#still bop to it DAILY

[seokmattchuus]

How do people look back at the music they used to love and hate it now?

Like, I definitely still fuck with the cringey music I used to love but maybe that's just me needing to be euthanized.

[ilostyou]

spotify said it’s sad girl hours today even if you don’t know it yet

[multi-twentyone]

just been made aware of the fact that angel with a shotgun is in my lifetime top 25 spotify songs. curse you supernatural

[izjeon]

GONEGIRL.

athlete!jungkook x f!reader

𖥻 genre: s2l (strangers to lovers?), fwb (friends with benefits), pwp, and university au.

𖥻 rating: 18+

𖥻 word count: 3.2k

𖥻 warnings: [MINORS DNI] afab/f!reader, heavy infatuation, they basically stalk each other, a lot of sexual tension, smut is literally the plot, many mentions of wet dreams, debatable infidelity, reader has debatable morals, jungkook & reader are horny, switch!jk (but he does most of the dominating) and switch!reader, a lot of making-out, hickeys (f.receiving), reader lowkey has a praise kink, hair pulling (m.receiving), jungkook whimpers, extra beefy jungkook, dry humping… and they get caught.

a/n: this is not proofread, but why is standing next to you such a bop?? helped me finish this after months of it being stuck in the drafts. also, to whoever told me to stay in the basement, i couldn’t stick to my word, pookie 😔. enjoy!

series masterlist: GONEGIRL

chapter one - ‘slowburn?’

𖥻 GONEGIRL

you knew who he was.

jeon jungkook: the senior that all the freshmen drooled for and the senior that all the seniors wanted to themselves. as a senior yourself, you couldn’t say he didn’t intrigue you. he was a sporty guy, winning national and global championships in track and wrestling for fun on the side. obviously, his matches were the most popular in viewership across the university. the golden boy, he never once failed to add another gold medal to your university’s esteemed profile.

so, you knew who he was, but you couldn’t understand why his eyes were stuck on you and only you.

you’d first met him at a party held by one of his close friends, namjoon. you were introduced briefly and didn’t exchange any numbers or socials. but, that following morning, jngkk_97 followed you on instagram. and, from that day on, he was the first guy to like your posts, the first guy to view your stories and the first guy you knew of to not slide into your dms.

with his intriguing, yet unexpectedly distant, behaviour, he found his way into your mind— 24/7. so, every morning, you awoke, gaslighting yourself into believing that the thought of his pink, pouty lips on yours didn't actually send you into a midlife crisis. they just made you a little faint.

every single night, you tucked your fragile mind into bed, losing yourself in hazy dreams branded by the thought of jungkook's touch. but, after a few weeks of contactless flirting, you let the idea of him go.

because you’d been told he had a girlfriend.

although it usually took a lot to do so, you felt the cowardly urge to give up on your infatuation. it'd been more than 2 weeks of mutual stalking but, still, no message. you guessed, he just wasn't as desperate for you as you were for him.

and you didn't like that. so you quit your daily routine of streaming his instagram and greedily watched as he kept up his own stalkish routine, consecutively failing to direct his focus back onto his girlfriend.

the same gorgeous girlfriend sitting with him on a black and cushy beanbag, radiating as she spoke to the other students around them. and that's when you realised, not having each other's undivided attention must've been a thing in their relationship.

because, his doe eyes of false innocence were only on you.

it was the first time you were seeing each other in person after namjoon’s party.

you stared back at jungkook through the wide, unglazed window in the separating wall between the kitchen and the living room. even with his supposed girlfriend of 5 months on his lap, running her fingers through his hair, his eyes were only on you. you scoffed, chuckling to yourself.

he would be fun.

leaning back on the kitchen counter of jennie’s apartment, you tilted your head to the side. intrigued, you watched as he did the same, copying your actions with a lopsided grin. now, you didn’t have the best eyesight but you weren’t so blind that you couldn’t tell that he was clearly hinting at something. something that would land you in a very taboo situation.

and you loved that.

you lifted your plastic cup to your lips and turned away from the athlete sitting at the other end of the room. you downed your drink as you walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. you looked around for your best friend and there she was, face deep in boobs.

as you made your way to the couch she was sprawled on, you realised the athlete had disappeared from his girlfriend’s side. curious of where he’d disappeared to, your eyes ran across the packed apartment, desperate for the sight of him.

and there it was, the something.

he was standing near the front door and his girlfriend had gone to sit with other seniors. it looked like he was exchanging goodbyes with his friends.

he was leaving— without his girlfriend.

“jennie, i think i’m going,” you mindlessly whispered, eyes stuck on the 5’10" hottie with his foot out the door and doe eyes drifting back across the crowded room. then his eyes were on yours again: a silent exchange of words.

“already…?” a drunk jennie whined, lifting her face from the deep cleavage of her girlfriend. “wait,” she mumbled, eyebrows scrunching into a sobering expression, and squinted her eyes at your side profile. “you think?”

satisfied with your decided future, you turned back to your best friend with your lips curling into a sly grin. “no, i know.”

she lazily propped herself up on her girlfriend and whined, “but how’re you gonna get home~?”

the front door slammed shut.

“i’ll find a ride.”

𖥻 GONEGIRL

jungkook picked at the zip of his thin bomber coat. he was leaning against his black benz, waiting.

ever since he first laid his eyes on you in that little backless, black dress, jungkook knew you were trouble. you were a distraction; more distracting than the pending termination of his current relationship; and much more distracting than the thought of joining the national track team again. you were a parasite living in his mind.

he practically breathed you. when he woke, you were his first thought. when he felt compelled to open instagram, you were there. even when he would try to escape you in his sleep, you were there. he could barely last ten seconds sinking into the thought of you. if you let him sink into the reality of you, jungkook would cease to exist.

jungkook groaned, throwing back his head. he thought he would be fine and perfectly content with your instagram and your daily occurrence in his dreams (sexual or not), but you just had to show up at this party— held by your best friend. how was he supposed to know you guys were best friends? now he was actually waiting for the real you and he could feel himself going mad. he wasn’t sure he could keep his hands to himself and he could already feel the consequences of his future actions creeping up on him—

“who bought that for you?”

his ears twitched.

his heart lunged and his eyes found yours in an instant. but jungkook’s always had a wandering eye.

his eyes almost instantly fell to your body, trailing over your exposed cleavage in your white dress, and then dropping to the high slit on your left thigh, almost exposing your crotch. you were some type of angel for sure.

he was fucked.

jungkook was fucked the moment he met you; the moment he spent over an hour scrolling through countless instagram accounts to find yours; the moment he couldn’t dream of his own future without you showing up; and the moment he began to pray you showed up in his dreams every night before bed.

he was fucked because he feared once he had a hold on you, he would never be able to let go.

a man’s logic.

“my dad,” jungkook finally replied, pulling himself together. “he decided i needed a car— because i run 24/7. and there definitely cannot be a cheaper and better car than a mercedes benz.”

his sarcastic tone made you smile.

“that’s cute,” you smiled.

it went silent.

“do you need a ride?”

“don’t you have a girlfriend?” you rebutted with a smirk. truthfully, part of you didn’t care about his answer. you were an addict in front of a line of coke. you would get what you wanted one way or another.

“ha,” he chuckled, lowering his head in what you thought was shame. your question put jungkook on the spot. and you knew cheaters never worked well when put on the spot. but jungkook looked up with a wincing smile and corrected you, “she’s not my girlfriend.”

oh.

“we’re… complicated.”

now, jungkook wasn’t sure that choyeon would’ve given you the same answer. they weren’t together, but she acted as if they were. and he didn’t make much of an effort to correct her. so, he guessed he was still guilty. but he only felt guilty to a certain extent. he’d already chosen feeling guilty about hurting choyeon rather than missing an opportunity to get what he dreamed of.

what he fucking craved.

the sound of your heels getting closer to him kissed jungkook out of his thoughts. oh, you seduced him: the feeling of your manicured fingers gently grabbing hold of his chin and slowly lowering his clouded eyes to yours.

you whispered, “how complicated?”

jungkook held his breath for a second or two. how complicated were they? well, he knew they were complicated enough for him to forget about her in your presence and only remember her when you asked him to. however, they weren’t complicated enough for them to not be in some sort of a relationship.

but he decided it didn’t matter. when it came to you, she didn’t matter. he realised how beautiful your eyes looked under the moonlight. they glistened with the false innocence jungkook knew would ruin him. after all the nights of imagined panting, moaning and fucking and mornings of bitter reality, post-clarity and cum-stained sheets, jungkook burned for your touch.

fuck, he could almost taste you.

as if you could read his thoughts, your awaiting finger finally fell onto the his plump bottom lip, sweetly kissing the man out of his stupor. your eyes left his and fell to where your finger slowly traced across jungkook’s soft, pink receipt of kisses.

that’s when his lips parted, and he whispered, “as complicated as you want.”

at his answer, your distracted eyes flickered back up to his awaiting, hooded eyes. that’s when you, too, realised how dangerous your infatuation had gotten. just the sight of those buttered chestnut eyes and the intoxicating feel of his slow exhales on your skin forced you into a reality where you lacked even the smallest control over your own body. but, even more dangerous, was how little you cared about the way you drowned in his presence. but then again, you never did learn how to swim.

you smiled, letting your hands fall back to your sides.

“i’ll take that ride.”

𖥻 GONEGIRL

the ride back to yours was almost silent, only filled with random whispers of directions coming from jungkook’s gps system. the voiced map directed him to your address and, yet, everything else pointed his eyes to you.

jungkook took a glance at you. he watched you; he watched you with your elbow propped up onto the rolled-down window, relaxed upper body peeking out into seoul’s night. he saw how you leaned further into the wind licking at your cheeks when he pressed on the gas, a hint of a smile wavering across your partially hidden face. he watched you in the silence, accepting his loud need— his loud need for you.

and he didn’t even know you. but jungkook couldn’t seem to find the rational sense to care. he knew you were a ‘stranger’ but, fuck, you’d overwhelmed his entire existence. you had damned him to the crucifying point where he actually felt the need to breathe you— to accept every single inch of you into his being— and he had no idea why. even as he glanced in your direction for the hundredth time, he couldn’t dare try to understand how you’d done this to him.

once again, as if you could read his thoughts, your head turned, lost eyes running over the lavender lights in the car. and like a key, your wandering eyes pierced his and locked his gaze onto yours.

“you’ve arrived at your destination,” the gps announced, breaking the exchanged glance. jungkook turned back to the road, and you turned back to seoul’s night.

“mm, just here,” you hummed, pointing to an empty parking spot in front of the tall apartment complex. maybe it was just human curiosity, but you found yourself mesmerised by the way he smoothly slotted the benz into the empty space.

fuck, everything he did was hot.

the sound of the engine’s hum softening into a quiet mew reminded jungkook of the anticipation clawing at his skin. it clouded his senses. but when his eyes flitted back onto you, yours were already on his.

he watched your lips part, and stilled as your next whisper left a trail of wet kisses across his mind.

“come up with me.”

𖥻 GONEGIRL

“thanks,” you started, slotting your key into auburn door’s lock. turning to catch a glimpse of jungkook’s dewy eyes behind his black locks, you smiled and continued, “for the ride.”

jungkook’s lips quirked into the same lopsided grin from earlier. “you’re welcome,” he replied.

it was silent again.

with those hidden eyes still on yours, jungkook’s tongue slipped past his lips, running over his bottom lips. your gaze dropped to the pink tongue flitting across those pink, pillowy lips of his, and you sunk. those lips forced you into a familiar daydream where all that mattered was letting your tongue glide across his bottom lip until you slipped in, fucking his tongue with yours— tasting jungkook.

you needed a taste.

you glanced back up into his prolonged stare. then your hands were falling from the keys in the door, fingers smoothing across the nape of his neck and cheek, and tugging his lips down to yours. but jungkook’s hands were already cradling your hips, touch-starved fingers pressing into your sides, as his lips met yours first.

it was a gentle yet deep peck. a peck was quick: it allowed jungkook to draw back for two crucial seconds and let his clouded vision run over your expression. alluring eyes looked up into his gaze and jungkook could finally see it: your mutual desperation, the hunger, and the torture. it was all he needed to see before his finger was tilting your chin up once more, and his lips were taking you in.

from brushing his tongue past yours to savouring the taste of alcohol on your tongue, jungkook sunk into the taste of you. but he didn’t know if he could go any longer without sinking into you. his hand left your waist cold, fingers fumbling with the keys in the door and failing miserably. “no,” you rushed, lips barely leaving his. “turn them to the right.”

after hearing the click of your stubborn door unlocking, you were all over each other again. you stumbled into your apartment, hand quickly muddling with the light switch, with jungkook hurrying after you, tossing your keys and his suffocating jacket aside.

his daring fingers smoothed over your ass, kneading the soft, clothed skin, before lifting you to his hips. a deep hum of approval rumbled against your lips as your legs wrapped around him. but, in this position, your little dress had ridden up, exposing a white thong snug to your weeping slit. and who on earth would jungkook be if he didn’t cop a feel?

lifting you up once more to adjust his arm, the tips of jungkook’s fingers slipped under the white lace, fingers grazing across your supple ass. feeling his fingers inch closer to your needy cunt, your breath hitched and the dull stir in your core began to hum, itching for more than a simple touch.

and, as if he could read your mind, your breath was forced from you, head falling onto the lush cushions on your sofa. wafts of mint invading your senses, your hazy eyes took in how beautiful jungkook looked above you— like it was where he was meant to be. and he realised the same, the apartment’s warm and amber lights cascading through his locks and clouding the irises of your tempting eyes.

in that still second, both you and jungkook came to a silent agreement. your dreams couldn’t compare to reality.

“you’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

you blinked. you knew you were beautiful— of course— but hearing the phrase trickle out of jungkook’s pretty mouth felt…different. your eyes followed his as his gaze fluttered across your face, brows furrowing as if he were in awe.

“kiss me,” you begged, and he obeyed.

greedy, jungkook’s kisses were everywhere— on your swollen lips, before tumbling down your jaw to the middle of your neck, littering a trail of bruising hickeys. and you couldn’t do anything but moan, whimper, and sink into his sweet touch.

“oh, fuck,” you whined, head tilting back into the plush sofa. your fingers pushed through the thick rift of hair at the nape of his neck, tugging on it. but you never would’ve expected such a pathetic moan to leave his throat, rumbling into the sweet spot right above your collarbone. you paused. his moan echoed in your mind— a repeating succulent sound. so, you tugged a little harder, relishing in how he muffled a guttural whimper into the base of your neck, “mmf, fuck”. but then his hips began to move against yours, revengeful, and you realised how fucked you were— and would be.

jungkook had a bulge that made you wonder; wonder how he crammed that shit into his boxers; wonder how he lived a seemingly normal life with it; and wonder how he would struggle to cram that cock into your sopping mess of a cunt. so, as he ground down against your erect clit, your hips bucked up into his fucking, eager to measure the sheer size of the hidden dick. “oh, please,” you whined, thoughts stained by the way he licked a hot stripe across your ear’s helix, boner perfectly smushing down against your clit.

bruising lips barely touching yours, half-lidded eyes cruelly watched as you rode up into his clothed cock and stuttered moans so pathetic your cheeks burned, glazed eyes brimming with tears. he was already fucking you so good, and he hadn’t even touched your bare pussy yet.

oh, jungkook ruined you. with a hand trailing down your heated sides, he sent your body into a rabid heat, his touch only licking the wet flame ruining your ability to think. and when his hand finally cupped your leaking cunt, thumb circling over your pulsing clit, you were already begging pitiful whimpers. “please, please, please—”

“___?”

your bodies stilled.

a voice that was not yours or jungkook’s echoed throughout the apartment, piercing the thick haze that’d swallowed your minds whole. you blinked, stare slowly lowering to jungkook’s stunned stare that was already on you. his doe eyes wrinkled into a smile as his lips pursed into an awkward grin. the cringe was evident on his face; he was a grown adult getting caught with his hand deep in the cookie jar.

jungkook’s head slowly raised and turned, peeking over the sofa to see your intruder and his cockblock. then he froze. still hidden from the eyes of your cockblock, you eyed his expression, confused on why remained still, eyes wide, lips pursed and ears burning red.

who was it?

begrudgingly, you shuffled out of jungkook’s caging arms, propping yourself up on your elbows, and looked over the sofa, ready to kick out your cockblocking neighbour. but who you saw wasn’t an unfortunate neighbour you could just dismiss. in fact, the person you saw made you the unfortunate neighbour because there your best friend stood, mouth agape and only a foot into the apartment.

“oh, fuck. well, um. oh wow,” jennie blubbered, feet awkwardly wobbling over the door’s threshold. now, drunk jennie didn’t have the best memory but she could’ve sworn she’d warned you about jungkook’s relationship status. so, as you watched the cogs turn in her head, her brows furrow and her eyes squint, darting between the both of you, all you could do was blink and smile.

“…what the fuck?”

gg: ‘slowburn?’ - fini

[andresylupin]

I had fun making a playlist last year, so I'm doing it again!

(songs info here:)

鳩間節 (Hatoma Bushi) is a japanese folk song from the Hatoma island. It's a very small island, culturally part of the Okinawa region, and this famous song describes how beautiful the Hatoma landscape is from the Nakamui forest, one of the highest points of the island where you can admire the comings and goings of the boats.

"Chant et Likembé" comes from the album "Chants de l'orée de la forêt", a 90s folk recording by Didier Demolin, which features music and chants from the Efe people. They are one of the pygmy groups living in the Ituri forest of Congo.

The Halluci Nation is a canadian band, who blends First Nations music with electro, dubstep, etc. They are very vocal politically, with songs actively speaking out about First Nations' plights. "Mother Mother" features other First Nations artists, and calls back to the relationship between land and people.

ዋሽንት (washint) is the amharic word for a traditional ethiopian flute. It is a very important instrument in ethiopian music, and shepherds and cattlemen use it daily to communicate with each other and call/direct their flock. The player here is Tasew Wendim, who founded the Moseb Cultural Music Band, which mixes ethiopian traditional music with ethiopian jazz and other music styles.

"Fulenn" was France's entry for Eurovision 2022, by britton artists Alvan and Ahez. The lyrics are entirely in britton, telling the story of a woman dancing with the devil in the forest without a care. Big pagan-electro vibes, and I genuinely it could have performed well, but Go_A had a similar number the year prior (also better imo, even if I think Fulenn is still a bop), and so we ended up on the bottom, saved only from last place by Germany.

Kulning is a type of herding call from Scandinavia, used mainly by women. While these voice techniques had originally a very mundane use, they seem to have acquired nowadays a very mystic aura, similarly to other kinds of nordic folk chants. This particular recording is from the album Lockrop & Vallatar, entirely composed of Swedish pastoral music.

Otyken is a Siberian indigenous group who, much like the others on this playlist, incorporates folk music and traditional instruments with modern styles. They apparently blew up on TikTok, but I'm not on there, so I feel lucky that I stumbled upon them, they're very cool! The song is named after a siberian forest spirit and mentions how sacred the forest can be.

手向 (Tamuke) is an old traditional japanese melody, that is played on a shakuhachi (traditional chinese/japanese flute), during funerals or commemorations. "Tamuke" means spiritual offering to the gods or the Buddha, and this piece represents a time of prayer, contemplation with the deceased.

So I'm aware this is not the most seamless playlist ever with these very different styles back to back, we are kinda playing whiplash haha!

But I actually really like how they all respond to each other in a way: flute pieces (washint and Tamuke), modern takes on folk music (Mother Mother, Kykakacha and Fulenn, although Fulenn feels a bit out of place politically lol), herding traditions (kulning and the washint again), deep bond with the land (Hatoma Bushi, Efe people, Kykakacha)... In the end all of them speak of one thing: in the forest we are not alone 🌲🌌

[notroosterbradshaw]

slow dancing in a burning room - five.one

word count: 4.5k

warnings: nsfw 18+, language, angst. starting to get a bit rougher here, kids.

part of: The Boyfriend Experience universe

a/n: thanks to those who read, reblogged and commented on previous chapters. you’re doing god’s work. I know this series is a bit different to what you’re used to from me, so I hope you keep reading. I truly appreciate all the effort you make to show your support x

four.

You’d taken some time off to get Bradley settled into the apartment after the incident. He was quick to try and convince you he didn’t need a babysitter, unless you had ulterior motives to spend days at home alone together, and he wriggled his eyebrows in that way that would make you giggle and roll your eyes, it was all very over-the-top and romcom.

But he could admit, he needed you to help him with little things that hurt more than they should and you freely admitted, much to his chagrin, that you wouldn’t be able to concentrate with him at the apartment by himself if something happened.

Not surprisingly, he was stir-crazy after a few days which didn’t surprise either of you. Bradley Bradshaw did not know how to relax. He wasn’t big on vacations (he didn’t have a big friend group and could find a million reasons to prefer time to himself than be wrangled into stuff with his work friends). He freely confessed he was easily comfortable in his own company, but it was pretty evident quickly it was different when he was banged up and more or less under house arrest.

He'd powered through the book you’d hoped he’d enjoy in about three hours (he had to assure you he really enjoyed it so it was easy to scream through) so you relied on Amazon to deliver almost daily, channel surfed relentlessly, he was no good at binging TV and napped off and on through the day. But it simply came down to idle hands. Fine in his company on his own terms, but with strict orders to rest his head and give his body and mind time to heal – no gym, no running (nothing that he could exert himself with... including sex), no booze, no fun, he had reasoned – Bradley Bradshaw was figuratively climbing the walls. 

Physically, aside from a few bumps and bruises, he appeared absolutely fine, but he couldn’t lie and pretend his head wasn’t still splitting and much to your annoyance, he was resisting the painkillers as frequently as he could. What he was trying to prove, you weren’t sure, but it seemed unnecessary to continue the discomfort for the sake of it and you let him know gently each time he refused the pills you held to him.

“My body, I’ll choose what goes into it,” he told you with a tight-lipped smile, ignoring his lunchtime pills and bopping you on the nose instead.

“Okay,” was all you could shrug kindly. What else could you say and do? Anyone who had met Bradley knew he was no kind of pushover. He could have a certain gruffness, an agitation to him. Quiet and reflective if you didn’t know him, but he’d talk you under the table once he was comfortable with you.

But push him; he will resist. He’d said years ago if he had to put his life into a song it would be Corduroy by Pearl Jam, you understood it implicitly these days.

I'll take the varmint's path Oh, and I must refuse your test A-push me and I will resist This behaviour's not unique

You wandered in to find him cooking a few nights later, the waft from the front door absolutely delicious. You loved it, Bradley was a wonderful cook just like he proved he would be and you loved coming home to find him whipping something up in the kitchen.

He was one of those freaks who could watch a 90-second YouTube clip and figure out a recipe easily, inspired.

It infuriated you that he might have been a better cook than you were too but you would never tell him.

But God, you could get used to this, you realised. He hadn’t heard you come in (you snuck in quietly without fanfare after you’d walked into him dozing a few times that you didn’t want to interrupt just in case he was getting some well-deserved zzz’s). You carefully wrapped your arms around him, feeling him jolt in surprise before chuckling quietly. You kissed between his shoulder blades over his tank, he gave a quiet moan in response and he reached back for you. “I’m home, sweetheart.”

“Welcome home, love,” he said, turning to face you. The cuts on his face were well on their way to healing, but the purple rims around his honey-drenched eyes from lack of sleep overnight were evident. You didn’t know why he wasn’t sleeping and weren’t comfortable asking him yet. He certainly wasn’t complaining of being tired but he didn’t mention each morning that he was staying up all hours.

His palms held your cheeks and kissed you gently, a series of loving pecks. “Missed you today,” you admitted. You quite enjoyed coming home to him and you hoped he agreed. This moving in with a boy wasn’t too bad in all honesty. Not one that cooked, was incredibly tidy and about the sexiest man you’d ever met... that happened to be as infatuated with you as you were with him.

“Me too,” he smiled, his lips kissing the arch of your brow.

“What are you making me for dinner tonight, Chef Bradshaw?” you peered under his arm as you saw your large pot with a rolling boil of water.

“Vodka pasta,” he said. “With a glass of wine?” he asked hopefully.

“Sorry baby, but you gotta be patient a few more days until the doc gives you the green light, okay?”

He groaned. “There are too many OK’s I’m waiting for…” he muttered, a little restless. Maybe a bit petulant.

“I know,” you snuggled into him, your fingers tracing the elastic waist around his basketball shorts.

“I only really want one OK though. Just a tender green light,” he whispered, urging his hips forward to rest against yours. “Miss you, just wanna fuck so bad,” he whined.

You offered him a careful smile but didn’t answer. What could you say? You knew he was downplaying the pain in his ribs still, and his headaches weren’t vanishing as quickly as he’d like regardless of the multitude of ways you’d been fantasising about how he could please you while you couldn’t be intimate for now.

You’d offered a blow job here and there, and he appreciated the offer, but he admitted it wouldn’t satisfy him the way being tangled up with you could. “Whatcha get up to today?”

He raised a wary eyebrow at your abrupt change of topic, kind of hating being left hanging when you’d normally have fallen into some sexy banter with him that would always lead to something even more risqué. He sighed silently and turned back to the stovetop while you gave him space and propped yourself on the bench while he tasted the simmering sauce. “Netflix. Went for a run – ”

“Bradley – ” you tried as you saw his brawny, tanned shoulders tense.

“Love, please don’t. I needed the run – clear my head a bit,” he explained, not looking at you.

Okay. “Did you have the Telehealth with the shrink?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said quietly, a gentle nonchalant shrug creasing his features.

“Go okay?”

He turned back and sighed, resting his big hands on his slender hips, exasperated. “I just don’t wanna do the shrink, okay?” he confessed. “Please don’t give me a hard time about this.”

You gave him a tight-lipped smile, but he stared back, daring you. He knew you had something to say but he had years of trauma to work through and you weren’t surprised that he really didn’t want to go back to the start and overanalyse every horrible thing that had happened in his life again. Who could blame him? “I don’t blame you,” you conceded. “I know it sucks to feel so on display like that. Raw. But you and I both know it’s for the best.”

He hummed, but there was nothing pleasant about it, it was almost a growl. “You’ve had years of therapy… tell me honestly,” he straightened and guided you to the corner of the bench, where he pressed between your thighs, his hands massaging your quads, keeping you in place, well and truly trapped by his presence.

“What?” you asked softly, his imposing frame hovering over you.

“Tell me if the shrink is going to bring my parents back, or if it’s going to make my job any easier,” he watched your face so sternly and a dark sneer rose as your jaw gaped gently. He hummed, already pleased at your reaction.

Well, that was blunt.

“Bradley – ” you tried.

“No, really. I need to know. You come home once a week quiet and disillusioned after your session. I am watching you work through your issues, but really… what has it truly fixed? How has it healed you, love?” he asked, probing deeper. “You still refuse to talk to your dad, the mere mention of him upsets you – ”

“Bradley, please…” It wasn’t about you this time.

“My dad died when I was four, I barely remember it or any trauma from that time. All I recognise is the sympathy I get every time someone mentions me being Goose Bradshaw's kid. I’m nearly fuckin’ 40.”

“Yes, Bradley – ”

“I haven’t finished,” he muttered. “I watched my mother die when I was 17 and moved on with my life. I do things in my job that make me proud and shatter me all at the same time, but I still function every day. I know the weapons I use cause more damage than good, no matter what the leaders of this country say. No matter what my superiors tell me about the honourable peacekeeping I’m supposedly doing. Why can’t I just process these things on my own?” his voice was so even, you were finding it hard to meet his eyes. “I think I have done a fuckin’ great job to now.”

“Because you love what you do – ” You tried to remind him of the stipulations made to get him back in the air. Ribs healed, mental health functioning well. In the greater scheme of things, it made total sense he’d have those hoops to jump through.

“Why does someone else get to decide if I’m mentally fit to get back in my jet? That person knows nothing about me. Nothing about my childhood, school, college… Mav. Not how in love with you I am, how someone else now gets to dictate if we’re intimate – which is also killing me,” he added for good measure. In himself, he knew he was perfectly capable to please you, but each advance was delicately refused and while he knew you were only doing what the doctor ordered – he hoped – it was starting to eat at him too that you were keeping your distance. He volunteered to repeatedly go down on you, but you told him you were okay and looking forward to moments you could share together, just like him. He accepted that, but just because he couldn’t be pleasured didn’t mean he wanted you to go without too. It was a woeful cycle.

“I know, sweetheart. I miss you too.”

“I could just have you right here… I feel fine, and you feel so fine to me,” he whispered against your jaw, nose nuzzling your pulse. “But you’re just like them at the moment. You see that I’m still me. I’m healthy. My body is healing… but you’re resisting too,” he said, retracting his body steadily and moving back to the stove, checking the sauce as you recoiled, immediately missing his touch.

He had far too much time to think about things, with or without the shrink’s help.

“Bradley, just give your body the time it needs,” you tried although the way his body rescinding like that made you feel bitterly cold. You missed his warmth quickly.

“It’s in right working order,” he snapped your name. “I’m fucking fine and I don’t need a bunch of lab-coated douchebags, or you, to tell me different.”

You held your hands up, slipping off the counter. “Okay, okay,” you stood down… on many fronts. You walked to him and bunched his tank at the chest in your palms and brought his lips to yours. “I’m sorry. I see that you’re doing really well. You’re the best judge here.”

“Thank you,” he said softly. “I need you to hear me, love,” he pleaded, bobbing to rest his forehead against yours. “No one else seems to.”

Hearing a knock at the door, you gave Rooster a quizzical look and he gave a small smile. “I invited someone to dinner.”

“Better not be my dad...” you muttered as he shook his head, a weak, apologetic call on his lips.

“Of course not,” he pulled himself from you and stood to height, heading for the door as you poured yourself a cool glass of water, even if a half dozen tequilas seemed more appropriate. You’d been home ten minutes and your nerves were fucking fried. You clutched the sink, trying to centre yourself and upon hearing your name, you looked up at Bradley as he stood side-by-side, mountaining over the man that made his life miserable all those years ago.

“Maverick, hi,” you managed to say, biting back the choking feeling in your throat as he gave a slight wave and presented you with a half dozen burnt orange roses. They were beautiful and Bradley grinned at the gesture.

“Been a while,” he said softly and if age wearied him, he was certainly showing it. “What’s it been? Fifteen years or so?”

You shrugged, a little shellshocked, gazing at Bradley who was very interested in his tanned bare feet suddenly. “Could be…”

“How’s your grandpa?”

“He’s good. Usual Viper,” you supposed as Mav nodded.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Maverick said as Bradley joined you, resting his palms on your waist as he held you from behind. “So, you weren’t kidding, kid. You two are very much together.”

“This is the love of my life, Mav,” he pressed a kiss into your hair as you pushed through with your smile, hoping it didn’t appear as confused as it was feeling and Maverick smiled, fondly. “Love, Mav is here for dinner if that’s okay with you?” 

“Yeah, of course,” you said, forcing the affirmative into your voice.

Where the fuck had this come from?

“I appreciate the invite,” Maverick said.

“It’s no problem,” Bradley spoke up

“I guess I’ll set the table…” you loosened Bradley’s grip and thought maybe, just maybe… you were going to need that wine to get through the night. “Mav, can I get you a drink?” you asked politely.

“I’ll just stick to water,” he replied.

Fuck.

“No problem,” you said, pulling away from Bradley to collect some glasses and busy yourself elsewhere.

“Bet you’re glad to have Bradley home?” Maverick asked as you collected the crockery. He held his hands out, hoping to help you. You let him, the room was far too small for a snarky comment not to be heard by all. Not to let Bradley feel your discomfort.

You gave a kind smile and contemplated your answer. “Of course. But I suppose not in these circumstances.”

He nodded faintly. “I understand. I want you to know I did everything I could up there to keep him safe – ”

“Mav,” Bradley cut in. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain anything.”

“I guess it could have been a lot worse,” you agreed, and that tone of seeped through. Fuck it, you said. They might not have been drinking, but you were going to make this discomfort a little easier on yourself at least and went to the fridge for the bottle of rose you’d been resisting, not wanting to drink around Bradley while he was recommended not to.

“Good drop,” Mav said, calmly. He could feel the air around you – the confusion, the hurt. He knew Bradley probably hadn’t told you everything – regardless of what was classified or not. Bradley had said there were no secrets between you, he had told Mav how in love with you he was on the way home, evacuated to safety. Maverick wouldn’t leave Bradley’s side, regardless of his orders. He was going to make sure Bradley made it back to dry land, safe and sound.

Feeling a hand on your hip, Bradley tenderly kissed your temple. “Grub’s up, love. Take a seat, I’ll stand.”

The apartment was just not conducive for three. No room for a dining table, you generally ate together on the couch or at the counter on the stools when an effort was made. “No,” you reassured him, softening as he smiled at you, his palms cupping your jaw before he lightly kissed you. “I’ll stand.”

Bradley came to bed lightly later that night. You’d left him and Mav to chat for a while, before excusing yourself at a reasonable time to shower and take your leave. In your PJs, you had moved on to your book, what you were reading you weren’t quite processing, your head dizzy with your distraction. Each time you heard a laugh you felt more confused than before.

Pete Mitchell was in your apartment. And he’d been willingly invited by Bradley Bradshaw. When had this narrative changed?

“Lovvve,” he drawled, crawling into bed with you. He crept his body over yours, not daring to sneak between the sheets. “Thank you for tonight,” he pressed sweet kisses into your forehead, temple and finally the tip of your nose. He wriggled his thighs between yours and took your book, tossing it towards the bedside table – its crash suggesting it well and truly missed it, bookmark be damned.

“Hmm,” you replied, but he knew it was a more put-off sound as he chuckled quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure seems it,” you replied.

“No, really. I’m sorry,” he said with a little more sincerity, but the fond grin and dancing eyes told the story. “Kiss me,” he whispered, nudging his nose with yours.

“Why didn’t you tell me Mav was coming over tonight?” you blurted out before his lips touched yours and he paused, jerking back slightly. “I didn’t think you could stand him.”

You searched his face. You could see his brain working and trying to find an excuse that would appease you. And when he said to you, “We’re trying to work on our relationship,” you almost pushed him off you. He had you pinned for a reason but sadly for you, he was under the microscope.

“What happened for anything to change? A month ago, you were dreading him as your CO… now your buds again? My brain can’t even compute the venom you’ve spat at him and then he’s in my kitchenette for dinner and I have to pretend he hasn’t hurt you - ”

“Our kitchenette,” Bradley correctly you gently. “I live here too, remember?”

Sighing, you ran your thumb against the faint gash healing on his neck and his eyes fluttered closed, sweetly. “Yes…” you corrected yourself. “Our kitchenette. But I still need some warning about stuff like this, roomie.”

He nodded. “Okay, you’re right. I fucked up there.”

“What happened for everything to change between you and Mav?”

He sighed and rolled to your side, his thigh still curled over yours. “It isn’t that simple.”

“Then spell it out to me. Because tonight over dinner, you two were as thick as thieves. You hardly missed a beat.”

He gave a gentle smile but his eyes begged for mercy. “Do we have to do this right now?”

“Well, I could have asked when he appeared three hours ago, but I figured that may have embarrassed you both,” the sarcasm dripped from your tongue and you were trying so hard to remain calm.

“That’s fair,” he had to admit. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t give you any warning. That was wrong of me.”

“It’s just a fuckin’ text, Bradley,” you sniped quietly.

He nodded. “You’re right, I should have at least given you that much.”

“I felt like a complete idiot. You gave me no time to prepare.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, you handled it beautifully,” Bradley laughed quietly at the grimace that shrouded your face and his face softened as he kissed your temple. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. I’ll be more considerate of inviting guests.”

“It’s got nothing to do with guests,” you pursed your lips together, the fever burning under the surface of your skin simmering as you closed your eyes a moment and you felt Bradley move to his pillow. “It’s Mav. Singular. One guest.”

You looked at him as he crossed his legs; for a moment, you wondered if you’d gone too hard. He wasn’t angry, he was passive, and that might have made you more furious. “He helped raise me when Dad died. He tried to after mom died.”

“And he pulled your papers from the Academy. I know all this.”

“He told me he pulled my papers because I wasn’t ready to trust my instincts. I was too reliant on the rules and unprepared to break them if need be.”

Remaining quiet, you willed him to go on.

“Before I left, I know I was the worst to you. My moods were deplorable, I was a fucking asshole to you. And I wasn’t lying when I say Mav got to me every single day. The night Phoenix and Bob were caught in the bird strike…” he sighed. “I fuckin’ laid into him. I didn’t tell you. It just came out, I guess compounded with everything else that had happened that day. I wanted to take his goddamn head off, I hadn’t seen red like that in years. And I remember coming home and taking it out on you, my sweet girl,” he frowned sadly. “I should have been able to handle my business better and not take it out on the one person that I love most in this world. I don’t know why you stay by my side, because I know I’m hard to contend with…”

Sighing, you rolled over to face him, twirling a loose tendril that curled above his brow. “Think you’re the first grumpy flyboy I’ve ever dealt with?” you asked fondly as he flushed a little. “I just want you to be okay. And you’re only a few weeks away from returning to desk duty. But you know you need to go through the motions. Don’t take it out on me, they aren’t my rules.”

“I know,” he dropped his eyes. “I shouldn’t be lashing out, I’m just so frustrated.”

“Trust me, I know.” 

“The shrink thing is really bothering me,” he confided quietly.

“I know, sweetheart,” you pressed your thumb into his temple before scootching closer and wrapping your arms around his shoulder, cradling him tenderly in your arms. He breathed in your body wash, grounding himself. “You’ll get through this. I’ll be right there beside you.”

“Thank you,” he murmured quietly against your chest. His lips pressed against your tee until you could feel the sweet kisses against your jaw… then pulse. His large hands circled your waist, dragging you to him. You so badly wanted to resist, but he was so warm, smelled so good and felt so strong against you. “I love you.”

He nuzzled to your lips, those first slow steps of how to make you come undone. “Bradley…” you warned. He hummed in reply, but it was a dare. He was willing you to ask him to stop but resistance was futile as his long fingers walked under your nightshirt, grasping the meat of your hip and pushing his thigh between yours, opening you to him, his kiss relentless.

“Feel good?” he asked softly. He was desperate for you. He hadn’t felt so pent up since he was a stupid horny kid. He didn’t know how frustrated he could feel until the option for intimacy was snatched away from him. Your diligence to stay true to the doctor's orders was obscene to him. He didn’t realise how by the book you could be… from him, an irony.

And it had been so hard for you to resist him – your beautiful boy deserved to be loved but every time he touched you, you were positive you’d hurt him. And while he was healing, he still needed time, something he was unwilling to apprehend when he felt fine in himself.

Fine.

Fine.  

“You’re resisting,” he muttered, his tongue tracing your lips. There was a tension in his voice, it was subtle, but you could feel it to your bones. “Why are you holding back?”

You sighed and pulled back a little. His frown clouded his handsome face and he huffed, rolling back to his pillow and staring hard at the roof above him. “Come on, it’s only another few weeks, sweetheart.”

He rubbed his face. “Jesus Christ, don’t you think I’m the best judge of my body?”

“Of course – ”

“Since I’ve gotten home, you’ve looked at me like I’m I should be wrapped in cotton wool. You won’t touch me, you won’t kiss me, am I that hideous to you?”

You sat up, a little insulted. “Bradley, no of course not – ”

“Christ, when did you decide I was so repulsive to you? I’ve always had these scars, you know,” he hissed, his tone sharp. “I knew you hated them.”

“Bradley, my God, you’re spiralling. What are you talking about?” you reached for him, but he moved wide from your touch. This man beside you, Bradley... he was reaching. You were only trying to be considerate of his injuries - 

“Can’t we just fuck? Jesus Christ. If you don’t want to be with me, just fuckin’ say it already.”

“Hey, hey,” you said softly, cowering on yourself. “I just don’t want to hurt you. I'm sorry, Bradley,” you said meekly. “There is no other reason – ”

“I said I feel fine. It’s a few bruises. Why won’t you fuckin’ touch me? I come near you, and you find every excuse under the sun to get away from like me.”

“That’s not true – ”

“Like hell it isn’t.”

“I don’t mean to, I’m just so scared to…” you replied.

He pulled his shirt off, a large, long bruise still over his right pectoral. You’d guessed it was from the seatbelt shunting him back into his seat when the jet -

When the jet crashed. When he could have died. 

“Please baby, I need to feel you. Please don’t be scared of me,” he begged.

“I’m not scared of you, Bradley,” you told him, moving closer and kissing his bruised though soft skin. He moaned immediately and laced his fingers into your hair. It was a reaction he couldn’t stop, even as he seethed at the same time.

“Then don’t be scared for me, either,” he urged, though the softness in his voice returned from your familiar kiss. “I’m really fuckin’ good at what I do.” The double meaning in his tone told you. “I’ll always come home to you.”

And while you believed it because he was with you right now, that was all that mattered regardless of his to tell you the whole story of what happened that day to get him (and you) stuck in this predicament.

hiatus.

masterlist.

A/N: the tag list no longer exists. To keep up to date, give @notroosterbradshaw-library a follow x

[thebibutterflyao3]

Day 25 - Prompt: Bad @wolfstarmicrofic

January Daily Series - 659 words

<<<Previous Part OR Start Here

Sirius shoved his way through the crowd with his gaze laser-focused on James’s dark, tousled curls. He needed an answer to this vitally important question right now and James was his moral compass. It was imperative that he check in before he made this decision.

“James!” he hissed, rushing to his best friend’s side. “Quick, what does it mean if I’m defending Remus to himself? Is that a bad sign?”

“What?”

Regulus glared from where he was snuggled under James’s chin. “It means you like him, which we already told you. Now, go tell him!”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

James sighed, then smoothed a hand over Regulus’s back. “He’s right though. You’re gone for him, mate. I don’t know why you’re defending him from himself, but that much I do know.”

“He was calling himself stupid and some other bullshite in Welsh I didn’t really understand, but was clearly ragging on himself and I couldn’t just stand there and let it go when-”

“Sirius!” Regulus snapped. “Go snog him and leave us alone.”

Sirius opened and closed his mouth twice before a frustrated whine left his throat entirely of its own volition. “But he’s from here and I live-”

“So what? It’s fine! Now go, you obnoxious git! Before he sorts out that you can’t tie your shoelaces without James’s approval.”

“That’s not true-”

James reached out and squeezed Sirius’s shoulder. “Really, Sirius. We’ll figure it out. See if this thing with Remus is worth it, then hash out the details later, yeah?”

“Yeah, alright.”

Sirius spun around and squared his shoulders. He could do this. James believed he could do this, so he definitely…probably…could?

“Go!” Regulus shouted, kicking his bum.

He stumbled forward, then shot a glare at his brother, but Regulus was fully snogging James now. Sirius grumbled under his breath before approaching his Herculean task. It shouldn’t be this hard to ask Remus on a date. The bloke practically admitted to liking him too, just not in those exact words.

Just walk over there, ask him to have a drink, and see where it goes. Easy. He might even get a cheeky snog himself for the effort, which he did want. Ever since their not-a-date lunch a few days ago, he’d thought about kissing Remus.

Then why do I feel like I’m about to pass out?

Remus was still awkwardly bopping in a sea of couples, exactly where Sirius left him. His brown beanie was askew after his fidgeting with it and a few of those honey-dipped curls were matted to the sweat on the back of his neck. More than anything, he wanted to yank that ugly hat off of his head and stroke his fingers through all of that hair.

He's not even fit, but I still want him. That has to mean something, right?

Sirius inhaled deeply, then marched toward Remus with the confidence that fled earlier marginally renewed. James said they would figure it out, and that was as good as a promise coming from him. He could do this. He could have something real for once.

“Remus,” he said, inwardly cursing at the waver in his voice. Sirius cleared his throat and tried again when he skidded to a halt in front of the bloke. “Remus. I like you and even though we live an obscene distance from each other, I’d like to try…this.” He waved a hand between them and chewed the inside of his cheek.

“This?” Remus blinked slowly as his brows furrowed.

Shite! How am I already fucking it up?

“Oh…erm, dating. If you want to, of course. I’m not assuming that you do, or anything. Just asking, sort of,” he blathered, face flushing deeper by the second.

Flirting was second nature for him, yet he’d lost every ounce of his charisma the moment those pale green eyes met his. Sirius never fell apart like this over a bloke. He could charm the pants off of anyone with little effort. Men, women, or otherwise, it didn’t matter.

What is wrong with me?

Next Part>>>

[matashaw]

Klaus von Klinkerhoffen

≫i used to hate Klaus so much but ive started to love his character a lot actually Klaus headcanons requested by @mimpinightmare !! I hope this gets you in a good mood!!!!

general headcanons:

demi boy, asexual, gay, he/him pronouns

german!!!

the sweetest boy you’ll ever encounter

candies are his comfort food, especially the red ones with sour candy on top

has the prettiest blonde ever, sometimes paparazzi ask him what he does to keep his hair so golden (he just laughs, says that his aunts hair remedies are very good and goes on a rant about how her aunt is the best)

HAS FRECKLES

adores farm animals, animals in general

HUGE green flag

autism and social anxiety

childhood headcanons

grow up in a farm, with the help of his cousins they built a small football field

got injured ALL THE TIME

very sensitive kid, he wasnt born to live in the countryside

wore braces at some point

used to have a beautiful, long hair. Sadly, his parents made him chop it off

got made fun of a lot, crying in his room was a part of his daily routine

when he was bored he did some type of hairstyle, absolutely loved pigtails!

collected bottle caps, still does it

once almost drowned in a lake, developed a fear to swimming since that and didnt grow out of it until he joined the team (North helped him a lot with it)

how I think he’d dress

he gives me a lot of cottage vibes, but also a downtown brownish vibe too! I think he’d love scarfs and handmade sweaters. Such as

anything that reminds him of his grandma really

music taste

likes all kinds of music, doesnt really pay attention to the lyrics

some examples of his music taste are

Walk like an Egyptian (The Bangles), Honey, Honey (ABBA) cannonball (The Breeders) Blitzkrieg Bop (Ramones)

well, first request completed! I’m sorry if I take a long time to make your request, but I’m so excited to see people requesting!! Thanks a lot

[seokmattchuus]

STOP MY FAVORITE BANDS ARE BEEFING 😭

WHAT IN THE EARLY 2010S

[puppyguppy]

"And we're live in five, four, three..."

You watch as a silent set of fingers finish off the countdown. And at the familiar sight of a fist signaling zero, you flick the camera at your side on and into both broadcasting and recording, before squirming and settling down into your seat for what's bound to be a very boring job. An easy job, almost too easy, but still boring. An entire-ass degree in filmography, with a major in cinematography and a minor in directing, and yet. And yet this is where you've ended up. Strapped for cash, and filling in for some other lensman that'd called in sick last minute. There's a hundred other places you'd rather be, and a hundred other things you'd rater be doing, but. None of those places or things would probably pay nearly as much as the nice offer you'd received from this silly talk show's hostess.

So, all you can do now is hope that whatever, or whoever, today's topic is, is at least a little exciting.

Not that you're holding your breath on Your Daily Dose of Pros!

Yeah, you'd done your research -- just enough before accepting the gig with a desperate, defeated sigh. You're not one much for celebrity gossip, and have always believed everyone deserves a bit of privacy, even the professional heroes. Hell, especially the professional heroes. And a small part of you feels a little sick and sheepish for lending a temporary hand in spreading such propaganda, but it's not like the tabloids wouldn't still thrive without you. They would've just found someone else.

And left you to starve.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic. Especially since the hostess seems relatively nice. And pretty. Though in the same sort of way that most venomous creatures are. You can't be sure what exactly her quirk is, not without asking, at least. But, between her eyes and her attire? She reminds you of a chameleon. Her suit is all vibrant, patterned, sharp angles, and her eyes move independently of each other as she scans the relatively small audience of those privileged enough to actually experience the show live. You watch her wave and smile at them as she saunters her way on stage, both predicting and following her path with the camera, while the slightly-cringy bop of the show's theme song bleeds into your ears. You've got headphones on to hear the hostess over the sounds of everyone and everything else, ready to catch any verbal cues that might direct the camera's gaze in any other which way. And that's probably the most exciting part of the job.

Sometimes, you get to move the camera. Left or right, up or down, zoom in or zoom out. Yippie.

Currently, you've zoomed in on the hostess' profile, while she asks the audience (and those watching from home) how they're all doing, how they're feeling, even though only those actually here can answer. It's not like she takes long to really listen, anyways. Not before falling into a cushy looking couch and clapping her hands together in exaggerated glee. You're only partially paying attention as she starts to explain today's show; also thinking about all the half-started scripts you have scribbled across napkins back in your apartment. You can't help but wonder -- does such a look help with this kind of job? When facing both eyes forward means so much more than normal? Does the suit distract? Make the guests feel dizzy, a little loose-lipped? Does the hostess also have the tongue of a chameleon? Ready to snatch up and collect each tasty, juicy bit that's dropped today? Or, just like you, does she wish to be somewhere, anywhere else? Maybe she dreams of being an actress. Maybe in another life, you both would've still met, but because you hired her --

" -- everyone! Please give a warm, warm welcome to today's guest, Eraserhead!"

You almost drop the camera. Which is saying something, since the damn thing is on a stand and an extendable arm. So, more accurately, you almost drop yourself. Right out of your seat. There's no fucking way. No way that they got Eraserhead to agree to this. Not that you like, know him or anything. But, you definitely know of him -- fuck, the whole world probably does by now. And from what you know, this is even less of his kind of thing than it is yours. You're here because you don't have much of a choice. You've got rent to pay, a body to feed -- even if he has to pay rent, too, he's a fucking pro -- one of THE pros -- so what the fuck would he be doing here? Any other time that man's been on screen he seems absolutely miserable. Polite still, but. And, up until the last few years or so, he'd been one of the most private heroes. But now, he was appearing on talk shows?

It's gotta be a quirk or something.

Or someone that just looks like him.

Wouldn't be too hard to achieve now, not with his face and height and weight and supposed hobbies slapped all over the internet these days, like he's some kind of collectible trading card. He is, but he's also a person, a human. With a past, a heart, a life -- alas. The public took to him and his involvement in the war like they would a newly discovered species of animal. No longer a name associated with just theories and whispers and glances; he'd been forced out of the safety of the underground, and brought into the light by Shigaraki's hand, where he's now forced to remain, pinned underneath the light of the sun by millions of snoopy, selfish eyes. Like a bug.

He deserves a jar, at least.

Better yet, a vivarium.

Somewhere comfortable to escape to, with everything he needs, everything he wants. Somewhere all these people struggle to see, even with all their magnifying glasses and greed.

You remember you have a job to do when some door towards the left of the stage opens and closes, and then you see him. And you think, well. He looks the right size. The right height, the right weight -- and then you silently curse at yourself, before showing the rest of the country what it is that you are seeing.

He's not wearing his hero costume. Instead, he's wearing a pair of nice, form-fitting, pink pants, a rumbled up white button up with the sleeves rolled up his arms, and then a loose black blazer overtop, with just one button done. His hair's down, since this isn't a formal interview or anything, and you think -- you can't be the only one to think -- fuck, he looks good. It's a little grungy, a little silly, but he pulls it off so effortlessly, with his only accessories being the bruises shadowed around his eyes and some stubble. When the hostess stands, he greets her with a bow and friendly handshake, before he's handed a microphone and gestured to sit down in the sofa across from her. When he sits, he does so respectfully, and gives the small, chattering crowd a short wave of his fingers.

When you zoom in, it's because you're supposed to.

Not because you want to.

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

Genius Korea's Best K-Pop Songs of 2023 — ONEW&KEY Mentions

source

12. ONEW — O (Circle)

Just like its title, “O (Circle)” begins and ends in the same place: with a rippling, repeating instrumental. The lyrics explore natural cycles of life: the seasons, and the happiness and sorrows of existence. The song expresses how constant change is both a great sadness and a great joy; certain lyrics are repeated, reinforcing the theme of constancy within change. ONEW's singing ranges from ethereal to soaring, easily conveying the song’s nuances. From a gentle start, the song grows to an emotional ending with a full chorus of voices. “O (Circle)” is a poetic, almost mystical, reflection on what separates and connects.

19. KEY — GOOD & GREAT

An anthem for those facing the daily grind of being in the workforce, “Good & Great” expresses that urge to break out from the monotonous day-to-day hours. While still wanting to do the best at what had taken hard work to get to, KEY sings about thinking of a momentary escape from reality to keep it all together before returning to the hustle and bustle (or lack of). Though tackling what can be seen as an overall boring topic, the song’s overall vibe is hard to not at least bop your head to.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Down in the (link)dumps

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Back when I was writing on Boing Boing, I'd slam out 10-15 blog posts every day, short hits that served as signpost and public notebook, but I rarely got into longer analysis of the sort I do daily now on Pluralistic. Both modes are very useful for organizing one's thoughts, and indeed, they complement each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The problem is that when you write long, synthetic essays, they crowd out the quick hits. Back in May 2022, I started including three short links with each edition of Pluralistic, in a section called "Hey look at this" (thanks to Mitch Wagner for suggesting it!):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#linkdump

But even with that daily linkdump, I still manage to accumulate link-debt, as interesting things pile up, not rising to the level of a long blog-post, but not so disposable as to be easy to flush. When the pile gets big enough, I put out a Saturday Linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

All of which is to say, it's Saturday, and I've got a linkdump!

First up, a musical interlude. I've been listening to DJ Earworm's amazing mashups since 2005 and while I've got dozens of tracks that shuffle in and out of my daily playlist, the one that makes me wanna get up and dance every time is "No One Takes Your Freedom," a wildly improbable banger composed of equal parts Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, George Michael and Scissor Sisters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaboIeW1A_4

I defy you to play that one without bopping a little. I think it's the French horn from "For No One" that really kills it, the world's least expected intro to a heavy dance beat.

Moving swiftly on: let's talk about fonts. I remember when Wired magazine first showed up at the bookstores I was working at in Toronto, and my bosses – younger men than I am now! – complained that the tiny, decorative fonts, rendered in silver foil on a purple background, was illegible. I laughed at them, batting my young eyes and devouring the promise of a better future with ease, even in dim light.

Now it's thirty years later and I'm half-blind. Both my my decaying, aging eyes are filmed with cataracts that I'm too busy to get removed (though my doc promises permanent 20:20, perfect night-vision, and implanted bifocals when I can spare a month from touring with new books to get 'em fixed).

Which is to say: I spend a lot more time thinking about legibility now than I did in the early 1990s, and I've got a lot more sympathy for those booksellers' complaints about Wired's aggressively low-contrast design today. I'm forever on the hunt for fonts designed for high legibility.

This week, Kottke linked to B612, a free/open font family "designed for aircraft cockpit screens," commissioned by Airbus. It's got all the bells and whistles (e.g. hinting) and comes in variable and monospace faces:

https://b612-font.com/

B612 arrived at a fortuitous moment, coinciding with a major UI overhaul in Thunderbird, the app I spend the second-most time in (I spend more time in Gedit, the bare-bones text-editor that comes with Ubuntu, the flavor of GNU/Linux I use). A previous Thunderbird UI experiment had made all the UI text effectively unreadable for me, causing me to dive deep into the infinitely configurable settings to sub in my own fonts:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css

The new UI is much better, but it broke all my old tweaks, so I went back into those settings and switched everything to B612, and it's amazeballs. I tried doing the same in Gedit, but B612 mono was too light for my shitty eyes, so I went back to Jetbrains Mono, another free/open font that has 8 weights to choose from:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Love me a new, legible font! Meanwhile, a note for all you designers: the received wisdom that black on white type is "hard on the eyes" is a harmful myth. Stop with the grey-on-white type, for the love of all that is holy. This isn't 1992, you aren't laying out type for Wired Issue 1.0. Contrast is good, actually.

Continuing on the subject of software updates: Mastodon, the free, open, federated social media platform that anyone can host and that lets you hop between one server and another with just a couple clicks, has released a major update, focusing on usability, especially for people unfamiliar with its conventions:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/09/mastodon-4.2/

Included in this fix: a major overhaul to how you interact with posts on servers other than your home server. This was both confusing and clunky, and the fix makes it much better. They've also changed how sign-up flow works, making things simpler for newbies, and they've cleaned up the UI, tweaking threads, web previews and other parts of the daily experience.

There's also a lot of changes to search, but search still remains less than ideal, with multi-server search limited to hashtags. This is bad, actually. Thankfully, we don't have to wait for Mastodon devs to decide to fix it, because Mastodon is free and open, which means anyone with the skills to code a change, or the money to pay techies to do it, or the moral force to convince them to do it, can effect that change themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/

Case in point: Mastoreader, a great new thread reader for Mastodon:

https://mastoreader.io/

Every time that guy who owns Twitter breaks it even worse, a new cohort of users sign up. Not all of them stay, but the growth is steady and the trendline is solid:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/

It's the right call: while there are other services that promise that they will be federated someday, promises are easy, and there's world of difference between "federateable" and "federated." As GW Bush told us, "Fool me twice, we don't get fooled again":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

One big difference between the kind of blogging I used to do in my Boing Boing days and the long-form work I do today is the graphics. When you're posting 10-15 times/day, you can't make each graphic a standout (or at least, I can't). But I can (and do) devote substantial time to making a single collage out of public domain and Creative Commons graphics every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

I am not a visual person – literally, I can barely see! – but my daily art practice has slowly made me a less-terrible illustrator. I got in some good licks this week, like this graphic for the UAW's new "Eight-and-Skate" work-to-rule program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

That graphic was fun because all the elements were from the public domain, or fair use. I love it when that happens. I've spent years amassing a bulging folder of public domain clip art ganked from the web and this week, it got a major infusion, thanks to the Bergen Public Library's Flickr album of high-rez scans of antique book endpapers. 86 public domain textures? Yes please! (Also, the fact that Flickr has one-click download of all the hi-rez versions of every image in a photoset is another way that it stands out as a remnant of the old, good web, not so much a superannuated relic as an elegant weapon of a more civilized age):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/albums/72157633827993925

Speaking of strikes: there are strikes! Everygoddamnedwhere! After 40 years in a Reagan-induced coma, labor is back, baby. The Cornells School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Labor Action Tracker is your go-to, real-time observation post as hot labor summer turns into the permanent revolution. As of this writing, it's listing 968 labor actions in 1491 locations:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu

There's no war but class war and it was ever thus. Brian Merchant's forthcoming book Blood In the Machine is a history of the Luddites, revisiting that much-maligned labor uprising, which has been rewritten as a fight between technophobes and the inevitable forces of progress:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

The book unearths the true history of the Ludds: they were skilled technologists who were outraged by capital's commitment to immiseration, child slavery, and foisting inferior goods on a helpless public. You can get a long preview of the book in Fast Company:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90949827/what-the-luddites-can-teach-us-about-standing-up-to-big-tech

Merchant also talked with Roman Mars about the book on the 99 Percent Invisible podcast:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine/transcript/

If that's piqued your interest and if you can make it to Los Angeles, come by Chevalier's Books this Wednesday, where Brian and I are having a joint book-launch (I've just published The Internet Con, my Luddite-adjacent "Big Tech Disassembly Manual"):

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/chevaliers-books-8495362156

Where is all this labor unrest coming from? Well as Stein's Law has it, "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." 40 years of corporate-friendly political economy has lit the world on fire and immiserated billions, and we've hit bottom and started the long, slow climb to a world that prioritizes human thriving over billionaire power.

One of the most tangible expressions of that vibe shift is the rise and rise of antitrust. The big news right now is the (first) trial of the century, Google's antitrust trial. What's that? You say you haven't heard anything about it? Well, perhaps that has to do with the judge banning recording and livestreaming and not making transcripts available. Don't worry, he's also locking observers out of his courtroom for hours at a time during closed testimony. Oh, and also? The DoJ just agreed that it won't post its exhibits from the trial online anymore. You can follow what dribbles of information as are emerging from our famously open court system at US v Google:

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

If the impoverished trickle of Google antitrust news has you down, don't despair, there's more coming, because the FTC is apparently set to drop its long-awaited suit against Amazon:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftc-poised-sue-amazon-antitrust-163432081.html

Amazon spent years blowing hundreds of millions of dollars of its investors' cash, selling goods below cost and buying up rivals until it became the most important channel for every kind of manufacturer to reach their customers. Now, Amazon is turning the screws. A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance details the 45% Amazon Tax that every merchant pays to reach you:

https://ilsr.org/AmazonMonopolyTollbooth-2023/

That 45% tax is passed on to you – whether or not you shop at Amazon. Amazon's secretive most favored nation terms mean that if a seller raises their price on Amazon, they have to raise it everywhere else, which means you're paying more at WalMart and Target because of Amazon's policies.

Those taxes are bad for us, but they're good for Amazon's investors. This year, the company stands to make $185 billion from junk-fees charged to platform sellers. As David Dayen points out, Amazon charges so much to ship third-party sellers' goods that it fully subsidizes Amazon's own shipping:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-21-amazons-185-billion-pay-to-play-system/

That's right: as Stacy Mitchell writes in the report, "Amazon doesn’t have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products, because it’s found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs."

Now, one of the amazing things about antitrust coming back from the grave is that just the threat of antitrust enforcement can moderate even the most vicious bully's conduct. Faced with the looming FTC case, Amazon just canceled its plan to charge even more junk fees:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-drops-planned-merchant-fee-ftc-lawsuit-looms-bloomberg-news-2023-09-20/

But despite this win, Amazon is still speedrunning the enshittification cycle. The latest? Unskippable ads in Prime Video:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-22/amazon-prime-video-content-to-include-ads-staring-early-2024

Remember when Amazon promised you ad-free video if you'd lock yourself into shopping with them by pre-paying for a year's shipping with Prime? The company has fully embraced the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

That FTC case can't come a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/23/salmagundi/#dewey-102

[teddypickerry]

𝐀𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀!

pairings! steve harrington x fem henderson reader

word count! 900

warnings! none

summary! in which your (secret) boyfriend steve gives you quite a karoke show :)

a/n! this was very poorly written at 4am based off a very vivid dream i had about him last summer. was missing this bbg and so here you goooo

IT WAS A LATE WEDNESDAY EVENING one that consisted of dnd after school with the boys. leaving their babysitter and i alone upstairs. it was after dinner when steve and i were sorting through all my music. he was certain on finding a perfect record for the evening and had been flipping through my records for a few minutes now. the radio played softly in the background, a song by queen i hummed along to for the majority of it while i finished annotating my book. i shut the book as steve glanced over at me. i was sat on my bed, specifically the right side as i leaned against the pillow. the fluffy haired boy stood beside my record player at the end of my bed. a smile on his face as he held up the grease soundtrack. "you have the grease soundtrack!"

"it's dustin's." i rolled my eyes as i looked up at him as he looked at me in disbelief, a smile still present on his face. "i don't know why you hide it..." he mumbled as he put it away. a familiar beat echoed on the radio. steve looked at the radio and gasped "this is my jam."

"god, steve. could you get anymore boring?" i joked as he ignored my words, turning up the volume button and turned towards nothing in specific and began singing along to the words. "she's coming in 12:30 flight, the moonlight wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation."

i shook my head at him as he continued singing and began moving to the beat. steve harrington was a horrible dancer, let me preface by saying that. but he had fun with what he was doing. which made me always secretly love when he did so. his head bopped to the music as he swayed around. "hurry boy it's waiting there for you!" he sang, getting louder by the minute as his vocals were just below a scream.

my hairbrush randomly appeared in his hand as he grabbed it off my dresser and tossed it in between hands, holding it up to his mouth pretending it was a microphone. singing the chorus, turning towards me and singing it towards me. i let out a giggle which was music to his ears, and enough motivation for him to continue.

i grabbed my camcorder off of my nightstand as he continued singing the second verse. he wasn't as silly at this point, leaving that for the chorus. i pressed on as his voice belted TOTO's classic hit. singing the second chorus, now looking into the camera as i scooted towards the end of the bed. laughing as he sang into the hair brush and looked into the camera. some MTV shit.

he then pulled the camera from my hands as the instrumentals began, making me roll my eyes as he put the camera on me. "look at her. isn't she just the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?" he asked the camera as if it was a child. i stared at him as i rubbed my lips together and he smiled brightly. the song continued as he set the camera on the bed, facing me.

he continued to hop ontop of me, making me giggle at his movement. his body hovered over me, his hand holding himself up as he locked fingers with mine and pressed me into the bed. he looked down at me with a small smile. we had began dating only days ago, secretly, obviously. dustin would hardly handle the news. and nancy, even though she told me daily how cute steve and i would be and how he's practically head over heels for me, i didn't want to hurt her. because let's be real, best friends who sleep with other best friends ex's suck. not that we've slept together... yet.

so kisses in the kitchen and sneaking out of dustin's room into mine will have to do for now. and car make out sessions. never forget those.

his breath was warm, i could feel it tickling my neck as he leaned down. his lips pressing to mine as they moved together. it was a feeling of happiness, pleasure, feeling of ultimate right. being with him felt so right.

he leaned back as the song started up again. "hurry boy she's waiting there for you," he sang softly into my ear making me giggle. he pulled himself off of me as he stood up and began singing crazily again. this time pulling me up with him and dancing with him. i just laughed as i soon sang along. in between the giggles and singing and small kisses on the neck. we began belting the lyrics at the top of our lungs as we pranced around my room.

dustin and will entered towards the last verse as our loudness was curious to them. will smiled immediately at the sight. him and jonathan having talked about how steve and i were secretly in love with eachother but wouldn't tell eachother — as far as they know. while dustin looked at us confused, "what the hell is this?"

"oh, hi dustin!" steve greeted as he wrapped his arms around me and i let out a laugh and pushed him away. i smiled widely towards the boys as dustin still looked confused. "what you've never seen two best friends scream toto at the top of their lungs?" steve joked, as i pressed my lips together.

"you guys are weird." dustin muttered, exiting the room like the annoying little brother he is.

[breadvidence]

Today, on things I'm thinking about:

The medicalized model of the mind is more or less inescapable in the mainstream American consciousness (can't speak to the international scene, though I assume chapter five of the ICD has a similar hold as the DSM does in the States), to the point that I had a hell of a time choosing a phrase that wasn't speaking from that model. Whether the layperson's understanding and the clinician's understanding are the same is irrelevant to how it impacts media analysis, which is where I'm going with this, this is about Les Misérables, character analysis, and writing fanfic, what blog do you think you're on. I can't get out from under neurodivergence and mental disorder when looking at characters written by an author whose life predates those concepts, and there are two problems here for me, personally:

Victor Hugo's acuity in the description of the human experience (and his comedic faults in not depicting what I would call "neurotypical" people for shit) does not alter the inherent fact of fiction that you write from your understanding rather than reality—we're all in the cave—and his intent behind the characters' maladaptive, adaptive, and divergent behavior/personalities can't be meaningfully interpreted from the medicalized model—the author is dead, but he also dead-ass wasn't thinking about the diagnostic features of autism, either, or of autism as a neuropsychiatric way of being shared between humans across time and place. The fact that autism is a way of being that's existed across time and place (per my understanding!) is irrelevant. I'm putting aside, for the moment, the way Romantic tropes and symbolical choices impact verisimilitude as a journalistic depiction of daily life versus verisimilitude as the reality principle underneath... Y'know, no, I'm breaking off, what I'm saying is we're analyzing characters, their thoughts and actions, as if they have real people psyches and as such we're gonna leave aside the fun wacky way you can read, say, Éponine's ascent/descent from humanity to monstrosity, which prob cannot effectively be pointed to as a reflection of Hugo's understanding of how people work in the daily any more than it can be commented on as "hey, I knew somebody who did that, the doc said she had an adjustment disorder and that's why she became a ghoul with incredible powers over the plot". Anyway. When Victor Hugo writes of Valjean's eyes in 4.3.8 "they were those deep and glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain wretched men", I can pretty confidently say he's not thinking you know, a dissociative reaction, and that's a meaningful difference from an interpretive point than my looking at it and saying oh yeah, a dissociative reaction. To really feel how an author's understanding impacts their depiction of the human psyche, read literally anything written by someone who was a real close adherent to Freud. If you're just bip-bopping along looking for personal significance and meaningful patterns in the book this—don't really matter much, actually, we're not digging up the truth (there's no truth in literary analysis!) of the relationship between Hugo's framework for How Humans Work, In Their Minds and the book he made, we're just doing something fulfilling and fun. Still. It bugs me.

As you may know, I write little fanfics, which means (you also know, but to say it in a way that's fun for me to type out) parsing down the original text into a groundwork to then extrapolate from it in a way that is recognizable to readers familiar with it (sometimes very fucking familiar) (or sometimes readers familiar with other extrapolations from the text [I'm looking at you, Amis fandom], which I find mildly mind-blowing as a phenomenon tbh, just really neat—anyway). To some degree, point (1) kinda doesn't matter on whether or not I'm going to produce fic that makes readers happy, because fandom is about alteration of its beloveds (sometimes deliberate writing against its texts) as much as it's about mimicry, besides which y'all are also mostly living in the same cultural context as I am, reading Combeferre and Jean Valjean and Marius and whoever through the autism glasses right along with me. And yet still: it bugs me.

This matters less for Dammit, where the characters are living under the medicalized model¹, but it's disruptive to me when I'm working with the longer canon era pieces like Loup-Garou, where I'm aiming for a Hugo pastiche and the medical framework feels disruptive. Presumably the thing to do, here, would be to engage with some of the writing from canon era about why people experience outsized bad feelings and fuck themselves over—the root of psychiatry, right there—or to simply go "the fic does not actually suffer from this disruption, you have severe untreated anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism, you dipshit".

Which is a secondary roadblock to the present bigger problem with Loup-Garou, which is that I forgot to write down a note to myself about what the plot is and have forgotten it, because forgetting things is 90% of what my brain does. Oops!

Anyway, out of a resentful acknowledgment of my inability to escape thinking about social-mental ouchies and whoopses without medicalizing them, I will say that Loup-Garou Javert is deliberately not functioning with the same neuropsychiatric patterns as Dammit Javert—the latter has, at root, a history of severe crippling childhood anxiety that he has, as you do if you manage to survive to be an old functional lunatic, developed behavioral management for without medical intervention. He's functional. It's like a broken bone that heals without a cast, you know? And that characterization is based off of the line "When I have subdued malefactors, when I have proceeded with vigor against rascals, I have often said to myself, ‘If you flinch, if I ever catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!’" (1.6.2—and in general Dammit Javert is more strongly aligned with the things that Javert says about himself in that scene than he is with what Hugo says about him in 1.5.5). Loup-Garou Javert has zero anxiety, he is Big Head Empty It's A Limpid Pool. In 5.1.1 we have "Thought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue", which fandom generally takes to mean he has not had thoughts: for Dammit Javert, he's had many useless and fatiguing moments in his life, he has thought things over, and his conclusions were either counterproductive/maladaptive/illogical or he bailed out before he reached them. Loup-Garou Javert aligns closer with the standard fandom interpretation of those lines. This is 100% because I wanted to play with an alternate take on the character. But that means I gotta somehow explain his perfectionism and rigidity and all without anxiety as a substrate, and I don't—actually 100% know where I'm going with that. Possibly puppy autism. Sometimes you don't know 'til you write it.

No real conclusion, here, just thinkin'.

(1) Lore! In one of those threads that inform the story but aren't visible, this impact Javert in particular—his medical record has OCPD as a diagnosis, F60.5 submitted on the insurance paperwork, and that means his psychiatrist [1] does not have a robust research literature to draw on when making medication decisions and [2] is working under the bigotry against personality disorders that doctors fuck over their patients with. If you ask me, the author, whether OCPD is a correct diagnosis, I would say [1] why do you want word of god, live your best Dammit interpretive life, if it's not on the page run free in the fields [2] I am highly cautious of the entire diagnostic framework of personality disorders as meaningful categories for human experience/psyches [3] without a sense of discontent over his career leveling out early, no close friends or family to push for change in damaging interpersonal patterns, and self-developed management of disruptive behaviors like angry outbursts, if I wanna armchair psych for a fictional character, there's not really something to treat as a medical problem, unless you wanna say that God this man is unpleasant in a way that fits a pattern of social maladjustment experienced by many people warrants medication the patient doesn't want, & so you might as well address his health problem under the label of an adjustment disorder and call it a day [4] all that being said, it's a better diagnostic framework than OCD, if you want a diagnostic framework, given all that maladaptive is consistent with his sense of self and he's not engaging in ritualistic behavior. Dammit Jean Valjean absolutely has gold standard PTSD and MDD tho, someone should diagnose that man and load him down with drugs.

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in - July 27, 2023 🎀

Today was easier than yesterday, but I am still so sleepy and tired. I have to work a full shift tomorrow AND Saturday on top of my weekend chores so I'm hoping to take Sunday as a full self care day! Fingers crossed!!

🩷 What I Ate Today:

Breakfast - One slice of toast with mashed avocado, paprika, a fried egg, and a side of watermelon, and one cup of coffee.

Lunch - ground beef burrito bowl with black beans, shredded cheese, chopped iceberg lettuce, sour cream, salsa, and a low carb tortilla.

Dinner - One plate of spaghetti with meat marinara sauce, grated parmesean cheese, and two pieces of buttered bread

Other - One cup of coffee with French vanilla creamer

Water ~ 30oz I just forgot to drink water today, but using my water bottle has gotten easier and helped me drink more during the work day.

I didn't feel like snacking much today, and I couldn't finish my lunch, but I am very satisfied with my intake today! I love eating healthier and listening to my body. I do track what I eat, but I make sure it's food I like! Given my past, I can't do restrictions, so I choose to honor my wants in a way that works towards my goals and nourishes both my mind and body.

🩷 Workout - Upper Body Pilates (ish)

This one was really good! It was my first time trying it and it had my arms burning in a good way. I really enjoyed it, and I totally recommend. This is definitely going to be a regular of mine! 10/10

This one has been a favorite for a few years, I absolutely love the way it makes my arms feel. The movements are easy and effective, and leave me sore in a good way. Absolutely my favorite lean arms workout, hands down! 11/10

🩷 Habits I Completed Today:

Made my bed

Morning & Night Skincare

Morning & Night Guided Journal

Read 1 Chapter of a book

Workout

I forgot to do my mediation and stretching, and I didn't meet my hydration goal, but I'm taking every day in stride and doing what my energy allows me to accomplish. I believe in self compassion and flexibility in routine, especially given how my energy fluctuates on a daily basis. However, I am definitely doing the full habits list tomorrow, I'm going to challenge myself to accomplish every daily goal I have for myself!

🩷 Song of The Day: Eleven - IVE

This song makes me feel like a badass princess who deserves only the highest level of princess treatment. It's hard to describe how feminine and girly this song makes me feel, even on my most tomboyish, sweaty work days. An absolute bop!!

🩷 Current Read: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Tomorrow, I can do this. I can meet my goals, all of them. It'll take some effort, but I have faith in myself. Once I get the ball rolling, it's just a matter of forward motion with accomplishing each of my goals. I can't wait!!

I also need to budget for next Saturday, as I'm going shopping for some new clothes before my university opens back up for the fall semester. If I'm gonna feel my best, I'm going to look my best too! I'm really hoping to get a few new dresses, accessories (like hair stuff, pantyhose, jelwery, purses, etc), shoes, and maybe some tops and skirts too depending on what the store has. I love shopping, so I'm super excited!!!

Til tomorrow, my lovelies!! <3