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thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

Note

I m sorry if this post makes u upset but honestly this is something i have been wondering a lot about. So i m sure the admis are aware of a theory that has existed for long time in t/k spaces that BH was holding t/k back. So wrt that we also know the boys recently became partners of BH by buying shares sometime in 2020. They also renewed their contracts in 2020. We also know tae has become happier and the famous t/k conversation took place in 2020. We can also see that t/k have more on (1/2)

screen interactions and are more frequently paired together since after the ITS convo and also appear to interact more with each other in various cobtent. Also there is a fall in j/k content no? I wonder if that theory was indeed true and that tae being happier could be bcoz of him getting to be more open with jk now and not hiding their relationship infront of the cameras and if that has anything to do with them being shareholders and the new contract. Bcoz this kinda makes sense to me (2/2)

Admin 1: The only thing with which you’ve upset me is by ignoring what I’ve said just a few posts ago about how the only ships I feel have actual potential of being ‘real’ are vmin and, to a certain degree, namjin, and how I’m more than open to talking about other duos etc as long as we talk about them as their real life friendships. Just yesterday I said that I don’t really care or pay attention to what other shippers do because it’s simply none of my concern. Why is that? Because no JK+ML ship has ever given me reason to go “huh?” or given me the impression there could be more than just friendship. Also, I’m not here to try and disprove other ships, or somehow try to convince anyone that my views are the only correct ones, I simply want to have a good time talking about vmin, namjin, and Bangtan, and that’s it, which I’ve said it yesterday as well.

I’ve been ARMY for many years now and yes, I’m more than aware of this theory because, in a way, it’s inescapable even if you try to stay clear of what T/K (and J/K) shippers are up to. And yet, despite that, for years my opinion on the topic has not changed in the slightest. I’ve written a whole post about ships and BH and how they are used for marketing purposes in rather obvious ways at times, how more screen time doesn’t immediately equal them being romantic (and the whole no screen time = no bond paradox), or BH “allowing” them to show off their relationship more, because that frankly, to me, sounds ridiculous.

Even if we’d entertain the idea for a moment, while also remembering that apparently T/K is still the biggest BTS ship, wouldn’t it make more sense for BH to show them? Because that would bring in more money? So, in that sense, hiding them wouldn’t make such sense business wise? Someone could argue that scarcity creates more demand, which once they do supply that demand, the money basically rains down on BH like crazy. And yet even that, to me, doesn’t really make all that much sense, given that they could just put T/K content behind a paywall, as in keep their interactions as paid content exclusives, but even that isn’t the case since apparently there hasn’t been much T/K shipper satisfying content even there. So, what exactly, would be the business point for BH to “hide” them? Remember, they are a company after all, not a matchmaking service.

Anyway, going back to my thoughts. We have 4 O’Clock followed by the knowledge that not that long after Tae started working on Happy Christmas, a duet for himself and Jimin which supposedly was too much for two members to sing it together (the implications here are rather clear), which was followed by Scenery (which has clear connections to the same event as in 4 O’clock and to Jimin), and add to all of that what Tae replied to that ARMY on weverse (this I also have a whole post about which I thought might’ve made my thoughts clear in a way, but I guess it did not). That does paint quite the obvious picture, does it not?

Just yesterday I said that the biggest rule in shipping is respect and being respectful, yes? Do you think it is respectful to still hold on to this made up T/K theory despite being faced with Tae’s own words? Despite how ridiculous it sounds? I don’t think so.

Therefore, for me, with everything Tae has done to express his feelings in connection to Jimin, as well as clearly stating that 95z is love (just a few months after telling off that shipper) and the fact that (despite surely having to jump through many hoops along the way) Jimin answered Tae in kind by making Friends happen which solidified them as soulmates to us but also made their wish and promise of remaining together even when the cheers are gone known (here’s my analysis of that song). That’s no small thing. And if that T/K theory held any merit, I highly doubt either Tae or Jimin would do all this, which I’ve also already once discussed in a previous post. Add to that Tae’s Weverse reply, their conversation during ITS, and Tae wanting Jimin to come sleep next to him on JKs birthday (that being something the company has no control over and is their own free time and their free will of telling us about it), the only “relationship” that Tae has with JK, in my opinion, is that of close friends, band mates, and colleagues.

As for their contract and them being shareholders and that having some kind of connection to them being able to show their relationships more freely—while yes, they did say that they’ll sign the contract and thus give BH seven more of their years so long as the contract reflects their hard work and achievements, it’s rather ludicrous to think that there might’ve been some kind of clause in there as well about how BH won’t “hide” a ship anymore or allow them to just run free and show off their relationships. Frankly that would be stupid and way more risky than worth it both for BH and the members themselves. Besides their personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are not for public consumption, so to speak. Even more so in the world of idols and with the prospect of having to do their military service in the future (this being doubly important and risky when considering their relationships being between two members and therefore LGBT).

We have no way of knowing what is exactly in those contracts, and what kind of effect them having BH shares has on their work-relation with BH, all we do know is that whatever was in those contracts was satisfying enough for all seven of them to sign it and be happy with that choice. Everything else is pure speculation.

This is the final time I’m answering such an ask since now I think I’ve truly made my stance on JK+ML ships known sufficiently, and this time I mean it.

Also, for future reference, can we please talk about JK not in romantic connection to a member for once? I have a whole post expressing my grievances with the treatment he gets from shippers and how there is so much more to him.

Admin 2: We live in a materialistic capitalist world where money is the leading power. Many people get up in the morning and work their a*s off to bring in enough income to live and to feed themselves and their possible family. But there are also people who find ways to make money without having to work their a*ses off. Such possibilities in todays day and age gives you, among other things, making videos on Youtube. If you’re sneaky enough and have an eye for what sells best at any given time and what brings in the biggest viewership, you might come to find that a great way to earn well is by making videos about BTS, and more specifically, about popular BTS ships, or even the most popular one at that.

Maybe you noticed how at some point there was a boom on youtube when it came to people making reaction videos, especially to anything BTS related, as well as hundreds of channels about shipping doing analysis videos, especially for T/K and J/K.

More below the cut:

In that moment when Tae basically said no to T/K being romantic, those T/K channels faced potentially “losing their jobs” and thus losing a very lucrative source of income. When I say lucrative, I mean up to $90k a year, which is a sum of money the average person can only dream of. Therefore, to save their existence and income, they decided to push on with their agenda and disregard any signs pointing against their ship. That’s why I think theories such as the one anon presented us with are ones that are created during conversations between people with such channels as wonderful solutions to explain away signs and behaviors that simply didn’t fit them and their agenda. There is a whole own eco system between those channels and their views, and shippers at large, to keep their shipper fantasies alive at all cost.

We know that T/K is one of the oldest, and the most popular one, among BTS ships, which relies on how fun and nice interactions between JK and Tae are to look at, how silly they used to be in the past together, and how some of their on stage behavior worked well in terms of “awakening” crazy fantasies among shippers. The most important in all of it though has always been that this ship contained the maknae and the next member closest to him in age, and thus also to many of those who ship them. But that of course isn’t all there is to it.

Since 2016 we’ve had 4 O’Clock and Scenery, both inspired by the same event, as well as vmin defining each other as their soulmate. These facts alone are, for me, a glaring contradiction for this whole T/K theory and any kind of romance existing within either T/K and J/K. For me, it’s a rather absurd thought to have a soulmate and also be in a romantic relationship (or harbor romantic feelings) for another person. Just like it’s absurd for me how supposedly two big JK and maknae ships are supposed to be real at the very same time and the band also exists at the same time as some form of background noise.

We also later on have Tae who wrote Sweet Night in which Tae sings about falling in love with his best friend, who has always been Jimin. Taking into account what Tae told that shipper on Weverse yet months later announced that 95z is love, that he sang Friends with Jimin, which was also co-written by Jimin, I very much doubt that there have ever been any romantic feelings from Tae toward JK (and vice versa).

I’d also like to note that Tae and JK didn’t spend any time together during their vacation in 2019 (according to them in the first episode of BV4), as well as JK having shown a kind of distaste toward the idea of one of Tae’s friends already having gotten married (or at least that’s what his facial expression looked like) which to me indicates the same thing they said in the ITS conversations: they’ve matured and their personalities have simply grown in different directions making parts of their friendship a bit awkward.

On the FESTA 2020 Rolling Paper Tae called JK his comedian while JK called Tae is safe place, which for me makes it sound that their bond is simply that of an older brother and his younger brother. I feel like during their ITS conversation they tried to communicate to us that they had some issues with each other but at the same time also try to somewhat negate all that obsessive romantic shipping that's been going on involving those two for so long. But that obviously hasn’t worked out.

Tae did say that he had to take certain steps and now he’s happier, but personally I believe that had far more of a connection to their work, or specifically Tae’s mixtape and the work and negotiations around it, since we know some of it might’ve been pushing the lines a little too much if BangPD felt the need to call him and ask him to tone it down a little. If I put on my delulu hat, looking at how happy Tae seems in recent months, I’d be inclined to believe this also had something to do with Jimin, who also seems to be in quite the happy mood as well.

Even if I’d step into a whole delulu tent, I see absolutely no connection to JK when thinking of all the things that could’ve been a factor that led to Tae’s happy state.

It’s easy to see that we’ve been getting more T/K interactions recently, which can be due to marketing strategies (since Tae’s mixtape is coming soon, and potentially also JKs since it’s been mentioned here and there last year) but also due to them getting closer again friendship wise after working through whatever was causing them to be awkward with each other (or at least slowly doing so). We all know that Tae is a very honest (as much as that’s possible in their line of work) and the only thing all of this shows us that Tae is simply showing us with JK that they’re doing better again, but none of their behavior in any way diverges or exceeds anything that’s normal for all of BTS and how touchy and full of affection they are with each other to various degrees. We have a whole post on the bias of body language as well.

Personally, I see no indication whatsoever for there being anything romantic about T/K, since that’s what you’re essentially asking about. After all Tae was the only one who had no idea about JKs drawing for Hobi, so if they were romantically involved, don’t you think JK would’ve showed it to him or at least told him about it?

I’d recommend listening to what Tae told us, remember that especially when we see him put his arm around JKs shoulder or touches his arm, that that isn’t a show of his romantic love for him, but just their normal level of BTS affection. Don’t let people convince you into buying into their agendas because at the end of the day, they have a lucrative business in doing so while, should it all one day come to an end, you will be the one that gets hurt due to their words and theories.

The sole fact that T/K relies on many of the same arguments as J/K, and both have JK as the part of them, is, for me, an indication that those ships aren’t real and instead that Tae and Jimin treat JK as their younger brother whom they love, just like all of BTS does. This is simply how BTS are. Everyone touches everyone’s arm, thigh, back, and hugs each other, it’s simply them being them. In order for a ship to be romantic and “real”, it takes a little more than just a touch of a thigh. There needs to be something more, like we’re able to find/see that something more with vmin, for example.

Tae is my bias and it always upsets me when people don’t respect him and the things he’s said.

#answered ask #BTS #Taehyung #Jungkook

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five-rivers · 4 years

Text

Interview With a Ghost, Part 2

Part one is here. The Dannymay prompt used is ‘Bones.’

"Well," said Captain Jones, over the intercom, "that answers that question."

"Not really," said Patterson. "It doesn't really explain all the ancient China stuff. We didn't even ask him about that."

"I think it does, actually," said Collins, tapping his fingers on the table. "If he didn't want people to know that he'd died and was continuing to live his human life, what better way to throw them off the trail than by mimicking a old legend like that?"

"But the Fentons said it wasn't well known," said Patterson. "Who would have known about it when the Fentons first showed up?"

"It certainly narrows down the list of potential..." Collins groaned. "What do we even call this? Victims? Suspects? Possibly dead people?"

"Before you two get too tied up in semantics," said the captain, voice coming through the intercom again. "We have some things to discuss. My office."

Collins and Patterson weren't the only ones assembling in the captain's office. Captain Jones had called Molly, the medical examiner, in as well. She sat on the chair in front of his desk, a stack of papers in her lap.

Jones shut the door behind him and locked it. "Alright," he said, rubbing his face and sinking into his chair. "So, before you called me in to watch that interview, I was talking to Molly. She told me some interesting things about Phantom's body. I assume you've already told these two what you've learned."

"I've gotten a little more, since then, actually," said Molly.

"Go ahead, then," said Jones.

"Well, at this point we're pretty sure that the cause of death is electrocution... Or we would be, if it wasn't for the whole 'only half a body' thing he has going on." Molly sighed. "He has electrical burns on his bones. They're black in spots."

"Ouch," said Patterson. "What a way to go."

"Yeah. Let's not bring it up to him, okay?"

"It might be a way to figure out it's him, though, make him break cover."

Captain Jones cleared his throat. Collins and Patterson turned to look at him, expectant.

"That brings us to the bones of this matter, so to speak," said Jones.

Collins suppressed a twitch of his lips. The captain liked puns, but admitting that one found them humorous could be hazardous. Mainly because it would result in more puns.

"What is that, sir?" he asked.

"Do we want to expose Phantom? Assuming that he is masquerading as a living person, something I'm not entirely convinced of. Especially considering your mention of legends and 'ancient China stuff.'" The captain circled the words with air quotes. "Care to explain?"

"The Fentons believe that Phantom is the same ghost as one that shows up in a bunch of legends around the world," said Collins. "We were going to look into them, next, but Phantom showed up."

"So, in other words, there's some evidence that he's, what, hundreds of years old?"

"I suppose," said Collins.

"Which would mean that's someone else's body. Because there's no way it's that old, right, Molly?"

"Not unless all that ectoplasm in it preserved it, somehow," said Molly. "I wouldn't entirely discount that, by the way. I'm not an ectologist."

"And everyone who is, is a suspect because of the ectoplasm and the body's age," put in Patterson.

Captain Jones cleared his throat. "As long as that's not the case," he said, "that means that, if Phantom is playing at being alive, he's doing it with someone else's life."

There was a pause, the words heavy on the air.

"You don't think he actually killed anyone, do you, sir?" asked Patterson.

"No," said the captain. "I don't. But it's something we have to consider, because if it is the case, then we have an obligation to reveal him. But if it isn't... What do you think will happen if we reveal Phantom and he leaves? If he's just continuing his- his 'life,'" again his hands came up to make quotes, "and he's not hurting anyone, there's no reason to reveal him, and many reasons not to, including the safety of the city."

"There is a reason to reveal him, even then," said Patterson. "If he's lying about it being an accident. If he was murdered. Or if the accident wasn't as out there as he wants us to think it is. I mean, he's a teenager. They don't just drop dead for no reason, and, well, Dave's wife had a point."

"You mean with her comment about abuse," said Captain Jones.

"Yeah," said Patterson.

"If it helps," said Molly, "there aren't any other detectable signs of abuse on his body."

"There's another issue," said Collins.

"Yes?" said the captain.

"What if Phantom decides to object to our line of questioning more physically?"

"You mean, if he attacks us?" asked Patterson.

Collins shrugged. "He is a ghost. And a kid. And we're putting a lot of pressure on him. I don't think any of that is conducive to rational decision making."

"I guess we can't argue that he isn't violent," said Patterson, making a face. "But what can we do? We can't definitively say what's going on."

Captain Jones glared at his desk as if it had offended him. Maybe it had. It was a horrible mess.

"We need to keep investigating," said the captain. "But I want you, all three of you, to be circumspect. We need a different explanation for why you're asking questions."

"Why?" asked Patterson. "Phantom already knows."

"Because of his 'enemies.'" Air quotes again. "We don't know who they are, or the real reason he's so anxious to keep everything quiet. We don't even know if he's talking about humans or ghosts. And," said Captain Jones, after a significant pause, "I don't want the Guys in White to get wind of this at all. They can have that corpse over mine, you got it?"

To Collins' great relief, the captain had chosen to deal with the Cult Division (aka Cameron Daily and his computer) himself, which left him and Patterson free to strategize on other fronts. Specifically, to whittle down which children they should interview, how they should be interviewed, and whether or not it was possible that any of them were Phantom.

"If he can shapeshift, then he can shapeshift," grumbled Collins, massaging his temples. It was far too early for this, and he'd been here until midnight yesterday, getting paperwork together and sending for class lists from the school. They'd had to explain why they wanted them. "His body type could be anything." He reached for his coffee. He was almost out.

"But," said Patterson, "we have his body. The body types match."

"He could have changed over two years," said Collins. "Teenagers usually do. He could have, I don't know, simulated a growth spurt in his human disguise, or whatever."

"Still, he couldn't have changed that much, not while escaping suspicion," argued Patterson.

Collins grunted. "Maybe," he agreed.

"And he's got to go to Casper High, he gets to ghost attacks there too fast for him to go to school anywhere else."

"Mhn," said Collins. "Sure, I guess."

"Has to be someone who's been there for two years, because of when everything started. So it can't be and of the freshmen or sophomores. Has to be someone who's an incoming junior or senior."

"Or someone who graduated last spring," said Collins.

"You're right," said Patterson. She tugged on the end of her braid. "That might complicate some things. Still. I think these are the most likely candidates." She pushed a list of circled names and pictures across their shared desk. "We can interview them today."

Collins glared at it, the way he glared at everything that wasn't coffee at this time of day. "Patterson, I thought we were doing interviews with kids to find the conspiracy theory kid."

"Well, we can do that, too, and ask around to see if anyone's been acting ghostly."

"Fine," said Collins. He squinted. "'Wesley Weston?' Dear god, who names their child that?"

"I don't know. It's better than some celebrity baby names that I've heard of," said Patterson, shrugging.

Collins put the list down and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "What was the theory again, anyway?" he asked. "That Phantom was the Fenton kid?"

"Daniel. Yeah. I've got him circled, here." Patterson tapped on the list.

"Do you think there's any merit to that?" asked Collins. "The Fentons are ghost hunters. You'd think they'd either notice and stop hunting him, or, well, you know."

"It would explain the ectoplasm, though. And maybe the electrical burns. They're inventors, too, and that thing on their roof has to have some kind of fancy wiring."

"That would be-" Collins wracked his brain for a suitable adjective and came up empty. He shook his head. "I don't think we can make that conclusion from a forum post you barely remember, Patterson. It sounds good, but-" He shook his head again.

"But it is pretty unbelievable. I still think we should ask him."

"Just like that?"

"Why not? You saw how he reacted to your question yesterday. His poker face needs work."

Collins' desk phone rang. He picked it up. "Detective Collins speaking," he said.

"Hey, this is Molly."

"Yeah? You have something new for us?"

"The body is gone."

"What?"

"Phantom's body. It's gone. I think there's been a break in."

I tentatively plan to continue this for day 25: Break.

#danny phantom #dannymay #dannymay 2020 #day 16

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ryqoshay · 3 years

Text

How to Handle a Nico: For Your Smile

Primary Pairing: NicoMaki Words: ~1.4k Rating: G Time Frame: Shortly after Maki has earned her doctorate and while Nico is working as an idol and an idol producer Story Arc: Stand Alone Set: “Thank You” For Your Smile (HtHaN) Sweeter Than a Choir (HL) All I Can Say (TA)

Author’s Note: Three seasonal scenes incoming! This is salvo one.

Nico’s attention was torn from the movie by the sound of the garage door opening and a car pulling in. She glanced at the clock. 11:23. Maki had said she might be a little late, but this was more than just dinner-cooling-a-bit-on-the-table late; Nico had long since wrapped and refrigerated Maki’s plate. And unfortunately, this was by no means the first time her girlfriend had been this late.

With a sigh, Nico paused the show and pushed herself up from the couch. However, her mood changed immediately when she heard the door slam open, boots stumble into the entryway and a coarsely growled curse as something dropped to the floor.

“Maki-chan?” Nico called, hastening her pace. “You alright?”

No answer.

Nico rounded the corner to find Maki, sitting on the floor, struggling with untying one of her boots that had managed to become double knotted. Her coat had already been tossed aside, as had her purse, the latter of which was likely what Nico had heard drop a moment ago.

“Here, let me get that.” Nico knelt, gently pushed Maki’s hands away and went to work on the knot. “There you go.” She said after a moment before pulling the boot off the other woman’s foot. Nico then did the same for the other boot before standing. Finally, she held out a hand to help her girlfriend up to her feet.

Geez, Maki-chan looks like she’s been through hell. Not only had Maki missed a button on her shirt when putting on her street clothes, but she hadn’t even bothered tucking it in to her skirt. She must have really been that tired or that anxious to get home. Or both. Probably both.

And if that wasn’t enough of an indication, she wasn’t latching herself onto Nico at the first opportune moment, as was customary; Maki loved her welcome home hugs. Instead, Maki was just standing there, staring as though her brain still needed another minute to catch up with the fact that she was finally home.

Nico stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Maki.

“Welcome home, Maki-chan.” She said quietly, smiling as she felt Maki reciprocate and start to relax. “And Merry Christmas.”

Maki tensed again.

“Maki-chan?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what, being late?”

“… Yes…”

“It’s fine.” Nico assured her girlfriend. “It’s not like you’re late every night.” Though certainly more than usual as of late, she added silently, not wanting to further upset Maki.

It was the winter season after all, and that typically meant a busier hospital. It was for this reason that Nico had been working from home more and delegating duties that needed in-person attention, so as to be available more to support the overworked surgeon.

“But it’s…”

Nico placed a finger on Maki’s lips to stop her protest.

“I know it’s Christmas. And I know it’s your favorite holiday. And I know we had plans to spend it together. But we have all day tomorrow, right? Nothing’s changed since you last told me you weren’t on call, right?”

Maki shook her head. “No, I’m off tomorrow. Papa insisted.”

“Good. Now let’s get you somewhere comfortable while I reheat your dinner.” Nico started to pull away but stopped as Maki’s hold on her tightened. She chuckled as the younger woman nuzzled against her cheek. “You know, I’m always happy to cuddle with my favoritest Maki-chan, but I think we’d both be more comfortable over on the couch rather than standing here.”

Maki responded with a sigh and a moment later, her arms loosened. Nico freed herself, but not before taking Maki’s hand so as to lead her to the living room. Once the redhead was seated, the raven-haired woman headed to the kitchen.

As Nico began the process of reheating the meal she had made, her thoughts turned to how many times she had done this exact thing. Though she hated seeing Maki wreck herself when things got busy at the hospital, she wasn’t about to tell her girlfriend to stop being dedicated to saving lives. The two of them both knew things like this would happen long before Maki had graduated, even before they were officially a couple.

Truth be told, Nico was guilty of overworking herself from time to time as well. Learning how to delegate duties so she and Tsubasa were not stuck handling every single little thing had been a challenge. Then getting back into a training regimen and returning to idol activities had added that much more stress to her life. But Maki had been beside her the entire time, supporting her in every way she could, even if that sometimes meant just being physically present for a comforting hug.

Thus, Nico had vowed to do everything in her power to support Maki in return. And tonight, that meant a warm meal and some quite time together. With that thought in mind, she pulled the plate out of the microwave, then grabbed two glasses and a bottle before heading to the living room.

“I’d offer to build a fire,” Nico said, making her way around the couch and setting the food on the coffee table “but you look like you’re about ready for bed.”

“Mmm.” Maki replied, eying the food with an expression that implied she was almost consciously avoiding drooling.

“Sorry I won’t be joining you, but I already ate, since I didn’t know how late you were going to be.” Nico took a seat beside the other woman.

“That’s alright.”

“But I hope you’ll still share a toast with me.” She pulled the cork from the wine bottle and started to pour. “We barely have a minute to spare.”

The couple clinked glasses and took their first sips mere seconds before the clock struck midnight.

“Thank you.” Maki said, setting her glass on the table.

“You’re welcome. Enjoy.”

“Not just for the food.”

Nico tilted her head curiously.

“For your smile.”

“My smile?”

“I was just thinking that even without a fire, Nico-chan’s smile is enough to keep me warm…” Pink dusted Maki’s cheeks as she delivered the line.

“But of course!” Nico couldn’t help preening. “Nico is the No. 1 Idol in the Universe. Her smile can warm the entire world. And can even melt the heart of someone like Maki-chan.”

“… Idiot…”

“You love it.”

“Yeah… I do…”

“You know, Maki-chan, it was your smile that first made me fall for you.”

“Hmm?”

“Back then, you were so often frowning or acting disinterested or getting angry or whatever that getting to see you smile, it was like a sort of treat.”

Maki furrowed her brow. “I wasn’t always angry or whatever… was I?”

“Well, no, but you didn’t smile all that often.”

“I smiled.” Maki insisted.

“I mean genuinely.” Nico clarified. “Not like when you smiled and rolled your eyes at Rin’s antics.”

“Or yours.”

“Sure, or mine. But I mean like when you played the piano. Or performed on stage with us as a member of µ’s. There’s a difference when you’re truly enjoying yourself. That was the kind of smile I fell in love with.”

“Ah…”

“And when I was the one to make you smile like that, it made my day. Heck it usually made my week. That’s why I did a lot of the things I did.”

“You mean tease me? I don’t think that made me smile much.”

“No, but Maki-chan is very cute when she blushes, and I found it quite easy to get you flustered. Still do, and you still are.”

Maki sighed.

“And you did smile when you figured out how to tease me back.”

“I suppose.”

“And that was its own kind of smile. Another kind of smile for me to love.”

“You really paid a lot of attention…”

“Of course I did! Nico was young maiden in love! Of course I was going to pay attention to every detail concerning the one I loved.”

“Every detail…”

“Yup.” Nico snuggled in a bit. “And don’t tell me you were any different.”

“… No… I did pay attention to Nico-chan.” Maki paused. “A lot, actually, now that I think about it. More than I think I realized at the time.”

Nico smiled at the admission.

“So, there’s only a little bit left in the movie I was watching,” Nico said after a moment “maybe like twenty minutes or so; just enough time for you eat. Do you want to finish it with me or watch something else?”

“What movie?”

“Miracle on 34th Street.”

“Sounds good.”

Nico unpaused the movie and the couple settled into a comfortable quite. However, if she knew Maki, Nico figured things wouldn’t remain silent tonight. But that was fine; they’d both sleep better afterwards anyway. And tomorrow, well, today now, was a big day for Maki. Nico looked forward to watching her child-like joy. But for now, Nico contented herself with the warmth radiating off her girlfriend, a warmth far more preferable than what any fire or blanked could provide.

Author’s Notes Continued in Followup Post

#NicoMaki #Nishikino Maki #Yazawa Nico #How to Handle a Nico #Love Live #fanfic #Happy Holidays!#Thank You

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lanaisnotwool · 4 years

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421 - 401K Rip-Off

https://moneyripples.com/2020/09/11/421-401k-rip-off/

Are 401K’s a good idea?

Is it possible that you are worse off with a 401K?

Where can you invest instead?

Chris runs the numbers to see what happens if you invest with a 401K. It is catered for you and is filled with the information you need to make the right decisions and making a ripple effect to the lives of others.

Listen to our Podcast here:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/07/30/421--the-401k-ripoff

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Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Welcome you out for a wonderful show. A show that is for you, and it’s about all of you. Those of you that work so hard for your money. And you’re ready for your money to start working harder for you. Now! You want to work because you want to not because you have to. You want to have that cash flow. That freedom. That prosperity. Today! Not 30 or 40 years from now, but right now, to be able to have that life that you love. To do what you love while you can still live. While you still have life in you. And it’s not just about having your own life of comfort and ease and freedom, which is amazing, but it’s about so much more. It’s about be able to create a ripple effect to the lives of others. Because as you prosper, you can use your blessings to bless the lives of others too. And that is a ripple effect. I’m here to create guys. Thank you for allowing me to create that ripple effect through you. And thank you again for bingeing, for sharing with others, for creating conversations, right? Because the only way to elevate your success is to elevate your conversations of success as well. And guys, you guys are doing an amazing job. Thank you so much for being a part of this and allowing me to create a ripple effect through you.

As a reminder check out our website, MoneyRipples.com Well, not only do we have the great e-book, Beyond Rice and Beans, that you can download for free, which will help you find money. Especially if you’re looking for a cash and be able to use and be able to create more freedom. There’s also great blogs. There’s even videos of this very episode being posted as well. So check that out. As well as our YouTube page. So check those out!

Today, guys. So again, I get this all the time because I get it. When the rest of the world is telling you to believe one thing, and you’re trying to do something different. It’s hard to break that pattern, right? Hey, we’re witnessing this in the world right now. There’s debates going on and between majorities and minorities and everything else, and it is creating a lot of debate, but the one thing you don’t see, many people debate is actually in the realm of money, right? When it comes to money, most people would agree going with the mainstream advice. It’s spend little, save a lot, save it in your mutual funds like your 401k is and get that employer match because it’s “Free Money”

Stay out of debt! You know, do all these things that you’re supposed to be doing that should somehow create freedom. Like guys, it has not worked! Period. Now you might think that somehow it has worked. Now, we might look back to grandparents generations, but understand is that there’s a ton of workers, funding, their social security and other things. They had pensions. We don’t! They have their pensions right now. There’s school teachers right now out of pensions, like running out of money. There’s States that are bankrupt right now. Government workers that aren’t getting the things that were given to us even few decades ago. And right now it’s relying upon you to create your own freedom. You cannot rely on anyone else. You cannot trust the government will have a decent amount of cash for you to use. It’s really up to you. So what’s been the answer of course, over the last several decades? It’s been the 401k, right?

I’m here to tell you the 401k is a Big Fat Lie! Now, granted. Does it do what people think it does in the sense that you defer taxes? Yes. You can have employer matches, which is like having free money. Yes. By the way, that’s just means that they’re just not paying you as much, just so you know. You know, it’s just a benefit, the company benefit of the add on, they just take it away from your salary anyways. All of these things, you know, is it essentially a real tool or a vehicle? Yes, it is. It’s a tax code that started back in, you know, back in the Carter era, right in the late seventies and by about 1980 and so on. Even though most employers didn’t really implement it, at least for the average worker, usually by the mid eighties, you start to see the average workers getting offered 401ks.

It became more mainstream. Now you have to ask yourself first and foremost, why does this thing becomes so big? Right? Why did people just keep using IRAs? Or why don’t we keep, you know, why don’t we start making roth IRAs more popular? Since that’s been around now for 20 years. More than 20 years. You know, we’ve had that for a while, but why aren’t people going crazy about the Roth? Now there’s some people that say it’s great, but the truth is you can’t save enough into a Roth. Can you? $6,000 or $7,000 a year is not enough to retire on. It’s nothing. It’s a ridiculous rule that you have the Roth IRA that kind of loses it. You’ve got things like life insurance out there that we talked about before. That is tax free, much like a Roth. It’s the same kind of taxation, but you can dump it a lot more.

But even then guys, if you’re trying to rely on a product to get you there, it won’t do it! There is no one single financial product that any financial advisor will offer you or your employer wall for you that will get you to financial freedom. And that’s what we are talking about today. Specifically, I’m going to focus on the 401k and why it’s a lie. Now understand that when it came out into the Carter era, taxes were much worse. Now there’s an article that one of my good friends sent and he sent it to me. He said, Chris, you should check this out. Very interesting. It’s actually an article in Bloomberg about 401k dated back on July 21st. Now this article, I’m not going to quote from it completely because even as I was reading it, I started to see some inaccuracies. The basic premise is pretty interesting.

Some of his solutions were different. He was talking about changing the 401k to be more flexible. More rules. I’m not opposed to that, but it doesn’t really answer the basic question. But he did bring up some good points about what happened when it started. So for example, the points that were good, right? And by the way, I know these are bad points and not only was it bad, I decided to look at the comments, which is never a good idea. If you want to stay in a good mood. When you look at the comments and people are railing into them saying, Hey, this was inaccurate. This was inaccurate. Right? But even with those inaccuracies that decided to go back and use some of those arguments, people were debating about, well, yeah, tax were higher, but medium income was lower. So I said, great. Let’s pull up the historical bureaus and find out what the census said, you know, on those things.

So anyways, I took a trip back in time to figure out what it really was. So here’s the first thing he said, the Marshall tax rate was higher in 1980, which is true. Your tax rate could be anywhere. It was taxed by just, but get this. We have eight tax brackets right now, right? In the federal income tax. The lowest is 0%. Of course. The highest is 37%. That is the highest bracket possible. Now you don’t get tax all that. It’s a scale that goes up, right? So as you hit each income bracket, that portion of that income bracket is taxed at that rate. So for example, right now missing, I’m not exact on the number. So I just closed them off, but you can get, basically get taxed 0% from like zero to about 18,000 bucks, right. Per year. So you have 18,000 or less of income.

You’re not even getting a tax on the federal side. State, maybe, but not on the federal. Then jumps up to like 10 and then 12 and so on. You know, so the top tax bracket for the median income today, by the way, the median household income today is about $78,500. So the top tax he even hit is 22%. By the way, the tax is owed as of 2020. If you make 78,500 on the federal tax, I’m not talking about the state taxes. Federal tax, you’ll pay 10,332 bucks, which is just over 30% of your income. Your total income. In 1980, the median income was 28,220 bucks. And this is across all races. I found out that white races were actually much higher. It was like 51,000. And I thought that was really interesting to see how it’s such a bigger discrepancy back then. I’m not surprised, but still pretty surprising how much the average white household was making was about 51,000.

But the median household income with all races, just like I did with 2020 was 28,220. Now with all the tax brackets, I did all the math on it. The tax, your taxes owed would be $5,663. So just over half of what you would have you paid today for the median income. The difference is though it’s about a third of the income, right? So that total percentage that you would have paid taxes back in 1980 was 20%. And also here’s the thing. The top tax bracket in 1980 was 70% with zero to 70%. With 16 brackets along the way there. So your top tax bracket even at the median household income, which wasn’t a lot 28,000 bucks, right.

Was still in that 32% tax bracket. That’s the bracket you’re in. The top bracket. So that’s where you’re paying more. So of course, if you’re looking for ways to reduce your taxes, why not find something to give you a tax deferral. In hopes that you would live on less. Here’s a faulty premise of course, is that even if you started saving in 1980, let’s say you have saved for the last 40 years. And I know some of you have. The problem is you’re probably noticing you’re not in a whole lot lower tax bracket today, are you? You know, maybe you earn a decent income, but income goes up with inflation, right? So of course the inflation you’re still having to make more. Now, granted right now is a lower tax bracket, for sure. So if you happen to retire today and you’ve been saving for awhile, you might be pretty happy.

But if you’re saving today, this might be the worst time to try to use a tax deferred account. Because right now we are in the lowest tax brackets we’ve been in decades. You know, this is amazing! These are, the tax rates are awesome! Even better than when I started working. Why would I try to avoid paying taxes now and go for a future date when it’s likely to be higher? And here’s the thing, guys, even if the brackets remained the same because of inflation, you have to consume more money each year to live. If you do, guess what, you’re getting tax on it. By the way, if you’re trying to count on social security, yes, you can get tax on social security. If you pull out more than a certain amount per year, and that’s not a lot of guys, it’s not a lot. So that’s the thing is that right now, it’s just based on taxes alone. The concept was great back then, which was, cause there was high taxes. They’re trying to pay for crazy stuff.

Inflation was going through the roof. It made sense, right? It made sense to say, Hey, the tax rates are ridiculous. I’m likely to be in a lower tax bracket because there’s so many tax brackets. It’s not hard to get to a lower one. So it was easy to kind of contribute to that and lower your tax bracket. But you’re delaying that tax for the future. You’re not really saving any taxes when you do a 401k. In fact, you saved nothing. And remember your employer’s contributions are going in as well, tax deferred and they come out taxed. So that’s a big one right there. Now here’s the thing is that people will say, okay, Chris, got it. You know, what’s the alternative, you know, what about now? You know, what’s going on today? Like what would you recommend?

Here’s the thing guys, again, I’m never going to make blanket statements. I’m not going to make blanket recommendations. I’m not going to give investment advice on the show. That’s because it’s illegal. I can’t do it. Right? But let me give you an example of what can happen because here’s the other problem with the 401k that’s a lie. Now people think with a match, right? This is the other big argument I get all the time. They’re like Chris, does it match though? That’s like a 50% match. That’s like a 50% return or a hundred percent match. It’s like a hundred percent return. So guys, I decided to do some calculations. I said, let’s do it by the numbers. That was another criticism on this guy’s thing. They said they didn’t really go by the numbers. He’s right. He didn’t, he was giving more conceptual stuff. Again, this is why I’m not really sharing the article. Cause it’s not. It’s good, but it’s not great. Right?

It’s not something you’d take as gospel for sure. So look at this way, whenever I talk to people or say, okay, Chris, this is what I’ve been doing. They’re like, I maxed out my 401k. Now when we calculate that with the match, because the match doesn’t go over usually 5% 6% a year. Anyways, if you get a hundred percent, most like get a 3% match or something or 4% maybe. But I said, okay, let’s go for the top that I’ve seen. Usually I won’t see with employer contributions. I won’t see more than 25,000 going in per year. So that’s great. Let’s just say that’s the case. I’m going to run two different scenarios. One have a person that’s about 45 years old with a quarter million saved up in the retirement account. That’s maxing their 401k for the next 20 years. And then I got somebody who’s 25 years old, starting from scratch. Also maxing out their 401k.

Which most people don’t do when they’re 25, but I’m going to say somebody is staying cheap. They’re the ultimate ideal saver, right? And they’re saving for the next 40 years and earning this. Now here’s the another debate. People say, well, what’s the real return? You know, this is why he got, I’ve put the match into this equation, right? With the match. You know, the real rate of return the market is anywhere usually between 7.4% and 7.6%, depending on the day. That’s of course the average I’ve seen like a 30 year average over time. It’s not 10 or 12%, the S&P500 doing at best, right around seven and a half. As of right now, July to July 2020, July 1990 to July of 2020, we went from the first to the first it’s about a 7.47% average.

Now like a real rate of return, not 10 or 12, that’s makes a massive difference when you’re started looking at 20 or even 40 years down the road. I figured, okay, we got that. But remember, there’s also fees in 401ks. And this is something that I saw in those comments. People are like, Oh, I’ve got like 0.04% cause I use Vanguard funds and all that stuff. Here’s the deal, guys. The fees in a 401k, aren’t that bad and even said he’s like, Hey, if you can get outside of the 401k, your fees will probably be less. Right? But here’s the deal guys. Most people never get that. And especially if you have money to go in a 401k, your fees are at least 1% on average. That’s pretty typical. They’re just the administrative fees that are inside 401ks. 401ks by the way, have like almost 20 different fees they can charge you.

So, and they’re all embedded with them. They don’t really make them very public. They’ll make them easily known. This is why people say, Hey, the Mark has been up, but my money’s not going up. Right. If you’ve ever said that, especially if you’ve been in the market long enough, you’ve felt this or noticed it before. You’re like, Hey, the market went up, but my money didn’t. There’s something wrong. This is part of the reason, fees are coming out. So I actually went kind of on the high end. Usually I don’t see people netting more than 6% rate of return. I put this at 6.25, I bonus you a quarter percent because the truth is, my point still going to win out. Even if I’m overly liberal with these numbers. Right? And not even being conservative. I’m actually being liberal against my own point.

I’m playing devil’s advocate against myself. Right? So 6.25%. Again, guys, I know the numbers going out because I just know a few of the guys are going to try to run the numbers yourself. So this is why I’m doing this. So anyways, here’s the deal. So I took that person. I said, Hey, what if you’re 45 years old? You’ve got a quarter million in your 401k as of now, which I know there’s several of you that do around this time. You’re max funding it. You’re going in about 25,000 a year with a match. I’m assuming you’re making that 120,000 or so a year. If you’re making less, it’s less right. But I’m putting this up, you know, kind of on a more conservative end where somebody might be max funding this. So you’re getting in a total of 25,000 a year. At six and a quarter percent after 20 years, you will have about $1.84 million.

So you have nearly $2 million. Now you might think that’s a lot, but you got to understand. There’s another thing working against us, which is inflation. Now I went conservative on this number. Again, playing devil’s advocate against myself, but I just decided to make this a number of conservative. I put it at a 4% inflation rate. Do not trust the government says about what, you know, their consumer price index and the inflation rates are. They’re messing with those rates to slow down the increase on social security payments to you. You know? So they’re trying to let that money stretch and last longer, they’re manipulating those numbers in real life, though, if you notice your real life, it’s not too far fetched to say, you know, about every 10 to 15 years, you know, my lifestyle has to kind of double.

Like what I’m living on today. I’ve got to have about double that within 15 years. You know, if you’re living on $4,000 a month back in 2005, you’re probably living on about $8,000 a month now. Again, changing circumstances with the life that’s the thing with inflation is kind of weird. You can’t really count on it because life situations changes. It can go more or less, but I put it 4%. There’s debates that it could actually be like 6% or 7%. It’s more closer what it’s been. Since we’ve been taken off the gold standard back in the early seventies. So anyways, I put it at 4% just to make it better. Here’s the key guys. When you’re looking at lifestyle, cause $1.84 million sounds great in 20 years. But when you look at the after inflation adjustment, that’s almost like having $840,000. So, and by the way, you haven’t paid taxes on this money yet. You still gotta pay taxes.

So say a quarter of that goes to taxes. You’re now left with about $600,000, right? And we’ll say 650,000. Again, I’ll be overly conservative on this number. 650,000. Here’s the key, again, financial buyers have taught this for years. Some people will say 4%. You can live on, right? That you’re not supposed to take out more than 4%. That’s an old number. That’s a number that worked before, back in the seventies. Most advisors that they’re, if they’re up to speed, won’t say more than pulling out 2% or 3%, especially with people living longer. So if you want your money to last, you want to pull out more than 2% or 3%. So what if you pulled out 3% of this after inflation adjustment of 650,000, that means you have about $19,500 a year lifestyle living on. You have a quarter million right now, you max out your 401k for the next 20 years.

And that’s like, you know, that’s a lot, right? They were putting in like over 18,000 19,000 a year into your 401k only to live on about 19,000 a year after you’ve paid taxes. That doesn’t sound so great. Does it? What if you started brand new? What if you’re a brand new person coming in and you’re like 25 years old, starting from scratch. You start immediately max funding that 401k, just like everybody tells you, you do that for 40 years. Six and a quarter percent with inflation working against you. Well guess what? The ending balance is almost 4.4 million, but after inflation, it’s more like 900, just over $900,000. So when you live on that, and remember you have to take out taxes. So let’s say a quarter of that goes into taxes. You’re left with less than 700,000. Again, you’re living on about, you know, if you factor in 3%, you’re living on about 20,000 a year. It doesn’t get any better.

This is why I say that 401k is a lie! You can not retire of 401k alone. Roth IRA won’t get you there by itself. And you can’t put in enough to make it work. You know, you factor in, even with the 401k, even with the match, you’re max funding it, unless you’re making a half million a year and you’re trying to stuff at full, most likely you can’t even do it that way. No, you can’t even do that much. It doesn’t matter. After some point you actually get restricted IRAs too. Some of you might say, well, I’ll do a SEP IRA. So I can do more of my income. I know some of you I’ve talked to, you put in 50,000 a year. It doesn’t matter, guys. You’re putting in 50,000 a year. You just double that number. And by the way, when you’re putting in SEP IRAs, you’re putting in your own match.

So the truth is you’re not even getting free money. You’re putting in all your own money to then live on about 40,000 to 50,000 a year down the road. If that. You get my point here? Is that whatever you’re trying to max fund into it. If you’re lucky, if the market smiles and you just right, stays around the average, you’re lucky to maybe pull out the same amount of money you’re pulling in. So whatever you’re putting in that’s about what you can pull out. That’s not fantastic, guys. That’s actually seems ridiculous because you can say, wait, I can just take that money, save it. You know, I can save it. Just keep it certain, not have to gamble the stock market. Because if you do like what happened to my dad Y2K knocked his retirement downright before he retired. It postponed his retirement. 15 years guys. That, I mean, this is again assuming averages. This is not assuming what if the market crashes, what if you’re trying to retire next year? And the market crashed in the next few years. Are you going to wait another five years to retire? That’s what some are doing. That’s ridiculous. It’s crazy. It’s insane.

Now let’s look at the alternative. Cause you say, Chris, what’s the alternative. So, you know, we’ve talked about different things. So I took the example of like AHP. Again, never guaranteed, right? But American Homeowner Preservation, you know, you hear their ads on this radio sometimes. They’d pay 10% a year right now. So what if you did the same thing, but here’s the thing. You’re not getting an employer match. Right? So say that you won, you had the 250,000 sitting in your 401k. You cash it out, right? Well, you might be able to avoid the penalty depending on COVID and the cares act, right?

But at least with taxes, you’ve pulled that money out. Let’s say you lose 60,000 of that quarter million. You’re left with 190,000. Okay. There you are. You’ve got 190,000. You can invest it. So say you go and invest in there. Again, this is not a recommendation. I’m just using this as an example of numbers, right? So you get 190,000 leftover after you’ve paid your taxes. You only put in 14,000 a year, not 25,000 because there is no employer match. And because now you’re getting paid that money after taxes, you got to pull taxes out. So even though you might be paying like 18,000 19,000 a year into the 401K, because now you’re taking the money out. Now you’re getting taxed. So I’m actually putting you in what would be viewed as the worst tax scenario, right? Because negative tax pull, you know, not taking, putting the money into your 401k.

Now it’s just coming out. You’re using after tax dollars. By the way, yes, you could invest in AHP pre-tax or with IRA money. But I’m using this as after tax where you get taxed every year. On the grow. So not only did you get taxed on the money, you know, that’s of course you’d actually finally put in, but now the interest you earned, which is at 10% also gets taxed and you still have to fight inflation. But again, it’s at 10% a year, right? After 20 years, here’s the thing, the end balance is almost one and a half million dollars. And this is, using this sort of person that’s 45 years old, right? So that person that said, Hey, I had a quarter million put in 25,000 a year with a match. Now they got 190,000. They’ve put into something like an AHP type fund at 10% putting in 14,000 a year.

They’re just putting their 401k contribution now into this. At 10%, they actually have one really about $400,000 less than they had when you’re putting in the 401k. You might think, well, Chris, even though they made a better return because there’s less money to go in. Yeah. There, of course it’s less. But remember too, when you’re cashing out of that money from the 401k, you gotta pay taxes. So it kinda actually owns breaks even at that point. And, but, well, actually you might end up paying a little bit more in taxes. So you might actually be a little bit under at the 401k, but remember the 401k says you should only be pulling out no more than 3% a year, right? The difference is this is that, again it’s about cash flow. Not accumulating money and then trying to live off less in the interest. It’s cash flow. Because if you had almost one and a half million dollars and you’re getting paid 10% a year, guess what?

Now you’re not pulling off, you know, and now using the numbers, of course, using the, now I’ll use after inflation number. So I just gave you that before. After inflation adjustments about, you know, $667,000, right? So that’s about what you got in, you know, in real dollars after inflation. 667, but you’re being paid 10%. It’s like having $66,700 a year lifestyle. Versus what I just said before with about an, you know, what was that $19,000 lifestyle. So you’re more than triple the lifestyle. Why? Because even though the numbers are about this, end up about the same, the cash flow is way better because the interest that’s paying you, the cash flow that’s coming from that is at 10% and not at 3%. So that’s why you’re getting more than triple the money back. Right? And yeah, you’ll pay tax on it. But so what, like maybe after the other money, your stuff pay tax on that too.

So again, same thing. That’s the person that has got 20 years of retirement. Right? So understand you can now hit those numbers faster. I use the example with that person that’s fresh start. Brand new 25 year old, right? Starting from scratch. So they just put 14,000 a year to AHP or something that earning 10%, right? Well, they’re going to end with about 3.4 million, but after inflation, that’s only like 716,000. But once again, because even though it’s like at $716,000 type of thing after inflation, the lifestyle that you can have is your pull off 10% a year is 71,000 a year. Much better than going about 20,000 a year. Right? Once again, kicks the crap out of it because it’s about cashflow, not just about accumulating money. And again, like I said, the 401k, it has to work at the right timing. You have to retire just the right time.

Otherwise it could be worked wrong. You got to make sure that taxes don’t go up dramatically. I was just pretending the taxes were staying similar, which they may or may not. If taxes go up, you’re getting host on your 401k. And people often will tell me that, Chris, I don’t know if I was a betting person. I would say that taxes are likely to go up from now. And I say with the way they’re printing money right now, either they’re going to cause massive inflation, which if you cause even worse inflation, that means you have to pull out more money, which means still more tax. Or they raise tax rates keep inflation down. So then you now have more money coming out, either way you lose when you start using that 401k. Or an IRA or anything else. Again, there is no product that a financial advisor can offer that will get you to that freedom. To be able to get you to that number.

You know, you have to be saving a ridiculous amount of money over a hundred thousand a year in hopes that you’re gonna make something. Or just live on a really cheap, you know, fixed income type lifestyle, right? Where you just try to do nothing. Don’t travel. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t visit grandkids. Just sit in your front porch and drink lemonade. Why? Not because you know, you want to, but because you can’t afford to go anywhere else and Lemonade’s on sale at the store. That’s why. This is the key factor here guys, is that it’s all about cash flow. And by the way, this is that 10% with tax with no tax advantages. If you do things like real estate, you can make better than that amount of money. And I’m not throwing those numbers out there. I’m staying on the low side. I’m basically going conservative with my point.

And I liberal against my point. Just to prove a point. Which is, is that there is a different world, a world of much better hope. If you look outside with the mainstreams, trying to pitch you and they’re selling you. And they’re selling you because they make billions of dollars in management fees off that. They want to keep the money in there forever. They’re the ones telling you to live on 2% or 3%. Why? Because then their money keeps growing. Their stock prices keep going up. Their CEO’s get keep getting paid more. They’re making more money because you’re not! And guys, that is one of the big reasons why I’m so passionately against things like 401ks, IRAs, which by the way, the government determines the rules and they can change the rules at any time. There’s no certainty. There’s no planning that can be done in those situations because you can’t maneuver with it.

You don’t even know what the rules are going to be like in 10, 20 years, how you, unless you’re retiring today, you have no clue. And even then they could change the rules. Look how they’re changing the rules on us right now because of a little virus, right? They’re freaking out. And they’re using that as a way to be able to change rules on us. We have a very different life today than we had six months ago. Wouldn’t you agree with that? Why couldn’t they change it on you? With the financial tools and things like that? The vehicles that they’ve been recommending. Of course they can. They need more taxes. They know where to go. They go for the people that are poor and middle class that don’t know what they’re doing. That are going and investing in these 401ks have zero tax advantages. And with the match, it’s just golden handcuffs.

You know, that little employer match does so little compared to the cost and the risk. But guys, just like you might’ve heard Robert Kiyosaki say, he says, the people that get the best tax breaks, the best tax advantages are the business owners or investors. If you’re in that category, if you get out of the employee mindset, you get out of that traditional mainstream mindset. Now you can actually have hope to break free. And guys, that is the kind of stuff that we’re talking about. Again, each of your situations are individual and different. I get that. Sometimes there are rare occasions, I think 401k works. Especially if you can pull money out right away. Like I get, I’ve had people get the match, pull the money out and go invest it on their own and they can work great. But, it is solo 401ks, by the way, guys, for those of you that are investors doing solo 401ks, I don’t trust those either because anything can change those rules and not to mention that we just don’t know.

I mean, plus if you get sued, I mean, there’s other issues that can happen there. You have assets they’re exposed that works against you in different scenarios. Either way, money getting locked up, get your money out of prison, get into a place that works for you. You guys want to know what that is. If you haven’t listened to show. There’s great examples of that. You know what, if you’re at the point you say, Chris, I think now’s the time I got to change my strategy. Shoot me an email. Say, Chris, what do you think about my situation? What do you think I should do? Just shoot me an email. [email protected]. And yes, I answer my emails. I shocked a guy he’s like, I can’t believe you keep telling me to email you. And I finally did it. And that guy, it was a slam dunk.

I was like, man, like, I’m so glad you actually had the courage to do it. Because for him it was like a 70,000 a year difference. You know, like a passive income that he could create from his current situation. I’m not saying that’s you, it could be, it might not be. But either way, if you think there’s a calling or a feeling with in you saying, I think now’s a time to do something different. The marks recovered. Maybe now’s the time to do something different right now. Why? While there’s still money in the market, you know, while the market’s still overvalued drastically, right? This might be the time. So again, if you have questions about that, shoot me an email. [email protected].

Guys, I hope this valuable. I hope you start to see why the 401k just cannot and will not work. And this is why I’m so passionate against it. Cause I’ve run these numbers over and over and over. And it comes up with the same results. Guys. You can’t expect to get something different when it hasn’t ever been different. This is how it’s been. This is why I left financial advising. And this is why I did something different. They gave me different results that got me to retire when other financial advisors can’t retire. And by the way, great question for financial advisors, ask them, Hey, did you get financially free off the advice you’ve been giving? Not from the commissions you’re earning, but actually from doing the things you’re telling your clients. And I can tell you honestly, I’m doing the things that I tell people to do as well. They don’t! They aren’t retired off that their mutual funds and their 401ks and IRAs. They aren’t! They are making money by selling you this lie!

This needs to stop now! This is why I’m here. This is a ripple effect I want to create. Guys, I hope you share this episode too. Share this other people. They need to know the truth. This has to stop! There are too many dumb pundits out there teaching this crap because people are putting money in their pocket, telling them, Hey, you do this. We pay you money. We will give you a little perks and benefits if you do this. So much money being thrown, at these 401ks and other plans. So you buy them and you buy a hook line and sinker. But the only person that loses is not the person telling you on the radio, right? Or on the TV or on interviews. Those people aren’t losing. The financial companies aren’t losing. It’s only you. This has got to stop. Guys, I hope this is valuable for you. Make it a wonderful and prosperous week and change your life now. It’s all about action and taking action to do something different. Do the opposite of what you’ve been told to do. Make it a wonderful week. We’ll see you later.

#Chris Miles #Anti-financial Advisor #Cash flow #Cash flow Expert #Debts #Entrepreneur #Financial Freedom #Money Ripples

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aenwoedbeannaa · 4 years

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Stone Hearts | Geralt x Reader | Parts I - III

Summary: A/U(ish). When fate landed you at Kaer Morhen, you were mostly just happy to have meals to eat and a place to sleep. But, as it turns out, fate may have led you to much, much more. (Basically, you and Geralt are students at Kaer Morhen together. These stories chronicle your lives together.)

Word Count: 7k+

Warnings: Violence, smut, the usual.

A/N: I originally planned on posting this as a series of short stories all at once, but as it is such a long story, I decided I’d split it up into groups of stories instead. So, this one is Part I, II, and III. Let me know what you think – and thank you, as always, for taking time to read my work 😊.

Thank you so much to @jesseswartzwelder for the request/amazing idea!

If you enjoy my work, consider reblogging this post following me for more Witcher fics here and on my personal/original writing blog here. You can also check out my masterlist!

Part I

The sun is hot, bearing down on the crowded courtyard and making you sweat through your leathers even more than you usually do. Still, you refuse to give any inkling of the fact that your blood is absolutely boiling, like your body is burning itself away. You know that it is more than the hot sun—you’ve started taking a new elixir, and ever since, you’ve been aching with fever. One moment, you are burning out of your skin, the next, you are shivering and sweating at the same time.

Your feet move of their own accord, purely out of instinct, as you dodge and parry, pirouette and deflect. You try as hard as you possibly can to breathe deeply and slowly, so as not to exert yourself even more. And yet, the sharp sound of dulled iron striking dulled iron reverberates you your head, loud enough to make you want to flinch.

But flinching is not an option. Not with Geralt, anyways. You don’t like losing, especially to your de facto partner. As usual, the two of you are the last pair left sparring, the others standing around drinking deeply from waterskins or laying on unclaimed ground nursing whatever wounds they incurred over the course of the day. You wish you were one of them, but only a little. If you are honest, you love being the center of attention; you love being one of Kaer Morhen’s Golden Children. You thrive one it.

“Getting tired, Witcher?” you quip, avoiding a slash of his blade with a rolling dodge, landing on your feet in a flash and only just missing him with your next attack.

“Not a chance, Witcher Girl,” he responds with a parry leading to an attack of his own. You manage to block him with the flat of your blade, but you can tell that you are off – not enough for an ordinary eye to see, but Geralt does not have the eyes of an ordinary man.

He’s got you backed up nearly to the wall, leaving you less room than you’d like, and distracting you enough with his smile, a dangerous flash of white, that you nearly lose your footing. But after another turn and other quick flurry of attacks and counterattacks, you do lose your footing – but it has nothing to do with Geralt’s smile and everything to do with a sudden blinding pain that seems to start in your head and travel down your body at lighting speed. You crumple to the ground.

Geralt drops his sword before you even hit the dirt, rushing to you side and placing a calloused hand gently on your shoulder, speaking urgently, “Y/N,” he says as he gently pushes against your shoulder to turn you over, “Are you alright? What happened?” What has him so worried is not that you fell – the two of you never went easy on one another, and each took your share of tumbles. No, he is worried because you had been steady on two feet one moment and wincing, dropping your sword, and thudding to the ground after it the next.

You have, of course, told him nothing about the extra elixir. You’d tried so many at this point that you’d grown into a sense of security, like something that couldn’t possibly harm you. After all, the really deadly shit was saved for the Trial of the Grasses – but even then, the strong ones usually made it, and you are one of the strong ones. But, no matter how many times you tell him not to worry – he always, always does. The same way that you worry about him every time you learn they’re giving him new mysterious concoctions to try.

He is you closest friend, and he has been since the moment you walked onto the grounds of Kaer Morhen and he punched Eskel in the face for lobbing an ill-timed joke at the very timid new arrival and making you cry.

Vizimir was not happy with any of you, and all three of you managed to earn yourselves extra cleaning duties that week. Geralt for punching Eskel, Eskel for making ‘unnecessary remarks,’ and you for crying. Coincidentally, that week was also the week that the three of you began a friendship that spanned even to this day.

You blink up at him, unable to speak, though you want to. Something is wrong, you want to say, Get Vizimir. But, try as you might, you aren’t able to make your mouth form the words. Instead, you just stare up at him with wide eyes. His brown curls are stuck to his brow with sweat, and his eyes are searching your eyes for an answer you can’t give him. You are also vaguely aware of other students abandoning their carefully staked out plots of grass to come and see what the fuss is about.

The only other girl, Estra of Ard Caraigh, chews her lip nervously as she looks on, though you can’t see her. The two of you aren’t particularly close, mostly because she is two years older, so you are surprised when you hear her voice from the growing crowd of onlookers, “They gave you that elixir, didn’t they? The one that’s to make sure you can train every day of the month?”

In your bleary half-consciousness, you see a flash of long auburn hair as she rushes to your side, pressing a hand to your forehead. Her face blanches and she turns back to shout to no one in particular, “Get Vizimir, NOW.”

You try once more to make some sort of sound, but all that comes out is a choked sob. You had not cried since your first day here, and the fact that tears were streaming down your face seemingly of their own accord was mortifying. The only thing that kept your from screaming in pain was Geralt as he took your hand in his own and held on tightly, leaning down to whisper that it was all going to be ok in a voice surprisingly calm given the red-hot fire burning in his eyes and his tightly clenched jaw.

Part II

Your fingers tap the glass impatiently as you peer out the window, checking for signs of life on the road that winds from the gate of the Keep out into the forests surrounding Kaer Morhen, twisting its way through the wilderness surrounding the Snow Pine Mountains. If you’ve calculated correctly, Geralt should be returning today. He left nearly two weeks before with one of the Witchers to help with a contract on a Drowner infestation plaguing a nearby town on the banks of some manmade lake.

Leave it to Kaedwen. Perhaps the people of Kaedwen had grown too comfortable. With Witchers nearby, there wasn’t much to fear from monsters, was there?

This particular excursion was his reward for being the first to return from the Trial of the Medallion – the chance to muck around in the swamps for a few days, cutting down drowners at thirty crowns a head.

Thirty crowns a head.

You still remember a time when thirty crowns seemed an unobtainable amount of money; money that could have lasted your family near a month if it had to. To think that once this was all over, you would be able to fulfill contracts earning multiples of that for each monster slain. Being considered at once a poor victim of a stolen childhood and a mutant freak who had no place existing was a small price to pay for such a steady income.

“Show me a lake, and I’ll show you the drowners,” as Vizimir would say.

Pulling yourself back from the objectively horrifying daydreams of hacking drowners to shreds in return for a sack full of coin, you resume your vigilance.

Accounting for the four days ride from Kaer Morhen, maybe five if any monsters appeared on The Path, and then three days at most to deal with the drowners, and then another four to five days ride back accounting for the supplies they’d be carrying back from the village, he should be arriving back today. Unless of course… No. You cannot allow yourself to even consider the possibility that anything had gone wrong.

You tell yourself you that the nervous energy that has you buzzing is simply born of boredom, or maybe out of frustration that you’d have to spar with Eskel today. After nearly two weeks pouring over books, Vizimir had finally determined that it was time to get back to swordsmanship and, most importantly, sparring. It was about the only thing that broke the general dullness of school.

And without Geralt, you tell yourself, sparring will be just as dull as the bloody books. You determine that this is at least a half-truth. Geralt was the only sparring partner quite at your level. So, it went without saying that sparring with anyone else was dull, mostly a waste of time. In your opinion, fighting an easy fight is not fun. And that’s not even your ego talking; it is purely factual.

And a bit of ego.

And then there is the separate issue; the fact that you hadn’t exactly realized – or had at least pretended not to realize – just how much time you spent with Geralt until he was gone. You’d been happy for him when he won the Trial of the Medallion, of course, but you hadn’t been quite as thrilled when you learned what the prize was. Sure – it was a chance for him to escape form the stone fortress for two weeks, a chance to get out and see the world. But drowners, no matter how easy to kill, could always be dangerous. Or maybe you were just upset that the second place winner – that just so happened to be you – didn’t get to go along as well. You’d finished only second behind him; it seemed unfair.

Despite its unfairness, it was reality. So, instead of out hunting monsters, you were stuck here while time dragged on at an excruciating crawl.

You’ve got other students with whom to pass the time, but to be honest, exploring the grounds of Kaer Morhen Of course, you still have your other fellow students to pass the time with – which you do – but it’s not the same. There is a bond between the two of you that far surpasses your bond with anyone else. No matter how adamantly you try to ignore it, there’s just no way around it.

You sigh in frustration and turn away from the window; you have too many things to do, regardless of how absolutely tedious everything is. Studying with Vizimir, of course. And you’ve got to spar today. At least that is somewhat interesting – even if none of the other students can quite match you; with the exception of Geralt. It is a convenient way for you to explain away any feelings. Perhaps sparring with people who cannot keep up is just boring. As much as you enjoy winning, there’s no excitement winning against people you could probably best in your sleep.

You pull on your last bits of armor – a belt with a small sheath for your dagger, and of course your leather jerkin. Your dulled iron and silver are slung over your back. You won’t receive your silver – a real silver sword – until you pass the trial of the grasses. It would, of course, be a waste to supply every one of Kaer Morhen’s students with new silver swords, considering the unfortunate reality that a majority would never need one.

Gods, you hope you need one.

You move silently through the ancient hallways, bracing yourself for the certain boredom that will greet you in the keep’s library. It is a large room full of old books, most of which are yellowed with age and feel as if they might fall apart beneath your fingertips. Vizimir explains that new books are not necessary, because monsters never change.

“Wonderful of you to finally join us, Little Vampire,” Vizimir says as you push open the wooden door to see several students sitting at the old tables all in various states of half-sleep. You just shrug in response and make your way to an empty chair. You earned the nickname Little Vampire after, during the week you spent delirious with fever, you apparently bit Vizimir’s hand hard enough to leave a scar when he tried to force a potion down your throat.

“Probably off waiting for Geralt,” you hear Stefan say under his breath to Eskel, who is sitting in the chair next to him. You pretend not to hear him; you’ve given up on trying to explain your relationship with Geralt to your peers. And anyway, it would be impossible to explain even if you tried – you cannot even explain it to yourself.

But then, you hear Eskel mutter, even quieter – “He probably won’t be back until tomorrow. Off spending that hard-earned coin the right way.” You know that it shouldn’t bother you; Geralt can do whatever he’d like. And what you’d learned from hearing Eskel and the others when they spoke about their time outside of Kaer Morhen, there was a very specific way they tended to celebrate. It wasn’t your place to be upset about it. And, yet, here you were.

Whatever, you tell yourself. He’s only following the Code. That fucking Code.

* * *

“Fucking hell,” Eskel spits, pushing himself up from the ground, heavily favoring his left ankle. You smirk, sheathing the blunted blade. You don’t need to say anything – knocking him out of the fight as quickly as you had spoke volumes.

“And all this time, we thought Geralt was just letting her win, eh, Eskel?”

You turn and narrow your eyes at Stefan, their dark amber burning like coals as you bore into him. You aren’t daft – you are fully aware of this particular rumor, as ridiculous of a rumor as it is.

“Would have been quite the charade to have been pulling off all these years.”

You have a hard time suppressing your smile at the familiar baritone, but you turn around with witcherlike reflexes regardless. And Code be damned, for all the elixirs they’d given you, emotion flooded you. You refuse to call it love; to be a Witcher and admit to such a feeling would be laughable. But you will call it joy – joy at seeing your absolute closest friend in the world after all this time.

A whole two weeks.

Not wanting to make yourself, and Geralt by extension, the butt of jokes for the next month, you stop yourself from barreling toward him and throwing your arms around his neck like you want to, you settle for smiling instead.

“Finally,” you drawl, “A real challenge.”

Your friend smirks, arms crossing over his chest.

“I’ve just returned, and the first thing you want to do is cross swords?” he fakes offense.

“Of course,” you retort, “This is Kaer Morhen, after all.”

“Damn,” Geralt responds, “Thought it was Ban Aard.”

Several others who had abandoned their activities to listen laughed at that one – you included. Fucking mages and their fancy schools, preaching about the importance of magic Witchers’ reliance on it. Ban Aard and Aretuza were the butt of a good number of jokes at Kaer Morhen, like Kaer Morhen certainly was to them.

“Enough standing around and talking,” you goad, “Grab your sword, Witcher.”

You ignore the hushed conversations around you as Geralt replaces the silver sword slung over his back with a dull iron one. The usual nonsense – something about the two of you thriving on attention and showing off and something else about the two of you needing to “just fuck already.”

He seems to be ignoring the group just as you are, reading himself as you do the same.

“Alright, Witcher,” you smile dangerously, “Let’s see if those Drowners sharpened your skills."

Part III

“It just doesn’t feel real,” you muse, turning over your shoulder to glance at Geralt who sits with his back flush against yours, “Only two days until the Trials.”

“Mhm,” he answers from deep in his chest. While you have chosen to cover up your panic and fear with excitement and fierce pride, Geralt has turned to philosophizing – existentialism and cynicism being his philosophies of choice.

“Geralt…” you mutter, wishing that you could get more than a syllable or two out of him. “It’s going to be ok.”

You are trying to convince yourself just as much as you are trying to convince him. And, given your tendency to turn everything into a game of logic – very useful in calculating opponents next moves – chances are high that you are correct.

“We’ve both responded well to all of the elixirs they’ve given us, hardly any negative reactions at all,” you expound, but Geralt scoffs, making your mouth snap shut.

“Yes, except that one time two years back when you almost died.” His voice is laced with worry, and though you are facing opposite directions, you know exactly what his expression by his tone alone. His eyebrows are knitted together, and his amber eyes are narrowed such that from a distance, someone might not notice that he was undergoing mutations at all. His lips are pressed into a tight line, and his curls fall into his face. That, combined with his bulky form, would make anyone stay away. Anyone except for you.

“That was one time,” you press, “One elixir out of hundreds. It’s a better record than most people.” Kaer Morhen was your home and you truly wanted to become a Witcher. If you’d been left alone in Crookback Bog, you would have died years ago. And if you’d grown up in some backwater village or in the poor district of a city, plague or pox could’ve taken you. For you, the potions and elixirs and the mutations they induced were just the inevitable tradeoffs to life here. If you couldn’t survive the trials, you couldn’t be a Witcher, and if you couldn’t become a Witcher, you’d be on your own with no skills to speak of, no way to make a living. At least Kaer Morhen gave you something akin to a family – it had given you Geralt.

“I don’t care to remember any details of that week,” he mutters, looking at the ground and shaking his head, “But I… I can’t stop thinking about it. About you laying there burning with fever, calling out in your sleep.”

You are stunned. Geralt, while not as closed off as the other students and Witchers liked to say, was not apt to speak with such emotion. You can’t remember the last time you heard him stumble over his words like that – or if you ever had, for that matter. You open your mouth to speak, about how that was quite a regular occurrence for Kaer Morhen’s students as they underwent mutations, but he is already speaking again before you can get a word out.

“You kept saying that you were on fire, your bones were on fire,” you pick at the grass as he continues, “And the elixirs to help the pain only made it worse.”

Truth be told, you don’t have much memory of that week of your life. You were delirious with fever, and only remember brief moments that you could not definitively place in the “real” category or mark them off as hallucinations. But, as he speaks, some memories do pop into your mind. One in particular where it took three grown men to hold you down and force one of the elixir’s down your throat. Vizimir started calling you Little Vampire after that, thanks to the fact that your perfectly average canines managed to dig so deep into his hand that he still had a scar. Now, you supposed, you understood why Geralt didn’t like that one.

“I just… I can’t…” as Geralt stumbles over his words, you cannot tell if you are hearing his heart hammering or yours. You follow your immediate urge and turn around to sit next to him, both of you now looking out towards the grounds of Kaer Morhen through the trees. You’ve had this secret meeting place for years – a place where the two of you would go to talk or just to sit. A peaceful place, away from the constant chaos behind the castle walls.

“Geralt,” you say, placing a hand on his shoulder and shifting so that he is facing you, “You’re the strongest of all of us. Even Vizimir said…well, you remember!” You are referring to a conversation you overheard one evening when you were prowling around places you shouldn’t be. He was talking to one of the other instructors, the two of them comparing notes.

“Geralt, Y/N, and Eskel will be this year’s Three, mark my words.”

“There’s no need to be scared,” you add after a moment, voice quiet. You hadn’t known he was so scared to undergo the mutations. He was always the best in your training exercises, always the strongest, the fastest, the one getting all the special elixirs. You hadn’t even thought that he might still be worried.

Quite suddenly, he turns, placing his hand over the one of yours that is resting in your lap, “I’m not worried for myself. I just… I can’t… It makes me so angry to think of them putting you through that again.”

You look down, staring at his hand on top of yours, which is suddenly the only thing that you can focus on. Relationships at Kaer Morhen aren’t forbidden, but they aren’t common. There had been a handful of moments like these – none of them that went farther than stolen glances and they always left you feeling somehow empty, aching for what you couldn’t have.

Silence stretches between you. The only sound either of you make are the thundering of our hearts and carefully controlled breathing. Though, you notice, each time Geralt breathes in, there is a slight unsteadiness to it, a shakiness, as if he is trying as hard as you are to keep your breathing in check.

Finally, you draw a breath that would be noticeably shaky, even for a person who hadn’t undergone all of the mutations that the two of you had. You tear your eyes from your hand to look up at him and say, “I’m an adult, Geralt. I’m going through the trials willingly.”

Geralt doesn’t respond, just clenches his jaw and lets out a huff, so you continue, “We’ve always known about the Trials, I agreed to it when I came here, and I’ve continued to agree to it every time that I’ve taken any of their elixirs. I’ve...We’ve been training for this for our whole lives. Without Vizimir I would have died without getting a chance to experience real life.”

“I know the speech,” Geralt shoots back almost immediately, pulling his hand away and leaving you feeling hurt.

“Geralt.” You are struggling to keep your voice steady. You can’t decide if you feel like screaming or crying, so you keep to the Code and shove both of those urges down as deep as is possible given the situation. “It’s not my fault we have to undergo the mutations, so don’t fucking snap at me.”

“Fuck,” Geralt says, shaking his head and burying it in his hands, “Y/N, I’m sorry. I know.”

He is silent for another moment before he finally lowers his hands and looks up at you. You realize in that moment how close you are, your faces only inches apart. You can see the gold flecks in his amber eyes and the stubble on his cheeks and have to fight to ignore the urge to reach out and see how his skin feels beneath your hands, and what his eyes would look like if you did.

But then, he reaches out with one hand, hesitantly and ever so gently, to cup your face. You shiver as the pad of his thumb brushes just beneath your lower lip and the very corner of your mouth. Time feels suspended, as if the two of you are floating on some separate plane where the day of the Trials will never come and the two of you can just stay right here, just as you are, forever.

“I hate the idea of you undergoing the Trial because I can’t stomach the thought of losing you, Y/N.” The words are like a punch to the stomach that is somehow pleasant, knocking all the breath out of your lungs.

He leans even closer, until your foreheads are touching. “I know the Code, and I know I’m not supposed to, but I love you.”

You breathe in, memorizing the smell of him. You’ve only ever been this close during sparring exercises. You decide you like this a lot better.

“When I had the fever… The one thing that kept me, you know, here was you, you know,” you breathe. You’ve never told him because you know that no matter how much he had pretended to hate it as of late, he sticks to the Code. The Code, which doesn’t look highly on Witchers being in relationships – especially with one another. “And that’s why—and you’re the reason I know that I’ll survive the Trial.” Your eyes have drifted down, unable to meet his as you confess this – the secret you have been hiding from him for so long.

He is silent for a moment, frozen there with his deliciously warm hand on your face before finally letting his and slip lower, resting under your chin and gently tilting your head up so that he can meet your eyes. “Fuck the Code,” he says, eyes flashing before pressing his lips to yours.

It is your first kiss, and it is pure bliss. Your lips fit together like pieces of a puzzle and the sensation has you drunk with pleasure before he even deepens the kiss. And, when he does, you are ready. You part your lips for him, and he greedily explores your mouth. You keep thinking that it can’t get any better, but yet it does. You moan involuntarily as his hand slips from your chin, ghosting along the curve of your neck and coming to rest on your shoulder, calloused thumb sweeping across your collar bone.

His touch is electric, leaving your skin feeling hot and charged, and longing for more. Your arms wrap around his neck, pulling yourself flush against him. He responds with an appreciative grunt, moving his hands to explore your body, starting by sweeping down your sides, just barely grazing the sides of your breasts in the process.

With his hands now firmly wrapped around your sides, he breaks the kiss, leaving you in a huff of frustration and disappointment – you hadn’t had nearly enough of him. But before you can get too out of sorts, his lips touch your neck and you moan, tipping your head back to grant him complete access. You don’t even have time to worry about the fact that you have no idea what you’re doing – that you have never done this before – because Geralt is so thorough, so in control of the situation. It’s like he knows all the right places to touch, and exactly what to do with his mouth to have you breathing heavily, small sounds of pleasure slipping through your lips.

Tentatively, you begin exploring his body with your hands. You love the way that his muscled form feels beneath your fingers, and it makes you want to explore every inch. As your hands move down his chest, you find yourself tugging at his shirt. You don’t know if it is an involuntary reaction to his teeth grazing your neck as his lips continue down to your collarbone or whether it is simply a feeble attempt to pull the fabric away because you would very much like to know what his sculpted abdomen feels like beneath your fingers without the offending material in the way.

Geralt’s hands, on the other hand, have gripped your white linen shirt, identical to his own, and already began pulling it over your head. You raise your arms to make it easier for him, and the moment it is off, you greedily reach for his own tugging the material up and over his head. For a moment, you just stare at him, drinking in the sight of him shirtless before you. It wasn’t as if you had never seen him this way – but you had always done your best not to look too long, afraid that he would notice as question why.

However, he interrupts your moment of slightly embarrassing admiration when he wraps his arms around you, hands grazing your hyper-sensitive skin. You sigh, content to let him touch every inch of you. Encouraged by this, his hands wander up to unlace your bra and you bite your lip in anticipation. You cannot wait to feel his hands on them, arching your back, willing him to make faster work of it.

He grins as he slips the material off your shoulders, grin turning into more of a smirk as he sees you staring back at him with wide, expectant eyes. He slides one hand up your back, easing you down so you are laying beneath him, eyes drinking in the sight of you naked form and making your feel suddenly exposed. But, given the way his pupils dilate, he likes what he sees as much as you do.

He leans over you, lowering himself so that he can bring his lips to yours once more. You greedily bite his lower lip, hands back to their game of exploring as much of his body as you can reach. And then all of a sudden, you feel his stubbled cheek graze against yours as he leans to growl in your ear, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this to you, Witcheress.”

His words add fuel to the fire burning in your core, and you whimper as his fingers brush your nipple. It feels so delicious it is almost painful. You’ve never even allowed yourself to fantasize about this scenario, as much as you may have wanted to. You never thought it would happen – and you weren’t one to dream of impossible things. And yet, here you both were.

“Geralt,” you breathe, completely lost I the feeling as he kneads and pinches your breasts. And then… his lips. The feeling of them against your breast and his tongue flattening against your nipple is warm and soft and better than you could have ever imagined it feeling. Your eyes roll up into your head as he makes use of his free hand to gently twist and pinch the bud not currently receiving the attention of his tongue.

Heat pools in your core, twisting and tightening and aching for his touch, and, oh gods, for his tongue. Any nerves you thought you would have doing this for the first time have evaporated. There is no room in your pleasure-drunk mind for nervous thoughts.

Once again, seemingly able to read your thoughts, he slips a hand between the two of you, unfastening your belt and unlacing your trousers. For a brief moment, your mind blinks to a thought of just how practiced his hands are – but you don’t dwell on it for more than a split second. You are burning with need, and you could care less how many women Geralt has had before you – if the stories of the young man’s exploits on those rare occasions when Kaer Morhen’s young Witchers in training were given leave to take on smaller contracts here and there under supervision of elders – it doesn’t matter to you right now.

It matters even less when his hand slips into your waistband, expert fingers finding their way to where you need him most. His finger dips between your folds, gathering the wet heat pooled there for him, humming appreciatively against your chest as he lets his finger trail back up to the little bundle of nerves. His touch is perfect parts gentle and firm as he circles the small bud, making you cry out into the open air.

“You like that, Witcheress?” he asks gruffly, swirling his finger again and making you buck your hips against his hand. Making yourself form words is pretty much hopeless at this point, with his finger dancing over the hard little nub that no one save yourself has ever touched before, but your pleasured cries are more than enough answer for him.

He loves watching you like this – writhing beneath him, hips moving of their own accord, eyes blinking open and closed again. He especially loves your little gasps; the way your pretty mouth stays open in a constant ‘oh’ as he works you with his fingers. Your ragged breathing turns him on even more; your breasts rising and falling at uneven intervals as he increases his pace and pressure. And, oh gods, he loves the groan that escapes your lips when he does.

“Gods,” you say with a great deal of effort, “That feels… G-geralt!”

He watches you as your body tenses for a moment, amber eyes fixed on you as he watches you fall apart, already committing this image to memory; the first time you’d come for him. You are still twitching as the aftershocks of your orgasm wrack your body when he grabs your waistband and tugs your pants off roughly, breathing in your scent and greedily taking in the sight of you.

Your thighs tremble as he presses his lips to the inside of your calf, peppering the soft skin with kisses as he moves his way up your leg. You are still reeling from your orgasm, but already you need more. His hands follow his lips, massaging the seemingly always sore muscles of your legs and making you sigh with pleasure.

You reach down to run a hand through his hair, and he lifts his amber eyes to meet yours as he moves to your other leg, pressing kisses across ever inch of your skin. His tongue traces the crease between your thigh and your most intimate area, and your hips thrust towards his face of their own accord. But then a thought enters your mind, and you tug at his hair, “Geralt.”

“Yes, Witcheress?” he says, locking you in his intense gaze.

“I should… Shouldn’t I? You know…?” You can feel his bulge through his pants, and you are eager to touch him, to feel his hardness with your fingers, your tongue, and inside of you. But for now, Geralt clearly has other plans.

“Shh, Witcheress,” he says, nipping gently at your inner thigh with his teeth, “I’m not done with you yet.” His words send your mind into a whirl as his hands slip under your thighs to your ass, letting his shoulders hold your already quivering legs apart so that you are completely exposed to him. You whimper as he blows cool air on your heat, making you shiver.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he says gruffly, eyes locked on yours once again, “But first I want to taste you.” He lets his tongue just barely graze your clit, and you whimper again, on the verge of begging. “I think you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Y/N?”

You can only whimper in response, your need for him an almost painful ache in your core.

“Hmm?” he rumbles, looking up at you with an impish grin, “Didn’t hear you.” You cannot think of a more beautiful sight than Geralt – the boy who was your first friend and the man who you fell in love with little by little until you were mad with it – looking up at you as if you are the only person in the world.

“Y-yes,” you whimper, voice laced with need.

“Mhm,” he growls, finally running his tongue from your opening to the little bundle of nerves. The feeling of his tongue touching you there has you seeing stars. It feels even better than his fingers as he explores you, paying particular attention to the places that make you gasp and tighten your grip on his hair.

He takes his time, savoring the way you taste, better even then he imagined – which he often had despite his efforts not to think of you that way. He’d tried to stick to the Code, he’d tried everything to keep his mind busy – every time he made a trip out of Kaer Morhen, he’d tried to distract himself, but now, as he explores you with his tongue, breathes your scent, feels your soft skin beneath his fingertips, and hears your soft gasps and moans, all he can think is that he has abided by the Code for way too fucking long.

You are absolutely lost in the feeling of his mouth on you. And, when his lips close around your clit, sucking it into his mouth and attacking it with his tongue, you cry out so loud you are almost convinced everyone back in the Keep can hear you, not that you care. He moans against you, delicious vibrations making you cry out again.

His hand has been traveling closer and closer to your entrance, and you find yourself desperately moving your hips, urging him on. This time, he obliges without teasing, seeming as if he couldn’t pull away from you if he wanted to.

He groans along with you as he slips a finger inside of you, stretching you gently. He takes his time here, too, slowly pumping his finger in and out, committing to memory every place that makes you gasp and writhe until he finds that spot. He adds another finger, focusing on the sensitive place inside of you. Your eyes screw shut as he curls his fingers in time with his tongue; he has turned you into a senseless mess.

The pleasure is too much. Every muscle in your body tenses before finally, you release. Your back arches as you cry out, thighs trapping Geralt in place as you ride out wave after wave of pleasure until finally your body goes slack and you fall back against the grass, breathing heavily.

For a moment, Geralt doesn’t move, yellow eyes drinking in the sight of you lying there slowly coming back to your senses. When your breathing has somewhat returned to normal, he slowly kisses up your body until he reaches your lips, capturing you in a kiss that seems to last forever, but still not long enough. You can taste yourself on his tongue and it drives you mad.

You are already reaching down, desperately and clumsily attempting to yank off his pants, wanting there to be nothing between the two of you. He helps you with the task, kicking off his boots and tossing his remaining clothing to the side. You watch him, eyes committing every muscle and every scar to memory, and finally you allow yourself to look lower.

It takes you a moment to realize that you’re staring, eyes wide as you consider the size of him. Not that you have anything to compare it to, but he is huge, and, considering the only thing that had been inside you before this day are your own fingers, you shiver at the thought of it. He lowers himself back onto his elbows, eyes finding yours as he brushes stray strands of hair from your sweat-soaked forehead as you blink up at him through your lashes, chewing your lower lip, feeling equal parts nervous and impatient.

As your heart hammers in your chest, he leans down to press his lips against the sensitive spot at the crook of your neck, positioning himself between your legs. You whimper as he teases you with the head of his large cock, sliding it from your entrance to your clit and back again, pausing there when all you wanted was for him to push himself inside you.

And all at once, he does. You draw in a sharp breath at the mix of pain and pleasure. He holds still for a moment, letting you adjust to the size of him. You hadn’t thought it’d feel this good. You’d not had much in the way of women to tell you about things like this here at Kaer Morhen. Most of what you learned, you learned from the boys – and you’d learn to take anything you heard from them with a grain of salt. But this – gods. It felt like pure bliss.

Finally, he slowly drew out and thrust back in again, groaning into the space between your neck and shoulder. By his third thrust, you were already raising your hips to meet his, wanting more, faster, harder. But Geralt was taking his time, despite your fingers raking his back, leaving red marks that could be mistaken for claw marks, in all honesty.

“Geralt,” his name spills from your lips in something between a sigh and a moan. He responds by kissing your neck, then moving up to kiss your lips, the two of you lying there, drinking each other in, hips moving harder and faster as he fills you up over and over again, somehow hitting every single spot inside of you, making you whimper beneath him.

You are both sweating, breathing heavily, and clawing at each other as if your lives depend on exploring every part of one another. His thrusts are even, though. A perfect rhythm that has you repeating his name over and over like a prayer. Each time, he hits that spot, and you feel that tightening in your belly, like a coil. And then, all of a sudden, it snaps, and you are lost in a sea of pleasure.

He finishes almost immediately after you, thrusts growing more and more sporadic as he finishes inside you.

The two of you lay there, half-clothed but unworried. No one will stumble upon you out here. Code be damned, you are in love. And for tonight, you are just that – not two people about to undergo the Trials, not a future Witcher and Witcheress – just two young lovers, all tangled up together, staring up at a sky fully of stars, watching the moon rise over the Snow Pine Mountains.

Taglist: @fairytale07, @geeksareunique, @jesseswartzwelder, @haru-ririchiyo, @unnamedmaincharacter, @lazilyscentedwerewolf, @stretchkingblog97, @curlyhairedandconfused, @valkyriepuff, @comicbeginning, @alwayshave-faith, @hp-hogwartsexpress, @angelic-kisses13, @holyhumorliteraturelight, @nogitsunelichen

(Let me know if you’d like to be added!)

#geralt x reader #geralt imagines #geralt of rivia #reader insert #witcher reader #geralt of rivia x reader #story: stone hearts #series #the witcher #the witcher fanfiction #fanfiction #geralt fanfiction #the witcher au #au #witcher school au #fanfiction series

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blackfreethinkers · 4 years

Link

By Kwame Anthony AppiahOct. 7, 2020

How Black is Kamala Harris? That the question gets posed speaks to the ill-defined contours of an ill-defined concept. Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican-born father, has been called in the media “half Black,” “biracial,” “mixed race” and “Blasian.” In online posts, people have ventured that she’s “partly Black” or — for having attended Howard University, a historically Black school — an “honorary full Black.” Others persist in asking whether she’s “Black enough.”

The old British concept of “political Blackness,” the heyday of which stretched from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, would make nonsense of such questions in a very immediate way: Ms. Harris’s mother, by this definition, is just as Black as her father. For proponents of political Blackness, “Black” was an umbrella term that encompassed minorities with family origins in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Africa and its diaspora. That’s not to say it was the sturdiest of umbrellas: It was never uncontested. Yet it may have lessons for us today.

In Britain, anyway, its legacy remains legible. Three years ago, in a public-awareness campaign designed to increase voter turnout among British minorities (“Operation Black Vote”), Riz Ahmed, a British actor and rapper of Pakistani parentage, appeared on a video. “Blacks don’t vote,” he said. “And by Black people, I mean ethnic minorities of all backgrounds.” The year before, the student union at the University of Kent attracted attention when it promoted Black History Month with the faces of six famous figures: Alongside four British people of African descent, it posted two of Pakistani heritage — the pop star Zayn Malik and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.

During its roughly two decades of prominence, the political Blackness movement, taking note of how Britishness had routinely been equated with whiteness, was especially devoted to the “Afro-Asian” alliance. (In Britain, the term “Asian” defaults to South Asian.) During the 1980s, the movement’s inclusive usage of “Black” went mainstream in Britain. The Commission for Racial Equality, a public body established in 1976, decided that “Asian” would be a subcategory of “Black”; other such organizations followed suit. The bien-pensant among the children of empire started styling themselves as Black, whether or not they had sub-Saharan ancestors.

Of course, this broadened sense of “Black” wasn’t exactly a novelty. Malcolm X, in a speech from 1964, heralded Black revolutionaries around the world and explained: “When I say Black, I mean nonwhite. Black, brown, red, or yellow.” Anyone who had been colonized or exploited by the Europeans qualified. And Malcolm X, in turn, was drawing on an internationalist tradition captured six decades earlier by W.E.B. Du Bois. “The problem of the 20th century,” he wrote, “is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

In Britain, this capacious usage of “Black” scanted the enormous differences among the nation’s nonwhite minorities. But that was exactly its point, and its power. The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall — you could see this elegant figure on British television in those days, with his close-cropped beard and well-fitted blazers, lecturing for the Open University — was always warning against the way “race” presented itself as a natural fact about human beings. Using “Black” as an umbrella term, he felt, would weaken such illusions: It would helpfully emphasize the “immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects.”

In an influential 1988 essay on “black cultural politics,” for example, Mr. Hall celebrated a film by John Akomfrah, whose father (like mine) had been a Ghanaian politician. Yet he also cited the writer Hanif Kureishi’s two collaborations with the director Stephen Frears, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” as significant contributions to Black cinema. That neither Mr. Kureishi nor Mr. Frears was of African descent didn’t make the work less Black.

Only such an inclusive conception of Blackness, proponents maintained, could effectively counter an exclusive conception of Britishness. Ambalavaner Sivanandan, a political thinker and the longtime director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations, saw strategic benefits in “the forging of black as a common color of colonial and racist exploitation.” As a young man in the late 1950s, Siva, as he was known to his friends, left behind the ethnic strife of Sri Lanka and went to London, only to witness attacks by white youth on West Indians in the Notting Hill neighborhood. “I knew then I was black,” he would write.

Opponents of political Blackness tended to suspect that Asians were being forced into a template set by Afro-Caribbeans. In the early 1990s, the sociologist Tariq Modood cited a survey that suggested only a third of British Asians identified as Black, and argued that Asians suffered more from racial prejudice in British society than people of African descent did. White working-class youth were drawn to Afro-Caribbean culture, he said, while turning against Asians. It galled him, too, to see anti-racist programs focused on Afro-Caribbeans when most non-white British people were Asian.

And there’s no doubt that the social reality on the street didn’t always harmonize with the high-minded aspirations to shared struggle. Claire Alexander, a sociologist at the University of Manchester, has dryly recalled that when she did fieldwork in the late 1980s about how Black British youth created their cultural identities, “one of my main informants, Darnell, commented, laughing, ‘you know, Claire, Blacks and Asians don’t get on.’”

Yet the various criticisms of political Blackness presented quandaries of their own. Sure, the umbrella concept didn’t give voice to all the differences it encompassed, but it wasn’t meant to supplant the many other sources of identity in people’s lives. Besides, a term like “Asian” itself ignored the immense internal diversity of the group it designated. Among British Asians, Sikhs and Hindus didn’t vote the way Muslims did. Islamophobia targeted Asians but was also promulgated by Asians.

Mr. Hall, warning against the fiction that “all black people are the same,” had no illusions that Afro-Caribbeans were a cohesive group, either. When he was growing up in Jamaica, he recalled, nobody was ever called “black,” but colorism — prejudice against those with a dark skin tone — was rampant: His grandmother could distinguish 15 hues of brown. Social groups, he knew, are fractal. By the logic of culture, creed, color or kinship, you could always split them into smaller groups. So why not lump them into larger ones, too?

In Britain today, the arguments for splitting and lumping — for specificity and commonality — remain unresolved. The Black Students’ Campaign, the largest organization of nonwhite students in Britain and Europe, represents students of Asian and Arab heritage as well as those of Caribbean and African descent. A few years ago, chastened by critics of the “Black” umbrella, the organization decided that it needed a new name and asked members for suggestions.

Those Black History Month posts at the University of Kent certainly came under fire for including people of Pakistani heritage. “Ill-thought and misdirected” was an institutional tweet from Black History Month UK. The Kent student union “unreservedly” apologized on its Facebook page. The offending faces were purged.

When Riz Ahmed appeared in the public service announcement for Operation Black Vote, some people were eager to see his face purged, too. The journalist Yomi Adegoke remarked, “When I’m followed around in an Afro-Caribbean hair shop or newsagent, an Asian vendor forgets all about political blackness and becomes far more occupied with blackness-blackness.”

But there have been voices for lumping, too. “As children in the 1980s,” Mr. Ahmed wrote somberly, “when my brother and I were stopped near our home by a skinhead who decided to put a knife to my brother’s throat, we were black.” Emma Dabiri, an author and broadcaster (“Irish-Nigerian” is how she designates herself), recently called for “the identification of affinities and points of shared interest beyond categories that were invented to divide us.” And, as it happens, the Black Students’ Campaign never found a replacement for “Black,” and the group still includes Arabs and Asians.

There’s a reason that “political Blackness” never gained much purchase in the United States. In Britain, what matters most is whether or not you’re white; in America, what matters most is whether or not you’re Black.

Still, in the United States today, similar debates roil over “people of color” and the acronym now in favor, BIPOC (for Black, Indigenous and people of color). Does such nomenclature suggest that all nonwhite people are interchangeable? Indian-Americans have a household income that’s two-thirds higher than the national median; for Black people, it’s a third lower. Should these groups share an umbrella? Does the language of generality blunt the sharp analysis of racial disparities we need?

Damon Young, the author of the memoir “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker,” calls “people of color” a “valueless catchall that extinguishes identity instead of amplifying it.” Jason Parham, in Wired, has dismissed “people of color” as an “idiomatic casserole of cultures and identities.” If you mean Black people, say Black people, such critics argue. And they have a point.

The hitch is that the term “Black people,” too, is a casserole of cultures and identities. Anti-Black racism can be a useful concept. But it’s equally an umbrella, casting its shade over the fact that in socioeconomic terms, British Caribbean immigrants and their children and grandchildren in the United States have fared better than “native” African-Americans and that those from the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean have fared worse. It also obscures the fact that colorism, even within Black America, can entail another set of disparities in treatment.

And while some African-American critics think “people of color” is hopelessly expansive, others think the same of “African-American.” The political movement ADOS, which stands for American Descendants of Slavery, wants to establish what it considers a properly “cohesive” notion of Black identity, fencing out people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris as “New Black” usurpers of a native lineage of suffering. (For some of those who take Blackness as a badge of dispossession, Ms. Harris’s father’s elite education makes him a suspect member of the Jamaican comprador bourgeoisie.) Every tribe, it’s clear, contains other tribes. It’s umbrellas all the way down.

Reflecting on political Blackness, then, should encourage us to retrain some of our reflexes. The identity group that we invoke should be “right-sized” to our needs and aims. Sometimes we’ll want to contract a category for purposes of analysis; sometimes we’ll have reason to expand a category for purposes of solidarity. Indeed, if the context is white nationalism and the anxieties of membership in an eroding demographic majority, “people of color” may be an invaluable analytic term. The salient distinction there is between white and nonwhite.

What about the ADOS movement? If ADOS activists flounder — they have fixed their gaze on slavery reparations and are intent that the wrong people don’t get in on the action — it will be because their certain-Black-lives-matter-more approach proves politically misjudged. An ambitious goal like reparations may require broad support, and in turn a broad conception of “Black.” Skeptics might think that, as with the prospectors and fortune hunters of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ADOS’s determination to keep the rewards for themselves imperils the chances of anyone getting them.

But let’s say you’re concerned about colorism. You might have been among those who were indignant when Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black woman, was cast in a biopic about Nina Simone, a dark-skinned Black woman. To talk about such prejudice, you’ll have to insist on one of the ways in which all Black people aren’t alike. You’ll have to split rather than lump.

Getting the identity aperture wrong — drawing a circle that’s too wide or too narrow, given our agenda — can lead to confusion or futility. When we’re told that about a third of Latinos support President Trump, should we wonder whether something has gone terribly wrong with Joe Biden’s ethnic outreach? Or should we wonder whether a demographic category that suggests a similarity of interests between Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may — for these purposes, anyway — be eliding distinctions that matter more?

For these purposes is always the crucial qualifier. One’s purposes can involve coalition politics, cultural interpretation or socioeconomic precision. The point is that none of these identity terms is stenciled by the brute facts of the social world; rather, they stencil themselves upon the social world. Each is invariably a decision — a decision made jointly with others — that arises from our interests and objectives. You don’t like the available identity options? Start a movement; you may be able to change them.

By the cultural logic, or illogic, of race, Kamala Harris, like Barack Obama, counts both as biracial and as Black. Among major-party vice-presidential candidates, she qualifies as the first Asian-American, the first Indian-American, the first African-American, the first woman of color. Identities, of course, are multiple, interactive and, yes, subject to revision. As the architects of political Blackness rightly insisted, collective identities are always the subject of contestation and negotiation.

Political Blackness may have had its day, but we’re still coming to grips with its central insight: Blackness, like whiteness, has never not been political.

#politics and government

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screamingatanemptyroom · 5 years

Text

I Can’t Eat Love pt 4

Here is part 4 guys!

Also, I worried about this, since I’ve posted it in such a piecemeal fashion that it might be a little confusing. Let me clarify the timeline just a little:

After the first scene in part 1, where the engagement is broken, the story goes back 3 years to when Lenora first wakes up in her second life. So all the parts I’ve written since have been in the second lifetime, leading up to that scene. (In case you’ve wondered, getting to the broken engagement won’t be the end! Seeing how she prepared for that moment will set the stage for the fallout after the engagement is broken).

Anyways, hopefully it has made sense so far, and thank you for all the positive feedback on this story so far!

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 linked here

_______________________________

“Your Highness.”

I plastered a polite smile on my face, performing a perfect curtsy, but all the while my mind was racing, desperately trying to figure out how long he had been there, how much he had heard.

Even if I was planning to let the engagement be broken up like last time, I needed the three years to get my family back on track financially before that happened. If we broke up too soon… the debtors would come calling and my life would end very much like the first.

Fortunately, Ronan didn’t seem upset or angry, he looked more bored than anything.

I let out a silent sigh of relief. He must not have heard the “temperamental child” comment I had made to my father. I wasn’t too concerned If he had heard my blatant lies about the Queen managing accounts. He didn’t know enough about how things worked in the palace to know if that was true or false.

“… We’ve come down to check out the horses.” Ronan had been talking while I wasn’t listening.

I blinked, realizing for the first time he wasn’t alone. I was slightly shocked that I hadn’t noticed the young man next to him, he stood a head taller than both myself and Ronan, with dark hair and eyes that contrasted with the prince’s lighter coloring. Odder still, I came to the conclusion that I had never met him before, in this or the past lifetime.

Chastising myself, I was unsure if Ronan had introduced us properly while I wasn’t listening, and if so, how I had responded. I could have performed a formal court greeting by sheer muscle memory, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I had done something odd.

Ronan’s companion studied me with a curious expression, he stood neither too close or too far from the prince. Hopefully judging by his lack of confusion or disapproval, I had yet to humiliate myself.

Only 3 more years of keeping up this charade, and I’m already slipping. I must stay focused!

I forced myself to listen to Prince Ronan.

“The stupid stable master insists he is too wild to ride, but I think he is just too unskilled. If I were to ride him, he would be tamed in moments.”

That at least provided me with the mental image of Ronan falling off his horse and injuring himself. My smile came much more naturally. “I’m sure your highness could manage even the wildest of horses. “

Ronan nodded distractedly, already losing interest now that he had finished his horse story. “Is Lady Edith here?”

Three. More. Years.

“No, Your Highness, I believe she is home today.”

His gaze sharpened. “Is she ill?”

“Not that I know of.” Years of royal court training kept my smile perfectly in place.

Ronan coughed, seeming to realize even with his denseness how out of place his question was. “I was just thinking, since you two are such close friends, if she was ill, you would be visiting her.”

“Would I?” I could barely hear my voice.

_______________________________

“Go to sleep.” Angela tried to tuck me into bed, but I stubbornly refused, sweating profusely from the fever.

“No, with me being sick, surely someone will be by to visit?”

Her face was blank. “No one has come, miss.”

“Prince Ronan? Edith? … Mother?”

“No one.”

_______________________________

“… give her my best when you do see her.” Ronan was still talking. Lucky me. How had I ever not realized where his heart truly leaned? Had I really been so blind?

Even as I felt disdain for my former self, a part of me wanted to forgive her. Not blind. Young. Naïve. A little girl who thought the world would go her way just because she asked nicely. A girl who thought love was the most important thing in life, the only purpose of life.

… I was not that girl anymore.

I curtsied once again as the gentlemen took their leave. My smile perfect, polite, concealing the darkness I felt within.

_______________________________

Hallers set up the office within an hour, surely using some sort of supernatural ability, given the absolute chaos he had to work with.

I sat down at the desk, looking through the stacks and stacks of papers and slowly did the numbers. It was not a simple task. After hours of poring over tax documents, expense sheets and overdue lendings, I had only a few pieces of the overall picture.

But even from that I could tell it didn’t look good.

It was clearly evident that my father should never be allowed near money. The personal spending habits of our family were appalling. Thousands of crowns wasted on the most frivolous of items.

This had to stop.

I estimated our projected income, wincing when I realized just how much money was being diverted from the proper channels. If we could cut down on the stealing from the collection services, we should have just enough to cover the duchy’s expenses. But that would leave us almost nothing for personal spending.

Could I convince my family to stop spending? As I looked around at the luxury that surrounded me, I felt a sense of futility take over. No. even though I was sure of the cuts I would make in my own expenses, I would have to find a way to support our family through other means.

I spent the next few days working my way through all the paperwork, working from morning until night, stopping only to sleep and eat.

I was so focused on my task that I was startled by the soft knock on the door. It was Hallers.

“Excuse me miss. I have taken the liberty of contacting of few of the smaller vendors and consolidating some of the debt with a smaller interest rate.” He handed me a stack of smoothed out bills. I glanced over them, whistling with appreciation when I saw the improved numbers.

“This is perfect Hallers, thank you!” I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my eyes with a sigh. “We will need to set up a meeting with all the men involved with taxation collection. If we don’t put a stop to this corruption, nothing I do will save this duchy.”

“Very good, Miss.” A delighted grin crossed his face, passing so quickly I almost missed it.

“Let’s aim for next week, I need to come up with a plan for terrifying a group of men into doing exactly what I want.”

“I’m sure you will be quite successful,” Hallers answered with a perfectly straight face. I couldn’t help but let out an amused chuckle.

“If that’s all, I’ll return to my work… “ I paused as he didn’t move an inch. “Was there anything else?”

Hallers hesitated. “Your etiquette lesson with the Queen is scheduled for tomorrow, yes?”

“Y-yes.” I blinked, confused by the direction of the conversation. “I will head out to the palace in the morning, why?”

It was actually something I was dreading. How many hours had I spent in those rooms, sweating, crying, trying over and over to perfect the lessons the queen had to give me? All to impress a man who had no interest in me. It seemed so ridiculous, now.

“Well, there is a man who works in the Royal treasury…” He paused, looking slightly embarrassed. “My brother, in fact… I have expressed to him your recent efforts over the last few days to organize the Duchy’s finances and enact change and he was eager to lend his assistance.” He bowed. “I apologize if I overstepped my bounds.”

“No need,” I waved a hand, dismissing his apology. “How exactly does your brother wish to help us?”

“He would like to share some of his experience and knowledge regarding taxes, land ownership and financial reform.” Hallers again looked slightly embarrassed. “He’s somewhat of a progressive man, Miss, not exactly a monarchist, but he is very skilled…”

“HE’S PERFECT!” I stood up, smiling. An experienced person who could give me advice on reforming the Duchy AND didn’t like the monarchy? I couldn’t have asked for better! “Can you arrange for us to meet after my etiquette lesson with the Queen?

Obviously shocked by my enthusiasm, Hallers nodded. “Very good, Miss. I’ll arrange it. He’ll be very pleased.”

“As am I.” I sat back down, settling in to continue organizing the accounts. “We’ll save this Duchy, Hallers.”

“Miss?”

I chuckled, the sound a little more sinister than I intended. “Whether they like it or not.”

#writing #short story #I can't eat love #part 4 #second life #second chances #thanks everyone for the support

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positivlyfocused · 4 years

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What a Positively Focused 1:1 Session Looks Like

Prospective clients sometimes ask about what client sessions are like. Some wonder what I do with clients. Let's take that last question first.

I provide context where clients get clear about who and what they are. In that clarity, they find what I found in my own clarity: That they create their life experience ongoingly.

When they find that, life takes a turn. It becomes fulfilling, fun, fantasical seeming, although it's not fantastical, it's just how life works when Positively Focused.

Gradually clients enter their creative powers while learning, or re-learning how their creative powers work. They find happiness, freedom and joy.

I show clients their power and how to get it through a mystical experience that feels like a conversation.

Now the first question:

What are client sessions like?

Client sessions are conversations where I share insights about what my clients talk about. The insights open greater awareness, both for clients and for me. Since I give clients access to me through text and email as well as our in-person sessions, I can share an example of how a session sounds.

The following is an email from a client who lives with his wife. Married many years, Clifton (not his real name) now wants out. He wants out because he finds his situation, including his wife Margo (not her real name either), intolerable.

Behind Clifton's perceptions are belief constellations creating his intolerable situations, including Margo. Clifton is on his eighth session. Already he's seen seemingly extraordinary shifts in his wife. Only they are not extraordinary.

By learning how to create his reality on purpose, Clifton has created a new-to-him version of Margo and a new-to-him version of their marriage. Clifton wants his freedom. But he knows he can't have that until he makes peace with his current reality.

Being Positively Focused does that. It also makes his experience of his changing reality more fun, as you'll read from this email exchange. Clifton gave me permission to share this exchange provided I remove identifying details. The bolded sections are Clifton's comments, with mine following.

^^Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

It's the dreading one feels liberated from

So, I paid my income taxes today. Almost $4500. I had been dreading it and still haven't filled out a return (though now I have REAL motivation to do so, ha ha), and was thinking , "Send them a crumb" -- which is how I've done it for years. Throw the wolves a bone now and again and they'll back off for a while (until they get hungry again). This year, practically at the last minute, I threw them the whole carcass. It was liberating. I realize that I've always felt "liberated" (at least temporarily) whenever I am able to pay these creditors off at the calends (first of the month), and then I don't have to worry about it anymore. Gives one a feeling of power.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how something “dreaded” once done turns “dread” into “liberation”. Remember what emotions are about. Then ask yourself: what is it I feel liberation from? Is it really the taxes? Or is it the “dreadful” feeling, which indicates something important, and when freed from that you connect with something that feels comparatively liberating and powerful? Interesting thing to consider.

I have $50,000 tied up, but currently collecting nine percent annual interest compounded, some gold coins and another $10,000 currently tied up in the van (I cleaned it up and put a "For Sale" sign on it, but have yet to put an ad on Craigslist)

Most of the day was spent in that "Joy/Freedom" space. I had a good piano lesson with Sergi (graduate of a music academy in the old Soviet Union - can't recall which, but it was a prestigious one). Earlier that day, I had been looking at a very wide screen monitor, 2nd hand at a local computer store. The store owner called me and informed be the price was almost $400 - more than I cared to pay, and I politely told him so and thanked him for getting in touch. I could have, of course - but I feel I should be spending those dollars on other things. Anyway, sure enough, I had a "hunch" on the way home and stopped at Goodwill. Found a working 48-in. TV that will double very nicely as an entertainment screen and a computer monitor. Price - $50. I liked that a whole lot better than $400. And it's bigger. Yes, the stand's a bit wobbly (probably why it was given away), but I imagine that's just a matter of tightening a screw or two.

Nice job following the hunch. Life is an adventure, or can be, when one connects with All That Is and allows it to lead one to all one wants. It also becomes treasure hunt-ish. Who knows what lies around the next bend or building? And, the best footing from which to play the adventure is in “Joy/Freedom”. Absolutely.

^^Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

Everyone seeks internal connection on their way...

Also feels good to me to reuse and/or repurpose something. That includes composting. I am not a fan of gardening (one source of conflict between Margo and I), but at least composting is a good way to make use of food that has "gone off" and would otherwise be wasted.

See the differing interests between you and Margo as wonderful sources of both joy and variety. Joy in that what you love you love and what she loves she loves…and you both get the same thing from both your loves: connection with your Broader Perspective.

Variety in that, in the relief of your partner’s passion, you, rather than being turned off by that, can turn instead (turn the other cheek) to YOUR passion and feel exactly what she feels when she’s tending to her plants: connection, flow, fun, exuberance.

Then, perhaps, you can feel appreciation – not conflict – when you turn back to what she enjoys, knowing she’s getting from her passion the same thing you get from yours and so your passion and hers are not all that dissimilar.

Not that it matters, or maybe it does - but I was in the market for a large monitor because as a composer, I often work with very large scores - and it is tremendously helpful to see as much of it as possible. Not practical on small monitors.

That you are "in the market" matters. You’re on your way…you’ve been on your way, but also have been resisting the “way”…to your dreams. The monitor is a manifestation – a sign post – indicating your waywardness. I use that word not in it’s traditional definition, which is negative, but in a new way, indicating “toward your way”. The way you connected with that TV indicates your “compliance” with your Broader Perspective.

And just as you were compliant [in such a way you realized previous, important manifestations] and now this manifestation, there will be many more instances of delight on your way….which is why life never creates wham-bang manifestations that happen in an instant like magic. Instant manifestation happens in nonphysical. But in the world of manifested things, All is set up so you can enjoy and savor the JOURNEY towards the destination. Each moment is a realization. The more you come into this conversation, the clearer your awareness and the more you’ll see this statement’s accuracy.

^^Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Most don't see manifestation evidence because don't know what it looks like

This week, I also had the impulse to add something to an unrelated tweet [on Twitter]. Some actor had put himself out there, advising any directors or producers of his availability and experience. I retweeted and added that if anyone was looking for a great film composer, please consider me - and added links to samples of my work on YouTube. A couple of people retweeted it...usually, I don't hold out much hope for these sort of things, but one never knows...trying to stay open to the possibilities.

This is a great example of your mixed energies. You don’t hold out much hope, but at the same time you “never know”. So you took action based on hope/who knows…and you saw a tiny manifestation of desire (that someone retweeted the tweet) outweighing your disbelief [expressed as "don't hold out much hope". Most miss these instances of evidence. Now you know it's more evidence of you on your way. Nice.

Like the double recliner I bought for what I plan to be my "apartment/suite." I sleep best in a recliner, which are typically for one -- but when I saw it, I started thinking, "Hmmm...what if I get lucky?" Wouldn't want to live with someone in that space (it's pretty small), but it could be a nice place to entertain... 😆

Enjoy this unfolding process right up until you wake one morning with someone beside you and you get how you manifested them as you manifested the recliner! Objects, people, circumstances…the entire Universe: at your command.

Margo and I have been getting on better, I think. Monday evening, she apologized for being short with me earlier, but she had been feeling poorly (infected insect bites) and just wanted to do the Garbot thing ("I vant to be alone!") I told her I felt her pain and understood completely - but in the future, please just come out and say that. I'll respect it. (Actually, I'm glad to, ha ha)

I’m sure you would be happy to respect it. Isn’t it nice to see the movement forward with her? And didn’t it confirm our conversation about her that whenever someone appears upset with you, it’s never about you? It’s about THEM. ALWAYS.

Their connection (or rather their LACK of connection) to their Inner Being...that’s always the source of negative emotion. So next time you can know…and accept…and then run for the hills, when she indicates disconnection through ornery emotional expression!

Her infection and current state of well-being is also why I am yet again postponing telling her we need to get a divorce. Yes, because I think we have grown in different directions and neither of us are happy in the relationship the way we should be. Officially however, it is for financial reasons.

I have consulted with lawyers and financial advisers, and they basically say the same thing - I will be better able to provide for her if she is not my legal spouse. There is nothing illegal about it, couples often do it because one needs disability payments and it is impossible for one spouse to totally support the disabled one. Also true if they continue to cohabit. I knew someone who continued to live with his ex. And of course, we haven't shared a room for years - and soon, I'll have a whole space, complete with kitchen and bath, to myself. I have put this off for way too long. And I need to do it like, yesterday. But she's feeling bad right now, and she's not terribly stable in general. I am afraid for her.

“Fear” is an emotion. Fear for another indicates you, looking at another and seeing that person differently from how your Broader Perspective sees that same person. Yes, there are aspects of reality you think confirm the “truth” of what you think might happen if she were on her own. And, your strong fear indicates you creating a reality in which you get to witness her being exactly as you are creating her.

And…there’s another version of her you could draw to you and so experience. The same way you’ve done with her and her disconnection caused from insect bites. You are allowing more of the person you know her to be to shine through. But for now, it’s prudent to proceed on this path. It is, for both of you, the path with the least angst. Always a good idea: following that path.

^^Photo by Juan Miguel Agudo on Unsplash

Everything you want is right on your path

Eventually, I really don't want to be living under the same roof with her - but for now, I have been attempting to rebuild some kind of relationship so she knows she's cared about and won't have to worry about her basic needs and won't be abandoned to fend for herself (at this point, it would be like abandoning a child).

Anyway - this is how I must present it. As a strictly financial decision. Nothing else changes. We continue going on as we have, living in the same house (which will continue to be community property). She remains my sole heir and beneficiary. She'll be able to get disability payments and EBT and remain eligible for Medicaid.

The difference is, I'm a free man. Period. What I will do with that freedom or how it will play out, I have no idea, but I'm staying open. She'll be free as well. Gods know, I've tried to encourage her in her writing, and mostly the way she relates to animals. If there was an office of Ambassador to the Animal World (or at least carnivores, bovines and equines), Margo would do the job better than anyone else I know.

All this is good stuff. Mahayana Buddhists would say you’re being her Bodhisattva in creating such a caring landscape for her. It is good as I know you feel good taking this path.

Encourage her in thought, but don’t voice them. Let her and her Inner Being come to the realization wherein she puts her passions into practice and from that she creates a whole new world where money comes into her life easily and swiftly.

Sometimes, I think she'd be happier with her brother, running his huge ranch cabin as a B&B, taking care of the horses and the sheep and the dogs and cats. It's what she spends most of her time and energy on anyway (and she complains about it, but I usually tease her, "You know you love it!") So that's where things stand...I've asked that "Broader Perspective" of mine to let me know when the right moment to announce the divorce is. About all I can do at this point.

Yes. As with the saw, as with the TV, as with everything you want, this is the best path. Do so and watch how easy the conversation goes. The more experiences like these you have, the more convinced you’ll become that this is the only way you want to live: surprised and delighted. Which is how you knew your experience would be when you first decided to come into physical reality.

It's all in the joy

My clients come enthusiastic about what we do together. The moment we start, they feel resonance with what we talk about. In short order they get results. That's why I offer a 100 percent money back guarantee. Everyone gets the result. Schedule your free 1:1 session.

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whats-the-story-tc · 4 years

Text

7th of June, 2019

"The One with the Conversation"

[tw for anxiety]

Hiya, guys! I hope you all get to rest in the winter break, and celebrate, if you do Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Yule or anything of the sort. Anyway, today, I really started missing V, so here are some old stories I randomly remembered, that I thought I should tell you guys. This will be part one, there's another story like this incoming.

June 7th, ordinary day, near the end of school year, summer, fun. Everything's ace. Except for... that conversation. You see, about a week prior, we had to write this essay for V on "what it means to be human for me". And, after a long debate with myself, I chose to include my issues with anxiety and depression, as they're a pretty big part of my human experience. When I got it back, graded, I saw only a little question written next to the paragraph. "What's the story?" That's where the URL comes from.

On the 7th, after class is when I decided to tell her my story. I'll just quote the texts I sent to my friends, so you'll get the hang of what happened, because I don't think present day me could tell you more accurately than that.

To Pocketwatch Friend, translated from my native tongue:

"I hate when people feel sorry for me. And I know V will never say she feels sorry for me but I saw it. I forgot that those who love literature are some of the most emotional people, even if they don't show it. I didn't want help or pity, that's not why I wrote what I wrote. I wanted a civilised, mature discussion with a mature person I trust. And even though this was mature, I think half of it was just us trying to read the other's reaction."

"I didn't want her to think, I didn't want her to help, because if I don't help myself, we can't achieve anything, not even if a whole school stands behind me. I just wanted a chat. Of course I can't blame her or myself, it just went to shit..."

"And then she asks me if [our homeroom teacher] knows. Fuck, that poor woman would go into a cardiac arrest if I told her about this 🤡"

I didn't have to. She saw me break down. I had a serious anxiety attack in church the week after, on the last day of school. So I guess, she found out either way. But whatever. Remember what V asked me here. It's gonna be important later.

"I understand her reactions, but this isn't really what I was hoping for. She said goodbye to me saying that she will be thinking about this a lot. Then fucking think, but this isn't what I wanted! Of course everyone would be shocked at first, but..."

Then I went on rambling. Yeah. Pretty intense, isn't it? But doesn't contain some of the more important details I only remembered hours later.

Here's what I told my other friend, but only the things I didn't already talk about (direct quote, as we speak English w/ each other):

"I have [told her I don't need help]! And while she said it's a noble thing that I want to solve it all on my own, I have to be careful not to fall ill because of the weight of it. I told her it already happened, but I did pull myself back in Paris [long story]. Plus I got out of social anxiety on my own! If I could do that, I can do this too. I told her this as well."

"We also spoke about my inability to concentrate. [V in red, me in black.] "Despite that fact, you still do quite well in class." "Most of it is luck." *smile* "Do you think luck is all there is to it?" "Of course not. But a large part of it." "

So, yeah. Classic me, I could only remember the positive bits later, once I've vented the negative out (and went to this school-organised event, a kind of ball that afternoon to hang out with my friends). The texts to Pocketwatch Friend are from about 2 PM-ish, where the experience was still fresh, and the other two from around 10 PM.

We could say this is one of the main things that shaped my relationship with V. I mention us analysing each other's reactions, but really, we had never been more open. Me with everything I said, and her with the concerned eyes. She is really expressive with her gazes, that's why I talk about them so much. When she's concerned for you, you know it. It's evident. That's why the blog's title is "All the little ways she cares".

The other one... the quiet compliment, in that last one. She knows I'm smart, has known since day one. I remember texting my friend after my first lesson with her and saying "okay guys, I'm sure our middle school English teacher told her about me". She spoke about this grammar-related rule thing, and asked the people who understand it to raise their hands. Nobody did, as far as I remember. And V deadass said "I know Specs wants to raise her hand." I was baffled. How on Earth could she possibly know that, we haven't said a word to each other before!

But, to be fair, during that time I still called her "fox woman" behind her back, a silly nickname my classmates gave her in middle school because of her dyed red hair and many fox accessories (and, to be fair, her sharp facial features), as I didn't have enough respect for her yet to drop it. That only came about a month later. But that's a story for another post.

~ S ♡

[Every story I share here, no matter how specific I get with my wording, depicts actual events from my own life.]

#tc #tcc #teacher crush community #female tc #female teacher crush

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honeymoonjin · 5 years

Text

enjoy your stay - chapter five

A/N - Just for now, I’m trialing not putting in chapter links on this post to see if it helps more people see it since the tumblr search function cuts out posts with links. If there’s not a big difference, I’ll put them in later, but to see the first chapter if you’re a new reader, please click on my blog and check out my masterlist.

ENJOY YOUR STAY ↳Boss!Namjoon, Chef!Jin, Receptionist!Hoseok, Bellboy!Jimin, Bartender!Jungkook, Accountant!Yoongi, Photography student!Taehyung ↳Some inappropriate language and cursing. Later chapters have sexual content.

SUMMARY ↳Working the graveyard shift at a hotel isn’t the most exciting job in the world, but your coworkers are certainly happy to have you here.

CHAPTER FIVE ↳Your work friends help encourage you to straighten out your problems with Jin, but is there really such an easy solution?

Over the week that had passed since you had breakfast with Hobi and Jimin, it became a daily occurrence for the three of you to wander along the main street, finding a dinky little overpriced café to hole up in and hang out for an hour or so.

It was nice hanging out with them outside of work hours, especially when all your past jobs had been filled with toxic competitiveness or people way older than you. You had never really made any work friends before, but if anyone asked you, you wouldn’t hesitate to call Hobi and Jimin your friends.

Today was the first time the three of you had managed to step into a coffeeshop that was actually any good. It had kind of become an inside joke that at one point you’d just end up going back to the hotel to use the staffroom amenities, that at least they were more reliable than the places you’d been going to, but for once the food was good and the hot chocolate with a raspberry shot you got was divine.

“Ugh, these people aren’t prepared for the sick tip I’m about to drop in the glass jar,” Hobi enthuses, “it’s honestly a blessing having a coffee that doesn’t taste burnt.” You wondered how Hoseok ever managed to get to sleep with the double shot black coffee he always chose, but the man did have a habit of constantly surprising you.

Jimin puffed out his cheeks and let out a stream of cooling air over the surface of his mocha. “Shouldn’t you be saving up your money for your share of the cake?” Jungkook’s birthday was in a few days, and as it turned out the hotel night staff had a habit of celebrating each staff member’s birthday. Jungkook had only been working there eight months, and it was his first birthday working for Namjoon, and his 21st no less. You had promised to a stressed-out Joon that you would organize it for him, and the three of you had decided to go thirds in a cake for him, while Jin was going to make kimchi stew for a shared dinner. “Man, if you flake on me again, I’m getting you coal for your birthday.”

“I said I would pay!” Hobi defends himself emphatically, holding his palms out. “Besides, let’s just say I have a…secondary source of income now,” he wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully.

Jimin frowns at him dubiously. “I already told you - you don’t have the ass to be a stripper.”

“What, and you do?” Jimin simply raises an eyebrow in silence. “Okay, that’s beside the point, what I’m trying to say is that I got a job helping out Yoongi during the day.”

Your mouth flops open. “Accountant Yoongi?”

“What other Yoongi is there? Yes, Accountant Yoongi.”

You frown at him in suspicion. “What could you possibly have to offer him?”

Hoseok lets out a strangled cough of indignance. “Excuse me, but I am a man of many talents! And for a busy man like him, sometimes it’s more convenient to buy talents than take the time to pursue them naturally, you know?”

Jimin’s eyes have narrowed into slits, and he would look menacing were it not for the foamed milk moustache sitting on his upper lip. “He pays you to fuck him?”

“Hey!” Hoseok glances around the room to make sure nobody heard, but he doesn’t deny it.

The bellboy pouts and throws his teaspoon on the table dramatically. “Why do you get all the good things in life?” He sighs. “That’s like…the dream.”

You shake your head, still processing. “How did you even- How you do get into that? Did he wander up one day with a business proposal? That’s so wild,” you exclaim in a hushed whisper.

Jimin smirks. “Why, wanting to make your own business arrangement, baby? I’m right here.”

You glare at him beseechingly. “Hobi’s getting paid and you think I’m going to let you fuck me for free? Get real.” Over the past few coffee dates the flirtations between you and Jimin had gotten way more explicit than they ever could at the hotel, and at this point you wondered if he would even take the chance if he was given it, since he seemed to get so much joy just out of teasing you.

“Oh no, baby, I think you’re the Yoongi in this situation. After all, you did try and pimp me out to Taehyung last week.”

“Okay, you know very well that that was blackmail, we’ve been over the Taetastrophe before, I was just playing matchmaker, it’s not at all indicative of… of how I usually am.”

Hobi scoffs into his coffee and shakes his head bemusedly. Jimin grins, catlike. “So you normally prefer somebody else to take control, then?”

You stare at him for a moment. “…Anyway, Hobi, you still haven’t told us how this whole sugar daddy thing works. Feel free to share with the group.”

He looks up from absentmindedly stirring his drink. “Well, there’s an app, and it sorts you out by location, and it just happens that the number of rich gays in the area is limited, so really it was kinda inevitable that we would be matched up.”

You frown. “Oh. I was expecting a little more romance, passion and intrigue, you know? That’s boring.”

Hoseok turns to you. “I never said there wasn’t passion and intrigue. Have you ever gone down on a guy while he’s having an important Skype meeting with Chinese investors? Cause I have.”

You break out into a scandalized blush, but Jimin just lets out a short laugh. “Damn, Hoseok, I cannot believe the receptionist is getting more action than the bellboy. I mean, have you seen how hot my thighs look in these pants? It’s sinful that Namjoon lets me wear them, but he knows I bring in the customers, so he won’t say anything.” Jimin shifts in his seat and stares you down. “Speaking of action, has your sad little slobberfest in the kitchen actually gone anywhere? I’m surprised he hasn’t asked you to dinner yet.”

You let out a defeated moan around your last mouthful of hot chocolate. “No, and for a while he’d leave cute little gifts and stuff around, but I feel like maybe he really did just want some reassurance in a tough time and that he’s not actually interested…” you trail off when Hoseok and Jimin share a meaningful look. “What? Has he talked to you guys about me?”

The receptionist scratches under his collar awkwardly, and Jimin looks a little guilty. After a few attempts to get the gossip out of them, Jimin finally lets out a deep sigh. “He does like you, honestly, but… Look, he’s heard some other staff, and guests, talk about you, and he doesn’t want it to be a competition, so he’s giving you some space. Poor guy probably thinks you’re already taken.”

Your frown deepens. “What do you mean? Who’s been talking about me?”

He glances up at the ceiling for a few moments, working his jaw, then looks down again. “All of us, Y/n. I’m honestly surprised you haven’t noticed. Hobi’s probably the only one who doesn’t, but now I realize that’s probably just because Yoongi wears him out.” You let out a shaky laugh when Hoseok nods sadly, but your face is still twisted up in confusion. “Jin’s not a competitive guy, babe. If you want to be with him, you have to let him know, otherwise he’ll just carry on acting like nothing’s happened. He’s not very confrontational. He just doesn’t want to create any tension between the guys, that’s all.”

Your mind races at a hundred miles an hour, trying to catch up. This is surely the weirdest conversation you’ve had in a mom-and-pop coffee shop, and you’re still trying to process everything. “Wait, you said guests, too?”

Hoseok hums in affirmation. “Taehyung’s been kinda bragging to Jungkook about the fact that he’s had you in his room multiple times. Technically it’s true, but he makes it seem like the two of you are a thing. Jungkook idolizes Jin, so the news got back to him pretty fast. I’m sorry, muppet, the whole situation is kind of a mess. We should’ve told you sooner, but we figured you must’ve already known.”

You shake your head slowly, brushing off his apology. Tae was acting like the two of you had sex? How were you going to face sweet Jungkook at his party knowing that he probably thought you had fucked his friend? Hoseok was right, the whole situation was fucked up.

You stare into the dregs of cocoa at the bottom of your mug. “What do I even do? I don’t want people to think any less of me, much less for something that never actually happened.”

Jimin shrugs. “I mean, the two of us are on the same page as you, so don’t worry about us. You just need to work out which of the other guys you want to explain things to first and go from there. Work out some priorities, girl, or this whole drama will end in tears.”

You nod, resigned to your fate, and get up from your seat. “I’ll see you two later tonight, then. I’ve got a call to make.”

You made in home in a little over twenty minutes, quickly changed out of your work clothes into some pajamas and sat on the couch staring at your phone for way too long, finger hovering over Jin’s name in your contacts list.

Should you call him now and wake him or just wait until work tonight? It was already quite late, or rather, early, and you wanted to get a decent sleep. No matter when you spoke with Jin, you still had Tae and Jungkook to sort out. It was going to be an intense shift.

Clenching your eyes shut, deciding to bite the bullet, you call him, and try to still your racing heart as the rings echoed in your empty apartment.

Five, then six, then seven, until you considered just hanging up. Finally, on the ninth ring, the call goes through and Jin’s delightfully deep voice calls out your name.

“I’m sorry for waking you, but I really needed to talk to you.” It’s only when you get this far that you realize you actually haven’t planned out what it was exactly that you wanted to say. “I… I miss you. I feel like you’ve been avoiding me lately.”

A pregnant pause on the other end. “I, yeah, I have.”

Your heart drops. You have to focus all your energy into keeping your voice steady. “I hope I haven’t done anything to upset you. Jimin told me about some of the workplace banter that’s been going around about me. I wanted you to know it’s not true.”

Again, he takes a while to reply. You can’t work out if his sleep-addled brain is just taking longer to process, or if he’s really thinking about what he’s saying. “Well. I’m glad it’s not true. You shouldn’t be sleeping with guests, especially not ones that are directly related to the boss, and especially not on company time.”

“That’s the thing! I didn’t! I had to go into his room to talk to him about something, but nothing of that nature happened. I promise you.” It takes you a while to realize that the extended silence that follows isn’t him preparing a response, but that he really isn’t going to reply at all. You clear your throat. “I really like you, Jin. I know workplace romance isn’t really the best thing to get into, but… I don’t know, that kiss changed a lot of things for me. I can’t stop thinking about it. And I feel like such an idiot that I’ve gone and wasted my chance because of a rumor going around. I’m sorry.”

He breathes your name the moment you apologize, and the weight of the emotion it holds leaves you speechless. You lean back against the arm of your couch, both hands holding your phone snugly to your ear like it could get you any closer to the man on the other end.

“It’s not about the rumors,” he confesses quietly. “Look, I think the world of you, and I hope you know that. But you said that the kiss changed everything for you,” he breaks off to sigh heavily and you have to chew on the inside of your cheek to stop from taking back the words that upset him, “I’m sorry, but that’s just not me. Fuck, if my ex saw me like that she’d probably change her mind and take me back, but the reality is, that’s not what I’m like most of the time. Would you ever feel this hung up over the chef you met on your first day that was carting around lobsters in an ice bucket? Because that’s me. That’s me when I’m not miserable after a break-up, and that’s why my girlfriend couldn’t stay with me. I can’t… I can’t be with you if you see me as that heartbroken pile of mush on the kitchen floor. I’d just be setting you up for disappointment like I did with the last girl. You don’t deserve that.”

It’s not until you go to reply that you notice how much your eyes sting and how your throat is beginning to choke up with emotion. You take a breath before you speak but it’s too shaky to reassure you. “What can I do to prove to you I like the real you? How can I show you I’m serious when you never let me see you?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I’ve gotten over my ex, and when I’m in the kitchen I’m back to my normal self, I’m sure to Namjoon’s despair, but whenever I see you all that disappears, and I feel like a smitten teenager again. All I want is to hold your hand and take you somewhere nice and-” he breaks off to groan in annoyance. “Fuck, even now you have me confessing my deepest darkest thoughts like a lovesick fool. If I was on the phone to anyone else, I’d be joking around and teasing them, and they’d have hung up already. I just…” he sighs again, but softer than before. “Give me some time to sort myself out. You can…you can do whatever you want with your time, I won’t be mad. But it wouldn’t be fair of me to pursue you when you don’t know what you’re really in for. I’m sorry.” The line clicks dead, and the silence that fills up the apartment is deafening.

You let a few tears fall that had been building up, letting out a wobbly laugh. That was the most heartfelt and emotional rejection you’d ever had. You didn’t know how you were supposed to fall asleep after that, but you crawled down the hall to your bed and collapsed onto the duvet anyway, hoping that sheer exhaustion would take you under.

It was pitch black outside when you awoke, and you hummed in content at the full-body stretch that overtook you, relaxing your muscles and making your vision swim for a bit. As the spots in your peripheral cleared, so did the daze of just waking up. You roll over and check your phone only to see a stream of messages and missed calls, all subtitles under a headline of 1:47am.

“Fuck!” You jolt out of bed and run down the hallway, going to the bathroom as quickly as you could before brushing your hair and teeth, tugging your uniform on bit by bit as you go. You get ready in a record time of 8 minutes, arriving at the hotel a little after 2am.

Rather than spending the extra few seconds it took to go around back to the staff entrance, you pull up and dash into the lobby, ignoring the two men that call out your name, asking what happened, and sprinting down the hall to Namjoon’s office.

Rather than waiting to knock, you burst open the door, panting heavily, and a stream of apologies come out in stutters of breath.

It’s not until you’re met with silence that you actually look up and pay attention to what’s in front of you.

Namjoon and Taehyung are in the office; the elder sitting at his desk like usual, dangling his glasses frame from a single finger while the other hand is buried deep into his hair, tangling up strands. His younger brother is leaned up against a filing cabinet, arms crossed.

Only Tae looks up at you when you storm in, and you’re shocked to see the look of pleasant surprise that crosses his face when he sees you. “Y/n wouldn’t mind! I won’t be a nuisance, honestly, hyung.”

The manager simply groans. “And how would you know what she would or wouldn’t mind? Were you so struck by her presence when she met you for like two minutes?”

You raise your eyebrows at Taehyung in an expression that hopefully conveys ‘good going, genius’, then turn to Namjoon’s hunched form. “What’s happening?”

Finally, he sighs tiredly and sits up, slipping his black frames back on. “Taehyung here wants to earn some money for a new camera, and he’s proposed he can be your assistant.”

You blink, mouth dangling open a little too long. “I thought I was the assistant.”

Namjoon waves one hand in the air and nods. “I told you, Taehyung, you can’t just expect she needs the help. She’s a wonderful employee as is, without you tugging on her skirt for some pocket money. It’d be good for you to spend some time outside of this hotel.”

Even though Tae’s proposal involved you, you still felt like you were intruding on a private conversation. Neither man had even thought to ask you why you were almost two hours late to work. You come in to the office just enough to shut the door quietly behind you, and awkwardly stand in silence, fiddling with your fingers.

“I don’t need to spend time outside of this hotel! Just last Tuesday I went in to uni to hand in my rough draft for the portfolio, which, by the way, you haven’t once asked me about.”

“Oh, you took a trip in to school one time and now you think you deserve a job?”

Taehyung rolls his eyes and looks moments away from stamping his foot in frustration. “Fuck, seriously? I said you could just buy it for me as a birthday gift but no, that would be too much trouble for you, Mr. Small-business Owner,” he drawls sarcastically. “Isn’t it such a shame that mom and dad wasted all the perfect genes on you and used all the sloppy seconds for me? I bet they’re real disappointed that you’re a successful entrepreneur and I’m just some sad, starving artist, huh? I bet you’re real disappointed in me, too,” he mutters the last part, kicking his feet on the carpet, not looking his older brother in the eye.

You try desperately to avoid eye contact with either of them, certain you shouldn’t be here, hearing this, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Namjoon hasn’t given you a second glance this whole time. He’s staring straight at Tae, struck silent, with tears slowly gathering in his eyes.

There are a few moments of uncomfortable silence, broken only by Tae’s sniffing, and when he does finally speak, it’s so soft that you strain to hear it only a few feet away. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Well,” Taehyung scoffs, but there’s no bite to it, “now you do. If my own brother won’t hire me, I guess I better go find a job somewhere else in town. Excuse me.”

He bustles past you and you wince when the door slams, Namjoon looking up at the noise with red eyes. He seems to at last take note of your presence, and his gaze flickers once to the clock on his desk, then back to you. He doesn’t say anything, but simply tilts his head slightly as a gesture for you to explain yourself.

A little put off by the events you probably shouldn’t have witnessed, you have to clear your throat before getting any words out. “I had a rough day and forgot to set my alarm when I went to sleep. I’m so sorry. It won’t be happening again.”

Too drained to really put up a fight, he just nods. “I think we’ve all had a rough day. It’s fine.” He takes a stabilizing breath and sits up straight in his chair. “Hoseok’s run out of printer paper again, can you please drop some off to him asap?”

It’s clear that the conversation has ended, and he just wants you to leave so he can compose himself, but after grabbing a couple reams of paper from the stationery drawer in the office, you pause by Namjoon’s desk, bend down, and pull him into a quick hug.

He still doesn’t say anything, but his arm comes up to wrap tightly around your back, and you can feel the way his hands are shaking slightly. You give him one last squeeze and let go, sending him a soft smile before you leave.

Once you leave the tension of the office behind, you blow out your cheeks and sigh. Even though your shift was technically going to be a couple hours less than normal due to your tardiness, you had a feeling it was going to be the longest one yet.

#bts au #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts x reader #taehyung x reader #jeongguk x reader #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #namjoon x reader #hoseok x reader #yoongi x reader #jin x reader #enjoy your stay

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theexistentiallyqueer · 5 years

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Sorry to bother, but where do autistic and adhd brains overlap? Because both are neurodivergent (and beautiful, I agree) But how can I find out which behaviour belongs more to me being autistic (got diagnosed this year) and which is adhd? (No Matter What Deadline, after several years in hostile environment (failed university, then call center work) I panic. Hard.) How do I disentangle adhd and autism to find out what strategies to use to function better?

Please don’t feel like you’re being a bother, because you’re not! Honestly the fact that someone is coming to me to ask ADHD questions makes me teary-eyed, because I’ve fought so hard to learn to function with ADHD that people Asking Me Things like I’m a trusted expert just makes my heart grow three sizes, the opposite of the Grinch.

I’m probably not the best person to ask about how ADHD and autism overlap specifically, especially if you’re taking this from an autistic POV. And I’m also not a behavioral expert, which is a very strong preface. But I can (and am very happy to) talk a bit about my experiences with ADHD and how I’ve learned to make things work for my brain.

I’m going to put this under a cut, if that’s okay with you, anon. It got kind of long and I don’t want to overrun anyone’s dash. And you can always, always ask me ADHD questions, and I’ll try my best to answer.

My ADHD tends to manifest specifically in the following ways:

Extreme hyperfixation that has its own varying degrees (e.g., I’m really into Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but I have so lack of interest in Byleth/Claude that my lack of interest feels like an actual void)

An inability to process feelings regarding things other people care strongly about that I don’t. If we’re using the same fandom example: I could rant forever about how Byleth/Edelgard gives me ALL THE FEELS, but if I friend I care about started to talk about Byleth/Claude, I would immediately lose all interest in the conversation and struggle to react in a way that doesn’t present me as a selfish monster who doesn’t care about the person I’m talking to.

I tend to monopolize conversation if I’m given the opportunity because I LOVE getting the chance to talk about my hyperfixations. If someone cuts me off when I’m really into a topic, I get incredibly irritated and have to try to restrain from myself from acting petty in response. The number of times I have smiled my mouth is a knife and said, “ANYWAY, as I WAS SAYING…” is beyond count.

I don’t recognize or remember people until I have something meaningful to associate them with. I also don’t tend to notice things that don’t clock themselves as Important in my brain. I usually describe this as “background furniture.” Even PEOPLE become background furniture. A girl I work with mentioned a person on her team had quit, and I’d literally walked by that person’s desk earlier that day and didn’t notice it was empty, because that person and the entire space they occupied was background scenery.

If something affects or touches me personally, it hits me Very Personally. I had a complete fucking breakdown watching the video of Philando Castille’s shooting, because I heard his daughter crying while she watched him getting shot and went down onto a spiral of personal loss over my own father to gun violence and started to immediately correlate the two. Separating ADHD brainness from my whiteness is complex and hard and (said sarcastically) so, so much fun.

The direct inverse of that are things like: I’m talking to my mom, who’s telling me about a high school friend of hers just got into a horrific vehicle accident and is in the ICU. My mom then goes on to give me regular status updates on this woman I don’t know. I get out of work, and she talks about this woman’s surgery. I get out of work, and she talks about this woman’s family’s attempt to find an adequate rehab center. They find a rehab center, and my mom shows me how her friend decorated her daughter’s room. My mom shows me a video of the girl working with a physical therapist, who gets her to push herself upright with a walker and take her tentative steps. “Awesome!” my brain thinks. “Great!” my brain thinks. All of it spans over several days, weeks, months. I have nothing to do with this constant influx of information. I don’t know how my brain should file it. I don’t know this woman who was injured. I feel for her in theory because no one should ever have to go through that even though so many people do, but I haven’t ACTIVELY PRETEND like I personally am invested in the situation or else my mother gives me Concerned Eyes because I seem to be In A Bad Mood Today.

When it comes to organization, I tend to lean towards hyper-organization rather than hypo-organization. By which I mean I over-organize to combat the fact that ADHD often results in disorganization, and disorganization results in chaos, and chaos gives me COMPLETE PANIC ATTACKS. At work at one point, I had my emails auto-tagging every incoming email based on the email type, on top of tagging for my clients. Every label had a different color, and it all made sense to me, because I’d made it. When my team had cover my stuff on a day I was out, my inbox was such a horror show that it left them feeling drained and distressed.

Let’s talk about socialization! I have a rocky relationship with my childhood best friend. When I discovered social justice in college, I started picking fights with everyone over everything Problematique. The first major fight I had with my best friend at the time was because she felt I was over-aggressive towards a mutual male friend of ours. She was probably right, because I know the kind of bullying behavior I later developed. I thought I learned from it. After the 2016 election, I messaged her on FB, thinking I had a sympathetic ear, to say that seeing her mother post constant messages of support for Trump and sharing stuff dismissing Trump’s sexual assault allegations was particularly hurtful considering I’d told my friend that my mom had been sexually assaulted.. I’m not going to share what she said, but she wasn’t in the wrong. We didn’t talk for several months after that.

Speaking of her! When she started dating the guy she’s now married to, at one point I asked her if they’d had sex yet. I asked it because I thought it was a thing you were Supposed To Talk About as friends, and also because I was, in a way, morbidly curious, because I’m grey-ace and queer. She confirmed that they had, but I still felt so icky and uncomfortable about that for so long afterwards. It was only after I started to understand that I’m not cis and not allo that I really understood why: I was forcing myself to perform what I thought female friendship was based on how it’s portrayed in media, and it’s only once I began to understand that I’m on the ace spectrum and that I’m nonbinary that I really started to understand how forced mainstream conversations of attraction are.

I’m loud! I’m loud! I’m loud! I’m loud all the time! I live with my mom and I socialize with my mom and when we’re in public spaces and I’m talking about something that interests me, she always, always, always feels like she has to shush me. What makes it ironic? If there are other people being loud around me, I can’t function. I can’t process the noise. It’s EVEN WORSE if they’re speaking in another language, because if it’s English I can process the words at least, but if it’s another language, it’s just pure, inescapable sound that I know has meaning but can’t intuit, and if I can’t understand something, that’s as bad as dying.

From what I’ve read about autism, here are ways I THINK my ADHD traits overlap with autistic traits:

I can’t read facial expressions. I think I have a better concept of emotional nuance in facial expressions than someone who’s strictly autistic, but I’ll still panic when I see a smile that isn’t bland enough. RDS (rejection-sensitive dysphoria) will kick in. They hate me, they hate me, they hate me, is the track my brain will play on repeat until I’ve drunk myself into oblivion. Whenever someone smiles, I mistrust it immediately.

Eye contact is incredibly fucking frustrating. I understand that it’s expected, but it’s SO UNCOMFORTABLE. Why do we need to stare into each other’s eyes to understand one another? How can you people write whole treatises on the sanctity of locking gazes and finding an instant intellectual bond without realizing that eye contact that’s not called for is personally invasive?

I can’t understand flirting vs not flirting to the point that I’m absolutely paranoid someone is flirting with me, at which point I usually become hostile if I think they ARE, because DON’T FLIRT WITH ME. TALK to me!

I hate, hate, hate unsolicited physical contact. If I’m in a state of over-expression, I hate it even more. I’m not physically withdrawn, because I love hugs, and cuddles, and human touch. But when I’ve spent the entire day listening to other people talk and I have to walk into a room where people continue to talk, if someone touches me, it’s fucking No-Oh-One.

Someone is interested in a thing I’m interested in. We’ll use Persona 5 as the concept, because this honestly happened recently. I talk with the guy whose desk is across from mine about Persona 5 all the time. He’s also excited about Royal. I started going into my Sophia theory that I’ve really only lobbied at @softspokensansa. I could see, I could viscerally see, the interest drain from his expression. BUT I HAVE AN IDEA SO I WILL TALK ABOUT IT ANYWAY, and then afterwards I felt incredibly resentful that I was being filtered through a cookie-cutter drain.

It’s painful–it’s really painful!–to try to talk about my spiritual ideas with other people. I have a side blog I just started and am preppy myself to share, and I’m absofuckinglutely TERRIFIED everyone is going to write me off without looking at what I have to say. IT’S THE RSD AGAIN! Nothing I ever said has actually mattered before, so why should it now?

I feel, constantly, like I’m halfway between a point of reality and a point of something. What that something is is indefinable, but regardless of it, I exist.

I’d like to direct you to two very positive youtubers I know; I meant to do this earlier, but now feels right in terms of how I’ve written: How To ADHD and Amethyst Schaber.I credit both of them in helping me find a safe place with ADHD before diagnosis. There are stories other than yours that matter.

I wish you the best, anon! If you think you’re autistic and ADHD: given the comorbidity between the two, you probably are! And ADHD is just as beautiful, complicated, and misunderstood as autism is.

If anyone reading this can speak to living as both autistic and ADHD, please respond so I can lift your voice. And to my anon: you’re beautiful completely. I hope my story has helped you in its anyway, and I hope that you find yourself at a place of peace. It’s a struggle to get there, but it’s worth it, every step of the way.

#anonymous #thanks for coming to my teq talk #gaydhd

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wutbju · 5 years

Link

The Times They Showed Their Quality: My own experience with Liberty University’s treatment of faculty BRIAN MELTON·MONDAY, JUNE 24, 2019 Clarification: This note was written in direct response to comments from Liberty’s provost in a recent Christianity Today article claiming that the relationship between the LU administration and its faculty staff is “healthy”, and that the faculty is “completely comfortable with what [the administration] is doing,” and it should be read in that context. I offer this as a simple statement of my experience to serve as a corrective in honor of the many people whom I know wish they could speak out but can’t. Thanks in advance for taking this as nothing more or less than it claims to be. --Brian Anyone who is paying attention to criticisms of Liberty University these days is well familiar with the charge of “Fake News.” It is a common and mindless refrain, parroted back in obedience to The Donald’s talking points and it somehow resonates with otherwise intelligent people. It is also an easy charge to levy, as most of the time when people not connected to LU hear about nefarious happenings and underhanded actions, it is as “something that happened to this guy I heard about” or the like thanks to LU’s use of non-disclosure agreements. I never signed an NDA. So, I thought I might skip the rumor mill and share my own direct, first-hand experience with the administration’s behavior. What I can attest to is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg and not as bad as what has happened to others, but it marked the transition when, after fifteen years, I finally came to the definite conclusion that the upper administration at LU wasn’t simply self-serving or even inept, but fundamentally duplicitous. Worse, it demonstrated to me that they acted this way intentionally and with malice aforethought.

In 2014 my family and I moved back to the Lynchburg area, where I occupied a position as an Instructional Mentor, acting as a bridge between the College of General Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences. Previously, I had worked for LU full time residentially for over ten years. I served as a professor, chair of the curriculum committee, and moderator of the faculty senate during that time. I liked and respected (I still do) the people in those schools I worked with directly, and at the time we intended to spend the rest of our lives there. I figured whatever else happened, we would muddle through it and I would retire from LU when the time came. My point is that though I of course had my frustrations with the administration on some issues, but there was no ill will and I hoped to keep working for them for years to come.

One peculiarity of my position at the time was that it was “part-time full time.” Technically, I was a part time worker and I received none of the benefits that other faculty did, while at the same time I was counted as a “full time” faculty with a terminal degree for SACS purposes via a “limited benefit” contract (the sole “benefit” was that after filling out paperwork I could receive up to $400 a year to join professional associations). I knew there would be none of the standard health or life insurance, tuition assistance, etc. going into the position and was fine with it, as we were allowed to take extra classes and make a comfortable sum that allowed me to pay for all the extras out of pocket. I recall speaking with my associate dean as late as 2015 and telling him that I would be happy doing this job until I retired.

Of course, the lack of medical coverage in particular was a complaint that many had, but I did not see it as a significant obstacle. Yes, it was on the unfair side to be a second-class faculty member who did not get the coverage others did, even though I did as much work, and getting on the school insurance would be a significant boon to our family. Still, I worked from home, was paid well, and just accepted it as a known downside of the specific job I had agreed to do. There had been constant rumors that the administration appreciated us and was taking steps to give us coverage, but nothing ever came of it. Until the Fall of 2016, that is.

That fall I received an email on a Friday afternoon (when few people would be expected to look at it, of course) informing me that I had worked enough to qualify for medical coverage under the university. I had one week to respond. If I didn’t I would immediately and permanently forfeit any claim to coverage now or in the future. As you can imagine, I didn’t wait! I responded immediately that I was grateful for the opportunity and to put me down for it. I also contacted both of my bosses, who were happy to hear that I had received coverage. Both promised to do everything they could do to make sure I kept it by giving me the required amount of work.The next week I called Human Resources to find out more. I spoke with the benefits coordinator, and told him how much I appreciated the gesture. He replied that he was glad to hear it and that LU was always happy to help its people. As he explained the details of the coverage, he was careful to sneak in a comment that if I ever happened to fall below the required line, I would lose my coverage. “Well,” I thought, “that’s fair.” And so I asked what I thought would be the obvious question: “Where is the line? How much do I have to work in order to rate coverage?” His reply was shady, and you could tell by the uncomfortable tone of his voice that he knew it too. “That’s proprietary information,” he said, “I can’t release it.” “You can’t tell me at all?” I asked. “No” was the answer. My bosses, good people that they are, also both followed up with HR and they were both given the same answer.

From that moment, I knew that this was, in reality, nothing but an intentional set up. The reason they would tell no one where the line lay was because it was mobile--no one would ever cross it again. No matter how much we worked, it would always be “unfortunately” short of the goal. In fact, Liberty had obfuscated on Obamacare as long as they could, and now they were being forced to offer coverage to all full time workers. Rather than be frank about it, they were playing the situation off like this was a friendly and helpful boon to their employees, all the while laying plans to revoke the coverage at the first opportunity and blame it on said employees. It was as dishonest as it was obvious.

Sure enough, within a month, we began to get notifications of sudden “policy changes” that cut the financial rug out from under whole classes of faithful employees. My own turn at this came in December. In a move worthy of the counting house of Ebenezer Scrooge, four days before Christmas, I received an email informing me that I was to be locked out of any and all overload teaching effective January 1. For me, that amounted to an immediate pay cut of approximately a third of my yearly LU income. I was given approximately two weeks--including Christmas Eve and Day--to make adjustments. Never was an apology expressed, regrets offered, or even an acknowledgment made by anyone beyond my immediate superiors (who had no say in the matter) for the obvious effect this had on people’s lives or for the manner in which it was rolled out. Over the next quarter, chaos ensued as the administration waffled back and forth about what to do next and my hapless bosses could only report what the whim of the day happened to be. One day I was looking at a 50% pay cut. A week later, the rumor was that my position was being eliminated. A week after that, it was 20%. Then 30%. etc. etc. etc.The following Fall, things finally settled out--as much as they do at Liberty, where things are constantly in flux as the latest disposable “rock star” tries to leave his mark. I ended up losing about 25% of my previous income potential and we were limited to a theoretical 30 hours per week of work. I emphasize “theoretical” because in fact no effort was made to track anything outside of teaching hours, which represented the hours for which we were actually paid. At the same time, Liberty’s “Co-Provost” announced sweeping changes to our positions requiring substantially more administrative work. Since administrative hours were never counted or totaled nor paid individually, in fact our workload as a whole went up substantially while our overall pay potential dropped significantly. Perhaps worse, we were now charged with tracing faculty compliance via a tool called the “FAR” which tracked and logged every single time a faculty member was late doing anything. While that information had been available to chairs and deans for years, now it was forced down to even the adjunct level and I, as an Instructional Mentor, was required to contact the faculty under me and ask for an explanation any and every time I saw a “red flag.” Miss posting your Monday announcement by five minutes this week? I have to demand a justification that I would log with the university on your record. Are you a little late in grading the papers the university suddenly required you to return to the students two days earlier than before? I’ll be checking up on you for an excuse why you shouldn’t be fired. And with the “Co-Provost” (What the heck is that, anyway? The real provost pretending to not be? The actual provost’s personal assistant?) constantly haranguing us with threats that there were “hundreds of people lined up for your job”, threats so thinly veiled that they insulted your intelligence as much as they frightened you, there was plenty of angst to go around.And so I found myself in an interesting position: I was working full time hours at a part time job that had at least full time expectations, being told that I could get in trouble if I didn’t accomplish my full time work in my part time hours. I operated on a one year contract with no job security under implied threats of “non-renewal” delivered via smarmy video messages that tracked how much of each you watched. I was part of an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system that meant I was party to inflicting all of this onto others. (Let us not forget academic standards that had fallen dramatically over recent years and about which I could perhaps write another whole article.) And I was supposed to be happy about it--sacrificing my time and my family for the university, but not being able to expect a scrap of loyalty or genuine appreciation out of anyone above the deans’ level in return. The only safe words that could be used to express serious dissent were, “Thank you sir! May I have another?” All of this was happening in the name of Christ, and every complaint was expected to be excused for the sake of the mission, a mission that it was increasingly clear the school’s own president regarded as secondary to making money and winning football games (since confirmed directly in a recent tweet). It should come as no surprise, then, that in the summer of 2017, when I was approached about an opportunity to teach in Europe, I decided to leave. And the medical coverage? In September of 2017 I received the equivalent of a medical “Dear John” letter, regretfully informing me that since I simply hadn’t worked hard enough in the past year, the university had no choice but to end my medical coverage. At the time, my wife and I were actively being treated with expensive anti-biotics for Lyme Disease and a malarial-type infection she had picked up on a mission trip. My new chair in LUO (my previous one had quit in disgust) went on the line for me to try to reverse the decision, but was told to sit down and be quiet--the administration didn’t care and he was risking his own position by speaking up. In the final tally, I most likely could have made ends meet on the new salary they were offering, but money wasn’t the central problem. Neither was the still-absent medical coverage; we had lived without it before and could again. The most important issue for me was character. I had to be able to rely on Liberty University to treat me and others fairly and honestly if I were to bank my family’s welfare on working for them. My own personal narrative aside, I knew of many other people treated worse than I was--a whole list of persons I liked and respected. If the last few years had taught me anything, it was that while there are still many excellent people to be found there, Liberty University as a whole was as shifty, dishonorable, unprincipled, and hypocritical a work environment as could be offered. I could not trust my family to them, and I increasingly found it hard to have my reputation associated with an organization that had proved itself so often without honor. (Yes, I’m old fashioned that way.) It was a hard decision. We love our friends in the Lynchburg area very much and we love the Virginia mountains. We love our church, and, as I said, we planned to grow old and die there. We miss them all badly, even as we travel and experience Europe. Unfortunately, Liberty’s behavior and lack of honor made it virtually impossible to stay--for us at least.

Moving into 2018, I learned that more cuts were likely. (Despite what Provost Hicks asserts, it is a relatively recent thing for faculty to be completely surprised by their non-renewal. At one point there was a written agreement that faculty would be notified by January if it were a possibility, and even later people were unofficially informed.) I approached my bosses and let them know I would be leaving at the end of the year in the hopes that if they knew it, someone else’s job might be secure (I was told that it did save a position). In true LU style, I later received official notification in a boiler plate email that they had regretfully decided not to renew the contract I had already informed them I wasn’t seeking. I arrived at LU in the Fall of 2003 to find an earnest, if humanly fallible university making its very best effort to transform itself into the Notre Dame of Evangelicalism. I left a financially successful behemoth where real ministry and Christian charity is carried out by earnest believers in spite of the effort and example of its upper administration to the contrary. Increasingly, LU is becoming more the Harvard of Evangelicalism than the Notre Dame (academic standards definitely not withstanding). It is a university where the original mission has been sacrificed in favor of a political agenda and a secular system of situational morality, Liberty falling to the right wing in counterpoint to Harvard’s left. Though the campus may be bigger and more beautiful than ever before, sadly, thanks to the trajectory of its current administration, its reflection of Christ is not.

#Bob Jones University #Liberty University #Faculty

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