#so many new things happened in the span of a single day for a person that wouldn't even dare to step out of her house a few months ago

[inefable-enigma]

GUYS I just landed a full-time job (???? like a job i literally applied for just for the funsies, like in my heart i was sooo sure they wouldn't accept me....i guess my 9 to 5 era has officially started, excited and scared at the same time <3333

[jordyn14]

Maybe today wasn’t so bad after all | Joe Burrow

Summary: After a terrible start to a day that had such high hopes, two people do something that should lead to an even worse day, but in ends up better than it started.

Pairing: Joe burrow x first person fem reader

Words: 5058

Notes: this fic is kind of all over the place, but I didn’t want to split it up into 2 fics. I hope you enjoy!! <3

Taglist: @wickedfun9

The Bengals season was officially over following the win against the browns on January 7th, though we all knew it was over after the loss against the Chiefs on December 31 which kicked them out of playoff contention. In honor of adding another season into the books, Sam was hosting a little party for any player or friend of a player who wanted to come today. To say the day was not going great so far was the understatement of the century. First, as soon as I woke up in the morning, I stepped in some fresh poop from Mike, the cat I got Joe for his birthday, who apparently forgot where the litter box was. Because she's new-yes, she, Joe named her after Mike the Tiger at LSU-and I absolutely adore her, I shook it off and took a very in dept shower, making sure to scrub my feet extra good in order to rid myself of it completely.

Next, during breakfast, I was transferring my eggs onto my plate after putting some on Joes and the handle broke off of the pan and dropped onto my feet. The eggs went everywhere on the ground and were quickly eaten by Tucker, the dog Joe got me for Christmas, who flew in immediately after hearing the commotion to see what happened. I thought I was in the clear since two bad things happened to me in a span of an hour and a half-so what else could go wrong-but that was soon proven wrong when I was carrying Joe and I's pre-workout smoothie so we could get in a light workout together in the basement, and I tripped down the stairs. Not only did I spill the smoothie all over myself and the stairs, which made for an annoying clean up, but I also face planted, which made for an awesome bruise right on my jaw.

After that, I showered for the second time, drank the new smoothie Joe whipped up for the both of us, and we got in our little workout for the day. Once done with the workout, I took Tucker for a walk and went to the grocery to store to stock up on all of the necessities. While in the grocery store, I completely forgot that I was supposed to start my period, so I got blood all over my new jogging pants Joe gifted me for Christmas and had to buy a new pair of pants at the store, along with a pack of tampons, which weren't the ones I usually buy because, ironically, they were all out.

Finally, everything seemed to be going right for me and the day turned out pretty good, until it came time to get ready for Sam's party. I did my hair and my makeup without a single problem, but then of course when I put on my new dress that I was excited for, I put it on only for me to realize the zipper broke when I washed it. Because I was on my period and very hormonal, I started to cry. My mascara got all over my face and when I tried to wipe it off, my other makeup came off with it so I had to redo it all. Plus, while crying, Joe tried to comfort me, and because I was hormonal, I got mad and told him to get away from me. What made me cry more was that Since my new dress broke, I had to wear an old one that wasn't anywhere near as pretty as the other one.

So, now, as Joe pulled into the parking lot, I took a deep breath and prayed that this night wouldn't be a disaster like the whole day was. The party was at a little convention center in the middle of Cincinnati that has held frequent get togethers and parties in the past. Since this party symbolized the end of the season and it could be the last time some of the guys see each other, it was very special to so many of the guys. To make it even more memorable, Sam got Jeff Rubies to cater and he had one of his favorite bars set up a little bar. Because friends were invited as well, I was excited to see some of Sam's friends that I probably have not seen since college.

Once Joe put the car in park, he looked over at me with a sigh. Seeing him look at me in the corner of my eye, I looked over at him and we made eye contact. "Well here goes nothing, I guess. Let's hope this goes well." I said with a little defeated laugh, the both of us knowing how the day has been going for me. "Let's be optimistic, what's the worst thing that could happen, right? There's no stairs...that I know of." Joe said, and started to rack his brain in an attempt to try and remember if there are stairs at this place. I tried to remember with him, because if there were stairs, I was certainly doomed. "There aren't any stairs where the party is at-well, that we'll have to walk up anyway- there's an elevator leading up the floor we're on." I said, remembering exactly where the stairs and elevator were at.

Joe laughed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Y'know, it's kind of pitiful that we even had to think about that." Joe laughed. I laughed and nodded. It was extremely pitiful. Who would need to think about if they would have to go up stairs? Definitely not many people. "It is, but with the day I've been having, It's better to be on the safe side." I said. We chuckled a little bit together before Joe turned the car off. "Sha'll we?" Joe asked. "We sha'll." I giggled and opened up the door quickly. I stepped out of the car and then met Joe in front of the car. Because of my situation at home-having to redo my makeup-we were about 30 minutes late. Luckily Sam said not to worry because he has the place until midnight, then we're kicked out.

Joe and I walked inside together and got into the elevator. On the way up, we made funny faces in the mirror on one side of the elevator and then took a funny picture that I had to promise wouldn't be posted, which I have to do with every picture I take of him. By now, he should know I won't post them. For one, I know how private he is, and I am too, and for two, I would never share these moments with anyone, other than close friends who probably have the same kinds of pictures of him in their phones.

The elevator opened up with a little ding and revealed a huge and bustling room. People were scattered around across the whole room and there were orange, black, white, and striped decorations throughout the whole room. Immediately after hearing the elevator open up, the majority of Joe's teammates looked over to see who arrived, and when they saw Joe, they all began to hoop and holler and call out his name, excited to see him. With a smile, I let go of his hand and went to go find some of the wags, mainly Gracie and Tianna since both Holly and Morgan were out of town with their husbands.

It didn't take long for me to spot Tianna who was messing with Cody who had a far from amused look on his face. When Tianna spotted me, she immediately stopped annoying Cody and ran over to me excitedly. "Finally! It's been boring without you!" She yelled and hugged me. "Girl it's only been 30 minutes." I laughed. "Uhm...exactly." She said and emphasized it with her hands. I shook my head and laughed at her, continuing to look around at the little buffet Jeff Rubies set up and then the little bar in the far right corner. "So, what did I miss? Anything fun or crazy happen?" I asked, needing to be caught up on any of the tea that I missed while I was gone.

Tianna gave me a look and signaled for me to come and sit down at their table, so I followed. "It's not really with the team, but apparently one of Sam's friends just got cheated on. He's here and a bunch of people were talking about it when they first got here." She said. My mouth dropped open in interest and I looked round to make sure I didn't see Sam anywhere. "Who? Maybe I know him from college." I said. Tianna raised an eyebrow and looked at me with a small smile. Why was she looking at me like that? I raised my eyebrow back at her in confusion, needing her to tell me so I wasn't confused. "Did you sleep with some of Sam's friends or something?" She whispered with a little wink. "Women-shut the fuck up, she ain't like some of your friends." Cody said.

The three of us started to laugh at what Cody said, but she continued to look at me, still thinking I might've slept with some of them. "What-no, I have been with Joe since 12th grade and we didn't cheat. Now, show me." I said. "Okay okay." Tianna said quickly and began to scan the crowd to try and find whoever it was she was looking for. I looked with her and tried to see if I recognized some of the people, but I wasn't having any luck. So far, none of the people looked familiar except for the players and their wives or girlfriends. "Ooh- there." Tianna said excitedly and pointed at someone somewhat discretely so they didn't see. I followed her hand and spotted one of Sam's friends. I knew exactly who that was, and I wasn't too happy that he was here.

"I know him, that's Aiden." I said and took my eyes off of him. "Why do you say that in a bad way?" She asked me. Why was there a hint of attitude in my voice? Well, because Aiden and I were kind of friends back in college. This particular friend group of Sam's consisted of me, Joe, Sam, Jessica, todd, and Aiden. We were all good friends and always either studied together, went to football games together, or went out to parties together. From the very beginning, Aiden knew Joe and I were together and in a very closed, strong, and long-lasting relationship. But he just couldn't help himself from crushing on me. The crush got so big that he eventually confessed his feelings for me while drunk and tried to get me to cheat on Joe with him. To say he was persistent was an understatement and it happened more than once.

Of course I told Joe who told Sam. After that, Aiden didn't really hang out with us too much. "Let's just say he had a crush on me and wanted me to cheat on Joe with him." I said. Tianna let out a small gasp as she processed what I said and then looked at Aiden with a little scowl. "Well in that case, the jackass deserved it." She said with a little 'hmph'. I grabbed onto the drink I snagged from someone passing them out and held it up. "Now that's something I will fucking cheers to." I said with a little laugh. "Hell yes." Tianna picked up her glass and to her surprise, Cody picked up his as well. Tianna looked over at Cody, surprised that he was into this conversation since it was a girls conversation. "Really babe?" She asked. "Uhm...hell yes." Cody said. We all laughed a little at his reaction and then clinked our glasses together. After we clinked our glasses together, we each took a sip of our drinks.

We've been here for about an hour just hanging out with people and catching up, even though every single person that I'm good friends with on the team I've been texting. After Tianna, I made my way around to some other people before finally sitting down at a table with Ja'marr, Tee, and Sam. Joe was sitting down with us too until he left to go get him and I drinks at the bar.

"So, Mrs. burrow….” Ja'marr said and leaned back in his chair. I raised my almost empty glass to my lips and said a small, "Mr. Chase?", before taking a sip, trying to figure out what he was going to ask me. "What are the chances that baby Burrow makes an appearance this year?" Ja'marr asked me. I set my drink down and shook my head at him with a little laugh. From around the small table, Tee and Sam just listened to our conversation, who obviously were both aware of what Ja'marr was going to ask me before he said it. "Slim to none." I gave him a short and sweet answer, although I knew he would pry and want more from me. "And why is that? I mean come on, everyone else is doing it." Ja'marr said. "Unless I accidentally miss a birth control, which I never do, or by some miracle I just so happen to get pregnant, it's not gonna happen this year. Plus, I’m not everyone else." I said.

This has been an ongoing conversation between Ja'marr, Joe, and me for a while now. Ja'marr is fully convinced that it's time for Joe to knock me up, even though we disagree completely. "Come on, why? You've been married long enough." Ja'marr added in. "Some people have plans jackass." Sam added in. I looked over at Sam and pointed at him. Ding Ding Ding. "Exactly, thank you. We have had a plan for a long time, and a baby, while it's included in that plan, isn't listen for a long time." I said. Ja'marr just glared at me jokingly for a few seconds. Don't get me wrong, I wanted a baby and I would want one right now if not for football. Joe and I are at the perfect age to have children, but Joe is currently in his prime years of his career. It would be completely unfair to ask him to juggle being a new father and being an amazing quarterback all at once.

It felt like Ja'marr and I were having a staring contest. Both of us tried not to laugh or blink, until Tee interrupted. "I mean this with no disrespect, but If you don't want to get knocked up by Joe, I think that bartender over there will gladly volunteer." Tee said and signaled over to the bar. I turned my head in the direction he was signaling to. It only took me a few seconds to spot Joe who was standing at the bar. The bartender was mere inches away from a very uncomfortable looking Joe who kept trying to back away, but in a way that wasn't too noticeable. That boy was way too respectful. They were in mid conversation, and every time Joe would say something, she would laugh-a little too much- at whatever he was saying. I know Joe Burrow, and never have I once laughed that much during a simple conversation with him.

Now, unless he was making endless jokes, which I knew he wasn't because of his body language, that girl was just doing way too much. I glared at the two of them as they talked, a little annoyance and maybe anger building inside of me. I wasn't mad at Joe who was obviously trying to get away from her as she kept bombarding him. I was secure enough in my relationship with Joe, even though it took a while to get to that point. I was, however, mad at the girl who kept touching his arm and giving him flirtatious looks and laughs a little too often. Those flirty eyes were the same exact ones that I give Joe. I was mad at the girl's occasional glances at his wedding ring on his left hand that told me everything I needed to know: She was well aware that the quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals was married, but she didn't care one bit. Plus, she obviously couldn't tell when someone was uncomfortable or not feeling a conversation. She was obviously not a girl's girl. What a bitch.

As I continued to stare at the two of them and read Joes extremely uncomfortable body language, Joe glanced over at me. We made eye contact and immediately after, Joe's eyes widened and he sucked in his lips a little. I smiled a little bit at his plea for help and how much he was practically begging for me to go over and help him. I looked over at the guys sitting at the table who were just watching me and then Joe, interested in what was going on. "You know, girls are bitches. Excuse me, while I go save my husband." I said and scooted my chair back. "You need our help with the clean up job?" Jamar asked. "You can keep her body in my car." Sam added in. I rolled my eyes jokingly and stood up with a laugh. I headed over to save Joe from this awful conversation he was having.

While I walked over to Joe, he glanced over at the table again, but when he saw me, his face immediately lit up and he smiled slightly. The girl, seeing Joe's facial expression from his side profile, looked over to see what he was looking at. As soon as she saw me walking over, I could tell she had absolutely no idea who I was or that I was even married to joe. In her eyes, I was just another person that had a crush on Joe, like her. That still didn't change the fact that she could still flirt and give my husband the 'fuck me eyes', all while knowing he was married. Now I'm not usually one to come out and say that a girl's being a bitch, because I get it, we all have our own problems that we're dealing with, but I mean come on, to flirt with an obvious married man? Now thats low.

I looked down at Joes hands and saw the two drinks in his hand. One of the drinks was a whiskey and the other was a vodka spritzer. Perfect. Once I got to Joe, He looked down at me with his best 'thank you' eyes and handed me the drink. I grabbed the vodka spritzer in one hand, and with the other, I wrapped it around Joes waist and kissed his shoulder. "Thanks babe." I said, the both of us knowing damn well that I never call him babe-But maybe I should, because Joe's cheeks flushed red when I said it- and I knew Joe wasn't a fan of PDA but figured it was needed given the situation he was in. He never has been and he probably never will be. The only time he's fine with it is with close friends or family, so certainly not here with prying eyes. "Of course." Joe said, going along with what I was doing. After I kissed Joes shoulder and smiled up at him, I looked over towards the girl who realized who I was. Did you seriously think his wife wasn't here and watching you? Unreal.

Going along with the part, I held out my hand a little bit out of politeness and acted sorry that I interrupted their conversation. "Oh my-I am so sorry that I interrupted,” I said and then introduced myself, “and you are?" I asked, Looking down at her name tag. I read the name, 'Caitlyn'. Caitlyn knew exactly what I was doing and I could tell by her facial expression that she wasn't enjoying it one bit. "I'm Caitlyn, it's nice to meet you. We were just finishing up our conversation, you weren't interrupting." She said. I flashed a small smile her way and nodded. "Well good, I would've felt terrible. It was nice meeting you, but we should really go find Ja'marr." I said and looked up at Joe, tapping his back a little bit. Joe straightened up and nodded, "yeah-right, it was nice talking to you." Joe said.

We both started to walk away, though I could tell she was staring at us as we left. The audacity of some people is wild. "You are a literal saint, I love you so much. That was horrendous." Joe said as we walked to our table. I began to laugh as we reached our table. "Y'know, fuck her. She knew you were married and still flirted with you, why didn't you leave you pussy?” I joked with him. "I tried, but she kept talking and flirting with me to the point where I felt like I would be rude leaving her and then a news article would come out titled, 'Joe Burrow turned down talking with a fan, what a loser.'" Joe said with a laugh. The both of us laughed as we reached our table. “She can stay jealous.” I laughed. The three of them just looked at Joe and I before Tee spoke up, "wow, she’s like your knight in shining armor brother.”

"Shut up, he was just trying to be polite, some girls just Don't know how to keep their hands off of handsome men that aren't theirs." I said with a 'hmph' and a laugh after sitting down in my chair. Joe followed after me and sat down right next to me in his chair. I leaned in closer to Joe as he put one arm around my chair and sipped his drink. "There Ain't nothin' handsome about Joey B." Ja'marr said, messing with Joe like he always does. Speak for yourself. I looked over to the most handsome man here as he laughed and said, "At least I ain't as ugly as your ass." The whole table laughed as we listened to Ja'marr and Joe joke around back and forth about who the better looking one was.

Other than the incident with the bartender, the night was going pretty well. We were all talking, drinking, and having an amazing time. At one point, all of the D-linemen and O-linemen had a little game of who was the strongest, which was extremely entertaining to watch. The whole time they were competing, Joe was cracking up laughing, and not just the belly laugh. He threw his head back, his eyes were sealed shut, and he could barely breathe. It was like a breath of fresh air to see Joe having an amazing time after such a stressful and uncertain season; the injury.

Currently, I just got done in the bathroom and was walking back to the table we were sitting at. I barely got in 2 steps before I heard a voice I haven't heard in years call out my name. Everything in me told me to just keep walking and pretend like I didn't hear him, but out of politeness, I stopped and looked over at him. "Wow...I haven't seen you in forever. I was hoping I'd see you here." Aiden said. I gave him a small smile and walked over to him so we didn't have to speak too loudly. Hopefully he just wanted to say hi and let me go, or maybe even apologize for trying to get me to cheat on Joe, multiple times. Without me expecting it, he took a step closer, closing the distance between us, and wrapped his arms around me before I could even get in a word.

"Uhh...yeah, it had been a while." I laughed awkwardly as we separated. Aiden kept smiling down at me like he was looking at someone he is really good friends with but hasn't seen in a while. Don't get me wrong, we used to be friends and haven't seen each other in a while, but to want to talk to me and act like nothing went down just felt wrong and uncomfortable. "It's so good to see you, Mrs. Burrow." He said with a big smile. "It's good to see you too." I lied to him with a fake smile, unable to muster up a real one. Right after I said this, he took a step forwards, if that was even possible, making me uncomfortable and making this whole situation awkward, at least for me. I watched him as he smirked a little bit. You better not try something.

I took a step back for comfort and was about to excuse myself when he said, "you look beautiful, even more so than back in college." I furrowed my eyebrows a little bit, disgusted and appalled that even after what went down at college that he could still be face to face with me and try the same things as he did back then. One of his hands found my side and his fingers danced over my hip bone. "Joe wouldn't have any issue if we hung out for a bit, right?" He asked. Don't react, just let Joe handle it. The last thing I wanted to do was create a scene here and draw attention to myself and Aiden. I scoffed a little bit, not able to hide my disgust and disappointment any longer. "It's funny how even after I rejected you in college, you still have the balls to do it again. If I wouldn't cheat on Joe back then, what makes you think I'll do it now?" I asked him, but he still didn't take his hand off of my waist. "Oh come on, don't be like that." He said. I looked down at his hand and then tried to look past him in an attempt to see if Joe was at the table, but he was blocking my view.

All of a sudden, I saw Joe walking over to us, looking as pissed as ever. His fists and jaw were both clenched in anger. I breathed a sigh of relief that he was here so neither of us could cause a scene and draw attention to ourselves. "Get your fucking hand off of my wife." Joe said, putting one of his hands on the small of my back. I looked at Joe and gave him a little nod of assurance before looking at aiden whose eyes grew 10 times bigger once he realized Joe watched the entire thing, and his hand slid off of my waist. I watched as Aiden’s shoulders fell in submission and embarrassement, obviously thinking he was going to get away with flirting with me and putting his hand on me even after what happened in college.

"I-I-" Aiden began to say. "What? You Didn't think I'd see you flirt with my wife? Come on man, you're not that stupid." Joe said and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing so tightly that aiden winced a little bit. "I was just trying to catch up with her, that's all." He said. I backed up a little bit and stood next to Joes side. I glanced around us a little bit to see if anyone knew what was going on, but nobody even looked at us. Everyone was just caught up in their own conversations. Thank god. "How dumb do you think I am, Aiden?" Joe asked. Aiden swallowed hard and shook his head. "Look man, I'm sorry, it won't happen again, I'll leave.." He said. "You're damn right it won't. Now, you can stay if you want, I won't tell Sam because I know he likes you-Why, I honestly have no clue-but I don’t want to ruin that. But, if you do stay, I don't want to see you near her again. Better yet, I don't even want you to look at her," joe said, and waited for a response, and when it didn't come, he added in, "you got it?" Aiden, who was obviously embarrassed, nodded quickly and said, "Yes sir."

With that, Joe nodded, took a step back from him, and began to turn slightly. Following his lead, I walked by his side and then we walked back with each other to our table that was now empty. This day just kept getting better and better. First it was the cat poop, which I wasn't even too mad about, but then one thing led to another and both Joe and I had someone flirt with us...and the both of them knew we were married. As we walked, I shook my head and sighed a little bit, just wanting this whole day to be over. Once we found our table, the both of us just sat down. "I'm sorry, baby. I cannot believe that fucker had the balls to do that for the second time. I couldn't stand to see his hand on your body, especially when you were so uncomfortable with him in the first place." Joe said.

"Hey, listen to me, Aiden is a jackass, I love you, and I'm all yours. Y'know, I hope he looks at us so he can be jealous of what he'll never have." I said with a smile and shrugged my shoulders. Joe just looked down at me and smiled. It was weird telling Joe that I was his, but I liked it. Normally there are people all over throwing themselves at Joe or accusing him of cheating to try and destroy our relationship, so telling him that I was all his felt... exhilarating, in a way. I was all his. He was all mine. And nothing or nobody could change that. Ever. I couldn't help but notice the little smirk that was growing on Joes face in place of his smile and I knew he liked when I said that I was all his. "Mmm, say that again." Joe said hummed quietly. I giggled a little bit at his reaction and said, "I'm all yours. And by the way, that whole thing with Aiden was really hot. Maybe today wasn’t so bad after all.”

[black-arcana]

NIGHTWISH Releases 'Perfume Of The Timeless' Single From Upcoming 'Yesterwynde' Album

Symphonic metal veterans NIGHTWISH will release their new album, "Yesterwynde", on September 20, 2024 via Nuclear Blast. It marks the band's tenth studio LP, following on from the release of "Human. :II: Nature." in 2020. The official music video for the album's first single, "Perfume Of The Timeless", can now be seen below.

NIGHTWISH keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen told Kerrang! magazine about "Perfume Of The Timeless": "When we had the first meeting with Nuclear Blast, talking about the new album and singles, I told them the first single will be a song called 'Perfume Of The Timeless' and it's eight and a half minutes long and the chorus comes in at 3:30. And they were, like, 'Perfect!' I think that has to do with the fact that we have a long legacy. You know, we can do whatever we want, and I do, but it says something that we can do that, when I heard that for Spotify it's good to have the vocals start after 15 seconds, or people skip it; they don't have the attention span anymore."

Asked if he had to adjust his writing style because "Yesterwynde" marks NIGHTWISH's first album since 2002's "Century Child" without bassist/vocalist Marko Hietala, Tuomas said: "No, it doesn't really change anything, except that now we had two voices instead of three, only Floor [Jansen, lead singer] and Troy [Donockley, multi-instrumentalist]. But that's it — it really didn't change much at all. And Jukka [Koskinen], the new bass player, is such a grounding personality that it's so easy to work with him. And his bass playing skills are tremendous, quite different from how Marko played the bass, which also brought a new spice into the music. So nothing but positive things to say about it all.

"There are many bands in the world that don't have a single original member anymore," he continued. "And I think it comes down to the fact that if the music is good, then that’s all that matters, in the end. Maybe for some people, certain bands are so holy that they can stand if they don't have certain members in it, even though the music would be good, but I don't really think like that. I just listen to the music, not the personnel behind it. That's all that matters to me."

Holopainen also addressed the fact that NIGHTWISH has no plans yet to tour in support of "Yesterwynde". The band previously explained that the reasons for the touring break were "personal" but unrelated to Jansen's then-pregnancy. (Jansen gave birth to her second child in October 2023.) Asked if it feels weird to be talking about an album that, for the first time, he won't be supporting on the road, Tuomas said: "No, it doesn't feel weird. It just feels right. But people shouldn't get worried. It's not the end of the band. We just signed a multi-record deal with Nuclear Blast, so there will be more music coming, definitely. But as far as shows, we're just gonna have a long breather now and see what happens. That's all I can say at the moment. We got our fair share in 2022 and 2023 when we did a lot of shows. So that helped."

"Yesterwynde" track listing:

01. Yesterwynde 02. An Ocean Of Strange Islands 03. The Antikythera Mechanism 04. The Day Of... 05. Perfume Of The Timeless 06. Sway 07. The Children Of 'Ata 08. Something Whispered Follow Me 09. Spider Silk 10. Hiraeth 11. The Weave 12. Lanternlight

In a press release, Holopainen stated about "Perfume Of The Timeless": "You are the result of an unbroken chain of millions of ancestors and their loves. 'Perfume Of The Timeless' reminds us all of this amazing fact. And if you're not amazed, listen to it again, because it's important."

In January, NIGHTWISH drummer Kai Hahto spoke about the band's upcoming follow-up to 2020's "Human. :II: Nature." album in an interview with Laureline Tilkin of Tuonela Magazine. He said: "At least it's not gonna be the same as 'Human. :II: Nature.', so… Probably, let's say that we go back to more heavy, heavier things on the new album, but also there's a lot of, again, new winds to blow, so to speak. So, different new elements. But, of course, it's still NIGHTWISH, but, of course, we brought back the big symphony orchestra again to the new upcoming tenth album. Yeah, it's gonna be exciting. And quite challenging music to play as well."

Earlier in January, Hahto told Chaoszine that "it look[ed] like" NIGHTWISH wouldn't play any shows in the next two or three years.

In December 2022, Holopainen said NIGHTWISH's upcoming follow-up to "Human. :II: Nature." would be the third part of a trilogy that began with 2015's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" album. He told Metal Hammer: "I immediately knew after getting that album ['Endless Forms Most Beautiful'] done that, 'Okay, we have to do more songs about this, because there's so much more to explore and tell the world. We're not done with this.' And the same thing happened after 'Human. :II: Nature.'; we're still not done. So let's do one more. At least one more.

"In a way, [the next album] is the third part of a trilogy, which started with 'Endless Forms…' and then 'Human. :II: Nature.' There are some major surprises there again, but it feels like a natural continuation to 'Human. :II: Nature.'"

In September 2022, Tuomas was asked if NIGHTWISH's upcoming LP will once again be an exploration of evolutionary science, as was the case with the previous two releases. Tuomas said: "Yes and no. It sails on the same waters, but there's some new surprises there as well."

In August 2022, Tuomas told Rock Sverige that he spent "about a year" working on the music and lyrics for the next NIGHTWISH album.

Asked if he got any kind of inspiration from the pandemic, Tuomas said: "Yeah, lyrically there's a couple of things that reflects the pandemic, but not in the way you would expect."

"Human. :II: Nature." was released in April 2020. The follow-up to 2015's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" was a double album containing nine tracks on the main CD and one long track, divided into eight chapters, on CD 2.

In August 2022, NIGHTWISH announced the addition of Jukka Koskinen (WINTERSUN) as an official member of the band. Koskinen, who made his live debut with NIGHTWISH in May 2021 at the band's two interactive experiences, had spent the previous year touring with NIGHTWISH as a session musician.

In November 2022, Jansen revealed that she was "cancer free" after undergoing surgery to have a tumor removed following a breast cancer diagnosis.

Photo credit: Tim Tronckoe (courtesy of Nuclear Blast)

[blubushie]

I'm going to be completely honest, you are extremely cool. I do have an actual question though: When did you start using tumblr and why? What made you decide to share your story via this account?

Sorry this is a mite late, I typed all this up and then my browser crashed and I had a 5-second breathing exercise so I didn't lose my mind over my lost 5 paragraphs.

I actually had a Tumblr account from 14-17. I first joined because I had the understanding that Tumblr was largely a safe haven for the Other Crowd—people like me that were social outcasts or didn’t fit in anywhere else. I deleted that account when I was 17 because Back In My Day they were too many creeps on Tumblr that were obsessed with the sexualisation and anatomy of an intersex 16 year old boy. I had too many questions about what was under my clothes, I had too many chasers flirting with me and talking about my anatomy in ways no child should ever be spoken to or of about, and I’ve been down that road before and it got to be too much so I shot through (luckily that hasn’t happened since I’ve been here now except for the occasional hate asks).

I came back after meeting Lozza (who I’m aware is active here—please fucking DM me if you’re reading!) who got me into TF2, and I came for the TF2 crowd and to talk about my fic. Funnily enough, this all started because of Learnin’ the BLUs, and how I wanted to reach people with my writing and my take on Sniper from someone who’s been in his shoes long enough to get it.

I stayed because TF2Tumblr largely doesn’t seem to understand much about Sniper. I haven’t seen an instance of anyone really getting him down as a character—hell, I don’t think even I fully get it. I impart a lot of my own experiences onto him, but I’m lucky (or unlucky) enough that I have the ability to do so. I’m a bushman, a functionally extinct species. I’m a sniper. I’m a bounty hunter. I understand Australia and what it would’ve been like for him to grow up there as an Other, I understand the culture—a major problem with people writing Sniper in Australia is that they base him off city roo things when this bloke is from the outback. Australians aren’t a monolith. We’re not the same across towns in the outback, let alone across states and territories. And city life and outback life are two VASTLY different experiences. The outback covers about three-quarters of the Australian continent but only holds 5% of its people.

You’re alone out there.

A lot of people don’t understand, or even know, a bloody thing about sniping. There’s a helluva lotta maths involved. It’s rocket science with a rifle. They don’t understand camping, or what makes a bushman a bushman, or what drives people to be bushman, or that there’s some kinda magic in Australia itself that sings in your blood and pulls at you like a noose when you leave. They don’t think about how he wouldn’t recognise a single star when he looks at the sky in New Mexico, how the moon would be upside-down, how there’s suddenly people everywhere when most of his life he’d be lucky to see a total of five people over the span of a month. That shit affects who you are as a person. They also don’t understand that shy, gentle Sniper wouldn’t be a thing—shyness and gentleness is not something people are looking for in someone who deals with other people through violence. Clients want confidence, determination, they want someone cold but friendly enough that they themselves aren’t afraid to approach them.

He's a professional, and a businessman. I am too.

The fandom has a tendency to tip the scale in one of two directions far too often. It lacks nuance and balance. Me being here, a bushman and sniper and bounty hunter, hopefully provides some much-needed perspective to a fandom that I sometimes feel is lacking it.

Over the year I’ve been here, I’ve sparked friendships and connections and I’m so glad I made the decision to come back. People are reading my fic and liking it, I’ve got mates, and all’s good. My being comfortable in the hole I’ve carved out for myself in the escarpments of our little hellsite has made me feel I can be more open about who I am and what I do. That’s how you ended up with me telling my stories about the things I’ve seen out in the bush, the things I’ve experienced, the people I’ve met over my adventures and the person I’ve grown up to be.

I also came because (if you haven't noticed already) I have a Whole Lotta Thoughts about a Whole Lotta Things. And I stayed because, for what's felt like the first time in my life, people want to listen.

I’m glad I’ve come back, and I plan to stay for much longer this time. :]

Also thank you for calling me cool! It always surprises me when people say that cuz I just see myself as some bloke tbh 😅

[thisworldisablackhole]

Sprawl Trilogy first impressions

God damnit, Gibson really did it this time didn’t he? The man really knows how to string you along and then ghost your ass mid dinner - dipping out of the bathroom window to leave you calculating the tip on your own.

Upon writing this, I have just finished Mona Lisa Overdrive, so I’m full of post-book emotions. Mona Lisa Overdrive took me the longest to read out of the 3 books. Part of that is due to the fact that I was getting distracted and spending full days writing posts on this blog about music and other stuff, and part of it is due to the fact that it is simply the most narratively dense book in the series.

After reading all three I have to say that Neuromancer is still my favourite. It had the most satisfactory ending by far, and perhaps the most cohesive vision. Count Zero is the only entry in the series that was kind of a dud for me. Upon finishing the trilogy, I think there is still some important world building information in that book that is worth revisiting, but the semi-boring characters mixed with all the weird heady spiritual stuff just didn't click for me. Not to mention the finale was much like when you try to pop a bubble on a sheet of bubble wrap and it sort of just softly squeezes out the air without making a sound. Virek going from being on the verge of unlimited power to completely ceasing to exist within the span of a few pages just made me go... "oh.... alright then".

Many people claim that Mona Lisa Overdrive is the best, and I can see where they are coming from, but I must admit I am just not a huge fan of the multi character perspective switching that happens between every chapter. Neuromancer still had it's fair share of innate complications that come from being based in a highly technological word (and written by an author who trusts the intelligence of the reader way too much), but it had a single driving perspective that was easy to stay engaged with. Count Zero caught me off guard with it's perspective shifting right away and it took me almost half the book to really pin down all the who what and where's to a point where I felt connected to each thread. Fortunately Gibson improved on this method of writing A LOT with Mona Lisa Overdrive. Even though he upped the narrative threads from three to four, the characters felt more fleshed out and were easier to connect with.

There is still so much I don't fully understand about the story. The end of Mona Lisa Overdrive wrapped up a lot of loose ends from the previous two books while simultaneously opening a pandora's box full of new questions and theories to explore. I do feel like Gibson added a bit of unnecessary information for the pure sake of complicating the plot and throwing you off balance, but it was nonetheless fascinating. Kumiko's entire involvement in particular was a huge question mark for me. Not to say I didn't enjoy her character. I loved the interactions between Kumiko and Colin. The whole idea of a handheld maas neotek personality construct that acts as a guide/companion that only she can see was really fun, but I kept waiting for her involvement in the whole switcheroo deal to make sense and then it turned out she was never really involved in that aspect of the story in the first place.

On that note, one of the beautiful things I learned to accept about Gibson's writing is that he loves to leave the reader in the dark. There were many times where I felt like an idiot for not fully understanding what was going on, only to have Gibson drop the answers straight into my lap in the last quarter of the book. I found reading this series a lot more enjoyable when I just relaxed and went along for the ride instead of asking questions. The knowledge and context you gain by the end of the books almost beg you to read them again, and that is why I refuse to do a full in depth review until that happens. I just can't do them justice until I fully understand.

[domestikhighway58]

✨ 2022 Writing Year In Review ✨

Thanks to @spencer-reids-adventures for tagging me! Woo!

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 58 (LOL UNINTENTIONAL)

2. Word count posted for the year: 1,099,815

3. Fandoms I wrote for: Criminal Minds, Harry Potter, Parks & Rec (but yo, I don't really count those last two)

4. Pairings: Luke Alvez/Spencer Reid, Aaron Hotchner/Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid/The BAU Team, couple random outliers in there somewhere. Feel blessed I didn't drop any of my 4 Jeid fics in public.

5. Story with the most:

Kudos: Casimir Pulaski Day with 536

Bookmarks: Casimir Pulaski Day with 262

Comments: And again! Casimir Pulaski Day with 151 comment threads (why is sadness so popular?)

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why):

Honestly? My first ever fic and the thing that got me back into writing. The Eyes Have It literally opened my own eyes to writing again after a decade of not touching a keyboard. I did not think I would make it past 1000 words, let alone the 100,000 words that fic inspired. I had never written dialogue seriously before, never come up with any kind of extended plot, never explored character arcs, or even written creatively past a few lines of poetry. I posted that first chapter assuming I would lose interest or my depression would get the best of me yet again but neither of those things happened. I finished the three-part series three months later and made so many amazing fandom friends through that one fic. Even if it's not my most popular or even best-written work so far, it will always be my favorite.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why):

OOF. Well, quite a few fit that category but one I'm quite sad about is also just a symptom of my itchy fingers when it comes to writing whatever pops in my head. I deleted it (so sorry) but I plan to return to it one day and make it what I wanted it to be. If you're dying for shitty Highway58 drunkfics, here are these two terrible gems: The Wolf (terrible half-assed attempt at werewolf Spencer, update coming the next time I have whiskey) and my one and only Harry Potter fic, Sequi Mi, where I decided no matter how hard I fangirled on HP in my youth I can't do it anymore now. Maybe one day.

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received:

My very first few comments on my first-ever fic bolstered my confidence like nothing else could. Some were short, some were so long and detailed that they made me cry. I recall two specific commenters who stuck by that crazy story with inspiration and encouragement and they are now in my circle of online friends I never would have found if I didn't keep writing. <3 Every comment I get is an amazing compliment and every single person who decides to take the time to read my bullshit is a goddamned gift.

9. A time when writing was really, really hard:

Several stories I've completed this year spanned a time of my life that I thought was my lowest point. While writing it out through fic was helpful, it was also an outlet that exposed my issues and forced me to face them. The hardest time for me to write was also the time I probably wrote the most, when I was in that lowest space around this time last year. I felt guilty about it when everything else was going to hell but I kept doing it. Ultimately, exploring this side of my creativity allowed me to overcome some of those massive problems I thought were insurmountable.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: 

So many. I think I was somewhat surprised to find how much I enjoy writing the OC protagonist from their warped perspectives. I wrote a sadistically evil Doctor, a psychopathic billionaire heiress, and a Wild West warlord this year all within the context of CM and they were SO MUCH fun, I'm sad I killed them all. I also just think it's interesting to explore the potential depths of OCs within the fanfiction genre. So, that was a pleasant surprise when all I anticipated starting on this journey was a new way to explore the characters I already love.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing:

Ugh. I dunno. Too many words, but here's this from my first OC I still love and miss: Cheers, Caro, you might be in my first OG novel one day:

"Time to make an offering. 

The clothes and the phone bundled in her hands, she turned to the door. Walked down the narrow stairs, across the empty hall. Pushed the creaking screen door open against a violent night, the storm which had gathered earlier finally unleashing its fury. 

She cradled the phone with the image of those hands frozen, locked against her. Against her. On her. In her. Choking life back into her. 

Edging the rusted gate open she entered the garden. The wildness couldn’t compare with home, but it was something. " The Eyes Have It, Chapter 19

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: 

I think I've expressed this already elsewhere but... I wasn't a writer at all before this year. I dabbled for years in poetry and songwriting before landing at a point where I assumed my creativity was dead beneath the yoke of daily life and responsibility. When I started reading fanfiction, I was more depressed than I have ever been in my life. I buried myself in the words of others and wished I could even come close to that kind of creative expression. So when I finally sat down to write a story, I outlined something that came nowhere close to the story I ultimately wrote--and that's when I learned it's not about planning or hoping to do it, it's just about doing it. So, if anything, I grew comfortable with the idea that I can write and that I should--for myself. Because it helps.

13. How do you hope to grow next year:

I hope to start finishing my WIPs more succinctly and with a bit more regularity. I do think I need to spend less time writing fanfic and more time honing my other skills. It is difficult to find the delicate balance between doing something for fun and doing it because you feel you need to please others. That's the double-edged sword of writing and posting fics--sometimes you feel the guilt weigh heavy when you let. a story lie there for months without relief. So, I want to probably slow down with my writing and be a little more intentional with it going forward. (Though honestly, that pains me to imagine--I love following the faintest whiff of fresh plot wherever it might lead). I do know I have no plans on stopping now that I've started.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): 

This is so hard. I've met so many new people this year who have endlessly encouraged and inspired me. Way too many to list here. I will shout out to @foggyblues-ralvez for being the first person to say Hi to me from the fandom (seriously, my dear Mandy, thank you <3). @masterwords, I love you and writing with you has been a fucking honor (also just hi, you should do this if you haven't yet, ily). @spencer-reids-adventures--endless love for your support and comments and the sprints, literally every step of the way. And then I'll shout out @brillianthijinx because darlin' you bring out a side in me I love and am terrified by lol, in the best way. But again, if I were to personally shout out every single person who has made an impact on me and my writing this year this silly thing would be longer than my ao3 wordcount. No one wants that.

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

I won't go into detail here, but, yes. I write Spencer as my comfort character. While I sensationalize his issues to suit the story, the emotions are written from repressed experiences I have never explored. Writing is therapy as much as it is an obsession for me.

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

Just start writing. Don't think. Write. Share it or don't. Edit or don't. Just write. Every damn day, if you can.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:

Good lord, ALL of them. I hope to finish Casimir Pulaski Day by the end of January. I will be bringing back Signed, Sealed, Delivered in January as well. I want to finish up a few short fics soon and then continue my sequel to Silk Road quite soon. I have several A/B/O fics in the works, including the sequel to Old Town Road. @masterwords and I will of course be continuing our soft Hotchreid saga in Missing Pieces of Sleep. And then, you know, in my spare time I plan to start up part 2 of Finding it Out to explore some complicated Moreid/Hotchreid love triangle stuff within the canon. So, I've got a few things going on, ya.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read.

@masterwords @eldrai @goobzoop @tobias-hankel @pandorasdreamings @fortheloveofwonderland

[aggressive-almond-cookie]

I’ve been feeling a little weird lately and seeking comfort, so I decided to go replay splat2′s story mode.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, maybe briefly, but I didn’t play much of splat2 when it was active. I played a little bit of 1 when it came out, enough to fall in love with the concept but also enough to know it was for people much more mechanically skilled than me (a person who favored slow-paced sim games, turn-based RPGs, and point-and-click grindfests). I watched my housemate play 2 a bit but I couldn’t justify the purchase myself for something I figured I would terrible at. (I remember watching them play salmon run, and asking ‘wow, there’s a PvM co-op mode now?’ and thinking for a moment that maybe that would be less intimidating to learn, and then I saw a steel eel for the first time which was HORRIFIC, then watched them get completely swamped with with bosses and wipe, and decided .. no maybe not).

It was Splat3′s testfire, that I just so happened to hear about happening in a friends discord server, that happened to hit me at exactly the right time. I finally had a better job, was well on my way to healing from the trauma of my 11 years of working retail, and going through a bit of an inner renaissance, particularly getting in touch (possibly for the first time as an adult) with the true concept of play, the idea that playing didn’t have to have high stakes, that you don’t play to get a good grade in playing, you can just play to have fun and experience the thrill of intense situations in a setting where no actual danger is present.

I fell in love so quickly. I played the testfire every moment that I could and felt like I was finally, finally getting to enjoy this. In retrospect I was so bad at it-- I could barely swim up walls and I couldn’t even figure out how to use my special for the first several hours of gameplay and after trying out tons of weapons found that I was having the most luck using rollers and running over people (lol). But my skill level, for once, was something I wasn’t giving a single brain cell to worry about. I was just enjoying myself, celebrating every tiny victory and laughing at how many times I would just run off the map because I had so little spatial awareness. I won a 100x, I experienced my first squidparty, I did tricolors on attacking and felt intensely bonded with the random strangers I got partnered with. I was experiencing so many wonderful new things all at once and was absolutely euphoric.

And once the testfire was over, the emptiness it left behind left me so restless I thought I might start climbing walls. So to tide me over between then and release, I borrowed my housemate’s copy of splat2, figuring I could at least attempt story mode and learn the basics.

It was hard. Like really, really hard. I don’t... play these kinds of games. I could barely control where I was walking, I absolutely could not aim, I had zero confidence in jumping and missed even easy jumps routinely. I made it through by sheer stubbornness and force of will, running over and over through the same levels until I got lucky enough to get through them. Many levels I finished with a time of over half an hour, one at least 40 minutes, and that’s after lord knows how many failures. The last two kettles in the last zone nearly broke me. I actually cried tears of relief when I finally finished Platform Madhouse, shaking from the tension of making my final moves with the greatest precision and calculation that my clumsy and inexperienced hands could.

But... I did it, you know? And in doing so, I managed to prove to myself that I could do it-- that these kinds of games actually weren’t impossible for me, and that maybe, maybe I could overcome whatever other challenges awaited me in 3 and beyond, too.

Anyway, that’s way too much backstory to say that going back through the splat2 levels again was something of both a surreal and comforting experience. I went through them all in the span of a day, during a workday even, just playing in short intervals during breaks and lunchtime. Those last two kettles (minus octavio) were still the most difficult, but they didn’t take more than a few tries. It was satisfying to gracefully sail through so many of the levels that I struggled so painfully with less than a year ago. I’d say my confidence in making jumps has absolutely improved the most and is the thing I think has had the greatest impact on my ability to navigate the game-world in general.

I’ve been finally playing octo expansion too. A bit late maybe, but I think I had just really overhyped the difficulty in my mind and intimidated myself out of it. As it turns out, the main story is still very accessible, even to lower skill levels. You don’t have to actually complete most of the levels (or even play them) and even the points you pay to play you can go into debt with, so there’s never any real danger. You can skip levels after failing them enough times, so I think the only way you can actually get stuck might be the final segments. Granted, I’m still putting off going to the P R O M I S E D   L A N D until I have a long stretch of time for it (This is the same reason I still haven’t done After Alterna >>.., I just.. don’t have the sheer continuous amount of time to sit down and grind it out. I wish I could save states in these games so I don’t have to lose progress if I need to task-switch), so I might take this back, but so far that’s my impression.

And it’s been really enjoyable. I was happy to find there’s a ‘Who Caused The Big Bang’-style level that takes seconds to complete to make it easy to farm points (I keep wanting to call them power eggs when they’re not, lol). The levels on average are definitely more challenging than Alterna, but there are certainly several that I’d consider less challenging than Those Aren’t Birds and Target Town, and there are even some that Alterna practically made copies of (the one where you cut a shape out of boxes, for example).

That said, there have only been a few levels that I might say I breezed through-- they’re pretty challenging, but they don’t feel un-doable, and it’s so satisfying when you do overcome the challenges. It’s giving me an honest confidence boost to watch myself successfully take out a octosniper (my most feared enemy in my early days) with a charger (probably the weapon class I am weakest in) while balancing on a rotating platform (which were my absolute worst nightmare my first time going through splat2′s story mode). There’s still several levels I have to clear and some I haven’t even unlocked, but since they’re not keeping me from finishing the main storyline, I feel like I can just complete them as I feel up to it and there’s no reason to rush or get frustrated.

I love the levels where you just... play anarchy modes against octolings. Especially the one where you play rainmaker on manta maria-- tetras is a weapon option for that one and it’s quickly becoming one of my comfort levels in addition to just being good practice for firing the rainmaker. And I just love the entire vibe of everything-- much like Alterna there’s so much to see if you stop and look around, so many childhood-items floating in the sky, mixed with the music that gives me those vaporwave-esque feelings of nostalgia mixed with melancholy mixed with a feeling that’s somehow equally comforting and unsettling. And all that woven into these... weirdly juxtaposed grimdark/horror elements expressed with clown-like lightheartedness. It’s just a masterpiece of a setting and I’m so so glad I got the nerve to play this.

Splat2 in general has just been kind of a fun thing to mess around in with friends when we feel like a change of pace. Sometimes we do salmon run which is kind of awful without egg throws or squid-rolls, but we’re so low-rank that it’s still just kind of a chill experience.

I wouldn’t say I’m on a break from Splat3 anarchy because I keep intending to play it, and I know I’ll have fun with it, but then I get set up and sit down to do it and end up playing octo expansion instead. I think I may have low-key intimidated myself out of getting back into anarchy since I fell out of practice when I was out of town again; it feels like it takes me so long to get back into the swing of it and I take my losses a bit harder than I should. I tell myself octo expansion is good practice, and that’s not entirely untrue, but deep down I do know that the only thing that’s going to get me over my hesitance to play anarchy is playing anarchy.

But I guess at least if I’m going to put off addressing something I’m intimidated by, I’m glad I’m doing so by addressing something else I was previously intimidated by.

I’m really looking forward to Side Order now, especially since now I have the confidence that I’ll actually get to enjoy it along with everyone else and not get bogged down or walled off by being unable to complete basic things. I just feel a lot more capable, and it’s nice.

[ufuckingpastry]

I've been feeling in a rough patch lately and most of it's manifested in insecurities and a general lack of motivation to work on any writing projects. I haven't touched PB since I put it on hiatus. I came up with a really fun writing series that just petered off into nothing. I've barely progressed and done anything, even though I'm having all these cool story ideas!

If you've been here for a while, you might've noticed that I stopped writing a couple years back, right around when Homestuck ended. Homestuck was the first major fandom I was in and the first one I posted fanfic for. My AO3 has 50 works just for Homestuck. And, when it ended, it felt like so did my desire to create.

Of course, this was right around my last year of college and ohhhhh fuck that was stressful. Plus I got really into WoW too. I didn’t really have much time to write in general.

I struggled for 3 years feeling like I could barely write anything at all. I was in such a depressive funk at the time, and the feeling like I couldn't create only worsened it. It took me 3 months to write 1000 words.

And then, one day, something amazing happened. I got into dsmp, I got into these characters, and on a whim, I sat down and wrote my first fic for it. In the span of 3 days, I wrote 3000 words! And I was happy! And I posted it and people seemed to love it!

My AO3 now has at least 30 fics just for dsmp, and I've got folders upon folders of other projects and ideas springing up every day for new fics for other smp series!

And yet, I'm starting to see myself falter. With the dsmp ending, and especially ending like it did, it reminds me so much of Homestuck. And I see myself doing the same things and behaving the same way I did 6 years ago. Struggling to write. A lack of focus and motivation to work on any of my projects. An external source of immense stress that makes me feel like I don’t have much time to write anymore.

And it's frustrating on a personal level to see that. Therapy opened my eyes to recognizing my patterns of behavior. I can prevent myself from spiraling. I can recognize when I need a break and I can take that break and barely feel guilty for it. And yet, here I am again. Will it soon take me a month to write 1000 words?

Have I even written 1000 words this very month?

... so I've written 5000.

In 2022, I decided that I wanted to track my yearly word count. I wrote so MUCH in 2021 that I broke 100k words posted on AO3 for that year. But that was just finished works! None of my wips, which I knew I had a lot more of! So I tracked my word count in 2022 and I think I hit around 150k? And that's impressive! That's cool!

So I did it again for 2023. But it's been harder to keep up with that over the last few months. I've been in a limbo of not knowing how many words I've written. Based on the fact that I haven't made any progress on my fics, that number must be very low, I thought.

And then I updated my word count yesterday. And I realized something:

I've written over 5000 words this month. Which isn't a lot, sure, but it's a lot for me. And, you know what? That's on track for January and February. March was fucking wild cuz I broke 14k words in March. And I know from tracking it last year, whenever I get a huge spike of words in one month, it takes maybe another month to recover. So my next month won't be as big or grand, but that's okay.

And that made me sit back and really look at what that means. I've been rping a lot, which is where the majority of those words come from. I wrote 1.5k words in a single DAY and I'm over here wondering why I don't have any words left in me! When I was in my last writing slump, I was still rping. All I did was rp.

I'm still writing, even when I don't think I am. I'm still expressing myself in these creative outlets even when I don't think it's "real writing". And why does it matter what's real writing anyways? Isn't it enough that I'm still doing it?

It is. It is enough. Therapy helped me recognize my patterns of behavior, and sometimes the answer really is to just. Take a break.

It'll still be here when you get back.

[ladyleonster]

“ Happy Winter Festival, Mother, ” Leif greets his mother, still a bit stilted in the way he talked. There's a bit of a difference to it today, however. Bashfulness and nervousness overtake him, but he's already finished his gift, so he might as well give it.

And so he holds out to her a journal wrapped together with a deep blue ribbon, one of the two colors on Leonster's coat of arms. Contained within it are pages of Leif's handwriting, formal enough that he was obviously taught by Finn but not fine enough to be impressive against the calligraphy of any fellow royal from Ethlyn's era.

“ My gift to you. It's… a lot. ” It really isn't. Leif wasn't much for words, and when he started writing them, he struggled again and again to find out what to write or how to write it. In the end, it all comes across with the tone of a battlefield report, and to his credit, there are indeed battle reports contained within.

Battles spanning over many years, taking place all over Jugdral, but a great many in their own home country and in Grannvale too. A report on what Thracia looked like through Leif's eyes.

It feels a bit weird, giving what was ostensibly a gift of Leif's perspective on things, but if there was a chance Ethlyn could never return to Leonster… then this could help her learn what it was like after her passing.

No, even if she could return, then it'd be useful for her to be able to catch up. There was so much that had happened after all since her life.

“ The world is changing, Mother. I'm not leaving you behind. ”

Tales of not only his fights and also of the lay of the land are included but also those of a more personal variety as well. Leif writes to her of Fiana, of all the wonderful people he met there, and although there is very little directly Leif writes of himself, it is through his connections to these other faces that Ethlyn might be able to discern just how Leif had lived his youth.

Very few times does he say 'I' in it, but when he does, they come through in lines like these:

'I owe much to Eyvel. I'd like you to meet her one day if I can find a way.'

'I have plans for a new world.'

and…

'I'm getting married one day. Your bloodline will continue, I swear it.'

Ethlyn didn’t expect much of anything from her son for the holiday.  Not because he doesn’t care but because it’s just not really him to put a focus on sentimentality.  So when he comes bearing a gift, she is pleasantly surprised.  

She smiles and flips through the pages enough that she has an idea of what exactly it is that he’s given her and it takes her breath away when she realizes it.  This isn’t just a book or a journal.  This is glimpse into his life.  A window into all of the years she’s missed.  By giving her this book, Leif has invited his mother to be a part of it all.

Nothing will ever give her back the life that was stolen but this, she thinks, must be the next best thing.  

“Oh Leif...”  Ethlyn pulls her son into her arms and holds him tight.  She cannot wait to sit down and start really reading.  To pour over every single detail over and over again until she can close her eyes and truly imagine she is there beside him and Finn.  But her little boy is here before her right now and she would rather savor this moment in the present than get caught up in the past.  “Leif, I should have been there for you during every moment you’ve written about but I’m here now.  Even if you tried to leave me behind, I wouldn’t let you.  I’m not leaving you again.  Thank you.”

Quan will find his way here too, one day.  She knows it.  She has to keep believing it.  And when he does, she cannot wait to sit down with him and gush over their son’s many accomplishments together.

[gudbooks]

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Buy The Fifth Season here

"LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

First, a personal ending. There is a thing she will think over and over in the days to come, as she imagines how her son died and tries to make sense of something so innately senseless. She will cover Uche’s broken little body with a blanket—except his face, because he is afraid of the dark—and she will sit beside it numb, and she will pay no attention to the world that is ending outside. The world has already ended within her, and neither ending is for the first time. She’s old hat at this by now.

What she thinks then, and thereafter, is: But he was free.

And it is her bitter, weary self that answers this almost question every time her bewildered, shocked self manages to produce it:

He wasn’t. Not really. But now he will be."

REVIEW

Book One of the Broken Earth series, The Fifth Season is a wonderfully rich, dystopian sci fi book with strong touches of fantasy from Black author N.K. Jemisin.

The world-building here is epic.Jemisin weaves a tale of three women protagonists struggling to survive in a world in which the natural world itself is an enemy.

They live on an unstable planet whose violent eruptions can only be controlled by people born with special magic called orogenes (see our three main characters).

Where they live, in the Stillness, rather than being considered saviors, orogenes are feared, shunned, killed or enslaved by the world's elites.

Toxic as their planet already is the people of the Stillness live in fear of a "fifth season" that might bring earthquakes and eruptions so severe that they will mean the end.

There are recognizable themes here - oppression, cultural conflict, racism, enslavement, environmental degradation, yet also love, hope, family and resilience.

"The Fifth Season" can be a hard read because it is heavy at times, drops you straight into the story and uses second person present tense throughout.

However, the story and compelling characters push you along as well as Jemison's prose which is clear and almost lyrical.

There may not be an instant click but the story that unfolds is worth waiting for. Most readers say their investment began and things began to coalesce for them fifty to eighty pages in.

While I'd class this as high or epic fantasy-sci-fi, unlike what we'd find in many books in this category, here we have queer characters, a well-drawn polyamorous relationship, "found families" and people of various races and genders. Black characters are centered -- refreshing as this tends to be a rarity in this genre.

Big ideas breathe in this novel.

Buy The Fifth Season here

BOOK BLURB

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter.

Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance.

And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night.

Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

Buy The Fifth Season here

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

N.K. (Nora Keita) Jemisin, a Black American woman, lives and writes from Brooklyn, New York. She's a graduate of Tulane University and the University of Maryland.

Jemisin was the first author to win the prestigious (science fiction) Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years with the Broken Earth series of which this book is the first, as well as the first author to win for all three novels in a trilogy.

"But another thing I tried to touch on in the Broken Earth is that life in a hard world is never just the struggle. Life is family, blood and found. Life is those allies who prove themselves worthy by actions and not just talk. Life means celebrating every victory, no matter how small."

Quote from N.K. Jemisin from her Hugo Award acceptance speech for the Broken World trilogy

BY N.K. JEMISIN

The Broken World Trilogy

The City We Became (First book of the Great Cities Trilogy)

The Inheritance Trilogy

[t00turnttrauma]

An Open Letter

written originally as a final attempt for some extra credit

2022 has been one of many ups and downs. People have come and gone, as have many of my habits.

In January, everything was great. I had a comfortable job with some great people. I had a great group of friends and support even on tumblr by then. I had a high GPA, a boy by my side and all the love in the world.

By March, my entire life had changed. My once expansive group of friends had dwindled down to 7. My school announced that it was closing. In the span of a ten minute meeting, I had lost my support network, my school credits, stability, and my job. During most of April, I had no idea what was going to happen. I lost my scholarship, no other school wanting to pick it up because my GPA, while high, did not meet their standards. I’d be forced to leave the nest come August. I had no money, no school picked. May, I was still in the same boat, but by then almost all of the relationships important to me and I was trying to salvage had crumbled. I lost everyone. I was angry all the time from the stress. My hair began to thin and my nails were frail. I stopped eating and I just no longer cared if I continued anymore.

I gave up in that moment. The first two weeks of May were awful. I’d been kicked to the curb by almost everyone in my life.

I finally chose my school in June, got another job. I had my birthday and things finally started to look up. Despite sitting in a puddle of anxiety about moving out, I was excited for new experiences and new people. I had a chance to rebuild myself and find who I want to be. I finally saw a way to live my life how I want to live in a safe space. So I did. I moved into a dorm and I had a plan:

Only leave the dorm when you need and then even then, don’t make eye contact. Also maybe befriend the person you share a bathroom with.

Then I met Faith. She turned around in the line for food at the Kickoff party behind the gym. She introduced herself and invited me to sit with her and her friends. It was in that moment where I no longer felt alienated from my peers. I walked around campus for two days alone, begging my brain to muster up the courage to introduce myself to people. I watched people who ate their meals alone, wishing I could sit with them or sit with someone I recognized from the numerous workshops and orientations.

Within the first few weeks, I relied on other people finding me interesting enough to hang out. I would sit by my phone, hoping to get a single text and eventually they started rolling in. As the school year progressed, so did my confidence and comfort. I was no longer scared to have lunch alone, if I had to. I no longer had to stop and ask before sitting down with someone. I made more friends and created a social network on campus.

The more I attached myself to school, the less I felt like myself. I was no longer the girl that first arrived on campus. I was in the middle of rushing a sorority. I was unemployed and I had a horrible experience even trying to find the job I did have for a few weeks. Then the mid-semester slump settled in. I no longer left my room unless I had to or made plans. I’d spend hours out in the middle of nowhere contemplating and asking myself if this is really what I want to do. I, again, stopped eating. I kept a smile on my face to convince myself that it’s all okay.

These past two weeks have been stressful, yet the cherry on top of my semester. I was finally accepted and granted Active status as a sister in my sorority. I no longer have to worry about impressing them.

I walked into this year expecting the same as 2021. I expected the same routine as the past four years. Instead, I was thrown the biggest curve ball. To answer the second prompt of what my proudest accomplishment is, it’s pride. I’m proud of myself for making it. I’m proud of myself for pushing through and making sure that I had my things down pat. To walk into a campus as a new student without a single contact and to walk out of this semester with an entire sorority of sisters, friends from all of my classes, responsibilities, and a genuine smile on my face, it’s something I never could have imagined.

[pre1ude]

@gareththegreat , 👫 for four headcanons about our muses' relationship

their first actual interaction with each other is so profoundly abysmal it gives danny war flashbacks to middle school. by the time it happens it's been about four months of quietly playing each other in dodgeball, during which a.) gareth grows the utmost contempt for new kid prisslord and b.) dan starts seeing their friendly rivalry as lovely opportunity for future friendship but is much too shy to approach gareth. he's sort of unnecessarily loud and chaotic, but his passion in a game is admirable. sometime near the end of the school year in '85 he hits gareth so square and hard in the face with a ball that his nose bleeds all over the court. when dan rushes to check him over gareth headbutts him out of sheer protective instinct (rich blonde fuck quickly approaching at his 11 o'clock, it's the jason instinct) and they both end up at the nurse's office with identical nosebleeds. the rest is history.

after that dan spends some 3 weeks trying his best to apologize (his chest hurts after arguments, man can't handle genuine conflict, especially since he can't exactly pinpoint why gareth acts like he hates him so much), but they just end up bickering every single time. gareth is immovable, danny is indignant. they slowly and stupidly grow closer through banter without realizing. it takes exactly five tries for daniel to fold his arms and call gareth a stubborn brat.

they bicker so. goddamn. much. some days gareth decides to be a contrarian for the fun of it and other days dan strolls up all prissy and far too matter-of-fact to be bearable. their arguments can span months (even years), it takes one mention for the whole topic to be resumed. i can only explain it like this: they're both viciously dead-set on winning an argument (honestly i have a lot more to say on this but let's keep it brief) and i love that for them. gareth is highkey the only person able to make dan lose his 'indoor voice' and dan suspects he relishes in it. in an act of cosmic vengeance, dan gives gareth the nickname 'picnic man' during one legendary fight about fashion superiority. he stills calls him that occasionally and is not sorry about it, gareth has no room to harp on his suits when he's wearing red plaid. they truly can't (and refuse to) agree on anything beyond a mutual dislike of jocks.

and maybe horrible parents. it's no secret gareth doesn't get along with the other keefers and daniel is well-aware of his reputation as the family's 'black sheep' before they're even friends. he'll never admit to assuming it to be true, but getting to actually know the man enlightens him on a few personal feelings he has on his own mother. the thing is: he gets it. he is painfully, miserably familiar with the inability to please a parent, the mistakes framed as failures, the need to rebel underpinned by a desperation to earn a love that is conditional, that has stipulations. and maybe he'll never talk outright about his mother, who he claims to love and appreciate and who he has deep, mangled scars from - both physical and psychological. and maybe it's far too easy to assume he agrees with gareth that, 'yeah, parents are shit', just for the sentiment because what could a rich, doted-on only child raised in the lap of luxury possibly understand. but if there is one thing he and gareth can agree on.. let it be that affection and support should not be constantly earned through the skin of your teeth. and maybe the way danny tries to support him through it and talks about it, vague though it may be, lets gareth know that he understands conditional love. and that he doesn't practice it. fuck the keefers.

+1

he grows to understand gareth's anger and recognize the different facets of it that actually mean things like pain, fear, spite, sadness or resignation. danny sort of knows what it's like to have a language. his own is comprised of many silences that all have different connotations. and having your own language means being difficult to read and easy to abandon to your frustrating, indecipherable moods and danny hates how little control he has over it. so he understands quickly that gareth doesn't either. and sure, sometimes they get lost in translation, maybe misjudge a mood or a word, get short with each other, but daniel makes it a point to never just walk away. and yes, he uses his soft voice on gareth a lot.

[rhysand-vs-fenrys]

Is it hard to unionize? What would someone need to do if they were thinking about it? Asking for... reasons 👀

The answer to that question is incredibly dependent on where you work. I can lay out how we managed it (well, technically we aren't unionized YET, that's technically the contract signing, but still).

As far as your first question- is it hard to unionize- that is... very hard to answer. In terms of what actual stuff you do, the physical work, it's actually extremely easy. In terms of mental health, it's one of the hardest things you could ever do. Unionizing involves talking with a lot of people about the worst aspects of where you work. It's incredibly easy to feel overwhelmed. You'll want to give up so many times... But you'll suffer longer if things don't change where you are.

I don't know if we had it easy in terms of getting to this point, or if we were just so paranoid and so cautious that we avoided anything that could cause us trouble.

Either way, if anyone would like to learn about the process and how we managed it, what's still to come, and all that, see under the cut!

So, I came in a couple months into the process, when it went from a "Talk about it as a joke sometimes" to "oh we're actually doing this".

Step 1 was to decide to unionize.

This can be really hard, because you want to talk to A COUPLE of co-workers who you REALLY trust to keep their mouths shut. Discuss it in off-hours, never at work, never sending messages through any work communication, and never using work wifi (some places will scan wifi use and who is saying what),

Step 2 and 3 happen at the same time. That's finding a union, and defining who you want in it.

You can find contact info for any union on their website, and also just look at like, other companies like yours who have unionized. You can also just google unions.

Find two or three, and talk to their representatives (they'll put you in touch with one maybe even within minutes of you emailing them). They'll ask about where you work and what the situation is, and they might recommend changes to your thought bubble.

Step 4, set up secure communications.

First, we religiously meet every single week for an hour. The day has changed a few times based on who is on the Organizing Committee (more on that later), but EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. Even if it's just 15 minutes, even if our union rep doesn't attend.

A discord server was created, invite-only, and divided into several channels. Most are public- Updates, General, Rules.

Another channel is exclusive only to Organizing Committee members, a channel we can group-chat with our representative on, and then a second channel he isn't part of where we can complain about our representative (you have to do something to blow off steam as the stress builds).

And we created the rule that no one could be added to the Discord server until 3 members of the Organizing Committee signed off. That's the person who recruited them (more on that later) plus two others.

Step 5, who qualifies?

Your union rep will tell you this, because usually it's a policy set by their national board.

For us, it was any part time or full time employee (not freelancers) who works an average of AT LEAST 4 hours a week over a 3 month span.

Step 6, divide who is in your unionization pool into groups, and recruit your Organizing Committee

Again, I work at a tv station, so it was fairly easy to divide out. How you divide it might even be suggested by the union rep working with you.

Originally, when I joined, the Organizing Committee was all news people and I was the only non-news person there, but we've since equalized.

We did one person from each department covered under the union. So like, I had all of production (22 people, but with those qualifications we set in Step 5, it became 13 (the rest don't make the hours)).

Step 7, set more policies.

This was when we had to set rules, and what we did was:

Make a list of every single person in your organization. For us, this was easy because it's on our employee portal.

Copy the list into a spreadsheet, save that, and then duplicate the list into another spread sheet (you want one that's raw). YOUR UNION REP MIGHT DO THIS PART FOR YOU.

Go through every single name one by one and talk about them- how good are they at keeping secrets and being discrete? Do you think they'd be up for a union? YOU CANNOT EXCLUDE ANYONE WHO QUALIFIES- EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE THEM. This is about the greater good, not your personal feelings.

We used a number scale- 5 means "Pro Union", 1 means "Can't keep a secret/probably anti-union".

We also set a policy of no speaking to anyone about the union without the "Go ahead" of 2 other organizers, and ONLY the Organizing Committee member overseeing that department can recruit people, with exceptions here and there as needed.

Step 8, talk to people ONE-ON-ONE

**One on one, except when sometimes 2 organizing committee members would go. OC members quit, it's an emotionally draining process, so veteran ones always help new ones with their first couple recruits)

You're going to have to lure people away from the building in a way that flies under management's radar.

Sometimes it was just "Hey, want to go grab a cup of coffee?"

Sometimes it was less subtle, "Hey, can I talk to you about something? It's private, can we get coffee?"

Sometimes it was a flat out lie, "Wanna play dungeons and dragons?" (I used this lie on two people and it ended with the station actually creating a D&D club for employees because there were too many nerds talking about it all the sudden).

The Talks

Every last one of them followed a basic pattern:

Please keep this conversation between just us, even if you don't like what I'm going to say. Everyone has the right to make a choice for themselves.

How do you feel about the organization? What issues have you had? Any frustrations?

I'm part of a secret group of employees working with (Union) to unionize (I cannot stress how much the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023 helped us with being able to hear people's feelings about unions and talking more openly at work about them than we normally could have).

Here is what the process looks like (more on that later), here are the issues we've noticed are the biggest and why we think they are the solution to this problem.

What do you think?

Those conversations were an hour or so each, and there isn't much of a guide there because we kept it fluid to each person. This is why I say one-on-one, or if there is a second person, only an OC member, not you speaking to 2 people about the union.

Let them be honest with their feelings and let that lead the conversation, but don't make airy promises. Your union representative will have talked to you and talked you through what to say, so you'll have a kind of basic guide.

The Process (Which took a year, so it's not a fast process)

So, here's what it looked like for us, some of this is the policy of our national union.

Talk to everyone you believe is safe to speak with, who can keep a secret.

Every conversation, get the personal email and phone number of the person.

Pass it along to your union rep, who should call them individually to go through the process and get to know them and the job they do. It'll be almost identical to the convo you just had with them.

Our goal was to recruit 70% of eligible people and have a "Yes, I like this plan" from them. Our national union sent our representative out to us to have an in-person kind of party-meeting with everyone to get them hyped when we were around 60%.

Once we hit 70%, we entered a holding pattern, waiting for our organizer's boss to give him a thumbs up, then he engaged one of the union's attorneys in our general region (the union hadn't existed in our state until us, so no one was in-state).

Because of how the process works, we had to be in sync with her schedule.

During this time, we wrote our petition (which the attorney worked on with us), created a social media plan, created a logo, created a union gmail for official communication, and prepared press releases (we're a TV station so we do this normally, part of our jobs. Other unions will help you via their own press office).

Once we were getting closer, we reached out to our high-risk people.

Then the petition went live. The petition is just a message to management saying "Hey, we're doing this". You can find examples of what they look like everywhere, it isn't a vent session, it's not like "You suck, we unionize", it's much friendlier than we wanted to be.

People digitally sign the petition, and we managed to keep everyone quiet during this.

At this point, the Organizing Committee went from transparent to fairly opaque, we don't want to give people timelines because timelines and things are very rapidly changing at this point and you are so incredibly stressed about the news leaking.

Once the petition is green-lit, when we hit 70% of eligible people signed (more signed after, we didn't stop anyone from signing even after it was sent to the government), the next phase began.

The petition- with names- was sent to the CEO. He received a wake-up call from our attorney at 8am (his fault for having his calls forward to his personal cell).

At that point, government protections kick in in a much more serious way. They can't fire you or punish you for signing that petition in any way or the law comes down HARD on them (especially while Democrats control the white house). All the secrecy and stress was to get to this point without them knowing we existed, and we somehow managed to achieve it.

From there, it gets funky, and we're still in that process.

Basically they'll have to either voluntarily recognize us (which they have now put in writing with attorneys they intend to do, this is the unicorn of unionizations, so incredibly rare), or they fight like hell and there is an election 3-5 weeks after that petition is filed.

It isn't a done-deal yet, it could still become that knock-down-drag-out fight that is the unionization vote... but all signs are pointing in a very positive direction.

After that, we'll elect a Negotiating Committee (that is done union-group-wide, it's usually the same as the Organizing Committee, but the OC you just end up on if the OC wants you, the Negotiating Committee is more complicated).

The contract negotiation takes about a year, just how it works out, and you don't pay a single penny to the union until you sign that contract. They're covering the attorney and all that, not you.

Our union is also throwing us a party and bringing us swag to celebrate becoming the very first public media station in our state's history to ever unionize :)

[thoughtsaladblog]

Goodbye 2022

Here we are, yet again at the dawn of a new year. I’m currently spending my NYE like a totally cool person, i.e: alone in my house by choice! Although, no lie, I’m kinda digging it. Alone is where I thrive.

As I wonder at what fresh horrors await me (and this “great” nation) in 2023, I also look back at the year gone by. Honestly, even though last year swept by quickly it did still feel like the equivalent of 5 years. So much happened in the span of just twelve months that I still can’t believe that it was only a year gone by.

To begin with- I turned thirty. And with it came the fears of ageing and falling behind in life. But also a certain form of wisdom as well. I know I’ve matured in the span of one year more than I had in the last 5 years collectively. Sure, my disease may also have played a major role in the maturing but either way, a lot has changed in me. While I do still remain an avid overthinker- the things I tend to overthink about have changed. I dedicate much less time to worrying about dwindling relationships and people. My sole focus has been my work. This year I finally reached peak levels of workaholic, where I juggle four jobs, 7 days a week into the wee hours of the night. It’s been AMAZING! It’s exhausting but it feels so good to be productive. I mean I have no social life- save for maybe a week or so in April and a couple of weeks in December when I decide to come out of hibernation and socialise. But I feel so empowered. It feels good to make money, and to know that I survive completely off my own hard work and efforts. I’ve always liked the idea of being independent and it is my dream to be wholly independent as soon as I can.

So I’ve gone from worrying and wishing I could be younger and out having fun to finally seeing that what I truly love is being busy and productive. No amount of partying could ever meet the rush that comes with a packed schedule in which you work on autopilot. I earn and I get to spend and suddenly I feel like I’m my own man- or better yet, I feel like I’m overcoming limitations placed on women throughout history. I am the first girl from all my Sinhalese relatives living in Lanka to move out of my parents home- by choice and before marriage. I feel so proud because I feel like not only am I setting a precedent for other girls in the family who follow after me but I’m also living by my own rules. It’s a feeling of liberation that I can’t quite capture in so many words. It’s a thrill. The feeling of power and independence is always such a turn on- even if it’s about ourselves.

I also learned to value more important things in life and the brevity of human life and how so much of what we stress about truly means nothing in the grand scheme of things. From spending the middle part of the year stressing about the lack of a man and the hopeless attempts at finding someone through a dating app I evolved into spending the latter half of the year being grateful for things like movement and the ability to simply function. All it took was an autoimmune diagnosis, a few weeks of pain and limited movement and extreme hairfall before I realized that no man on this planet mattered more than my own abilities to function. My drive for independence meant that I needed to be able to function normally and on my own- suddenly that’s all I wanted. I valued the simple things- the things we take for granted. I learnt that there was so much God had already given me that I’d complained about and not looked after, and simply taken for granted. I learnt that I cherished those things and would fight as much as it took to retain them.

I learnt that I can actually live without my so-called best friends. I learnt that what I had for so long fooled myself into believing could be destroyed in a single relationship. That the trust I placed on people had been completely ill-fitting and that so often they can surprise you in ways that you don’t want to be surprised in. Dowaan proved to me how all that I had built him up to be as a friend was in no way what he was when it boiled down to it. When push came to shove he simply stood there agog- choosing a three month old “relationship” that started with cheating over a 10 year friendship that had been built on support and mutual understanding. And when I say choosing a 3 month old relationship- it didn’t really have a choice involved- simply a matter of standing up for his friend of ten years (his best friend) when his girlfriend at the time chose to take issue with his and my friendship. Better yet, it showed me who his girlfriend i.e: my best friend of 23 years, truly was. Apart from not trusting me, and trying to tear apart my friendship with Dowaan, it has since been revealed to me that she said some wonderfully “insightful” and completely false things about me to him during their courtship. What was truly the cherry on top was how at the end of that relationship and in the midst of the crisis in the one that followed, she still chose to call me and turn to me to be a shoulder to cry on despite all she had said. I feel like in learning and realising all this I’ve opened my third eye into the realities of the universe and the people in it. If I didn’t have much reason to trust humans, I have even less reasons now.

And the final lesson that came right at the cusp of the year drawing to an end, was to place more value and self respect on myself. A night of drinking and other shenanigans led to shameful sex with an old FWB in which neither him nor I were into it- thereby leading to a less than mediocre sexual experience that left me feeling more ashamed and in no way satisfied. I woke up feeling like I’d made my final big mistake for the year and it was all I needed to leave the bad habits that have held me back, in the year that was closing and take on the new year with better regard for myself. Sexual frustration should not be an excuse to shamelessly belittle myself, and going forward I hope to let my head make my decisions and not my libido. 

So much has happened to help me see more clearly than ever how much I need to watch out for myself, who my real friends are and what truly matters. This year was a great teacher. It taught me to love myself- not in the cringe-y Instagram influencer kinda way, but in the brutally honest, no-nonsense kind of way where I don’t let others walk all over me. And most importantly that I stop giving a fuck about people and incidents that don’t fulfill me, and choose instead to work on building my dream future for myself- because God knows, I deserve it!

[raymondfzeo295]

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D., teachers and extension food safety professionals at The University of Georgia, say that a three-day survival kit will suffice for the majority of catastrophes, but if you remain in an area where you understand power gets cut off for an extended time period, a two-week supply is more affordable. Whichever you select, "strategy food products so a minimum of one well-balanced meal could be consumed each s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/3survivalfoodkits/1-what-is-more-important-to-a-persons-survival-water-of-food-explain-survival-food-kits.html day," they state.

For instance, a three-day set that's suggested for a single person might guardian food storage meal survival kit have 18 servings, however just nine meals. This is deliberate, as you frequently have greater calorie and protein needs in survival circumstances. Shelf Life Another thing to think about is life span. Many food kits that are designated for survival have a 20- to 30-year rack life, but make certain you're double monitoring.

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1-Month Emergency Food Kit Emergency Essentials – Be Prepared - Emergency Essentials

Frequently asked questions Just how much food do you require? The American Red Cross suggests that you have a three-day supply for prospective evacuation situations and a two-week supply for house use. In other words, for circumstances where you might be stuck at home with no how to get dinosaurs to get their own food on ark survival power or other similar emergency scenarios, you must have enough food to feed everyone in your home three meals daily for two weeks.

What foods have the longest service life? Many survival food kits are made with dehydrated foods and/or freeze-dried foods, which have the longest service life. These kinds of foods can last 20 to thirty years if sealed and saved properly. According to the USDA, not all canned foods are considered shelf-stable.

[siimjaeyun]

ten! : friends? friends.

synopsis: you've been head over heels for jake, your brother's best friend since middle school; the poor boy has received way too many of your love letters that are stacked up in the corner of his room. and yet, he strikes you down every single time, but being stubborn is both a blessing and curse because when you catch him in a bad mood one day, he takes your heart and breaks it in the span of a few words. and yet, there he is wondering why he's so upset over your new friendship with the transfer student.

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you should have known better when you saw seungmin standing next to felix as you opened the front door. his nervous smile also taunted you and your brain did the one thing it new best, run.

sunghoon couldn't even process anything when you had already left his line of sight and it worried felix who stood oblivious at your reaction. on the other hand, seungmin tried running after you before being stopped by your brother.

you knew it'd be too easy to hide in the local cafe or even the dog shelter you visited, opting to run to a random convenience store.

while scrolling the shelves, you didn't notice the boy who was standing at the end of the isle. he noticed your presence first handing you the brand that you were likely searching for.

"im assuming you came for this?" you glance up and find jake extending his hand with your favorite ramen brand. normally, you'd be excited to see the man of your dreams, but today was different.

the moment your eyes met his, you broke down in the middle of isle, covering your eyes with the packet of ramen. jake, worried, pulled you in for a hug and softy patted your back to calm you down.

"its seungmin isn't it?" he confirmed, and only continued to hold you in silence.

when you finally calmed down, he paid for your ramen and sat with you by a table in the convenience store.

"thanks." you opened the container and took a bite while looking at the window.

"what happened?"

"seungmin. he's back. and he's friends with felix so when he came over, seeing his face brought back things I didn't know." jake only nodded, recalling the incident with seungmin.

although for everyone you had met only knew you as the girl head over heels for jake, before him it was seungmin. your first love.

"oh my god, I forgot to call my brother back, he must be worried sick." You felt guilty realizing you had left sunghoon to deal with it.

"come on, ill take you home." you accept his invitation and blankly stare at the picture in his car, taking notice it was a picture of the three of you with seungmin. you weren't sure why the picture was there; it was taunting you.

"yn! where were you, you had me so worried that even sunoo and i went searching for you." sunghoon hugs you and his eyes follow to jake who stands behind you.

"go in, ill be there in a bit." you turn back and give jake a quick hug and thank you before turning to head inside.

"thanks for taking care of her. i don't think there's any person better to be there with her now that seungmin is back."

"that's what best friends are for right?" jake clarifies and receives a smile from sunghoon.

"uh I think my mom made some extra dinner, and she'd be glad to see you."

"sure, why not."

sure, sunghoon still had some hatred for the boy, but at the end he knows jake is the boy who saved your heart. and your life.

--- taglist: @sleepyenhasasha @enhacolor @mochisnlix @nyfwyeonjun @jaeviez @yizhoutv @enheyy @c9tnoos @ncityy04 @leeis @fionathebanana @tomorrowbymoa-together @90sni-ki @alo-ehas @jakesim-p @ielaa @theskzvibe [temp closed]