I’m still not sure how to feel about it.” (This was somewhat a lie, actually. He’d managed to love R.D. even more than he already had for coming up with a title like that.)

“Wow.” The Newcomer stated. “She sounds awesome.”

Caliban smiled softly. “She really is.”

R.D. was out of town on important business—selling and collecting certain chemical samples for her future experiments. He couldn’t wait for her to get back.

He carried the bag o’ liver over to the vacuum chamber to be sealed before depositing it into the freezer. This process was repeated with the rest of the corpse’s organs (kidneys, spleen, intestines, the whole shebang. Except for the brain; that would take a lot more time to remove, so he’d have to save it for later).

All the while, a tantalizing aroma quickly filled the room. It wasn’t like beef; maybe a bit similar to pork, but only by a bit. It was completely and utterly unique. And delicious.

“They’re all off,” The Newcomer announced. Caliban turned to see that, indeed, the corpse’s limbs had been neatly detached from the torso.

“You work fast,” Caliban complimented. 

The Newcomer smiled, although their expression was clearly conflicted. Not nauseous or existential—just uncertain.

Caliban knowingly chuckled, looking over at the grill and back at them. “Smells good, doesn’t it?”

Having been caught off guard, The Newcomer suddenly found the adjacent wall extremely interesting. “I. . .guess so.”

“Are you hungry? There’s plenty here if you’d like some.”

“Ah, no thank you,” The Newcomer coughed. “I—I appreciate  your hospitality, but I’ve never had a very big appetite.”

Caliban shrugged as he returned to the heart and thymus. “Understandable. We’ve all got different tastes.”

Murdock groaned. “That better not have been intentional!”

“So what if it was?” Caliban instantly challenged as he garnished the organs with black pepper, sea salt, and a bit of garlic. “What, you’re the only one allowed to make morbid puns?”

“I should be,” Murdock scoffed. “Since I’m the only one capable of executing them properly.”

“I find that a bit hard to digest,” Caliban argued, immediately grabbing his favorite cleaver from the leather roll. 

Murdock responded by fishing his butterfly from one of the many pockets in his coat.

“What do I need to do next?” The Newcomer interjected, piping up before their mentor could start twirling his weapon. “About the limbs, I mean.”

Caliban, neither taking his eyes off Murdock nor lowering his cleaver, said, “There should be some butcher paper in the drawer you’re standing by. Just wrap them up and put them in the freezer.” He paused. “Actually, leave one arm out.”

“Why?” The Newcomer asked.

It took a few seconds before Murdock slowly returned his butterfly to its place. Caliban squinted at him, then exchanged his cleaver for a skinning knife.

“The bones need to be separated from the meat,” he explained, handing the new blade over to The Newcomer, who nodded and set about their new task.

Soon enough, the heart and thymus were finally ready. After Caliban transferred them from the grill to the plate, he swiftly approached the refrigerator, grabbed a can of Diet Coke and poured half of it into a chilled glass. 

A light on The HumaniTea 2000’s console started flickering, punctuated by loud beeping. Caliban raced to put his soda on the machine’s drip tray. Freshly processed blood flowed into the glass, dark red swirling throughout black, carbonated liquid. He gently shifted the glass in his hand to mix his beverage, then took a sip. 

Such a strong, coppery flavor should’ve been expected to clash with the delicateness of sugar, but in Caliban’s humble opinion, the way they mixed together was delectable.

He carried his drink over to the clear end of the tabletop, setting it down next to his plate. Without any further delay, he took a fork and steak knife into his hands and began slicing away at his supper. 

Caliban crammed the first piece into his mouth and automatically felt himself start to relax. The taste that coated his tongue was rich, salty, tender. He gave a contented hum as he chewed, already carving off his next bite. A voice in his head begged for more, more, moremoremOREMOREMORE—

A soft thud caught his attention; he knew from experience that it was Snare, who was stomping one of his little feet. Caliban glanced down to see the hare staring up at him with excited amber eyes.

“Oh! Hold on, buddy,” he told his pet. He turned his attention to The Newcomer.

They’d sliced a few good chunks of flesh away from the arm, and had already wrapped those chunks in layers of paper.

“That should be enough,” Caliban stated. “But there’s one more thing to do.”

The Newcomer looked a bit surprised, but still nodded. “Alright?”

Caliban reached into the tool case until he found a small, angled bone saw and a pair of sharp tweezers. He moved them towards The Newcomer. “Cut those fingers off.”

“Don’t forget to pull the nails out,” Murdock added.

“Didn’t you say that was a torture method?” The Newcomer asked.

“It is, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it after the target’s dead.” Murdock shrugged. “Plus, you can always do some torturing when you’re up for your first kill.”

With that, The Newcomer spent the next couple minutes shearing at the corpse’s knuckles. Once the fingers were off, they held them towards Caliban. “Are you gonna treat these like mozzarella sticks?”

Caliban laughed. “I have before, but not tonight.”

The Newcomer tilted their head questioningly. “Why’d you have me cut them off, then?”

“Give one to Snare.” Caliban gestured towards his pet.

The Newcomer’s eyes widened. They took a step back.

Caliban rolled his eyes. “Relax. He won’t hurt you again. He only bit you earlier because he probably thought you were dead.” He reached down to scratch Snare’s ears. “Fingers are his chocolate; give him one and he’ll be your friend forever.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t reassure me,” The Newcomer snarked. After some more convincing, they eventually approached the hare. They held one of the fingers above Snare’s head, to which he stood on his hind legs, pawing at it.

“Sit,” Caliban commanded, firm but not unkind. “Snare. C’mon, buddy. Sit.”

Snare obeyed, the adorableness of his twitching nose not taking away from how surprisingly exasperated he looked.

“Good boy!” Caliban nodded to The Newcomer, who then dropped the finger. Snare immediately snatched it up, holding it between his paws as he nibbled at the flesh.

“Breaking the laws of nature and still looking cute, ” they mused.

Caliban raised an eyebrow. “Rabbits are complete herbivores. Hares are omnivores and scavengers. Haven’t you ever watched a nature documentary?”

“No,” The Newcomer answered stalwartly. “Because the human side of the world is already nasty enough. I’m not gonna watch baby animals dying!”

“Fair point,” Caliban admitted. “But you have to realize how ironic it makes this.”

“‘Ironic?’” A grim, sly, sarcastic smile spread across Murdock’s face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 @that-bat  @sammys-magical-au    @insane4fandoms  @ayoreneehere  @anxious-ace   @dleep-deprivation-idk-jelp   @overemotional-cactus  @congratscat   @bloodjewel05  @symphony7  @neons-trash-blog  @annoyeddeadartist  @butterboyfly @i-dont-like-it-here-please-help @echoing-night  @i-am-not-a-twinkie  @goopiguess  @akladyathena  @xyzkiss @bispaceace  @alexpangender  @this1person  @4b-eraserlee  @Itanonymous @starshinebb  @frogwitch929  @alexthen3rd  @destinys-dreamer  @ijustlikeyoutubeman @leechinggoose @justaweird0makingart  @bee-the-matpat-simp  @axol-here

[diabolicjoy]

Do you have any tips to get into ceramics? I've been thinking of trying it but I have no idea where to start and some guides are so overwhelming :( Like what clay & paint do you use? Do you need a special surface or other materials for it? (If it's alright to ask! No presh to answer btw)

Your works are so lovely, I'm always looking forward to what you make next! 💗

hi beloved. my first advice usually is to find a pottery studio where you can take classes... a teacher’s guidance + every material you need available to you will make things way easier for you in the beginning. but assuming that you’re trying to learn by yourself at home because you can’t take classes right now for your own reasons... i’ll try to give you the most basic guide on ceramics here, hopefully it will clear a few questions you might have? btw i feel the need to point out that i only started making ceramics less than a year ago, so there’s still a looooot that i don’t know yet. technicalities like firing & glazes i’m a bit ignorant of, so i won’t be covering much of that :s again, this is very basic! i’m simplifying it just to help you feel less overwhelmed c: <3

1. ok first thing first, you asked about the surface. at home i placed a sheet of unvarnished wood over my table & that’s where i do all my pottery work. of course there are many other options, you can read more about this topic here

2. there’s a few different options for clay, differents colors & types that you might like more. it’s explained perfectly on this video :^) i personally use white stoneware.

3. you need to wedge your clay!!! this is crucial. do it on the surface you picked from #1. here’s a very good tutorial.

4. ok now you can build whatever you want!

• you take your clay (you can use a wire to cut it from the big block of clay), wedge it, & start your work. i always have a small bucket of water & a small sponge with me when i’m working. use a humid sponge to smooth the clay if needed.

• i usually leave it at a shelf to dry a bit for a day or two, then it’s a bit more hard & you can’t make many changes (as in, adding new stuff to it) but it’s a good moment to carve it a bit more if necessary & smooth it out with the humid sponge. sculpt the little details etc. i recommend buying a tool set like this, it’ll make your job easier for this part

5. firing. like a said before i’m still not very familiar with the technicalities since i don’t own a kiln & my teachers are the ones handling that part :p but what you need to know is that your piece will need to be fired twice in order to become actual ceramic. your clay needs to be dry to go into the kiln. the first firing is called bisque. after that, you need to glaze your piece & then fire it a second time. the glaze will basically turn you work glass-like & food safe. here’s a very informative guide on firing <-

6. there’s are many (many!!) different colors & types of glaze. you can go to the amaco website & look at their charts just so you can have an idea. you can use either colored glazes or a transparent one. underglazes are used to ‘draw’ on & decorate you work. i personally use underglaze to paint before bisque firing bc i feel like the colors looks less faded that way. after bisque, i simply retouch little areas if necessary before applying the transparent glaze over it. you can use the underglaze only after bisque as well. there’s also a bunch of underglaze transfer sheets on etsy that looks super cool & fun to try! one thing you’ll notice about both glazes & underglazes is that the colors do not look nearly the same before & after firing. the colors look rather dull & opaque, but they’ll be vibrant after firing. it’s my favorite surprise heh

ok i think that’s it! this is obviously super SUPER basic, there’s so much little details that you’ll eventually learn but i just wanted to help you situate yourself a bit because i understand how overwhelming it can be when you’re learning something from scratch & alone. my tip is: join facebook groups for pottery, there are SO many & people are always happy to help if you have any questions. i also recommend that you go buy your materials in person if possible instead of online, surely the worker helping you will be able to guide you better on the many products that are out there & answer the questions you might have about it. & about the kiln, most pottery studios offer their kiln for people that aren’t students. the one i go to price it based on the total weight of the pieces i bring.

hopefully that was helpful! 🥰🙏

[skye-huntress]

The Witch from Mercury Reaction

Episode 10: “Circling Thoughts”

Zanelli is persistent. Why is Aerial given an exemption? If you have to ask, the answer is probably not the one based on common sense. If Gundams were outlawed for killing pilots, of course Aerial would get an exemption. But that’s not the real reason why they outlawed Gundams, which means Delling has his own reasons why he chooses not to act in this case. Which explains why Zanelli has been suspecting him of having his own schemes.

Seriously, another assassination plot from Jeturk? Prospera had already caught on to his schemes the first time, you’d think he’d be more cautious after she has consistently outsmarted and outmanoeuvred everyone.

Speaking of Delling scheming, there might be a reason why those Lfrith variants appear behind him in the OP

That song isn’t going to be a recurring thing, is it?

So she’s happy because her Mio-Mio and Aerial are returning, and she knows the length of Miorine’s trip down to the hour right off the top of her head. Of course, she does.

So, Shaddiq has been postponing the challenges against Suletta, is he an ally, or is there an ulterior motive. She didn’t get any challenges before. Either everyone was waiting for the three Houses to make their moves first, or they are doing it now since Aerial is temporarily out-of-action. I can’t imagine Lauda is too happy about that.

So Mio-Mio shamelessly bosses her fiancée to look after her greenhouse, and Suletta is ecstatic about it because she know what it means to her. Yeah, that tracks. They are an interesting couple.

That’s an awkward why to test legs. I’m wondering why they needed Suletta specifically to test them, you’d think Chuchu could do that. Belmeria isn’t doing anything suspicious yet, so I guess we’ll leave that for now.

Oh, so she actually has her wishlist typed up on her phone. Nothing really standing out, they’re all fairly typical things

Will Miorine like the keychains? I personally think it could go either way.

This is probably the closest thing to father-daughter bonding for the Rembran family. All this business talk goes over my head so no further comment.

So smuggler lady is actually part of some other group that are currently investigating Gundams. Another faction, but if we take her at her word, it’s unlikely the same people that Prospera is working with. We’re probably building up to some major event or conflict that will shake things up.

So Zanelli is just talking about Jeturk’s schemes with not just Shaddiq, but also his entire team? Personally, I feel like Renee (the one with all the “back-up boyfriends”) has too many screws loose to trust with sensitive information.

So is the real reason Shaddiq is keeping challengers away is to keep someone from outside the three Branches from claiming Holder status? We know he is not above going behind his father’s back, though he probably lost some trust after his recent failure. And as someone who always thinks outside the box, of course he’s for throwing a wrench in the whole duelling system.

Wow, Guel got a real job. Good for him. We’ll see where this takes him.

Of course Shaddiq is going behind his father’s back, again! And Nica, just who the hell is she involved with.

Oh crap, she’s standing! Secelia Dote is standing! The end times are here!

So I get why Ojelo and some of the others are cynical about Miorine, but she only started this business for Suletta. Now she has to commit to her new business fully to protect the one most precious to her.

They say the best lies have some version of truth to them, not that Suletta is good at telling when someone has ulterior motives. It’d be bad to leave her alone with Belmeria, even if she doesn’t know how Aerial works, she can still say something that might lead a knowledgable person to figure out the truth

Number 5, I presume? He’s certainly different from 4, taking full advantage of the fact that Suletta might have developed feelings for Number 4. I was worried Peil would take an approach like this.

Interestingly enough, since Suletta has spent so much time with Miorine, she hesitates to go on a date now, because their relationship is starting to feel real to her. But is it? He’s planted the seed of doubt

The Peil CEOs are only interested in Aerial, and why wouldn’t they? They invested and risked so much to perfect the technology for themselves and in comes Aerial, completing blowing away their Pharact, and then follows up by overriding Grassley’s “Antidote” technology.

Okay, Miorine is denser than I thought. In a way though, I think she is still doing things with Suletta in mind. She hired workers to take care of her greenhouse so Suletta doesn’t have to, and she hired “Elan” so Suletta doesn’t have to do all the testing herself. But she’s screwing up in the little ways, like not telling Suletta when she got back early, and not even looking her once during their whole conversation. And of course, giving the okay to date “Elan” because obviously Suletta is interested in him and not, you know, someone else.

Except, it is quite clear that Suletta does have feelings for Miorine. Otherwise it wouldn’t bother her so much that Miorine would trust strangers with her greenhouse. Or hire “Elan” to do Suletta’s job. Or tell her to go on a date with him after all the times, Miorine referred to herself as Suletta’s bride.

So even hearing it multiple times, I don’t remember the name of this location, but its the place where multiple major characters are converging. We’ve got Suletta, Miorine, Aerial, Guel, Prospera and Delling all in one place with an incoming assassination plot against the latter. We have two more episodes for the current cour, so I guess we’re getting a two-episode mid-season finale.

Oh, there’s the two Lfriths. Wait, what?! You can tell what they are by the heads, but how?

So Shaddiq’s real ambition is to break up the Benerit Group. I’m not surprised. I mean, we all want it but probably not in the way they plan to do it.

[balkanradfem]

It's been a week of having covid and I'm still pretty sick. I still can't walk around for more than a few seconds and even just sitting down gives me a headache, back pain and exhaustion I can't fight off. Starting to get bummed out, because I'm used to bouncing back from any illness within 24hrs, being sick for  a week is a new experience. I didn't think this could happen, since I got vaccinated and everything, but I'm guessing this is omicron or something we don't have vaccine for yet.

I've had to google a lot of symptoms and it's been extremely hard to find any useful information, had to read articled upon articles only to find tiny snippets of useful info, so I'm going to compile what I had found out, just for a chance someone else finds it useful.

As soon as I got the symptoms, the taste of food changed; I didn't lose my sense of taste or smell, but anything mildly sour or acidic, like a tomato, apple, or any type of fruit really, tasted like rotten, spoiled, moldy garbage. The smell alone was enough to send me retching. I found out this is called 'parosmia' and it is associated with covid, but I found no statistics on how many people get it, or recover from it. I knew only one other person who had it, and she did not recover; this sent me into panic. My entire diet was consisting of acidic food, all of my canned food was acidic, most of my garden had sour and acidic produce, sour and acidic are my favourite flavors! For 3 days I thought I would have to change my entire survival plan if this doesn't fix itself, then, I found some additional info that said 'If your sense of smell didn't get affected, you'll get your sense of taste back easily'. So I went around smelling all kinds of stuff, and everything smelled normal. The next day, parosmia was over. Food tasted normal again, to my huge relief.

I had covid simultaneously with my roommate, and we both had wildly different symptoms, but we also both noticed that we're experiencing a return of whatever illnesses or symptoms we had in the past. For example, she developed a rash on her hands that she had few months prior, and a horrid headache all the way thru - she used to deal with migraines as lot. I had a high fever and also a bad back-ache, and a stomach-ache, that took 5 days to resolve – in the past, I used to struggle with very long stomach-aches. I also had a lot of joint pain, but since I do suffer from chronic pain, this was just normal to me. I developed a headache late into it, but nowhere near as bad as my roommate.

We were both also extremely exhausted, and would spend most of our days lying down and moaning in pain from how much the exhaustion hurt

My hip pain from the first days mysteriously disappeared on the day 3, and I've since suspected that something is, in fact, wrong with my hips, and that maybe I'm doing a bad job sleeping on a very tough surface and always sitting in the same position, and it might have been affecting my hips badly, and covid just highlighted the issue. I've resolved to look into some hip excercises in the future in order to resolve this.

It's day 7 for me now, and I made a mistake of thinking 'well, I ran out of food, I'm just gonna visit my garden real quick at 5am when nobody is around so I'm not being a public danger' and wow that was the wrong thing to assume, I nearly fainted, by the time I got back I collapsed in the hallway, almost vomited, and couldn't move for a while. I've since recovered, but I'm still impressed at what a bad call that was. I decided to make a pizza, and, sure enough, my sense of taste and smell is now gone completely. Couldn't taste that pizza whatsoever. So I'm still just symptom cycling.

I've read about how covid has psychological effect as well, and messed up people's mental health, but it was pretty insane to experience it first hand. During the first 5 days, I simply couldn't have any positive thoughts. I thought it was because hey, I'm feverish, in pain, exhausted, unmoving, didn't sleep for 3 days due to pain, can't eat my food, can't go outside, can't even open the blinds because light makes headache worse, but it wasn't even just that. When me and my roommate both tried to focus on one thing, anything, that wasn't horrible, we both failed.

I also couldn't – still can't, think clearly, or plan for anything I could do when I'm healthy again. It feels like that line is blurred and out of reach and it's unclear whether I'll be healthy again. I'm not sinking into despair over it, because in the course of being mentally ill, I had to teach myself how not to spiral. But I do feel like I'm stuck in some dark ditch mentally and that trying to crawl out doesn't work.

Can't believe covid is this scary. I understand fully well that anyone can die from this, I worried that it would wipe me out too. And I'm young and healthy with good immune system. I'm now extra worried about anyone else getting it because this is extremely hard to go thru. Can't imagine how it feels being healthy.

[spotsandsocks]

I posted 5,378 times in 2022

That's 4,370 more posts than 2021!

240 posts created (4%)

5,138 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@loveyourownsmiilee

@monsterrae1

@daughterofbuddie

@the-likesofus

@elvensorceress

I tagged 4,380 of my posts in 2022

Only 19% of my posts had no tags

#911 fox - 1,273 posts

#buddie - 1,255 posts

#eddie diaz - 990 posts

#evan buckley - 744 posts

#911 spoilers - 538 posts

#911fic - 299 posts

#911 on fox - 277 posts

#911 fic - 209 posts

#q - 207 posts

#buddie wip - 197 posts

Longest Tag: 101 characters

#oh eddie no buck sounds horrified and stares for a full minute before he says i’m coming over tonight

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Buck let himself in

Key to the Diaz house confirmed

106 notes - Posted April 12, 2022

#4

And its there when I look in your eyes

1.5K Teen

It’s just an ordinary evening; no different than any of the others he’s had with Eddie and Chris, he’s had so many now he couldn’t even guess at a number. It’s warm and familiar and he loves every minute he has with them but he’s never thought about having more than this, more than what they already have but apparently, Eddie has. 

That’s just become clear - in an ordinary moment on an ordinary evening, Buck’s stumbled over the most extraordinary thing. 

They were clearing up after dinner, chatting aimlessly about their shift, plans for their next day off, gossiping about work, just ordinary things. Buck enjoying the way they move around his kitchen - in perfect synchrony, as seamlessly as they do when they’re on the job. 

It happens just after he slides the last plate into the cupboard. He turns and Eddie takes one look at him and laughs, he steps closer and everything changes. 

“hold on, you have something…”

Buck feels the flash of Eddie’s thumb across his skin, fingers resting lightly against his face, he looks into honey warm eyes that crinkle at the corners and his heart stops. 

The act itself is over before it’s begun. Eddie’s removed the offending smudge from his face with a smile and returned to the final chores before him.

Buck can’t do the same because he’s reeling from what he saw in Eddie’s eyes. The look was unmistakable. 

For the first time Buck understands, he sees, really sees what’s in Eddie's heart. 

And it’s devastating.

Perhaps the most devastating part of it is that he’s seen that look before, so many times but he’s never understood it. 

He feels terrible. He hadn’t know, he hadn’t meant to be hurting his friend like this.

A wave of nausea rolls his stomach, he’s been making Eddie suffer and he would never, ever want that. 

Why hadn’t he seen it before? 

He stands frozen and speechless with a dish towel over his shoulder, slowly coming to terms with the most remarkable piece of information: Eddie’s in love with him.

He’s not ready. Fear hits him hard, sending icicles down his spine. He’s going to lose everything. It’s all over, everything he thought was safely his is slipping through his fingers because he can’t give Eddie what he wants. What he deserves. 

He needs to say something but he’s terrified, unable to speak the words that will drive Eddie away, he thinks he might cry. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not ready to lose Eddie, no - he can’t lose him, he can’t lose Chris. He can’t lose his family.

A calm voice cuts into his spiraling thoughts.

“Stop it. God, you think so loudly.”

Eddie’s smiling at him but there’s a tinge of sadness in his soft gaze. He knows what Buck’s finally seen and he knows the rest too because no one understands Buck like Eddie.

And it’s all over, in mere moments his best friend is going to hate him. How can he not when Buck has to say he can’t give him the right type of love back.

Eddie's gentle voice penetrates his spiralling thoughts. He sounds like he’s talking to a skittish horse that might bolt any minute.

“Buck, it’s ok. Just listen, can you do that?”

He manages to nod.

“Good.” The face in front of him is so familiar, so loved; still smiling, eyes still so kind and gentle no different than they were two minutes before, before the world up and changed on him. 

Eddie speaks slowly and each careful word sinks into Buck’s heart, and eases something in him,

“Buck, there’s nothing you need to do about this. Nothing you have to fix.”

Eddie continues and Buck struggles to understand, how he can be saying these things.

See the full post

174 notes - Posted September 29, 2022

#3

Thought I’d share this cute commission from Chemdoodles of one of my favourite buddie scenes.

Love this cute style

179 notes - Posted April 29, 2022

#2

Here's an amazing commission by the phenomenally talented @macarenaandrad3 for my 911/dragonriders AU fic. Its a story about how Eddie (and Christopher) meet Buck and he helps him to make a new life and move through his grief after suffering a terrible loss.

I love the art so much and it’s not like I can share it with anyone I actually know so onto Tumblr it goes.

To Fly the Skies Read on AO3

60K Rated E

Its long with more plot than I planned and it’s niche I know, but I’m really proud of the story. I thought this would be just for me but turns out there's a quite a few other people out there who want to read about fictional versions of fictional men in a world where dragons talk and fly the skies.

@macarenaandrad3

270 notes - Posted March 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Argahhh! Look at this- a commission for my fic 12 months 12 Kisses by the unbelievable talent that is @macarenaandrad3. Check out her blog and other art it’s all amazing

It’s doing things to my heart!

The fic -Over the course of a year Eddie and Buck exchange various types of kisses but while Eddie is drowning in feelings Buck doesn’t think all those kisses mean anything. Or maybe they do, actually he thinks its all pretty confusing and unfortunately nobody’s talking about it, but Christopher’s had enough and meddles, because that’s what you do when your Dads are idiots!

From a first accidental kiss to one that seals their wedding vows you can never have to many Buddie kisses.

The scene is from Chapt 11 November -a kiss it better kiss.

Tagging some mutuals and blogs I interact with under cut who I think might like to see this

298 notes - Posted September 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sydmarch]

ok I guess my last post was a lie I'm writing it now. syd autism + sales ramblings ahead. so like obviously we are all in agreement about syd having autism but I need to talk more about how that plays into his job as a salesperson bcus its just like something I have too many thoughts on. sorry if te readmore doesn't work in on mobile!!

for background ive actually been in sales myself for over 5 years and experienced several wildly different approaches to training, strategies, type of sales etc bouncing between.. hmm 4 different companies now that were exclusively sales.

SO it's obvious that syd is good at reading people but ONLY in specific contexts where it's clearly like, learned and not something that's intuitive. it's 100% masking and totally the kind of thing that comes in sales training where they teach you the DETAILS of communication because that's where a lot of the psychology of the sale goes down. so not just the scripting (which is obviously helpful itself and obviously something they use a ton of at lucas) but the little things in both reading people and getting them to do what you want. I imagine at lucas a lot of this is based on body language and microexpressions and shit like that which I don't have experience with as an inside salesperson but like to get into how insanely detail oriented it can get from some of my training it was like obsessive detailing over when and how to use uptones and downtones and what the purpose of each was. & having your trainer listening to you practice and marking down which tone you used at the end of each sentence to make sure every single time you got it right and also understood WHY it mattered. & every single time you ask for something you put the WHY before the WHAT so "because our team runs a background check on each client I need the last 4 digits of the social" and it was also assertive language so I NEED not CAN I HAVE and it was also trying to distance sensitive information from the client so THE social not YOUR social. THE card not YOUR card. I can go on and on it was literally like every word out of your mouth was chosen so specifically with an exact purpose and so was HOW you said it and then you also had people teaching you things like ok you know what a downtone sounds like if you hear it from a client giving an objection this is what that means. if someone says this what they really mean is this. no matter what they throw at you here is an exact answer.

so like if you're an autist who had been manually learning how to read people & how co communicate because you just don't instinctively know these things all of this is GREAT it's like Advanced Masking Lessons. and then this makes you better at pitching than all your peers because you're USED to having to think out every detail of your conversations in everyday life when they're not. so to finally bring this back to syd same thing applies. he KNOWS how to read his clients and tailor what he's saying to the specific person. he gets Edward down completely he knows he's not "someone who's interest is merely passing" he KNOWS what he wants and how to sell him. & he's able to modify the pitch for vera and take more of a "you want what aria has" approach. yes his technique probably didn't matter much on that one because she was just there to run bugs but my point still stands. yes from a doylist perspective of course he's the one demonstrating the readiface at the investor meeting because he's the protagonist but either way that implies in universe that he's there because he's the best with the machine. he's the most tuned into the details of the face because he HAS to tune in because it doesn't come easy to him like it does everyone else. clearly he's a star employee because lucas comes to him like tell me if you hear anything about the missing machine and sends HIM to replace derek on the house call. anyways that's it for now mayhaps this is all just me projecting but even so I'm still right.

[sleepy-shutin]

i hope you don’t mind me sending this to you, i genuinely appreciate your presence on my dash and seeing the work you put into informing people. i guess it just feels so alienating sometimes as a DID system, like trying to connect with other DIDOSDD systems. i haven’t had this experience on tumblr really but there was a period of time i tried to join the very few (at the time) anti-endo discord servers to try and connect and it was honestly just..uncomfortable? like, all of them forced us to have a system name, which the majority of my system doesn’t really like at all. weirdest thing ive ever experienced in them though is that i’m 99% sure one of them like, copied my alter who was active in them? right after she joined and made an intro post, like within a few hours, someone made an intro post with an alter with the same exact hair color (unnatural color so it was less common), similar facial appearance in general, very very similar personality at a surface level, name started with the same letter, which again maybe i’m overthinking it but it just felt so strange and left a bad taste in our mouth. i’ve just felt very alienated as a system sometimes because i don’t relate to the tik tok image of like, very obvious switches with full blown cosplays every time a certain alter is out, and it makes me doubt myself a lot because we don’t like having a system name, we don’t do wigs or makeup when we switch, we don’t have typing quirks or any fictives at all, we don’t sign posts or have pluralkit bios, and some of my alters are honestly just similar to each other in personality and/or appearance. not fakeclaiming anyone who does do that at all, its just all been so different from what i’ve experienced and it’s made connecting to other systems really difficult. thank you for reading though and your posts, you definitely don’t have to reply if you don’t want to.

i relate a lot to your experiences, so i'm going to be very blunt about my opinions here. full warning, this is a bit long because i rambled, but i have a lot of thoughts on your experiences here.

i came into the community around 2018, and it's been an experience watching everything unfold the way it has. i went from people not really knowing what my disorder is to it being incredibly hypervisible, but like, only one particular aspect of it; alters, and even moreso, fictives.

i don't like being in a lot of system spaces, because they put so much emphasis on things like syscourse when i genuinely don't care that much. and then almost no matter what i do, either side is always throwing horrific misinformation in my face and when i try to correct it, they call me ableist, say i'm fakeclaiming, or get upset because i'm "invalidating" someone, even when i'm saying "that's not how it works, here's what you could be describing". most of the time i'm even afraid to use parts language in these spaces because i'm afraid they'll blow up on me for using the preferred language of my system, lol.

they put so much emphasis on syscourse, having a system name, using pluralkit, who's fronting, alter age? oh if you're a 5 year old part you can't talk here even though you're the part that handles most of day-to-day life, and if youre a fictive of [x character] then you should apologize for existing because you did horrible things in source, except if you criticize my hyperfixation, actually fictives aren't source and i'm literally neurodivergent and a minor.

for the record, we don't really have a system name either, we just have a kind of collective name. we don't experience super clear-cut switches. we don't always tell people who's fronting. we just kind of live our life like normal, lol.

i have a very fast-paced job. one that's fast-paced enough that i can't pay attention to myself internally all the time, or always know who's fronting. it took me around two months since starting this job to realize just how much i was switching at work because i simply couldn't pay attention to how i felt internally, and most of the switches between my co-host and i are more internal.

i've had to pay a *lot* of attention to figure out who's fronting at work between my cohost and i. i'm starting to get into the rhythm of it, but the switches are *far* from noticeable to most other people, and often times slip under our own noses quite a bit as well.

i've also seen and experienced a lot of fakers, people clearly being mistaken about having DID, and things like you described; stealing alters. all of which happening to be in anti-endo communities particularly populated by minors/teens.

ive known a bunch of people that claimed to have DID and clearly did not have it, either by faking or by being mistaken about their experiences, and most of them were anti-endo minors. i don't mean that there's really a connection between faking/being mistaken about having DID and being anti-endo, because my experience is incredibly limited and i choose not to interact with the system community at large at this point, but rather that i see a connection between misinformation and people that want to spread misinformation that fits their narrative, as well as the stigmatization of being wrong about having a mental illness. many of these people hate endos and don't even have an argument as to *why* endos are bad outside of a vague "they're ableist".

all of these people had incredibly poor understandings of how DID works, from being close to final fusing while still living in an incredibly abusive home, (not possible), to "malicitors", to claiming trauma that they could not claim because they had "source memories" of said trauma, thinking "fusion is murder", or even worse, "integration is murder", thinking being polyfragmented is just having 100+ alters and that's it, etc. all of these things obviously being based in not having access to reliable resources relating to DID and filling in the blanks with poor understandings of what they've read online and always taking what other people say at face value without sources or critical thinking.

i kind of want to get a bit into why this might be happening, because it helps me to understand what's going on, how it's not normal, and how i can ignore it when i see it happening.

a lot of the younger DID community especially has incredibly misinformed ideas about how DID works, and turn it into "fictives disorder" or "alters disorder" and have a shockingly narrow idea of how your system should work, and if it doesn't fit like that, you're weird. when in actuality, the way their systems are working is actually not at all the norm for DID. not that they're all outright faking or mistaken, but putting this highly specific presentation of DID on a pedestal does no good for anyone, especially for people who mistake kinning and normal teen experiences for DID, which i suspect is the case for many.

i've known too many people that copied other people's alters, used fictive pseudomemories as a way to keep other people in relationships with them, spread misinformation about DID and how it works, rolled over and accepted someone clearly misinformed about their experiences and validated them as totally completely normal for DID when they're not, and overall creating this toxic bubble of misinformed ideas on how DID works to be okay with people acting like fakers or misinformation on the side of anti-endos does not exist.

having DID does not make you an expert on the disorder. doing the research and putting in the actual work to understand DID makes you someone who can speak on it as a whole. you are only able to speak on your own experiences with DID until you've actually looked into clinical sources.

if you haven't done the hard research on DID, you can't actually speak to how it "really" works. you need to do the research on the disorder to start fully understanding how it works, because DID *does* have a structure, it *does* have rules, it *does* have specific functions, even if you can't see these things. it *does* have a specific way that it works. read the research and you will see it.

god, shout out to that one server that used akinator as a "resource" for new alters in a new alters help channel, or all of the servers that use lists of media you "could be from" to "help" new alters, lol. or all of those carrds that explain you're on earth to new alters, when amnesiac barriers that high are not even remotely normal.

that's part of the reason i dislike when people say "DID isn't a trend!"

#systemsfordream was a tag that was trending for, what, a couple days? maybe a week? systems are unbelievably hypervisible online right now, and the community is primarily populated with teenagers that are constantly helping their friends "realize" that they're systems. i'm not going to fakeclaim any one person to their face, but if you think that there isn't a not-insignificant portion of the community that is either faking deliberately, or mistaken about having DID, you're fooling yourself, and i'm tired of pretending like it's not a thing just because someone will get upset at me because they feel i personally attacked them for it.

they don't realize that having the disorder does not make you an expert on it, and it's going to take more than a week of "questioning" and some twitter threads to figure out if you actually have DID or not.

as much as i hate to say it and plenty of people would hate to hear it, DID is a trend right now. because the "quirkiness" of mental illness is a trend right now. because a portion of the youngest generation is getting to their edgy teen years and is deciding to rebel, to figure out who they are, etc, and are growing up differently, where everything is hyper-marketed, everything is algorithmic, they are fed whatever content they like the most by all social medias, and are not even remotely anonymous anymore, and if anything, it's less entirely on them and more on, well, (gestures vaguely at the state of the world right now).

if anything, i see this as an incredibly abysmal symptom of a larger problem, but that's a post for another day, lol. or maybe just a long rant for my journal.

TLDR;

the way tiktok and #systwt portray DID is not a normal experience for how DID actually works, and you should not feel bad for not fitting into it. tiktok and #systwt spread massive amounts of misinformation on how DID works, are hostile to people that correct them even nicely, and only uplift information that fits their narrative because it's what they want to hear, because many of these people *want* to be systems for one reason or another, so they cherry-pick misunderstood information. that's why they only use unsourced carrds created by other 15 year olds as their sources on DID instead of anything reputable.

this isn't to say that this presentation of DID is *never* real, because i can think of plenty of ways it can be. but it's not the only way DID is, and it's not the most common way DID is.

[calumincolor]

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[eliteprepsat]

Think about how well you and your college counselor know each other. How often do you voluntarily talk to him or her? Counselors can be a tremendous resource of information and support beyond just enrolling you in classes, so if you don’t already, try regularly setting up times to meet with them.

To make the most of your time together, go in with strategic questions based on your curiosities and needs. Here are 6 questions to get you thinking:

1. How Do I Find the Colleges or Universities That Are Best for Me? 🔍

The college or university that is right for you might not be the same one you’ve heard about from your friends, parents, or favorite TV show. Each school has a unique set of characteristics, and finding the one that best fits your preferences will set you up for future success. Imagine a place you would thrive in. Consider factors such as size, location, academic programs, extracurriculars, and overall campus culture. Your counselor can provide guidance for how to assess which schools best meet your criteria and are most likely to admit you.

If you already have a list of colleges that interest you, you can ask your counselor if your list looks balanced or if you could benefit from modifying it. He or she can also inform you of any upcoming college fairs where you can consult with individual college representatives.

2. What Should I Be Doing This Year to Prepare for College?

Depending on what grade you are in, your counselor will have different recommendations for how you can best prepare for college. It’s helpful to devise a road map of sorts so you know you’re not missing any key steps. You can discuss topics such as choosing between the SAT or ACT, taking SAT Subject Tests, planning testing dates, stepping up your involvement in extracurricular activities, and making the most out of college visits.

3. Am I Taking the Right Courses? 📚

The requirements for which high school classes you must take vary by college and they may differ from your high school’s graduation criteria. For example, UC and CSU schools have what are called “a-g” class requirements, which stipulate the minimum type and number of courses you must take to be eligible to apply to these schools. Navigating these details with an expert can give you peace of mind as you piece together your schedule.

Not only can your counselor help you plan your class schedule so that you time everything appropriately, but he or she can help you choose the classes that will increase your competitiveness for college admissions. For example, if you’re thinking of applying with a major like engineering, you’ll want to take as many rigorous STEM classes as you can to demonstrate your interest and ability in that field.

4. How Does My Summer Plan Look?

As part of getting to know you, colleges like to see how you spend your free time. Summers are a great opportunity to explore and develop interests and further your academic career. Your counselor can help you decide what to do this coming summer–whether it be an internship, enrichment course, paid or volunteer job, or academic summer program–and provide resources for finding such opportunities.

5. How Do I Apply for Financial Aid? 💰

College, as you may have heard, can be surprisingly pricey. Harvey Mudd, for instance, estimates the cost of attendance for the 2019-2020 year at about $79,539 per year. Fortunately, you can find plenty of financial assistance in the form of grants, loans, scholarships, and work study programs. Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application is the best way to ensure you qualify for as much of this aid as possible. The form can be a little confusing, so you might ask your counselor if your school offers any events that walk students and parents through filling it out.

Your counselor will also likely know about additional local or national scholarships that you may qualify for. Each independent scholarship has its own application requirements, so finding out early can help you budget your time and not allow any deadlines–aka free money–to pass you by.

6. Is There Anything Else I Should Be Doing to Improve My Chances?

Especially if your counselor knows you well, he or she may have some additional tips for helping you get into your target colleges or universities. Perhaps you will be applying to schools that offer interviews and could benefit from interview pointers, or maybe your priority should be fine-tuning your college essays, increasing your GPA, or taking the SAT again to reach a target score. A great thing about talking with your counselor, rather than exploring the sea of online information alone, is that you get access to an interactive expert who knows you as an individual, able to tailor specific answers to your specific situation.

Hopefully you’ll use these six questions to get thinking about what topics you want to bring up with your counselor. Think about what areas you’re most unsure of, keeping in mind that the quality of the information you get depends on the quality of the questions you ask.

[yuna-writes]

The truth and the lie

Some of things to life I'm trying to figure out is whether what I've been told at a very young age is the truth or a lie. Even now, I'm still debating whether I truly want to go back to the workforce, or be self-employed forever. I feel like I'm not entirely motivated by money, but I know that money is really important part of the equation into this. Bills can't be paid if you don't have consistent source of income.

I feel like through most of my life, I've been constantly told to work hard, study hard, get a job, then be loyal to your boss and company to get that promotion and higher wage...and well, I feel like that part seems like a lie. It can be true that you could go through the system working very hard, but it doesn't necessarily equate to higher pay. Maybe back in my parent's day and age, a job actually meant something where there were actual loyalty and trust between employee and employer.

Strangely enough, I always wonder if that's the realization I came by myself or do other people just go about their livelihood and not think about these things? Most people get told by their parents that they need to be successful in school so they get a good job and a good career. I just feel like if I ever told my kids that information, I feel like what I'm telling them isn't completely true. The reasoning is that I went through the system myself. We don't really live in a society where hard work pays off these days. It's actually finding creative ways to work incredibly smart and efficient is what gets you out of bad situations. I think telling my kids to trust an outdated system that previous generations believed in doesn't seem to reflect reality at the moment. It was possible years ago to work a minimum wage job while raising a family, owning a house, and being a middle class person. Those days are long gone.

I don't have all the answers myself either. I feel like everyday I'm trying to figure out and navigate through some complexities with work, life, and finances. You can't really enjoy life to the fullest, if you're constantly broke. That's why I'm not really part of the YOLO crowd who live in the present moment, spend all of their savings on travel, and then come back to find out they are broke. At the same time, I also feel like I'm not really the type that would just sacrifice my youth to save aggressively and be living on cup ramen all day. I do have desires to enjoy the present and live life to the fullest, but I feel like it has to be done strategically.

Some people always tell me I seem like the type that thinks too much into the future. I just try to see the timeline within five years. But sometimes you do kind of need to think about the future so you know what goals to set to realistically achieve it. I think people who want to enjoy the present wouldn't like my type of thinking as much. But I also don't really like present day people either because they don't really think about consequences too. They spend all their money, go into extreme debt, in order to live their YOLO dreams. And yeah, unfortunately, money don't grow on trees. And then they go back working their 9-5 jobs where they are stuck between wanting to constantly quit their stressful and low paying jobs.

After a while, you kind of see through this loophole, but how do you actually break free from it? That's what I'm figuring out. I think sometimes I feel really different from other people, because most people don't question the status quo. They just continue to believe in what they were told as a child to be true, because they trust their parents, their teachers and they trust their boss. I always felt different in a way that everything I was told seemed like a lie, and I feel like I'm closer to the truth then what I've been told by other people. The result is that I'm not in debt and financially more stable...because I was disagreeable. It's odd, because I went through crap tons of arguments with other people but after a while you realize maybe you might have caught on to things faster then other people did. And that doesn't make you a villain. It just means other people couldn't see your perspective.