#author in Our Forgotten Children book

[selfdiscoverymedia]

Linda Orsini, author in Our Forgotten Children book

Linda is one of our authors in Our Forgotten Children book, and she bring a perspective from 30 years of teaching and being a mother herself. Meet an advocate for personal transformation, founder of Global Wellness Education, and host of the inspiring podcast “A Call for Love.” She is a speaker, author, coach, and the creator of the H.E.A.L. method. Through her course, Emotional Freedom, Linda…

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#"A Call for Love." #author in Our Forgotten Children book #Emotional Freedom #Global Wellness Education #Linda Orsini #Orchard of Wisdom #Sara Troy #www.selfdiscoverywisdom.com

[i-drop-level-one-loot]

*NSFW* How to train your pet Human pt. 3 (Yandere!Alien x GN!Reader)

CW: Dub-con, mild psychological distress, mind break, dead dove fic

Part 1, part 2

Kirtch slumped over his friend's standing chair, miserable and mopey.

A tall creature, taller than even Kirtch, sighed dramatically, sauntering around their depressed friend with a smaller horned being crawling behind them.

"I don't understand what I'm doing wrong." Kirtch whined pathetically in Jaudna's native tongue. Jaudna made a gurgling sound with the soft spot on their head, the closest human equivalent being someone rolling their eyes. They sprawled across their lounging seat, motioning for their pet to stay on his knees.

"I'll tell you exactly what you've done wrong. You pampered them too much."

"I punish them!"

"You punished them for their escape attempt. That was it. You've allowed your pet to test your authority in plenty of ways after that."

The man on his knees pleaded with his eyes to be let up, but stayed perfectly still, like he wasn't alive. Kirtch noted Jaudna's pet's demeanor with discomfort. That discomfort only lasted until he imagined (Reader) in that same position, looking up at him with their large dewy eyes, waiting so patiently to be held by him... his discomfort was replaced by jealousy.

"You don't understand, (Reader's) such a sweet little pet, and whenever they struggle they're so cute about it. I just can't understand why they aren't happy."

"Humans' minds are incredibly flawed. According to the few psychological texts I have gotten my claws on over the years, their memory is not set in stone like ours, it is fickle and easily manipulated. One of my books referenced a case in the nation called 'The United States of America' where nearly the entire country fell into panic over an imaginary evil, because a few doctors used a phoney science called 'hypnotism', a practice they believed could help recover forgotten memories, on a bunch of children, but accidentally implanted false memories of abuse, leaving the children traumatized, believing that they had been victims of a horrific occult."

Kirtch looked to his good friend nervously. "Are you implying I do something nefarious to my pet's mind?"

"No, I'm showcasing an example of how stupidly easy it should be to train your pet to love you." They tossed a book into Kirtch's hands, the cover printed with a photograph of a wild looking man, with fluffy hair and dark, hateful eyes. "Hypnotism isn't the only creative way humans have learned to reprogram each other."

Kirtch almost threw the book back, but saw Jaudna's unnamed pet still sitting so patiently for his master, and the pain in his body where his heart may have been throbbed again. "Thank you.. Jaudna."

(Reader) had waited for what they assumed to be well over an Earth day, alone in Kirtch's quarters, waiting for his return. The only company they received were the employees who brought their meals, speaking down at them in a language they didn't know, but could understand the disgust. It had been over a month since their fight with Kirtch. Every day since had been nothing but hell, feeling like their heart had been ripped out, they laid in their bed cage, only moving when necessary, allowing themselves to hide away inside their own mind.

The main door opened again, and (Reader) could hear Kirtch's long, graceful steps as he passed through the study and into the bedroom. "(Reader)? Are you still in bed?"

In an act of defiance, (Reader) kept their mouth shut, pulling the blanket tighter around their shoulders. But it was of little use, as Kirtch easily lifted their purposefully dead weighted body out of the bed.

"I'm sorry I was gone for so long, pet, but I had to see an old friend for advice." He carried (Reader) back to his desk, sitting them in his lap, fighting to hold them upright as they flopped about limply. "(Reader), please sit up so I can take off your shirt."

He began working on the wrists, the intricate metal cuffs with multiple buttons that almost acted like locks, and (Reader) subtly straightened their back to give him better access to the neck corset thing, thankful to finally have it off for a couple hours at least. (Reader) had grown to find it somewhat elegant the past few months, but it still was an incredible pain in the ass.

Feeling the air on their neck was bliss, and (Reader) immediately ran their fingers over their skin. (Reader) breathed a deep sigh, relaxing their body unintentionally. But almost as soon as their hands left their throat, a new collar was latched into place, a loud mechanism clicking as it tightened, stabbing the back of their neck with what felt like a fixed needle.

(Reader) cried out in pain, sprawling out their limbs on reflex, pushing themselves out of Kirtch's embrace and onto the floor, lying naked on their knees as they clawed at the collar, desperate to relieve the pain.

"What?? Why?" Their voice was barely audible through their sobs.

"I'm so sorry my pet, the pain will end soon, wait-" Kirtch pushed a button on what looked like a remote, and (Reader) could physically feel the rush of liquid enter their body, then the pain lightened, leaving (Reader) almost euphoric in it's absence.

"What is this? Why did you do this?" Betrayal laced their tone, and Kirtch looked almost on the verge of tears, but he stood still, refusing his urge to scoop up his little pet and beg for forgiveness.

"I know now that I didn't train you correctly, and for that I am sorry. I've given you too much leeway, and that is why you've been so unhappy." He took a ragged breath, thumbing the controller as he thought out his words. "I didn't want to do this, but I care about your happiness. This is for the best."

"So you put a shock collar on me?" (Reader) asked incredulously, spitting venom.

"No, nothing barbaric like that!" Kirtch looked hurt, flinching as he almost dropped onto his knees to comfort (Reader). "I just need to convince you that you're happy here with me, just as I did the first night you were here, to help you release your stress."

(Reader) remembered the shot he gave them, that first night when Kirtch used a toy to get them off, the hormones he artificially added to their body to make them feel pleasure, and then thought about the pain in the back of their neck. The color drained from their face. There were only two options; plead or double down.

"You can manipulate me all you like, I'll never be happy here." A tear escaped as (Reader) transformed their hurt into anger. "I deserve someone who will love me, not as a pet, but as an equal. Because I am a human fucking being. And we have partnerships. We don't jack off our pets, we do not love our pets like we love the people we have sex with, because that- that is not okay! Why did you.." (Reader) couldn't stop themselves from crying, looking up to try to at least slow the waterworks.

The silence between them was loud. (Reader) turned away, wiping away their snot with their bare arms.

"Pet, noun; a domestic or tamed animal kept for companionship or pleasure. Adjective; denoting a thing that one devotes special attention to or feels particularly strongly about." (Reader) looked up, horrified. "Your's may not be my first language, but I feel I had a pretty decent grasp on my understanding of what a pet is."

Kirtch placed a hand over his face to hide his expression.

"You'll be happier once this is all over. I promise."

"You son of a-!" (Reader) couldn't finish their sentence, more fluid passed into their spine, followed by an immediate sense of emptiness. Extreme anxiety flooded their body, causing severe stomach pain almost instantly. They collapsed, holding onto their midsection, their bare skin clammy. "What? Why?"

"No more talking back to me, pet." Kirtch kept his voice steady.

(Reader) cried out, rapidly becoming exhausted from heavy nothingness filling their body. "Please.. stop.."

Kirtch nodded, appearing relieved. He pushed another button, and the emptiness ebbed away, leaving (Reader) numb.

"I don't understand why you're doing this." (Reader) weakly grumbled, too tired to pick themselves up.

"Because I want you to be happy."

"I'll never be happy with you."

"Why?"

"Because! I deserve to be loved!"

"I love you-"

"Fucking liar." (Reader) snarled, knowing that this would cause them to be punished again, but needing to get in the last word. Kirtch looked so miserable, so crushed by (Reader's) words, but they felt vindicated by his pain. They needed to twist the knife deeper.

He smiled, so sadly, and grabbed a blanket, bending onto one knee as he covered his pet. "I love you, (Reader)."

Their heart clenched, and their face flushed. Immediately they searched his hands for the remote. "S-stop that."

"I love you."

Chemicals pumped into their neck, making (Reader) feverish and causing their thighs to ache. Their breath hitched, and tears of betrayal escaped. "I hate you."

"I know."

More pain gripped their throat, regret causing physical discomfort. "Why are you doing this?"

His smooth shelled fingers caressed their jaw, tenderly cradling (Reader's) face as though he needed them. Kirtch's touch sent shivers across (Reader's) skin, and they couldn't tell if it was because of the collar or their loneliness, but they wanted to pull him closer, make him touch them more.

"I will live for much longer than you. I will watch you grown old, and die. Even then, I will still love you. You are the most incredible creature I've ever met. I don't mind if you push me away, and slap at me. I just want you to be happy, at least most of the time." His head grew closer, his hardened face almost brushing (Reader's). "Let me make you happy."

'I need to fight back. Make him pay! I'm practically a slave! He bought me! I'll never see my family again because of him!'

(Reader) leaned forward, mind melting through their ears from the intense heat, and smashed their lips onto where his should have been.

All rational thoughts were drowned out by the intense need. They needed him, his love. (Reader) was aware of the sound of buttons clicking, but they couldn't stop, crawling onto Kirtch's body, feeling the edges of his joints scraping their back as his hands hungrily roamed their body, wanting to touch everything.

They would have felt ashamed, knowing how aroused they were, their exposed body touching Kirtch's stomach. Sweat was clinging to (Reader's) skin, and their eyes drooped stupidly. The only thing they could think of was relieving themselves, and wanting to see Kirtch relieved as well.

"Are you going to fuck me?" (Reader) whined between wet kisses, drunk on his touches.

"I will, if you want me to."

Their mood shifted, frustration beginning to surface again. "No. If you love me, wouldn't you want me?"

Kirtch sighed, fiddling with the remote behind (Reader's) back. "I do not have the same nervous system as humans do. We only engage in sexual acts for the purpose of procreation."

Shame shocked (Reader), sobering them up instantly. "Oh. I- I am so sorry." (Reader) moved to get off of Kirtch, but was held in place by the much stronger being.

"I will, to make you happy."

"No, I'm sorry! It won't make me happy knowing you aren't feeling good. I'm-I'm sorry, please let me go."

Kirtch pressed the button again, watching his pet's face darken and their mouth go from frightened to slack jawed. "Knowing you are feeling pleasure, from me, and only me, will bring me more joy than I can express." His cloak was ripped away, revealing his gorgeously colored exoskeleton. Kirtch gripped (Reader's) face tighter, forcing his blue tongue deep into their mouth, bursting with pride at the sounds (Reader) was making.

"What do you want me to do?" Kirtch asked, not intending on sounding like he was teasing them, but Kirtch craved the sound of their voice begging him.

"Please.." (Reader) swallowed their drool, feeling the hormones pumping into their brain, but too horny to care. "Please fuck me."

The spot on his pelvis where a human's genitals would be split open and a long, slimy cock revealed itself, growing behind (Reader's) back to a horrifying size. (Reader) only became aware of his erection when it fell forward, slapping against (Reader's) ass and lower back. In their intoxicated state, they turned back to look at what had suddenly touched them, and their eyes grew large in surprise. "Is that..? That's too big..."

Off balance and tipsy, (Reader) turned around, still sitting on Kirtch's abdomen, so that they were facing his exposed dick, and touched it experimentally. It was ridiculously huge, but because of the hormones being injected into (Reader's) neck, they were ravenous, using both hands to pump up and down on the shaft as they stuck the thin tipped head into their mouth, tasting Kirtch passionately. Kirtch was beyond elated, watching his precious pet so needy for him.

Kirtch picked (Reader) up, moaning at the popping sound as he pulled their mouth away from his body, seeing nothing but love in (Reader's) eyes as he spun them back to face him, and slowly began lowering (Reader) onto his naturally lubricated member. "Keep looking at me."

(Reader's) mind was hazy, and it felt like they were about to die, saliva and alien fluids leaking out their mouth and down their chin. Their internal voice had gone silent, the amount of tampering that had been done to their brain left (Reader) devoid of rational thought and intellect. "Yes sir." They barely got the words out as Kirtch entered their body, sliding into their needy little hole easily and without resistance, ramming himself in so their pelvis smacked into his shell with a wet plop, bringing (Reader) to a climax just from entering.

"Smile for me, pet." Kirtch cooed joyfully, loving how (Reader's) body spasmed, before slowly lifting them up, revealing the trail of their combined wetness stretching between their reproductive organs.

(Reader) smiled, reacting on autopilot as they rode out their orgasm, practically biting off their tongue when their sensitive body connected with Kirtch's again. "Ahhh, I already came! Stop!!" Their words cried for relief, however their voice and smile demanded more. It was too much, and (Reader) did want a break, but it also felt amazing, and that dirty little part of themselves that was desperate for love needed their body to be abused.

Kirtch bounced (Reader) on his cock, fucking them like a toy, regretting that he didn't have a camera rolling to capture just how adorable his pet was in his hands. "Look at how happy you are, pet! Don't you want to be this happy all the time? Don't you always want to be happy, with me?"

Kirtch greedily pushed the button again, peppering (Reader) with kisses as they came again, their sticky juices splattering on his stomach. The squelching sound of (Reader's) bruising body getting fucked by the hard as steel monster beneath them was music to Kirtch's ears. He had, embarrassingly, read the book his friend had lent him, and knew now how humans used pleasure to keep brainwashed people by their side. But it wasn't just pleasure, it was that feeling of connection. He had thought about what (Reader) had said, that humans don't jack off their pets, and that made sense, for animals that did not share the same level of intelligence as an adult human. What (Reader) needed, was to feel equal, to feel like they weren't just a pet, but a partner. So how would they feel, if Kirtch ejaculated so deep into their body they were still excreting his cum weeks later?

"I'm going to mark you as mine, (Reader)." It was a lie, his species did no such thing, but the look of unbridled joy on (Reader's) cross eyed face, the loopy smile that twitched as tears poured down to their chest, was a sight that made it worth lying.

"Are you cumming? Are you cumming in me?" (Reader) slurred, barely holding themselves upright in Kirtch's grasp.

"If you promise to be a good little pet." Kirtch could hold out for as long as needed. His species did not have sex for pleasure, so there was no sense of urgency when they needed to release. He could have continued going for hours, if he hadn't overdone it with the collar. (Reader) was on the verge of passing out.

"I promise! I promise to be a good pet! I promise!" (Reader) exclaimed, colliding their lips back onto Kirtch's as a string of hot sperm shot up into (Reader's) body, a fluid so thick it was practically glue, leaving (Reader) feeling physically full. Kirtch couldn't help but push the button again, seeing his pet overflow with adoration for him.

"I love you, (Reader), I really really do."

Kirtch whispered sweet nothing's into his pet's ear as they passed out, then carried them to his bed, tucking in their swollen body, not minding the mess. (Reader) really was the most beautiful and adorable little pet in the entire universe. He doubt that he would ever get another pet after (Reader) was gone. He sat on the floor, rubbing circles into their tear stained cheeks, smiling contently.

Of course, the next day Kirtch would have to use the collar, showing (Reader) how bad they truly felt inside when they refused to get out of bed, and while it was awful making them cry when they tried to refuse to eat, it was for the best. Kirtch knew it wouldn't take long for (Reader) to graduate from needing their collar, and that soon they would always be by his side, begging him to pick them up and play with them. It didn't matter whether (Reader) needed cuddles or needed to be filled with his seed, Kirtch would overuse that remote until they desired his touch all the time.

He didn't mind the glassy, doll like glaze to their eyes, the change in their speech, the way they began crying whenever it looked like Kirtch was unhappy, or how they stopped pushing him away. After months of flushing their system with artificial love, Kirtch knew that his pet was happy with him. And that was all that mattered.

#yandere #yandere alien #yandere alien x reader #pet human #cw dubcon #mind break #dead dove do not eat #dead dove fic #cw mind control #part three

[wondernus]

˗ˋˏ a winter interlude ˎˊ˗

synopsis: maybe this is meant to be an interlude – an unforeseen passing moment in each other’s timelines. but with the stroke of a conductor’s baton, the symphony lands on the fermata hovering above the note. do we allow this interlude to become something longer than a short period in our lives, or do we end it after all of it is over?

pairing: wonwoo x coworker!reader

genre: romance, drama, light angst

tags: children's book illustrator wonwoo, publisher reader, enemies to lovers, fake marriage, food/drinks, work husband jeonghan cameo, small town dynamics, snowed in, scene where reader almost gets physically injured

wc: 11.3k

message from nu: waaaa first fic of the year. special special special thank you to my beloved madi (@heartkyeom) for being my beta reader well after midnight. I also wanna thank mars (@onlymingyus) for being mars c: I remember a while ago I answered an ask with a possible wonwoo work husband spinoff. this is it. this is wonwoo's work husband spinoff. this can be read as a standalone fic. happy winter and happy new year to all of you. I hope you all enjoy this svthub snowventeen collab fic - nu ♡

wondernus's masterlist / snowventeen collab 18+

one

“Don’t forget to wear you layers because it’s about to be chillier as the week passes by. For those trekking into the mountains, make sure you look out for weather updates from the signal tower and stay indoors because a large snowstorm is about to paint the mountains white. Stay safe, and have a great day. Now, onto Yoon Jeonghan with the traffic.”

“‘Trekking?’ What are you? A protein bar wrapper? Anyway, thank you Joshu-"

Never really understanding why other people say they often find themselves turning down the music while driving to see better, you find yourself doing the same – driving in silence as if the silence could create such a frictionless surface that would shoot and propel your car to your destination. A couple of hours late to your annual winter work retreat, a clear understatement defined by the speed at which you are driving, what was supposed to be a carpool event turned into you sitting in a pool of cars while stuck in traffic.

The Sun shines lightly, a gentle kiss against your skin, but not enough to hug everything it touches in warmth. With the heater on high, you sit in your front seat sweating and dreading the moment when you have to get out of your car, thighs peeling off the leather seats and leaving a pool of sweat where you were sitting. Perhaps it is not the Sun and the heater’s heat that causes you to sweat, but a psychological factor – an amalgamation of stress and anxiety that stemmed from the moment you realized you were late.

No longer can you allow yourself to forgive him that easily, yet you really did not want t blame him for giving you incorrect meeting minutes. But when the retreat itinerary clearly stated to meet in the morning at seven in front of the publishing house, you should have known better than to wholly trust your ditzy new intern to attend your office meeting while you traveled out of town to hunt down your author for her overdue speculative fiction novel draft. Instead of writing the correct time to meet, he incorrectly noted the arrival time.

This unprecedented-precedented blip is the catalyst for a series of chain reactions that would metaphorically send you pummeling down the steep side of a mountain in a snowy avalanche that you could have avoided. But you do not know it, nor do you know how it, whatever “it” is, ends.

Dark circles under your eyes and a forgotten paper-thin pimple patch a jolt over a speedbump away from falling off your oily skin, you keep telling yourself that everything will be okay once you get to the camping grounds. Hopefully, this sort of denial could make up for the fact that you spent all of last night kicking your feet under your covers while binge-watching the reality show that your favorite boy group filmed rather than packing for your trip. But there is only so much your heater turned on high can do for someone wearing an old flimsy university tee with a couple of cat teeth-made holes who forgot to put their contacts in last night. You are better off skipping the winter retreat, but you are already nearing the mountains. There is no turning back – especially on winding roads.

And the embarrassment. This feeling of creeping anxiety seemingly washed away the moment it stepped foot into your head even though you are utterly unprepared and inappropriate for being late to the paid work retreat. Because this sudden realization hits you mid-drive: the only person who you would be embarrassed to meet in your current situation is excused for the retreat. Reasons unknown. And not that you would let any man define you, but at your core, you are simply a person with an embarrassingly big fat crush on your co-worker (and seemingly everybody else you work with). This crush is so bad that if HR made every team create their own set of photocards, you would put his in a protective cover with tiny holographic hearts, and then in a sturdy toploader decorated with overpriced stickers. One glance at him would put you in a trance, daydreaming about what it would be like to wake up in his arms on a sunny day with birds chirping outside your window, and him with a soft smile on his face.

Except for one thing – he hates your guts, so you decided to hate his too.

They always say “try, try again,” but how many tries would it take before the attempts turn Sisyphean? Sure, Hades enchanted Sisyphus’s boulder so that it would roll away before Sisyphus reached the top, but what about you? Car tires struggling against the icy roads, you drive carefully so your car does not turn into a giant hockey puck or a curling stone on (what is essentially) a giant ice rink. But being careful does not help the fact that you are unprepared. And being unprepared means your car has absolutely no way for you to drive over any sized slopes, no matter how many times you try.

You only realize any further attempt of going over the slope or taking any other route is fruitless when your tires spin in place after digging themselves well enough into the road. And you slump against your steering wheel like an exasperated character in a movie – pounding your head against 12 o’clock a few times for good measure. So much for a fifteen-minute-saving de-tour through a small town you have never seen before. And so much for you trying to drive over a slope you could easily walk over. Trying sucks.

Still, the only thing that keeps you from abandoning your hand-me-down car to trek forty-five minutes to the campsite is the fact that it is freezing outside, and your cellphone Wi-Fi gets especially spotty when you are in areas of high altitudes. With one final sigh, you push yourself away from your steering wheel to sit upright, leaning the back of your head against your headrest. There is not much to do except to put your car in neutral and try to push your car out of the little hole it dug itself in.

The thing is, the texture of real snow is a lot different from the snow that giant portable snow machines shoot out of their gigantic cylindrical nozzles to cover the courtyard in front of the city hall whenever the local city has its annual winter festival. Real snow is also incomparable to the “snow” a child creates along the perimeter of an ice skating rink, hands holding onto the rails for support while they repeatedly scrape the inside of one of their blades towards the inside of their other shoe, creating soft ribbons of shaved ice before the navy blue Zamboni can create a clean slate before private lessons start.

Real snow is relentless toward anybody who does not come prepared to interact with it. So, no matter how much you try to dig and twist your sneaker sole into the snow, that tactile grip that you wish to create that supports your feet while you are pushing against the back of your car can seldom be created. You slump against your car’s bumper in defeat. The Sun still shining on your skin, a little bit stronger now, leaves you with the same warmth you felt against your skin, a bit tingly and upsetting, when you knew your skin would still burn no matter how nice the cordiality of the Sun felt on that one Spring day in the past.

Plus, there is a little more time to observe your surroundings when you have given up completely.

In the grassy median strip that denotes the entrance into the small town is a wooden welcome sign with the name in loopy golden lettering against a beautiful pine green: “Welcome to Interlude.” A few feet ahead of you, the mountainous road marries smooth concrete, and the sidewalks pave in a festival town-esque brick lining. And you conclude you must be on the outskirts of the town. Leftover snow fills the grooves between each brick and covers the dark-colored awnings in front of each shop along the town strip. Where flashy LED shop signs and brightly colored bulbs decorate sidewalk trees drawing visitors in from around the world, is surprisingly a lack of people. And you frown while thinking about how you would be able to push your car to the side of the road if another vehicle wants to enter the town.

Not a few moments later, a navy blue truck slowly climbs up the road, and you feel the littlest bit of hope surge into your body. Forcing yourself to stand up, you move out of the way and wave at the incoming car. But as your day could not have gotten any more unfortunate, your car starts rolling backwards towards the pickup truck. And you cannot help but see your entire life flash in front of you – a person dressed too lightly for the snow and the used car passing by like a celebrity on a parade float, all in a moment.

What is scarier than the fact that your car is now bumper-less and the pickup truck remains unscathed is the man who hops out of his truck. Looking like a snow-stage boss from a video game, the man who is large and menacingly looking enough to make his shiny dark green car look like a minivan next to him stalks over to you with his finger pointed directly at your face. The only thing missing from the scene is the army of ice ogres that are supposed to follow closely behind him.

However, the only thing you can register is the fact that he is yelling at you – face glowing bright red and spit flying out of his mouth. Your body is frozen in fear. There is a lack of capacity for you to be able to stand up for yourself while you are shocked and unable to recognize your surroundings while terrible words spill out of the man's mouth. And you cannot do anything except take in his expletives while teardrops well up, ready to spill out of your tear ducts.

But they do not. A figure puts himself between the man and you, and your view is too obstructed to see the other side.

“I called the insurance company. Give me your information and I’ll handle it,” the mysterious person says.

“And who are you?” You hear from the other side.

“I’m their husband.” He fishes for his wallet in his back pocket and takes out a business card, handing it to the man between two fingers. “Call me. Email me. Your choice. I’ll get it sorted. Sorry about the whole thing, I didn’t have time to drive my partner. Bad husband right?... So, I heard you’re the new fishing shop owner? I’ll drop by sometime.” He tries to switch subjects to lessen the tension while slipping his wallet back into his pocket.

The thing is, it works. The presence of the man who uses his body to shield you calms the angry pickup truck driver almost exponentially. And the man who yelled at you seemed to forget he was yelling at you just because he realized your marital status. The man calms down, and even falters in his speech.

“Ahh…I’m not a fishing shop owner. I guess it’s fine now that you’re here, but you know men. There aren’t bad husbands, only ba-”

“I’ll be at Town Hall if you need more information from me.” The man who calls himself your husband purposely and curtly cuts the other man off, knowing very well that he would be even more upset if he heard the man finish his sentence.

The man does not turn back to address you until he is done taking photos of both cars and waving the other man goodbye. And your piece of junk car stays in the same spot, bumper-less and bruised, while the pickup truck, clearly without any injury, smoothly makes its way into Interlude, disappearing from your sight.

“You’re just going to dumbly let that man say those things to you? About you? Do you have no respect for yourself?” He lectures you, his deep voice muffled by the black wool scarf wrapped around his neck and mouth.

You see him clearly this time, how his black locks fall in front of his face in neat curtain bangs, set in a defined “C” shape. The oversized fleece-lined collar jacket falls to the middle of his thighs, leaving little room for his cream-colored sweater to peep into view. And his stance, focusing his weight on his right heel while his left foot slightly protrudes forward, allows him to tap his foot against the snow while he waits for you to answer him.

But what is shocking to you is not the code-switching he uses when speaking to the driver versus when speaking to you. What is shocking, you realize, are the thin silver-framed glasses that sit on the bridge of the man’s nose and the familiar deep woody scent that clings onto him, touched with a hint of peach.

It couldn’t be.

A cold chill leaves your tongue dry and squeezes your stomach.

“Are you dumb? Did you not hear about the snowstorm coming?” He asks you, a voice without concern, all while pulling out his phone from one of his pockets.

He tugs his manicured thumbs out of his gloves to wake his phone and proceeds to reveal his face from under his scarf to unlock his phone. After a few loud keyboard taps, you hear your phone’s notification sound from your car. But all you can do is stare back at the man, stomach gurgling and queasy.

“Yn,” your co-worker sighs, clearly annoyed by your lack of response. “Why are you here?”

two

A backpack-wearing piglet who happily crosses the street. A fashionably dressed lumpy toad who rows across the pond in a wooden paddle boat. A shrew who picnics with a chipmunk in a grassy city park. Tiny children who sit between each of a stegosaurus’s scutes. An angry and scruffy-looking Siamese cat who wears a cone too big for it to see. The backside of each illustration states:

Jeon Wonwoo ILLUSTRATOR Same Dream Publishing House Work Email | Work Number | Personal Website

Nicely squared recycled textured card stock printed with soy ink, Jeon Wonwoo’s business cards can very well double as collector cards. And the owner of these cards himself, in your eyes, is the most beautiful man you have ever laid your eyes on. No fantasy writer, no Renaissance artist could ever truly depict how you see this man. Yet it makes you feel terrible, so entirely rotten on the inside, knowing that he would rather crawl up several flights of stairs made of tiny plastic building blocks than take a fifteen-second elevator ride with you.

If you could pinpoint the exact day Jeon Wonwoo started hating you, it would be the Monday after coming back from a previous work trip to the vacation home of a poet the two of you were assigned. The two of you were amicable with each other, even more so – close friends. A power couple in the children’s books and short stories field – a force to be reckoned with. And the hotel rooms adjacent to each other where the two of you decided to sit on opposite sides of your shared door and talk to each other with both your backs against the door. You remember the sound of his hair brushing against the wood and his soft chuckle when you accidentally bump your head against the door. The goodbye after the trip lingered for a little too long while the first hello back never came. And you can only watch from the back of the crowd during meet and greets and panels, sometimes only catching the tip of his tiny flyaway from far away.

It would hurt your feelings a lot less if he turned away whenever you walked near him, but he chooses to frown instead. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make you like him any less. But you do not know what you are holding onto (or if there is anything to hold onto at this point).

Even now, there is a blatant emotional and physical distance between the two of you. He briskly walks at least a meter in front of you, never turning his head back to see if he left you behind or if you were following closely behind.

The thick uncomfortable shoulder strap keeps slipping from your shoulder, unable to find any traction against the smooth nylon of the puffer you put on earlier. And it is just a walk, a measly ten-minute walk to the police station where you can report the accident, but it is hard to walk while looking ahead when you are so close to crying. No matter how much you try to adjust your shoulder strap so it doesn’t stop falling, it finds a way to slip from your sore shoulder or frozen grip. Overwhelming emotions usurp any will to continue onwards and leave you feeling so annoyed, so dejected, and so frustrated with everything that happened today. And when your bag’s strap slips again, you let it slip from your shoulder, sending your entire duffle bag crumpling against the wet and icy brick pavement. 

And so you crumple with it, sinking to your knees and wallowing in your unhappiness.

The winter boots that clop in front of you never stop. Jeon Wonwoo would never stop for you, never walk backwards to pick up your heavy duffle and offer you a hand. So it wracks your head trying to understand why he would help you out in the first place, leaving you in the snow once everything was settled, and threatening an IOU coupon for the future. Why he would be in this town in the first place.

The shop window lights of the tiny electronics store to the side of you flicker on. On display and pressed flat against the glass are a bunch of old television sets stacked on top of each other, creating a large screen if not separated by the thick plastic television frames. Golden tempera paint in a modern Serif font exhibits the store’s logo across the glass: “Stay For A While,” in a wide downward pointing arc.

Every single television screen livestreams the local news. According to the subtitles, a giant snowstorm is about to hit the local area. Residents are advised to seek shelter and stay home. The sunny weather is only a farce. 

But you don’t notice the news. To you, the only thing in front of you is a lachrymose shadow of a blob trapped in a foreign town with nowhere to go. And your heart follows closely behind the man as if dragged by him on a leash – blindly bouncing, cobbling, and getting scratched by the various pebbles and dirt on the pavement.

The man never looks behind to check on the organ. He doesn’t even know it’s there.

“What do you mean you’re cat sitting? Jeonghan, you never volunteer to do things willingly…Oh, for the friends who are high school teachers? Then road trip with their cat and save your cousin who is stranded in the mountains.” You adjust your grip on your phone while mindlessly browsing through the several knickknacks for sale in the souvenir shop in the town’s only lodge.

Passing the wall of graphic tees and sweaters and passing through a shelf of souvenir mugs, you stop at a shelf of tiny woodcarvings. Your eye lands on a figurine of a whittled cat, hand-painted orange with a white belly. On the other end of your phone call, your cousin complains about the weather, but you don’t listen – clearly too entranced by the tiny cat.

“Of course I listened to the radio this morning,” you mutter while running the tip of your pointer finger against the cat’s ear, feeling the smooth sanded wood under your touch. “Okay, you got me. It was for background noise. Look, I’m not asking you to pick me up today. I somehow ended up booking a room after finding out cab services are down today. But if you’re not going to pick me up then I’m going to hang up and solve this myself. But if you don’t hear from me in three days, then call a search party. Okay?”

Except he hangs up before you can say goodbye, grumbling about how you never listen to him. Still, you’re unbothered by his action. The tiny cat, now in the palm of your hand, looks so content with life, unbothered by what goes on around it. Your mind wonders about its artist, how long they must have spent carving the cat from a single block of wood, the hours it must have taken to create something so tiny yet so fulfilling to own. And you wonder about the artist’s emotions, if they ever felt sadness after parting with their cat. If the cat was the artist’s friend, even for the brief moment, that juncture, in their individual timelines.

It would be best if you left the cat on the shelf, you think. Just in case the artist ever changes their mind about selling the cat. And the cat looks happier sitting on the shelf with its other animal friends, happier than what its painted lazy smile suggests.

And for the first time today, you feel a tiny bit of happiness – a halcyon moment surrounded by forest-themed trinkets and flashing keychains with generic names and soft 2010s pop music playing from the store speakers. That is until you see a familiar figure being escorted to the lobby of the lodge. Curiosity causes you to leave your spot in the souvenir store, edging closer to the creation of a new scene.

“I have a room.” You hear him try to reason with the security guard. “It’s not called loitering if I am a guest.”

You can’t hear the security guard, but it seems like Wonwoo’s bluntness is not a strong enough source of logos for the guard. And the guard stands in front of the illustrator, fully unconvinced that the man wearing a suit and holding his work briefcase would be any other out-of-town guest. And one look of pure panic on Jeon Wonwoo’s stupidly handsome-looking face sends you on autopilot, making your way to his side for no good reason.

“Babe.” You lie through your forced smile while looping your arm around his right arm. “Where were you?”

His arm jerks in the tiniest bit before it relaxes as if he hesitated for a moment before making his decision. Of course, another explanation could simply be because he experienced a negative bodily reaction to your mere presence. Flabbergasted, he would mutter. The nadir of today’s excitement. And you would hate him even more for using vocabulary without incorporating any malapropisms. He is as pretentious as the outfit he wears.

“Baby,” he grits through his teeth. “This gentleman seems to think I’m stalking the halls like some animal out to hunt its prey.”

“Sorry, Sir.” You pout at the security guard, hoping your natural pathos could appeal to the man. “My husband has a tendency to walk around whenever he’s bored. It’s been a while since we went on vacation, and he clearly has too many thoughts in his head. You see his outfit? It’s a bad habit.”

The security guard strokes his chin and nods, eying Wonwoo’s ineffable outfit. He wonders why the man in front of him would pack a business suit for a vacation in the mountains, but he doesn’t want to be the one too quick to judge. Rather, he agrees with the fact that the suit actually fits the man very well. If the man wasn’t stalking the hallways just a few moments ago, he would’ve asked him about which tailor he sees. “If he’s so bored, why don’t the two of you join couples night tonight? Winners get a free bedroom upgrade. And between you and me, I heard there’s a famous author who’s staying with us,” he whispers the last portion, a quick cheeky wink.

You don’t realize that you are still grabbing onto his arm until you dragged him into your room. And he shrugs you off, taking the extra step to smooth out his suit fabric while looking through your vanity mirror before turning to you.

“You have the grip of a snapping turtle,” he scoffs while looking around your room.

It is a standard room with a single queen-sized bed at the center of the room. If it were not for the carpeted floors, the entire room would look like a wooden box from its Western Red Cedar planks that make up the four walls to the wooden paneling that covers the ceiling, giant circular wooden beams that keep the ceiling steady by design. The rooms in this lodge are a termite’s dream feast and an art deco enthusiast’s nightmare. Even the bedframe is made of logs, cylindrical in every piece, and the bedsheets are of deep burgundy red bordered with silhouettes of black bears as if it came straight from the video game your cousin was so obsessed with a few Summers ago.

What catches his eye is not the fact that your duffle bag is thrown across your bed, nor the fact that the lamps in your rooms may as well be oil lamps. Rather, he stares at the door to the right of your mounted television, the divider between your room and your neighbor’s. And you can’t help but wonder what is going on in that head of his.

“You are insufferable, you know that?”

“How long did it take for you to think of that comeback?” His attention is drawn away from the door and aimed toward you. “Just because I compared you to a turtle didn’t mean you had to act like one.”

Your jaw drops and becomes your turn to scoff at him, loudly. You cannot believe what you are hearing, and your breathing becomes shallower as you glare at him. “Are you kidding me? Me helping you literally saved you from being pathetically kicked out by the security guard. You should be happy I didn’t record it and post it online.”

“Like you would have enough followers for it to go viral,” he sneers while taking a step toward you. “And I never asked you for help.”

“Loitering in the hallways? Wearing a business suit when you’re supposed to be at the retreat?” Now there is almost no space between the two of you. And you reach over to his chest, grabbing the plastic nametag that dangles from his neck, and holding it up to his face. The item feels as cold as the person who wears it. “Wearing your work badge? Fine, I’ll admit I have no idea why you’re here. But if you thought that walking around and waiting for some author to come out of their room and have some preplanned accidental meet cute could work, then you’re so wrong. And I’m not going to let you defame our company just because you have no social skills whatsoever.” You let go of the item you’re holding, letting it drop against his chest.

“Okay, I’ll be the bigger man and admit that I was waiting for the author my team wants to work with to show up. But talking about defaming the company? You want me to care about what you say when all of that was coming from someone who would rather let some random man verbally degrade their worth than to stand up for themselves? You’re all bite and no tongue. Just like a snapping turtle,” he says, his face entirely without emotion.

“SNAPPING TURTLES HAVE TONGUES. DUMBASS,” you snap at him.

“That’s exactly what a snapping turtle would say,” he challenges you.

The thing is, Jeon Wonwoo likes to keep things short even though he is not as quick-tempered as you are. He prefers to relay everything he wants to say at once, saving anybody from asking for clarification. Yet, you can feel that Wonwoo only seeks to maim you with his words. Even at your most imperturbable composure with your intern, you cannot stand being alone in a room with Wonwoo once he starts opening his mouth to speak. And stupidly and repeatedly you let his elementary quips affect you like rubbing salt on an open wound. The laceration in your heart.

“You’re so rude Jeon Wonwoo. No wonder I hate you more and more every single day. You’re the single-most worst person in the entire world, and I hate how I once considered us friends.”

He looks like he has something to say to you but mentally drops the notion. Instead, he sighs and makes his way to the door beside your television, unlocking the knob and opening the door. He doesn’t make some offhanded comment about being your neighbor and only quietly closes the door behind him, making sure it’s locked with a tiny click.

three

It is a tiny office breakroom, the kind with a beige refrigerator whose motor is a little too loud, a low-watt microwave, and light green walls decorated with random pen marks from the lodge workers signing up for holiday potlucks. The late afternoon sunlight shines in an ethereal orange glow through the window, casting what could be the day’s last warm ray across the round wooden table in the middle of the room. Central heating runs throughout the building, and the lodge manager sits in the hot seat, his hands folded in front of him while he stares at you and your “husband.”

“Darling?” A nice elderly receptionist on break holds up a bag of mini marshmallows, the tri-colored kinds you can only find in baking stores, and points to it with her manicured finger. “Marshmallow?” she asks you from her place near the kitchen cabinets.

“No thank you,” you reply, your hands wrapped around a warm disposable cup filled with generic brand instant hot chocolate. Gratis, courtesy of the elderly receptionist before the manager arrived to talk to the two of you.

You bring the sugary drink to your lips, blowing softly and watching the steam disappear into the air. The drink itself, velvet chocolate that coats your tongue, is a warm invitation to this little town in the middle of nowhere. However, you cannot help but feel the only thing – or person – that unwelcomes you is the man who tries to angle his body away from you and the manager if the two of you ever cause trouble for your neighbors. Again.

“Look, we’re not going to kick you out. It would be inhumane to kick someone out during a snowstorm. And also we’re all kinda snowed in…actually, we’re super snowed in so nobody is coming in or out at this point. Funny how it was sunny earlier, right? Anyway, word has it that the two of you are married. So why don’t you two take some time to work things out, yeah? I’m no relationship counselor, but this is a small lodge in a small town so word gets out fast. So, seeing how far the two of you are sitting apart from each other, maybe channel that pent up anger into some competitive spirit during couple’s night because we can’t have you two being loud and arguing elsewhere. And I hate to be the bad guy here, but no more calls from your neighbors complaining about the two of you arguing or else we will contact authorities. Alright? Just keep it down and work it out, would ya?”

The manager’s lengthy spiel is immediately followed by silence, although not awkward, but one that provokes thought. And when you sense Wonwoo, being the smartass he is, open his mouth to counter his marriage status, and you immediately kick him in the shin with the heel of your tennis shoe. And he folds like his latest pop-up book, glaring at you while trying not to wheeze in pain. A fake smile and a solemn pledge to not bother the other patrons for the rest of the night are enough for the two of you to be excused from the conversation with the manager.

But not from each other.

How you ended up blindfolded and dizzy with a bat in your hands while Wonwoo angrily yells at you from the sidelines is beyond you. For the time being is what the two of you agreed with, albeit this one is far from Ruth Ozeki’s version. It’s a small promise to try to prove the two of you are more than amicable: attend a few games and activities together with the other couples, attempt to act like a married couple, and dip after an hour.

After twelve elephant spins with your forehead against the baseball bat, you and the other blindfolded contestants try to cross to the other side of the banquet hall in order to smash one of the many squashes on the large blue-colored plastic tarp laid across the floor. And Wonwoo, along with the other separated pairs, barks into the open air in the direction he wants you to move.

The funny thing is, you would expect to hear him call your actual name out of all of the pet names being thrown around, but Wonwoo cannot yell for the life of him, so much to shout your name in public. So even though you hear a bunch of people getting confused with the various forms of “honey” and “baby” being called out, you struggle to find his voice amidst the cacophony of shouts. Once the physical dizziness from spinning around evaporated, you feel a new kind of dizziness from being agitated as an aftereffect of trying to find Wonwoo’s voice in the middle of the crowd. By the time you decide on giving up, the shrill sound of a whistle signaling the end of the game fills the air. Shrugging the blindfold off your face, you look around to see the aftermath. While the other pairs are on the other side of the room surrounded by broken pieces of squash, there is only one man standing in front of you alone and separated from the others.

Your breathing hitches when you realize he’s walking towards you – long, even strides like the romantic lead in a movie. By the time he places himself in front of you, your baseball bat is in his hand while your cheek is in his other.

“It was hard, wasn’t it?” he whispers while looking into your eye.

Except you can’t help but train your eyes elsewhere, unable to look him in his eyes while it feels like your heart is beating erratically. And even though you know very well how he is faking everything, you can’t help but regress to the same you, the same you who is so helplessly in love with the man you hate. The same you who spends every day wondering how did the two of you end up that way.

“You only took the bat from me because you’re scared I might whack you with it. And not going to lie, I was contemplating it,” you mumble.

“It’s okay babe.” He tries to cheer you up, a slight undertone of insincerity in his voice. He continues to ignore your statement. “You did your best. Snapping turtles are slow, but they still manage to survive.”

Ignoring the fact that Wonwoo’s hand is warm because he has warm packs in each of his loungewear jacket pockets (and the fact that he refused to share one with you), someone catches your eye in the distance. Where workers are cleaning up the aftermath of the squash game, a familiar-looking man stands to the side where some lodge patrons flock around him with rectangular objects in their hands. Once you see him turn his head your way, your entire body freezes – Wonwoo’s touch suddenly begins to feel cold against your skin. And Wonwoo, who was expecting you to get mad at him for calling you a turtle, can’t help but notice your state of panic. And he not so subtly turns around to see who could be causing you so much fear.

“Oh my,” he mutters, coming to his realization.

“I can’t believe –” you begin before Wonwoo interrupts your train of thought.

“I hope he rots in hell before he can get his next book deal,” he almost spits at the man from several feet away. He drops his hand from your cheek and takes a tiny step back before taking a deep breath as if he is about to ask you something that he would regret, “Do you mind staying a little longer? I want to make sure chauvinists never win book upgrades.”

“Room upgrade,” you correct him while glaring at the other man from afar.

“What?”

“You misspoke.” You guide your attention back to the man who is, for what you think is the first time, looking at you attentively and without malice. And the fact that he is looking at you amicably makes your brain go haywire, but you subdue your thoughts and continue the conversation. “It’s the ‘room’ upgrade that we’re trying to stop him from winning.”

“Book upgrade or room upgrade, it’s the same thing.” He frowns while tapping the end of the bat against the ground. “It turns out your pickup truck man is the author my team is after. But I’d rather be jobless than to work with someone like him.”

So he works with you, absolutely demolishing the competition during the Dinner and Paint section and loudly cheering for you while you stacked plastic cups. And the way he smiles at you, lovingly and with the glimmer reflected from the ceiling lights contrasted against the cocky attitude he surrounds himself with when one of you wins a game – it almost makes you forget that you’re supposed to hate him. How easily he wraps his arms around you, hugging you tightly against his embrace so much that his cologne lingers on your clothes, leaves you feeling hopeless. Because the only time Jeon Wonwoo could ever approach you without visibly withering in repulsion is when he acts like he is in love with you.

Outside the cozy lodge, the Sun sets its rays on the heavy layers of snow. While the Earth turns to face the other way, the rays wash the pillowy white crystals in a warm and deep burgundy orange – a warm embrace, a promise to return, before parting for the night. As you clean Wonwoo’s smudged glasses with the hem of your shirt, he sneaks his right arm around your waist while he leans further into his seat as the Couple’s Night host announces the next game. You feel something warm enter the pocket of your jacket and look down to see Wonwoo’s hand back on your waist. The untouched hand warmer gradually feels hotter in your pocket when you gently place your fake husband’s glasses back on the bridge of his nose. He whispers a small “thank you,” and you can only smile back at him with a heaviness in your heart that only you can carry.

The hand warmer feels like it would burn through your clothes at any second.

four

“Team Snowball, what did your partner answer for the question: ‘What is your partner picky about eating?’” The emcee points at the woman sitting next to you who gladly flips her sketchbook around for the other half of the room to see. She squints her eyes, trying to read the woman’s squiggly writing, and smiles when she realizes it’s a match. “Soft grapes? It’s a match. Point to Team Snowball.”

Despite everything going around you, you can’t help but fidget in your seat, the sketchbook’s pages starting to feel damp in your sweaty palms. Wonwoo sits with the separated pairs across from you. He crosses his legs, and his sketchbook lays comfortably across his lap so he can twirl his black marker in his hand. Even when you know you wrote the correct answer to Wonwoo’s food preferences, the two of you are still several points behind the other teams. Your stomach cannot help but feel queasy every time you embarrassingly flip your sketchbook for others to see. Because every single wrong answer about your “husband” whom you love very much feels like a punch in your gut every time you hear snickers from the others around you.

Seafood is your answer; you’re the last to answer this round’s question. You earn a small cheer from the woman reading your answer and a small smile from Wonwoo. He sneaks you a tiny thumbs up, the tip of his thumb poking out of his sweater.

“Next question,” dictates the emcee. “When did you know they were the one?”

It’s an abstract question – one that doesn’t necessarily need matching answers from both sides. Still, you look across to look at Wonwoo, uncertain whether or not he would put much thought into an answer he would have to pull out of thin air. Uncapping his marker with his mouth, he pulls the sketchbook closer to him to scribble down whatever comes to his mind. The action leaves your mouth feeling dry: one, obviously, because he uncapped the marker with his mouth; and two, he was the first to start writing.

Some answers are simple. Some answers are meaningful. Some answers are like yours – “love at first sight.”

Corny, overused, and unusual, your answer is the safest route you knew you could take. And despite how clichéd your answer is – its timelessness, its Hallmark-ability – still garners a series of awws from everybody around you. Technically, there is some truth to your answer. You developed a tiny crush the first time you saw him at the office. Who wouldn’t? He surrounds himself with illustrations of anthropomorphic animals and has a laugh that bellows and fills any room with joy. He made your days brighter by simply existing.

Now, the brightness struggles to navigate its way through the thick fog. And you’re left alone in the cold, the fog’s misty droplets clinging onto your skin.

It’s weird how in this life, time moves linearly, but moments and experiences with others exist in intervals – interludes that we can relive over and over again through memories. Sometimes we experience interludes of happiness, interludes of pain, and interludes where it only seems like there are only two people in this world. But nobody can determine how long these interludes can last and for how long you can try to hold on to these moments before letting go.

“Let’s see if Team Turtle can earn a point. Please show us your answer.”

“I’m kind of embarrassed,” he softly chuckles, voice more sonorous than ever, while standing his sketchbook on his knee.

9 pm is his answer. You, and the rest of the people sitting beside you, cannot help but gaze at his answer in confusion.

It is only when he sees you staring at him he finally clarifies, “When we were sitting in my car eating donuts while the waves crash on the shores in front of us. You smiled at me with pieces of maple donut glaze stuck to your upper lip.”

You. He speaks in the second person and looks directly at you with a soft gaze. It couldn’t be, you think. But it is true, you recognize his diction as true. He’s speaking to you.

And you remember that shared moment in the front seats of his car, the night of the work trip. The donuts were for the poet, but the two of you had the door slammed in your faces before being able to hold a full conversation with the poet. And after an entire day of confusion and apologies, the two of you were finally able to fulfill your portions for the work trip. Who knew that the tiny suggestion of walking along the pier after dinner would turn out disastrous – frigid ocean winds strong enough to blow people away? The clothes the two of you packed were not meant to sustain harsh winds but harsh sunlight – after all, the work trip’s destination is a beach town. So the two of you sat in his car, eating donuts, people-watching, and sharing anecdotes to get to know each other better. It was the type of conversation that you would do anything to prolong its duration, the type of conversation with the right type of person.

“You were so happy,” he finishes.

You were so happy, it echoes in your head.

Are you happy now?

“How about you?” The emcee turns to you for clarification. “Your partner gave us such a beautiful explanation. So, you have to explain your ‘love at first sight.’ Tell us about it.”

“Ohh,” Wonwoo begins awkwardly while giving an equally awkward chuckle. “You don’t have to if you do-”

“I was having a really bad morning.” You smile into your lap and look up at your supposed husband. You don’t know why or how the full day with unease bubbling inside of you dispersed so quickly after Wonwoo’s particular answer. But you launch into your story, letting the words flow out of your mouth like melted snow on a grassy hill under the bright Sun. “A really bad morning. I ended up working overtime and accidentally missed my morning alarm. I had to chase the bus while my hot coffee poured out of its opening and onto my skin. My entire day at the office was a mess because I kept messing up. I felt awful and exhausted. So I worked overtime for the second day in a row to clean up my errors. Someone places hot green tea in front of me, the free ones at the office. There is a doodle of a stingray with the dumbest-looking smile on its face. It looked so pathetic that it made me feel a little better about myself. He says that he accidentally boiled too much hot water and thought to make a cup for me. And then he holds his own up in front of his face. There’s a picture of a cat wearing glasses. ‘You can do it,’ he tells me in a squeaky voice. And he leaves. We don’t meet again for about a month, but his kind gesture pieced me back together. And I held onto his kindness for days.”

He stares at you, a few strands of his hair out of place and in front of his eyes. He doesn’t care to move them back in place. There’s that smile on his face, the exact one you imagined to be on his face that time he sat on the other side of your shared door. Soft coral lips relaxed, but the cupid’s bow is slightly perked as the corners of the lips turn upward. He tries to hide the fact that he is smiling, keeping his happiness hidden and only to himself.

So you smile at him. An honest, genuine smile where the cheeks kiss the lower lashes. And his lips stretch thinly so that his brilliant white teeth shyly make their way into the open. He smiles back at you.

Musicians know that an interlude, in music, is an interrupting or intervening passage that connects different parts of a song. An interlude can also be a song in an album. In other words, there are different ways for musical interludes as well as temporal interludes to exist. Now, there is a new interlude in your timeline, this shared moment where two timelines from two completely different lives collide and converge. Anybody can tell that this shared moment is filled with happiness and understanding…perhaps, even longing.  

But what do you call it when these two timelines have converged in the past? If two timelines that once converged reconverge at a further point on the timeline, did that initial interlude ever truly end? Are interludes simply short periods in our lives if these interludes stay in our timelines forever, even when the moments they denote end?

Nevertheless, at this moment, you know you’re happy. And you can only hope the man who sits across from you, the one who looks at you with a reminiscent expression you once experienced so long ago, is feeling the same way.

“Okay. We’re in third place. If we win this one, then we’ll be a point ahead of them.”

“I tied it pretty tightly. Is the tightness okay with you?” Wonwoo frowns from below you, seemingly exploring a different problem at hand. He inspects the rope he tied around your leg, poking and prodding at different sections. “It’s a three-legged race, but I don’t want you getting hurt from an accidental rope burn because I tied it too tightly.”

“Wonwoo, it’s fine.” You pat his left shoulder, letting him know he doesn’t have to worry.

He grabs your stretched hand, and you help hoist him upwards. But there is an apparent frown on his face.

“Why do you still call me Wonwoo,” he mumbles while wrapping your arm around his back and on his waist. There is a tiny pout on his face pointed downwards as he naturally loops his arm around your shoulders like he had done it a thousand times. “Are you not comfortable with calling me ‘babe?’ Any other name also works.”

Deep down, or not even deep down, you know he is right. You are uncomfortable with the idea of casually calling him by these pet names over and over again. Calling him by fake pet names, not counting the many idealistic scenarios that once played in your head, in this case, feels very wrong. His sudden change in attitude towards you as well as his overall demeanor after the last game left you in shock. A plot twist in a season finale would be less shocking than what you feel at this very moment. Like every other hypothetical person in your situation, you choose to ignore your problems by focusing on your other problems at hand. Because you know very well, allowing yourself to fully play into this fake husband rouse, even in times when you’re truly happy, would only hurt you in the end. And you’ve been hurt by him before, not really sure if you ever fully healed.

But you can’t deny he looks and seems nothing like the literal he-devil he was this morning. In fact, he seems to be the opposite. Even without being physically tied to you, he trails behind you like a lost puppy and clings onto your sleeve like a cat who kneads dough on your arm, nails hooked onto the fabric of your clothing. And you let him hold you close to him so much that he leans his chin on your shoulder while listening to others talk. And you let his hair tickle your scalp and would let him melt into you if he asked.

Getting hurt by the same man twice does not make a right. Succinctly, it only makes you dumb. So, to protect yourself, you use the image of the screaming man from the morning to remind yourself that everything is a rouse no matter how much you enjoy each moment with the illustrator.

The three-legged race’s course starts in the banquet hall, passes through the hallway and into the lobby, takes several twists and turns throughout the sitting area, and finishes in the banquet hall. Wonwoo takes the lead, firmly holding you against him while he chants “in, out, in, out” to direct how the two of you should speed-walk. But the excitement of the games and the promise of the upgraded room must have gone over the heads of several of the teams, causing each team to speed walk into a sprint once they left the banquet hall.

Wonwoo and you are also victims of wanting to win, or at least of wanting to beat the author. But in this incredibly small lodge, there are only so many paces you can take before having to try to squeeze past another team. And Wonwoo practically hoists you onto his foot without notice, penguin-walking you to make it past another team to navigate through the sectioned seating area.

Startled by his sudden lack of communication, you demand he set you down. “Let me go,” you grunt after being jostled against one of the round wooden tables. You are absolutely sure your hip would bruise in the morning if he bumped you into one more object. “It’d be easier if one of us walks ahead of the other.”

Does it look like I care?” His ego slips from his tongue, completely coating the sweet words that came out of his mouth before the game started. His sudden change in tone catches you by surprise. “I’ll buy a sled from the gift shop if it means I get to drag you instead of hauling you around.”

“It’s just a game.” You try to push yourself off of him, annoyed that he’s suddenly being uncooperative with you. In the meantime, the team behind the two of you catches up and pulls ahead. “Let me go before one of us gets hurt.”

Wonwoo’s eyes aren’t trained on you. Instead, he stretches his head to look at the few teams in front of the two of you. Surprisingly, the two of you make it out of the seating area without any trouble. Before the two of you can make a sprint back toward the banquet hall, you pull yourself away from Wonwoo, yanking his arm off of your shoulder.

“Babe, come on.” He holds out his hand for you to grab onto. “We’re going to end up being last.”

But your hand never reaches out to meet his.

“Babe? Are you serious? Are you kidding me? Are you really calling me ‘babe’ right now?” You almost shriek at him if it weren’t for the fact that the two of you are standing in proximity to the reception desk. But you are exasperated, your voice wobbles as you voice what is bothering you. “I’ve had it with you, Wonwoo. I tried communicating with you. I tried voicing my fears. But your head is so far up your ass that you couldn’t even think about the safety of the person right beside you. Am I sad and mad about what happened this morning? Yeah, I still am. Nobody deserves to be treated that way, but nobody deserves to be ignored. I don’t care about winning anymore. I feel humiliated, utterly and devastatingly humiliated by you and by myself. To think I let myself have fun around you. To think I believed for a second that you truly did care about me. At one point, I thought we were friends. At one point, I really did like you for who you were. But I guess I can’t expect people to stay the same, can I?” More words and sentences pour out of your mouth – like a small tornado that grows larger in size after picking up all of the things you left unsaid, the words that threatened to slip from your tongue all picked up and twirled into the tornado, you ended up saying more than what you meant to say.

“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say,” he begins, but he can only hopelessly stare at you squatting in place to untie the rope that binds the two of you.

“There.” You bitterly drop the rope in his free hand. “You’re free from me now. You can go back to hating me all you want.”

“But I don’t hate you.”

“I’m done, Wonwoo. I’m done with being confused so I’m just going to give up and wallow in my room until Jeonghan picks me up once the snow clears.”

five

“No offense, but I would never spend that much time or energy on a guy…especially a guy who treats you like that. He even stopped pounding on your front door so that obviously means that he’s the type to stop trying after a while,” your cousin rants from the other side of your phone screen. He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose while the cat he is looking after purrs contently on his lap. “So what are you? A masochist? You like men who treat you poorly and then reward you with like an hour of happiness? That’s literally like if professors gave you the hardest final you’ve ever taken in your life and told you to grab a free cookie after you turned in the final. What are you even holding onto at this point?”

“I don’t know,” you wail at the older man, crumpling your used tissue in the palm of your hand. It quickly joins the growing pile of snot-riddled balls of tissue at the edge of your bed. When you recline into your initial position, the shifted blanket knocks Wonwoo’s hand warmer onto the floor.

“Eww stop holding your phone so close to your face,” Jeonghan complains, “Vernon says I kinda look like you, and I can’t help imagining that’s how I look when I cry.”

“I don’t know why I still like him,” you mumble to your cousin. You honestly still don’t understand why you like him despite every single recent negative encounter with him. To be honest, your heart doesn’t flutter as it does with the characters in the novels you read. Nothing cliched happens when you see him, like how the world stops and he is the only one who walks in slow motion. Quite frankly, your days pass by whether you see him or not, but it doesn’t mean that the thought of him crosses your mind every once in a while.

“Maybe you just like the idea of him,” he offers with a sigh. There isn’t much that he could do for you in the middle of a snowstorm except to be on a video call with you and hope that the can solve whatever you have going on before his bedtime.

“I make up scenarios of him in my mind but I still prefer the real him,” you admit with a twinge of embarrassment. You can only sink deeper under your covers, pulling the cabin-themed sheets closer to your chest. Maybe you’re still holding onto the Wonwoo who existed during the work trip, and maybe, you think, he still exists somewhere.

“Hypothetically, do you maybe think that the reason why he’s so bad at everything is because he spends most of his time with children and draws instead of writing so his communication skill is basically hindered? Like how you’re good with feelings and ideas because that’s the bulk of the media you surround yourself with daily so you have more exposure to that area. So you have man-child versus person with skewed expectations on love and relationships. But then you literally have people like me…perfect in every aspect.”

“Shut up. You talk about traffic every morning but you can’t even name the model of your car. You were also tricked by a catfish.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“I’m sorry,” you beg him. “Please don’t.”

“My point is.” He places his phone down on the sleeping cat to use as a temporary phone stand while he gathers his thoughts. “The two of you seem like total opposites. And the only time the two of you seem to work well together is when you meet in the middle. So, have you ever tried communicating with him? Ever pulled him to the side to ask him why he’s such an ass?”

Yoon Jeonghan’s simple solution to your problem causes your brain to briefly short-circuit. Silence fills your lonely cabin room as your mouth slightly hangs open while your cousin silently judges you from the other end of the phone. It took a simple suggestion to make you realize that you have been hanging onto Wonwoo’s personality change to even think to consider the idea of confronting him about it. And Jeonghan’s hypothesis may not be wrong at all – life isn’t a fictional novel where everything can be magically solved in the incoming chapters.

“No?” Your answer is meek. You don’t know what to feel after this revelation. Anger? Despair? Peacefulness?

“And is he still knocking on your door? Trying to talk to you?” His tone is gentle for once.

“Yeah?” You look to the right side of your room where the door stands between his room and yours. Slips of lodge notebook paper often found in the nightstand drawers slowly shove themselves through the tiny crack under the door. “I think he’s pushing slips of paper under our shared door.”

“Then go talk to him. But throw away your snot pile and fix your appearance before you do. Yeah?”

“What would I do without you?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care. Bye.”

Sitting on the floor with your back leaned against the door, you shuffle the sheets of paper in your hands. There are a couple of sorry notes partnered with sad and apologetic-looking animal doodles. There are a few slips where he asks you to forgive him. Then there are these series of slips – a mini cartoon of his morning, this morning – that somehow cause a small upwards curl to form on your lips.

Blue ballpoint pen ink depicts a series of panels starting with a text he received this morning. This comic is void of cute tiny animals and can only be drawn with the sincerity of a children’s book illustrator. He draws himself staring at his phone screen in confusion – you’re missing, and the rest of the work group chat has no idea where you are. And he’s worried. Everybody is worried, but nobody is worried enough to send search parties for you. Blue-figured Wonwoo rushes out of his room, completely abandoning his presentation for the author, to rush to the entrance of Interlude. Because he knows that your team always passes through Interlude, but you’re known to arrive at the campsite while rubbing your eyes, hair frizzing from the static built from your head rubbing against the headrest while you were sleeping on the way there. But the scene he stumbles upon makes him angry despite how relieved he is to know that you are okay.

The few pages that you hold in your hand are smudged with blue ink, and the ending is unfinished. Wonwoo softly rasps his knuckles against the shared door, calling out your name. When you don’t reply, he sighs and sits down with his back against the door. You feel a tiny jolt with his added pressure against the door. Still, you can’t bring yourself to confront him. At least not yet.

“I’m childish and I let myself get caught up in moments. And you were right, if something happened to you, I would never forgive myself for hurting you. At one point, I really did forget that the reason why we agreed to work together was because we didn’t want him to win. I ended up wanting us to win, or at least for you to win so you could have the upgrade. I’m really sorry for not communicating well with you, and for how I acted.”

The sound of his hair leaving the door lets you know that he probably dropped his head toward his lap.

Taking a shallow breath, he mutters into his hands, “And I wasn’t lying when I talked about us at the beach. I really did like you then. I still like you.”

“Then why ignore me? Why act like you hate me? What did I do to deserve how you treated me?” The questions leave your mouth in a flare of anger.

“I started ignoring you because I was hiding from you. I couldn’t confront you because I knew I would make it obvious that I liked you. But I guess I hid from you for too long because you thought I hated you.” His voice muffled from being on the other side of the door.

“So all of this happened because of some big misunderstanding? Just because we couldn’t confront each other?”

So it really was a simple problem with a simple solution. The revelation feels like a sore punch in the gut, one that’s so surprising that all you can do is laugh.

“I’m sorry, Yn. I really am.”

“I’m also sorry.” You feel really guilty now that you know that you were wrong to believe that he hated you. “I should’ve confronted you about this earlier.”

“Does it still hurt?” His voice sounds clearer as if he shifted his body so he sits facing the door.

“Oh, from the race? Actually nothing happened.”

“From when you fell from heaven,” he finishes with his voice trailing in diminuendo, almost as if he is slightly embarrassed from using the overused pick-up line.

“It actually hurt a lot,” you joke. “But I’m glad it was you who found me in the middle of the road.”

“Then can I stay by your side? Not separated by doors, but by your side?”

So you push yourself away from the door, turning around to unlock the brassy knob. The door slowly swings open to Wonwoo, who is still sitting on the floor, now facing you. And you awkwardly sit in front of him, not really able to meet his eyes.

“I think I have a lot to learn.” He fiddles with the hem of his sweater. “I’ll start by being more communicative about my feelings,” he promises with a soft smile. “Because I really do like you.”

“I like you too.”

There is a magnetic pull that slowly draws the two of you closer together, a comforting sort of sensation that offers a moment of solace created from two extremes. The outside world is dark. The snowstorm has long gone. The surfaces where the sunlight once touched are replaced with the soft yellow glow of several lamps around both of your rooms. Kaleidoscopic remnants of shards of light scatter around every surface. But the two of you, seemingly in the very corners of your shared world exert a different type of glow - one that can only be created in a collision like the break of dawn after a devastating snowstorm. 

“I really like you too,” you can’t help but reaffirm.

“It’s actually ‘I also like you.’” He can’t help but playfully correct you. “You’re the publisher. You shouldn’t be making these errors.” He teases.

“And you’re the illustrator, so shouldn’t you stay quiet so I can kiss you?”

one month later

At the base of a computer monitor, a tiny wooden whittled cat naps lazily next to its turtle counterpart. Two people sit side-by-side in the breakroom a few rooms away, the metal seats practically stuck to each other. While their lunches heat up in the microwave, the two happily discuss the upcoming young adult novel they are finally working on together. Under the table, their pinkies naturally interlock. The man who scrolls through art ideas on his tablet can’t help but let his eyes linger on his partner for a little too long while they scroll enthusiastically through the several concept art slides he created. When the microwave sounds, he quickly leaves a soft and brief kiss on the side of his partner’s temple before getting up to remove their heated lunches. And the partner smiles while turning back to look at him, a smile brighter than the soft sunlight that wraps the room in a warm afternoon glow.

There’s a new interlude in their timelines. In this interlude, the two opposites are taking it slow, learning to meet in the middle.

dedicated to ellie (@flowershu/@eliphant). just wanted to thank you for supporting wondernus for all these years. happy new year <33

Copyright © 2022 Wondernus. All rights reserved.

#svthub #svthub.collab #seventeen imagines #svt imagines #seventeen x reader #seventeen au #seventeen fluff #wonwoo imagines #wonwoo au #wonwoo x reader #wonwoo x yn #wonwoo fluff #wonwoo angst #wonwoo scenarios

[itscherrylipsforme]

The missing piece: Oliver Quick x fem!reader

Part 2 here

Summary: A few months after Saltburn becomes completely his, Oliver still feels like something is missing. Without being able to put a finger on it he decides to pay a visit to Oxford, where all started, trying to find the answer between his old memories. Fate believes that a pretty and sweet student he meets in a bookstore is the piece of the puzzle he needs right now. After all everyone wants to be showered with love, don’t they?

Warnings: Post Saltburn fic, a little bit dark (it’s Oliver, what you expected?), age gap (he is around 15-17 years older), slightly innocent kin? (nothing sexual)

Words: Around 1700

Author's rambles: Okay, I feel in love with him the movie and I am kind of embarrassed about it (It’s not my fault hat the actor has pretty eyes and a gorgeous accent, fine?) For your own good, don’t aspire to have a boyfriend as toxic as him in real life. Also this is my fic on Tumblr, please be nice

Masterlist Characters I write for

Likes and reblogs are appreciated ღ

I do not authorize any of my works to be copied, translated or plagiarized ✗

There is a psychological phenomenon that claims that after achieving something we have been longing for some time instead of the sense of satisfaction we were expecting we feel incomplete, hopeless and already looking forward to our next success. After having the Saltburn's keys just for himself, Oliver experienced that piercing emotion for the first time in his life. If he was painfully unaware of it or simply decided to ignore it remains as an open question until today. The only thing that was certain for him at that time is that he needed some action, a new goal, maybe some entertainment, and specially he needed answers. That’s why he decided to go back to the place it all started nearly sixteen years ago

Oxford hadn’t changed a lot since he graduated, as he had the chance to notice it. Different names, different faces, different decades… But still the same social scheme it was back them. Groups of rich daddy’s and mommy’s children swarming around the campus, pubs where you had to drink to be accepted, and poor little nobodies who had to adapt or die in the process

He rented a large flat not so far away from the university, and in the café just below it he rediscovered a hobby he had always had, but which have been almost forgotten on those last months on the mansion. Looking at the students, being able to read through their facades while accompanied by a cup of coffee, became his new pastime. But people always talk and after some weeks spending the afternoon in the café terrace just lost in his thoughts he realized the odd glances the staff shot towards him, so he decided to hide his true interest behind a less complex and unique one. The next day he went to the closest bookstore to buy any novel that would help him with his purpose, after all, people just ask fewer questions when you are reading on your own. That was when he found you sitting on a couch, legs crossed with a book between your small and soft hands

Pretty, beautiful, gorgeous even. Young, probably still studying at Oxford. On the shy aspect, lovely and smart as he guessed correctly. Sweet smile. Bright eyes. Oh, and some soft curves he was able to peep while he seemed to be looking at the shelves by your side. Wait, was that a blush, what he saw on your cheeks? Another scholarship student as he was back then. The fact that your clothes weren’t from big and expensive brands and that you spent your afternoons in the bookshop without really buying anything was the clue he needed to be sure about it. God, you were adorable, perfect, just what he needed right now and he decided to start working on it

Time had shown him that patience and a good plan could take you far away, this is the reason why, although he was eager to come to you and straight-forward mesmerize you with his tricks, he waited. He spent the next five weeks going to the library more or less daily hoping to see you, and luckily (since he was used to building his own luck) your schedules always matched. He always sat on an armchair to read next to yours, close but not enough to be suspicious. Just after he had made sure you have not so subtly looked at him a few times, he decided to make the move

“The Secret History” a deep silky voice said from behind your seat. His face slightly near to your face which made the words linger in the air for some honey-like seconds “You have a good taste”

“Thanks… Thank you” you manged to say in sweet and shy whisper

“First time you read it?” he asked and a shake of your head was the response he got

“No, I have already read it a couple of times in pdf. But I have never owned the physical book”

“We can have that keep happening, can’t we?” he grinned, and you couldn’t remember if he was the first man who had smiled and looked at you in that way “May I have a look at it?” his large and firm hands came to hold the cover as he stood up and went straight to the cashier “Follow me, darling” the nickname rolled in his tongue, sweet as candy, and before you thought about it, you did as he said. You were obedient, good thing, he thought to himself. He pulled the money out of his wallet in merely seconds, paid for it and hand it back to you

“Thanks, but I can’t accept it” you said slightly embarrassed

“Of course, you can! It truly is an amazing novel, you deserve it” he smirked. His words have had just the reaction he had expected from you, cheeks covered with a tiny hint of pink “I have always found myself relating to Henry Winter, I just need my Camila now”

You were taken back, was that an attempt to flirt? Because if it was, he had your attention. While you tried to make any sense out of your thought, he spoke again

“I am usually on a café nearby, if you are interested you could come sometime” Another smirk, and at that moment you knew that this man was going to be the death to you. Things like this only happened to the main characters in romance movies

“I don’t even know your name”

“ You can call me Oliver, darling”

“I am y/n”

“Beautiful, beautiful y/n, it was a pleasure to meet you. Hope we see each other again”

And you did. Between coffees, books, conversations and more, he had you wrapped around his finger by the time your classes ended. Oliver was sweet, devoted, intelligent… all you could ever ask for in a man. He was straight out of your dreams, and damn he felt you were straight out of his. Innocent, easy to make blush, could keep with his ramblings and most important, you were eager to love, and he was eager to be loved

Yesterday it had been your graduation, when you left the ceremony in that beautiful dress he had insisted on buying you and wrapped your arms around him, he felt like his plan has almost completely succeeded. Almost, you wanted a fairy tale romance, and he was going to give you one. Keeping things slowly and delicate. But when he woke up and felt you laying on his chest sleeping peacefully, he couldn’t help but want to make you his. That had been the only night you had spent in his apartment in your months together. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn't rush, so he didn't. At least he was glad you were coming with him to Saltburn for a few weeks in the summer and you could bet he wouldn’t let you leave the mansion again if he could. After all, you were all that he wanted. His missing piece

Part 2 here

#oliver quick x reader #oliver quick x y/n #saltburn 2023

[venerawrites]

Omg I love your writing and am so so here for all the Gaara love! ♥️

Could you pretty please do Gaara finding out his S/O is pregnant?

author's note: thank you so much, you are so sweet! I love this request, it is so cute! Thank you so much for the idea! <3

Gaara never wanted to be a dad.

Not because he didn't love you or because he didn't want to share his life with you...

But rather because he did not believe he was fit to be a parent himself.

Firstly, he was a pretty busy man and knew he would not be able to spend a lot of time with his child. Being the son of the late Kazekage himself, he knew how rare family dinners and walks to the park were.

Secondly, he has never been good with children. Growing up without any friends, he was unsure how to handle anyone below the age of 10.

Like, how are you even supposed to speak to them? Like babies? Like adults? Do they have the capacity to even fully understand words?

Gaara was fully happy with the idea of spending your life together just the two of you, and based on the many conversations you had before, you were too.

But accidents DO happen...

and you DID get pregnant, despite your joint effort to prevent it.

When you saw the two lines on the test, your eyes widened in shock. The idea of becoming a mother hasn't even crossed your mind and here you were, holding the proof that a new life was starting to bloom inside of you.

You didn't know how to break the news to Gaara. So you decided that you are just going to wait for a few days till an appropriate time to share it with him presents itself.

The young Kazekage, however, knew you like the back of his hand and immediately knew something was wrong once he noticed your withdrawn behaviour.

So one morning, before you could even start your day properly, he rolled over on your shared bed, so he was hovering over you and cornered you between his arms.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong or do I have to keep you hostage in this bed?", he joked, yet there was a note of concern in his voice.

You stared at him long and hard, not cracking even a smile before abruptly saying:

"I am pregnant."

His smile fell and his whole body stiffened. His eyes became double their normal size and his mouth fell open.

When? How?... What?

Both of you always made sure to use protection, how was that possible?

He will start stuttering questions, crashing next to you with his brows furrowed in confusion. You are going to have to give him some basic sex ed talk about how contraception does not always work 100%.

"I want this child", you told him, eyes focused on your fidgeting hands in your lap, "I don't know about you but-"

Your words were interrupted by the soft feeling of his fingers interlacing with yours. When you looked up at him, he had a soft smile on his face.

"Hey", he gently said, "I want this child too! You are carrying the fruit of our love inside of you."

And at this moment you knew a new, better chapter was about to begin for you two.

I feel like Gaara would try to appear calm and collected about the news, just so he doesn't freak YOU out, but internally he would be scared and nervous.

He would borrow books from Suna's library about how to deal with pregnancies and new parenthood, going as far as even taking some written notes of the tips he finds interesting.

The more time passes, the more overprotective he would become.

Like I don't think he would stop you from doing lower-class missions from the very beginning (especially knowing how stubborn can you be about stuff like that), but after the first 3 months, he is definitely banning you from leaving the village.

He would send Kankuro to check on you regularly, making him use lame excuses that he is just "popping in to take something that Gaara has forgotten in the house".

First 5-6 months are pretty smooth sailing, tbh... Other than the fact that he is more worried than usual about your well-being, I don't think there is going to be much change to your relationship.

But THE LAST 3 MONTHS... OH MY!

This is when your mood swings, cravings, and hormones just go through the roof.

You are constantly unhappy with him - if he is with you, why is he suffocating you? If he is away, why is he working so much?

lots of fights about minor stuff :(

Gaara definitely has the patience of a saint, so poor man would just calmly take your insults and 5 seconds later - your kisses.

He is questioning if he wants a second child, tho

Despite being a busy Kage, he would still make time to pamper you after work by giving you foot massages, preparing your favourite snacks, or going for late-night walks, just because you wanted "some damn fresh air".

Overall, pretty caring and gentle with you during your pregnancy, but not TOO overbearing. He respects your personal freedom and at the end of the day, he thinks you know better than him what you are doing.

#gaara of the sand #gaara headcanons #gaara x reader #gaara imagine #naruto headcanons #naruto imagines #sabaku no gaara #naruto requests

[unabashegirl]

Enticing (17)

Author's note: Hello everyone! Here is a new chapter. It's actually been done for quite a while. My Patreon member's read it quite a long time ago. I had forgotten to post it, but without further do enjoy.

Click here x to join our Patreon community and get early access to new chapters for only $5.00 USD.

🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

He desired her every minute of the day from the very first day, but today it was different. His body ached for her. He needed to have her. He needed to quench the thirst that was quietly growing within him for her.

Y/N looked breathtaking. She was wearing an ocher gown. Her hair was straightened back and delicately placed behind her ears.  Alessandro had given her a pair of earrings and a ring to accessorize, but her neck was bare.

“We should stay” were the first words out of his mouth as soon as his eye landed on her. Y/N laughed as she took a few more steps closer to him. “Fuck the opera and dinner. You look gorgeous”.

“So do you. Well — handsome” Harry chuckled, turning around he reached out for a jewelry box. He had gotten a few clues from Alessandro as to what her dress would look like and with them, he had sent made a personalized necklace to adorn her neck.

“I got you a present and there is no room for arguing about it” he warned her. “Turn around”. Harry loved how down-to-earth she always was, but he loved spoiling her and tonight was one of those occasions. He just wanted her to accept the necklace and wear it out.

Y/N turned on her feet. She gathered her hair in one hand, revealing her bare neck to him. Meanwhile, Harry gently took the necklace out of the box and carefully placed it on her. It was heavy due to the number of diamonds and white gold that he had asked to have.

“Harry…” she gasped as she looked at the necklace through a mirror. She couldn’t believe the beauty or how luxurious it was.

“Do you like it?” he asked kissing the back of her neck, instantly causing her skin to break out in goosebumps.

“It’s stunning” Y/N smiled, she felt like a princess, something straight out of a children’s book. Never had she expected anyone to treat it in such an adoring way. She would have never guessed the day she met Harry that he would be swiping her off her feet and making her fall head over heels for him.

She loved him.

And not because of the expensive things or the necklace, but because of his actions and the way he looked at her and the way he made her feel.

The world made her feel constantly like she was drowning like everything was caving in, and she was going against the flow. Her anxiety kept her up at night and made her hide in closets where she could suppress herself and cry in tranquility. But with Harry things were different. When she was with him the world didn’t seem like such a bad place and the anxiety and concerns became silly. He would listen to her and would try to produce multiple solutions knowing that it was the only way that she would be able to calm down.

Y/N would sometimes feel ashamed that she placed so much on him, and she would tell him and profoundly apologize. It was natural for her. She was used to apologizing for her anxiety to everyone since she was in high school and even to her ex-boyfriend. Everyone around her always made her feel like it was her fault, and she was only creating more ruckus. They pointed fingers at her and insisted that she was only freaking out about things that hadn’t happened, but he understood her.

Harry didn’t make her feel like she was exaggerating, and he would validate her feelings. That’s why she loved him.

Of course, she wasn’t going to tell him just yet. She knew it was too early. She didn’t want to freak him out or mess up the night.

Harry slid his hands around her waist and held her.

“Thank you” Y/N whispered as she leaned to kiss him. They kissed as if they were saying goodbye as if they were each other’s lifeline. Their kiss breaks apart for a second, Harry’s smile stretched, his fingers gently slid down the side of her face to her neck, and he kissed her once again.

A knock on the door startled them and caused them to pull apart.

“Are you ready?! We are going to miss the reservation!” It was William being the natural-born father that he was. “And no there is not enough time for a quick one!” He yelled again as he banged on the door, repeatedly.  “What’s taking you so long!” He asked as they opened the door.

Y/N shyly stood behind Harry. She was nervous to what the other men would say about her appearance. She wasn’t used to turning heads.

“No one is bloody shaggin” Harry exclaimed, “cock block” he muttered, slightly irritated that he didn’t have a few minutes to ogle at Y/N. He pulled her in front of her to be able to shut the door.

“Wow! You look gorgeous” William blinked a few times, not living how stunning she looked. She was naturally beautiful, but she outshone everyone today. Even though he wore a Hugo Boss suit, perfectly tailored to his body just like Harry wore his Gucci. “I get it now, man” Harry pushed his face away from Y/N and his prying eyes.

“Where are the other two?”

“Downstairs”

Alessandro was smoking a cigarette while Michael looked at himself through the reflection of the car window. He had been battling with a strand of hair that wanted to rebel from the rest.

“There she is!” Alessandro smiled and threw the cigarette on the floor.

“Aren’t we lucky to be in her presence?” Michael winked as caught her reflections through the window.

“You are lucky that you are my best friend and that I don’t have to beat the shit out of you for drooling at my girlfriend”

“Harry Styles being insecure?” Alessandro chuckled as he patted his cheeks. “Impossible”.

“Can we have this conversation in the restaurant?” William interrupted Harry just as he was seconds from responding. “I am genuinely staving and get it!”

Heads were turned from the minute they got out of the car to the moment that they were escorted to their reserved table.  The majority was drooling over Y/N, but four men didn’t fall behind.

Harry sat beside Y/N while Michael sat on the other side of Y/N. They had been sitting on a round table in the center of the dining room. They didn’t care one bit. They were used to be the center of attention.

Bottles of wine had started to be ordered in seconds. Alessandro wasted no time in getting everyone slightly tipsy. He also made sure to order some appetizers as everyone tried to figure out what they were having for dinner.

“What are you ordering?” Y/N asked Harry, finding herself a bit overwhelmed with how delicious every single plate sounded. She looked for a bit of guidance.

“I was going to order some pasta, but I think I might have the risotto”

“I am leaning a bit towards pasta too, but I can’t seem to figure out which one” Harry closed his menu. Already sure of what he wanted and leaned over to help her a bit.

“How about carbonara?” He asked, remembering how delicious it had been the last time he had been to this specific restaurant. “I loved it last time”.

“Alright. I guess I will have it” She smiled and pecked his cheek.

“Harry? I didn’t know you were coming to Italy!” Valeria smiled as he walked up to the table. Harry sat up in his seat and threw an arm over the back of Y/N’s seat. He couldn’t believe that she had followed them to Rome. 

She had found out through a mutual friend. It hadn't been hard to find them. 

“Valeria” he faked a smile as he tried his best to maintain his composure. “What are you doing here?”.

“The same as you” she shrugged, “enjoying Italy” Alessandro rolled his eyes and tried his best not to say anything that would cause a scandal. “Is that you Y/N?” She gasped, “they sure did some work on you. You look unrecognizable”. Y/N bit back her tongue. “Seriously you look very elegant like you actually belong here”.

Alessandro laughed and took a drink out of his cup.

“On the contrary darlin. She belongs here. You are the one who shouldn’t be here”.

The men had only met Valeria a few times, but just now they were remembering how obnoxious she was. William was minutes away from calling security and having her drag out, but again there was no need to cause a scene.

Valeria ignored Alessandro's jab at her. She had other things in mind. 

“You know Harry, I am so happy that you decided to meet up with my friend, Ashley in your office. Both of you have been through so many things, and you do share Oliver. It’s important to forgive and move on. It shows that you have grown”. Harry hadn’t gotten the chance to tell Y/N about his meeting with Oliver's mother and in the context that she was saying it, it made Harry seem like he was meeting with her to do other things. "I'm happy that little Oliver is going to finally meet his mother". 

Y/N remained calm and showed no emotion.

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[atiny-for-life]

Ateez's Full Storyline Explained - Part 1

Masterlist

I'm gonna cover the Diary Entries/Diary Film before we tackle Inception MV in the next post since all three tie into each other but, as the only written medium, the Diary Entries are the most elaborate and provide the foundation on which the Inception MV is built.

Fever Part 1 Diary Entries:

Side-note: All future albums from Fever Part 1 onwards come in three versions - usually titled A, Z, and Diary Version. If you purchase the Diary Version, you'll find a series of diary entries by the members in the photobook - that's how the storyline gets told. This album, however, is a bit of an exception. There are still three versions but this time, the Thanxx Version includes just one bonus diary entry on the back of Hongjoong's large photo, but we also get the regular Diary Version which comes with a bonus booklet that includes all main entries.

Thanxx Version Entry:

Note: This entry is also being read by a female voice for Track 1 on the album, indicating that someone later found it. Who exactly is unclear. However, it's not the writer as will later become evident.

The entry begins with the first person narrator recounting an incident where an adult asked him what his dream was

From his entry:

As if my dreams explained who I am... When I said I have no dream, the look on the adult's face was like to the child with no name. The look was familiar to me.

He talks about how life passed him by: try to get good grades to please his parents, walk the same path each day, expression unchanged

Many books tell me, look at the stars in the night sky and become the person who shines bright like those stars. But, the stars that I looked up to in the sky did not shine at all. So I continue to walk, looking down at the floor.

It was then that a child walked up to him and told him there was nothing down there to look at, that he should look up

He describes the child as weird because the smile on his face was bright but his eyes were just like his own

They began to hang out together from then on; they would turn up the music and dance

Eventually, those hang outs became the times he felt truly alive

My heart pounding like it's about to burst and this tingling feeling coming up from my fingertips started to take over me. Was there ever another moment where I wanted something this bad? One by one, more children started to say my name. The path that I only walked with one other person became a path to many. Slowly, the word 'I' became 'ours'. Wandering around with this unknown fever, as we looked above our heads, stars seem to shine bright. Today.

The identity of the author is unclear, unfortunately, because going based on the events and some of the word choices, it seems like Hongjoong but later on, we'll see Yeosang's diary entry outright re-use parts of the final lines above

Diary Version Entries/Diary Film:

I highly recommend watching the Diary Film before you read on! It covers all entries in a very pretty, artistic way and will set the vibe for what's to come.

The Intro describes the location of Ateez's hideout: leave the city behind, head through a deserted side road and past a maze of cement walls to find a factory entrance with a 'No-Entry' warning sign

It's surrounded by wild grass, the only sign of visitors: a trampled path made by several sets of footprints

From a distance, you can already hear a familiar beat

Following the path, you'll find a deserted warehouse with rusty iron gates

The first person narrator (likely Hongjoong) enters and finds his friends - the sight makes him smile

From the entry:

These are faces I never got tired of seeing every day. This is our own space. Laughing, crying, arguing, dancing, and singing. A space where our dreams came together. Our hideout, our own world, separating us from the adult world. Right now, it is a moment void of compromises and tameness, it is the moment before we opened that door.

From Hongjoong's entry:

I don't want to be forgotten as if I never existed.

He talks of how he feels different from the people on TV who're performing under bright lights, but he still wants to be a star like them so he can be seen from everywhere

Maybe then, his family will notice him

Even if it were by coincidence, I wish I could meet them at least once. If my family could get back together like before... I miss the warmth of our living room.

His family split up, each of them moving away and leaving him behind where he now found his new family in Ateez

He met each of them through music, by performing in their hideout

Just thinking about them warms my heart! I really hope we can achieve our dreams together! My family, the music I love, and our dreams... We must keep them.

Seonghwa watches a girl perform by herself and feels something in him change as the music from her headphones reaches his ears

He feels the world fall away

From his entry:

Common sense, rules and this tough world didn't have power over her moves. Right this moment, my world broke along this snowy road. [...] She dropped a bracelet that had "Be Free" engraved on it. Ever since that day, I went to the same place at the same time.

Yet, she never returns and he has no way to contact her

Regardless, the way he views music permanently changes

I can no longer distinguish the structure, code, or the genre of the song. Only the lingering feeling of that day remains.

Yunho's entry is a one-sided conversation with his brother, likely taking place at his brother's grave

From his entry:

Hey brother, you look like you are in such a good mood today! The weather is so good as well. Even though I was running to see you, I didn't even feel the heat.

He tells him about his day, how they would've gone to Han River together and how he's been planning to rid of his brother's old guitar but couldn't bring himself to do it

But since it's a guitar you cherished so much, I just left it out of sight because it seemed like you abandoned your dream.

He continues to tell his brother about Hongjoong and how he was someone he felt he could talk to when things get tough

He is a person I admire on both an artistic and humane level. Thinking about it now, you both kind of look alike? I think you guys would have gotten along if you'd ever met each other.

He tells his brother how he can laugh again, thanks to Hongjoong and the other members and how it's helped him avoid the painful memories and focus on achieving the dreams his brother couldn't

I will make them happen: the boys and I will make it happen. When that time comes, you must wake up from the long hibernation. I want to show you all of it! I'll be back tomorrow. Good night!

Yeosang talks about how he was originally never good with mechanics until he started to dismantle a speaker

As time went on, every time he felt suffocated, he would begin to dis- and reassemble appliances and instruments

His parents are the ones who always make him feel like this; they have his entire life planned for him - one routine repeating over and over again each day

From his entry:

That day in that shabby warehouse, a bunch of guys I'd normally run away from asked me if I knew how to work a drone. This whole encounter was a bit strange! I actually was lost and wandering around. The sound of music was what brought me to that place. From that day on, I went there every day.

He falls in love with dancing, describes it as a mind-blowing activity not even the memory of his parents' worried faces could hold him back from

For the first time, I felt alive.

From here, we get a paragraph that can also be found in the bonus entry from the Thanxx album, as I already mentioned when we discussed it

However, where the Thanxx entry reads: "Slowly, the world 'I' became 'ours'. Wandering around with this unknown fever, as we looked above our heads, stars seem to shine bright." This one ends as follows:

Slowly, the word 'I' became 'ours'. However, now I must leave the 'ours'. If I back out, everything will be back to normal, the scattered members and the stolen hideout. I'm sorry, guys.

From San's entry:

I was always laughing, but I always felt lonely. I just couldn't open up or maybe I've never had the time to open up. Every time I got closer to someone, I had to move.

He has to move again today but at least this time, he can talk about his feelings with his friends

As soon as I saw them, I knew right off the bat, they're like me. Oh, Seonghwa was a little different. He never tried to do anything the traditional way, he was always 'HIS' way.

It was his dad who told him they'd have to move again but the words hit San differently this time since he finally found a place he felt like he belonged

What should I say to Wooyoung? Thanks to him, thanks to my friends, I was able to perfect my dance moves. Bobo, what should I do? What? You want me to do it 'MY' way?

The entry ends here, leaving it unclear who "Bobo" is but they get mentioned again in the Fever Part 2 Diary Entries

From Mingi's entry:

Music was my haven, my escape, my one and only relief. When I felt like dying, I would listen to music. I wasn't afraid of death! People who never lived in poverty would never understand this feeling.

The people around him looked at him as if he were an alien and laughed at him for wanting to die when he's just an "immature high school student"

I guess it is uncommon for someone my age to feel that way.

He doesn't remember a lot of names from his years spent in school since no one ever talked to him and, even when they tried, he simply wouldn't answer

But Wooyoung was different.

He's been with Mingi since elementary school and would always stick to him during breaks, even when Mingi would never bother to partake in the conversation

Wooyoung would tell him stories about their classmates, his favorite songs, American dancers and the other Ateez members he worked with outside of school

He always tops it with that signature laugh of his, which naturally made me laugh. Out of shyness, I started calling him "Woo-Ong". Ah, that unique laugh of his. He was the first friend I've ever opened up to.

Mingi started to spend all his time with Wooyoung until he eventually also followed him to the hideout for the first time

The place where I could dream. They were friends who took me as I am. We cried, laughed, and made music together. They accepted me as who I am, regardless of where I live or who my parents were. I felt exuberant for the first time in my life. But now I'm getting scared. Can I really have a dream? Will it not be taken away from me?

Wooyoung recalls how his mind always goes blank and how he wants to run away whenever he tries to perform in front of an audience, regardless of how confident he feels when practicing alone

On social media, his practice video already raked in 100,000 views and many people, including big entertainment agencies, reached out to him, and yet

Once I felt their look towards me, I just couldn't move. I closed my eyes, trying to escape, and then Seonghwa's voice popped in my head: "Wooyoung, before you start performing on stage, remember these three things: 'Everything will be okay!', 'Believe in yourself!', 'You can do it!'" "He will be too nervous to remember THREE things! What kind of psychology book did you read?" "Yunho, are you making fun of Seonghwa again? Buy hey Wooyoung, believing in yourself is the key." Hongjoong is always good at putting everything into perspective.

Wooyoung smiles at the memory and feels their presence despite them being nowhere near; he gets back up

He has a habit of chatting in order to beat his stage fright and has trained himself to laugh when he's feeling shy

But even though he doesn't mind being teased for these habits, he still freezes when he feels the eyes of an audience on himself - his tricks don't work in this kind of setting

He recalls the first time he met Hongjoong, Seonghwa and Yunho at a street performance and how he saw something in them he felt he was lacking

Expressiveness beyond dance techniques and showmanship that captivated the audience. When I danced with them, I wasn't self-conscious and was able to deliver my best performances. My legs are tense. The first step, the step that I was never able to do, the chain that was tying to my body was magically released.

Jongho recalls how he's had his entire life planned out, everything centered around playing basketball... and then he got injured

He begged the doctor to let him get back on the field and play again but it was no use

I felt like I was drowning. No matter how hard I tried, I was still stuck in the exact same spot.

He tried to keep going but the moment he fully gave up on his dream, he felt lifeless

As good as being dead.

He sees his own lifeless eyes from before reflected on Mingi now as he punches him

Yunho grabs his throbbing hand after to keep things from escalating further

Mingi clearly saw the fist coming his way but didn't try to avoid it. His lifeless eyes are still haunting me.

Mingi had called their dreams a luxury, had said their time together meant nothing to him and decided to quit

Jongho couldn't hold back from throwing a punch then

Funnily enough, it was a heartbreaking moment for me but also the time I started to dream again. At that time, I didn't know how to reach out to a lost Mingi. Where are we, where should we go?

The situation with Mingi clearly reminded him of the way it had felt to lose his first dream which meant, amidst the chaos and heartbreak, he realized he'd unknowingly begun to dream again

The Outro, written from Hongjoong's POV as will later become event, begins as follows:

Even though I lost my dream and family again, there was nothing I could do. Everyone left and here I am, alone again.

On a hot summer day, they decided to go their separate ways since they began to view their shared dream as shackles that were holding them down

The scorching sun melted away even our dream of youth and made it disappear at the end of our feet.

Their problems were piling up, their shared promises kept getting put off and, eventually, they began to forget each other

It was then that Hongjoong began to see him in his dreams

The man in the black fedora, whose eyes you could only see through his mask. Somehow familiar but tired eyes. "You lost your dream, not because of the tough reality, but because you guys decided to. "Get rid of the idea that the world you see is everything. There are many dimensions and many realities in this world. The world I am in, the world you are in, are all real."

The man says he'd like to share more but is short on time

He calls the hourglass in his hand "the Cromer" and says it's the key to connecting the worlds

He hands it to Hongjoong before stepping back with his final words

"Follow your heart, the map is there."

When Hongjoong looks up from the Cromer, the man is already gone and Hongjoong wakes up, feeling lonely

It's then that he spots the hourglass on the table in front of him and watches as the sand begins to flow from bottom to top, indicating the Cromer's ability to time travel

The iron door then opened and I could hear the footsteps coming closer one by one. The guys then gathered around me with the same puzzled face.

#ateez #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho #ateez lore #diary film #fever part 1

[alivesoul]

Poet, playwright, activist, educator, and essayist June Jordan was born in Harlem, New York City, in 1936. An only child, she was raised by her Jamaican immigrant parents in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. She began writing poetry at only seven years old. Jordan attended high school at the Northfield School for Girls in Massachusetts and university at Barnard College, which she left without a final degree due to her alienation from the strictly white and male literary curriculum there. She married and later divorced Columbia student Michael Meyer, with whom she had one child. Despite anti-LGTBQ+ stigma at the time, Jordan’s writing openly acknowledged her bisexuality.

The author of 27 books—including essay collections, libretti, and children’s books as well as volumes of poetry—Jordan was also a lifelong activist who fought fiercely for civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-war causes. She taught at CUNY’s City College, Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and SUNY Stony Brook before being appointed professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she founded Poetry for the People. Jordan’s many accolades include grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, the National Association of Black Journalists, and numerous other institutions. She died of breast cancer in 2002. A widely influential poet who worked in accessible language to convey deep truths around identity, Jordan is celebrated today for both her literary writing and her dedicated advocacy for social justice and historically excluded groups.

Why are you posting this @alivesoul?

Because June Jordan taught a class at the University of California Berkeley called Poetry for the People and that class has been permanently cancelled. A shame. Teacher/Poets are essential to any higher learning experience as poetry informs us in every way of the world around us. I can't imagine my college experience without the poetry of Nikki Giovanni, Quincy Troupe and so many others. Beyond that, June is a truth hunter, a truth gatherer, and a truth provider---a modern day griot. I truly hope she finds a safe space within the diaspora to continue her work as she represents the very best of what it means to be Black in this country. The attack on Black intellectuals from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Claudine Gay is truly one of the great academic and cultural crimes of my lifetime and cannot continue to go ignored. Never have I seen so many highly educated and accomplished black men and women so unfairly attacked and discredited. These men and women are literally trying to save the soul of country by shining a light on the FACTS of our history, present AND on those who would profit from lies, greed and violence. If there is one thing I would implore those who read this blog to do, it is to read, study and protect not only our history but those who make it their business to make sure it is never forgotten.

We are excellence.

Peace.

#Alive Soul #History #Know Yours #Teach Black History

[mintacle]

Just like, a side thought but I think the reason I tend to stay away from "tim drake centric" fics even though I adore his character is because a lot of his character tends to just be jason being "the big bad". Like from what I habe seen from his runs DC characterizes him by making bastards of the other robins but Jason gets a huge fucking hit and it makes me like very apprehensive.

I'd love to read about him!! But it's such a slippery hill into characterizing jason as the worst thing possible who needs to repent I just can't bring myself to venture too hard.

Also I have a bone to pick with the whole "replacement" nickname too because to me Jason wasn't mad soley of the fact he was replaced. Like he replaced dick that doesn't make sense- I think he was mad he was forgotten. Dick grew up, made a team- jason was erased from the books and even worse nothing fucking changed for robins operation and saftey. At the core it wasn't "oh there's another robin" its "did I ever exsit to you? Why is everything the same"

But yeah, both Tim drake AND jason todd are done dirty by this and it grinds my bones to dust.

Fandom discourse! Oh joy, yeah I mean, I always love fics most where all character are portrayed in a 3-dimensional and interesting way. If a fanfic author wants to just drag their hated barfo then fine I guess, but yeah especially for me it's not the vibes because I love my little jaybaby and my heart can't take evil characterizations of him. that's ooc to me. >:/

Jason and Tim are messy to analyze. there is so much between them especially because a lot of them is actually about Dick or Bruce, who are not necessarily present. I would always put both of them firmly in the roles of children and the ones not wielding authority when trying to understand how they relate to one another. They are both subjugated to Bruce's whims and I view hating on either of them as victim-blaming tbh. The person who needs to take responsibility, apologize and who caused these rifts is Bruce.

Anyways, I'm gonna shamelessly bump my own content now!! for a fic that loves both Tim and Jason and focuses on them, check my fic out. ;)

Gen, 3/?? chapters (a lot more to come tbh, I'm not the fastest at updates), time travel

#Jason Todd #Tim Drake

[selfdiscoverymedia]

MH23-45. Lori Chenger, Mind Hostage Negotiator

Mental Health Awareness with Sara Troy and her guest Lori Changer, on air from November 7th Mindset Inside-Out. How to thrive internally in an external world. Receiving a 2022 award nomination for the Global Institute for Evolutionary Women in the field of education, a category for recognizing women who teach, inspire, and educate others, is both an honour for Lori and symbolic of how life…

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#Lori Chenger #mental-health-awareness-shows #Mind Hostage Negotiator #Mindset #Our Forgotten Children book authors #Sara Troy #www.orchardofwisdom.org #www.selfdiscoverywisdom.com

[inolienkiki]

The Keepers website was taken down sometime in the last few days. I don't know exactly when, because I don't remember the last time I checked it, and our fandom is so small that it could easily have taken months to notice if I hadn't needed to reference something for the wiki.

It's not really a logistical problem; thankfully, the Wayback Machine has a recent scan of the website that covers everything- all the text, all the files. I've downloaded all the assets to my computer to make sure I have it personally backed up. (Let me know if you'd like any in particular.)

Nonetheless, the whole situation has left me feeling really... empty, I guess. For years, the Keepers website was basically the only thing left to anchor this story in the present. Almost everything about the series- initial announcement, anything from the original book tour, early author interviews, the HarperCollins webpage- was already gone soon after the series wrapped up. But now, all those links are gone, and the series is out of print, and the fandom is a few people on Tumblr who occasionally think about it, and vam, and me.

In just five days, the first Keepers book will reach its nine-year anniversary. But I don't feel like celebrating, because I feel like my favorite books are part of history now. Books are supposed to be timeless, but so few people are ever going to pick up these books again. Even so, I'm always excited by forgotten books- but Keepers doesn't feel exciting in the same way, because it's in the process of being forgotten, and because I know it could have survived if it had just reached its target audience.

The books are gone- out of print. The author is gone- he's said he wants to write another children's series, but he hasn't posted anything in several years, and his one last link to Keepers just went down. The people who read these books when they came out, the children in the school tours and the positive Facebook commenters and the one student who made the 3D-printed Fel'Daera, they're gone too, because Keepers likely isn't part of their story anymore. So, I guess I'm glad that it's part of mine.

I know this is a very specific feeling, and I know all 4 of my followers are already aware of the Keepers series, and I don't need to be telling you about it. But I guess what I do want to tell you is: Let's talk about Keepers. Let's draw and write and think about Keepers. Let's keep our memories of this series alive, and let's share it with our friends and through that let's send our problem into every other universe. God knows, we all deserve these books.

I'll see y'all later this week with a map of the Great Burrow.

#dead fandoms #middle grade fantasy #the keepers ted sanders #the box and the dragonfly #writing that last part didn't make me feel better #but maybe doing it will

[semper-legens]

41. On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe, by Caroline Dodds Pennock

Owned?: No, library Page count: 244 My summary: In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But the story has been about him, and the other Europeans who sailed to the Americas, for too long. What of the Indigenous Americans who went to Europe, willingly or unwillingly? How did they encounter Europeans and European society? And how many of their stories can be found between the pages of history, forgotten until now? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

This book interested me for a couple of reasons. This particular period of history - the early colonisation of the Americas by Europeans - is something I want to know more about. And despite having researched the subject, I know I still have biases and misconceptions in my thinking around these early points of contact, in particular the centering of the narrative around the Europeans. While the vast majority of our primary sources from the time period do come from the European colonisers, that's not to say that the stories and lives of the Indigenous people who first contacted them cannot be teased out. And that is what this book sets out to do.

And for the most part, it does an admirable job! This book is an onslaught of fragments, short versions of the lives of the people involved and as much of their stories as can definitively be known. The author takes pains to include details such as her subjects' names in their Indigenous spelling, rather than renderings that have been made to fit European spelling, and stating or guessing where information isn't available which people they most likely belonged to. The white Europeans are a footnote in this history; it's about Indigenous Americans solely.

And it definitely exposed some of the biases I have. Like, it talks about there being communities of Indigenous Americans in Europe, in port cities and population hubs, from Indigenous people who were either enslaved and gained their freedom or otherwise migrated east to Europe. I had never considered that people would have migrated from the Americas to Europe before; the thought had not occurred to me, even though it's blindingly obvious in retrospect. A lot of attention is paid to mixed-race children of white Europeans and Indigenous women, and the shaky legal status they occupied in Europe. It also makes note of a few instances where white Europeans found themselves adopted into Indigenous communities and stayed there, seemingly adopting that community as their people - you hear stories of it happening the other way around more often.

I did have one reservation with this book, and that's that the author is a white English person, and at times the way that she portrayed her subjects seemed like she was trying a bit too hard to make up for that fact, in a way that was sort of uncomfortable. I don't want to use the phrase 'virtue signalling' or anything, but she did at times seem to be trying to portray herself as 'one of the good ones' or something like that, and I'm not sure that was the best approach. Overall, however, this was a really good and interesting book, and I'm glad I picked it up!

Next up, forwards in time, and a mystery - did she really kill him?

#On Savage Shores #Caroline Dodds Pinnock #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #4

[ya-world-challenge]

Book Review - The Cat I Never Named (🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina)

[image 1: book cover - a red haired girl in a yellow sleeveless shirt hugs a calico cat against her chest. The backdrop is a bombed city with a topped mosque spire; image 2: a map showing Bosnia and Herzegovina just east of Italy across the Adriatic Sea; image 3: a street in modern Bihać - colorful red and yellow buildings line a street; source: wikimedia]

The Cat I Never Named

Author: Amra Sabic-El-Rayess with Laura L. Sullivan

YA World Challenge read for 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina

Review

This was powerful and emotional. This is a beautiful story that brings the emotions of surviving in a besieged city - the horror, the mundane, the joy somehow - into a very vivid picture.

It is the true story of Amra Šabić's teen years growing up in the city of Bihać, Bosnia, while Serbs intent on genocide pummeled her neighborhood with bombs. The story is written in a novelized style, and the impact of the writing is amazing. All the very real ups and downs of emotion throughout 5 years - from her strong façade to bouts of depression to furious rage - these really made the book compelling to me. Mixed in with such mundane horrors of living through war - like siblings walking to school on different sides of the road to spare their parents from both children being killed by a bomb together. It is also the story of Maci (meaning Cat in Bosnian), the guardian angel cat that adopted their family and even saved them many times.

What is also powerful about this book is its statement on the nature of hate. As the author says in the afterward, "...hate is a product of its perpetrators rather [than] a reflection of its victims. ... There is nothing that victims can do to ameliorate that hate except to educate by telling our stories..." Bosnian Muslims are secular, white Europeans. They speak the same language and share the same culture as their Serb neighbors. But they can never not be Muslims in the eyes of the Serbs. They are hated for who they are born as and no change on the victim's part changes the mind of those intent on genocide.

What's sad about this book is that I can't even say, "Wow, this was only in the 90s", because this same scenario is happening in Palestine right now.

I appreciate that Šabić-el-Rayess had the courage to tell her story and to claim her right to be a proud Bosnian Muslim despite hate. If you weren't alive when the Bosnian War happened and don't know much about it, I highly recommend this book as it is something that shouldn't be forgotten. Both the genocide, and the fact that other countries stood by and knowingly let it happen.

★  ★  ★ ★ ★    5 stars

Other reps: #muslim #m/f

Genres: #memoir #war #family #historical 20th century

Content note: Amra is trapped inside a besieged city and doesn't directly see the brunt of the genocide, though there are rumors of the rape camps and other brutalities. There are deaths and injuries from bombs that fall, but overall is written with a teen audience in mind.

Spoiler if you want to be sure the cat is okay:

The cat is gone, fate unknown, at the end of the book after the war, but nothing directly happens to the cat that we know of.

#book review #ya world challenge #booklr #bosnia #bosnia and herzegovina #genocide #memoir #war #family #historical 20th century #muslim #m/f #europe #eastern europe

[isfjmel-phleg]

July 2023 Books

A lot of rereads this past month, and for the most part they were more enjoyable than the new reads.

The Ghost Garden by Emma Carroll (reread)

Charming but not long enough! I would like a continuation of these characters' story.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (reread)

Always a pleasure to revisit. I had reread with the intention of crafting a solid argument for the MBTI type of the protagonist but instead questioned everything about my original guess and came out of it with no definite answer, sorry.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (reread)

Beautiful.

Battlecry by Emerald Dodge

I liked the premise of escaping a superhero cult, but I struggled with the worldbuilding. It didn't make sense to me that this cult would be exactly like extreme Christian fundamentalist teachings, down to the expressions used ("umbrella of authority" gave me some unpleasant flashbacks to some lectures my family listened to when I was a teenager), just with superheroism instead of theology. Cult tactics on a basic level are going to be the same no matter what, but practices like keeping oneself apart from "worldly" influences and "courting" and the subjugation of women etc. are all derived from a twisted view of scripture and are specific to that worldview. Why would a superhero cult need to do/believe these things? It would have been more logical, I think, for the cult to take a form that was a clear distortion of a worldview specific to superheroism. Raising children like weapons, for instance. Extreme workaholism. Military-like principles. That sort of thing. Perhaps not unlike the ways that Damian or Cass or Thad were raised.

The House on the Hill by Eileen Dunlop (reread)

I really like this one. The ambiguity of whether it's a ghost story or a time slip prevents it from being excessively creepy, and the family relationships are fascinating.

The Summer Birds, Emma in Winter, and Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Famer (reread)

These are beautiful, lyrical books. I found out this time that my copy of Charlotte Sometimes has a different ending from the original, so I have tracked down that version and will be comparing them as soon as I find time. (Not necessarily in a post here, unless anyone is curious about the differences in the endings.)

Blue Willow by Doris Gates (reread)

Comparable themes to The Velvet Room (see below). Perhaps a less compelling story, but still good, with thoughtfully portrayed characters.

The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden

Godden's point is extremely valid, but this was not a pleasant book to read, and there is one scene in particular that made me uncomfortable, so I don't think I'll revisit this one.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

This is the one for book club that was awful. You already know how I feel about it (here and here).

Octagon Magic by Andre Norton (reread)

Enjoyable, although I was less riveted this time.

Withering-by-Sea, Wormwood Mire, and Wakestone Hall by Judith Rossell (reread)

Very charming, and I love the illustrations. (Good use of the Victorian-esque setting without being too implausible or getting too bogged down in Wasn't This Era The Absolute Worst Unlike Our Gloriously Enlightened Times.)

The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (reread)

Magical in a way that my younger self would have loved a lot. (I enjoyed it now too.)

The Family Tree by Margaret Storey (reread)

I've already talked about this one, which I enjoyed.

#random personal stuff #hoping for better new books this next month now that I'm trying a new method of what to read next

[broadwaytheanimatedseries]

OH MY FUCKING TITAN

Guys. GUYS. GUYS!

So the author of the Azura books is a mysterious, eccentric lady who's books just so happened to wash up on the shores of the boiling isles and she's just some ordinary human with an inexplicably whimsical last name like Featherwhyle?

Which by the way, Featherwhyle? Like another bird related last name? What even are the odds? I mean, even if it's a pseudonym, it's an awfully specific choice, don't you think?

And speaking of specific, what about the design choices of her face and hair?

Wild red hair, that smile and that nose?

Sure it's not a one to one, but in order for this to make any sense timeline wise she can't be a very close decendant, but those similarities are enough to make her a direct decendant of Caleb and Evelyn.

All this time we were focusing on the idea that the Clawthorne family ancestor witch was Caleb's wife, and she may well have been, but do you really think the Clawthornes wouldn't know that one of the two humans who once visited the boiling isles was their progenitor?

Do you think Eda wouldn't know about glyph magic in the beginning of the show if her ancestors had at the very least witnessed it themselves, if not one of them having to use it at some point due to being a human? It just doesn't entirely add up to me.

So, my theory, and I could be totally wrong about this, but I feel like it holds up pretty well, is as follows:

Caleb follows Evelyn to the Boiling isles.

Falls in love with the world, with her, she reciprocates and they marry.

When Philip finds them, Evelyn is already expecting and he wants to kill her before the abomination is born.

Caleb stops him, so they have the infamous knife fight and Caleb dies.

The boiling isles no longer being a safe place for her and her child to live in, Evelyn takes one final stand against Philip (as shown by the memory of her casting a spell on him) and flees to the human realm.

Just to be safe, she might even change her name or last name, or both, when she starts living in the human realm alone. Perhaps Mildred Featherwhyle is not only a pseudonym, but one borrowed from ancient family history.

Safe from Philip for the foreseeable future in the human realm, Evelyn starts over her new life as a soon to be single mother of a child that she has no idea what to expect of.

After all, there's never been a child born of a witch and a human, as far as she knows.

Will they have a magic bile sac? Pointy ears? Neither? Both?

What this child ends up being like is really up to speculation at this point but regardless, whatever magic it may or may not have is slowly thinned away as they grow up around, fall in love with, and start a family with humans.

Their roots are all but forgotten when our aspiring young author finds some old books in the attic and is inspired by them to write an epic tale of witches and demons, heros and villains, and how love and friendship always manage to triumph over evil and hatred.

Perhaps it is even herself who offers the books to Manny, free of charge, as he enthusiastically talks about his daughter's love of all things both whimsical and gorey.

"A gift," she says, "to help inspire the creative young minds of today, to become the heroes of their own future stories"

Perhaps Luz was destined to find the boiling isles after all, not to help Philip, but to meet the most important family on it and help them discover their lost history.

And speaking of the Clawthornes, if Evelyn and Caleb's kid did not grow up in the boiling isles, how did the Clawthorne family come to be?

Simple, Evelyn would eventually return.

Not only to see her home again, but to leave behind a legacy of wild witches, a family who will not tolerate anyone like Philip ever again.

In both realms, she would raise her children to see past lies and deception meant to subdue and control people to do one's bidding.

In the human realm she raised her child until they were old enough to live on their own, but in the boiling isles she was already quite old, and she'd stay there for the rest of her life.

occasionally she'd take trips through the portal to see the growing family that was one of her last memories of Caleb, before she would part with it as well, burying the portal door in the front yard of the new home she built on the boiling isles, a home she made sure to hide from anyone seeking her and her family out.

I am the first in line willing to admit that this theory is a stretch, but I also firmly believe that the Azura books are not done playing their part in the relevance they have to the lore.

Like seriously WHY would they make the author look like that when she could look like anything else?

Why give her this inexplicable connection to the boiling isles that any ordinary human simply would not have?

Why do they so perfectly mirror the things that happen in Luz's life?

Why her books specifically?

Tl;Dr - I think the Clawthorne-Wittabane (or perhaps the Featherwhyle) family and the Clawthorne family, are two different families in two different realms that are still connected by blood and a shared history. In fact, it's possible one wouldn't have existed without all that had happened to the other that came before it. And regardless of all of that, whatever role they do play, we have not seen the last of the Azura books' relevance to the show's lore.

Anyway, I Am Completely Normal About The Media I Consume.

#the owl house #toh #toh theory #dee theorizes #dee goes down the endless black hole of speculation #insert charlie day corkboard meme here #she doesn't have her own tag so I'll just have to make one #toh Mildred Featherwhyle #good witch azura

[disquetlibrary]

The most recent episode of the podcast is out!

Narrator, Author, and Artist of the episode is The Bricksmith (she/hers):

https://www.tumblr.com/the-bricksmith

Artist of the logo art is FallenLeafSpirit (she/hers):

https://www.tumblr.com/fallenleafspirit

Transcript below break:

[Transcript Start]

Good evening friends enemies and unaquainted strangers. I Welcome you to the Disquiet Library. I am the curator. And these listless halls house many stories and artworks. This evening i have a reading and painting from the library collections. Before I get on with that I have a few announcements.

We have selected a library assistant. It turns out that Chester Teefs the author of the oh so helpful book our Liberian friend recommended to us a few months back lives near one of the entrances to the library. He was interested with working with the library's mimic population and reached out to me to see if he could assist. I was all too happy to take up his offer as regrettably I have made little headway with the rowdy books in our collections. So if you see a large trunk with a tophat around do not be alarmed. However I must say that although our new assistant is merely an assistant librarian, the powers and abilities conferred by this position are still potent and the usual safety measures for dealing with librarians should be followed. For those who have forgotten or are uninformed, Chester and I have put together some safety protocol and interaction guidelines. These should be posted on our new community announcements corkboards near the entrances.

Our second announcement for the evening is that community mapping efforts mentioned last week have progressed well. We have now established that one can get to the children's fiction section most of the time. By tucking a red crayon behind ones left ear. If you would like to contribute to the ongoing mapping efforts please feel free to use the crayons and paper we provide near the donation bins. Completed mapping efforts can be turned in at the checkout counter or if you happen to catch me winding my way through the stacks. Please do not turn maps in to Chester as this could have dangerous concerns for the spacial stability of existing routes.

With that all accounted for let us turn to this evenings artwork. It is another artwork and story provided by my archivist contact in an adjoining galaxy who provided the story of our nameless droid friend from a few months ago. You do not need to have viewed that artwork or story to understand this evenings entertainment. For thise listening to the audio recordings a link to view the accompanying artwork has been included in the description box or card where ever you found the recordings. The story has some description of gore and death but the artwork should have no objectionable flavors. So if you find these distasteful please feel free to peruse the other works the library has to offer. With that let's begin.

I'm still finding it weird working with the soldiers. They don't really have much of a personality. Must be their struck training or something but it's a bit unnerving when the closest they get to amicability is when they are polishing their weapons together or in the mess hall together. I'll try to get to know them once we get underway.

Galactic standard year 3455 spring week 5 day 2 Kaffel sector.

My platoon and I have received orders to carry supplies to the Carragath base. Reports indicate heavy pirate activity in the area and the nearest warp point is in the next system so we have been supplied with one of the battle carriers rather than a cargo hauler as would usually be flown on such a route. It seems a bit overkill for a few pirates. But apparently this transport has some important supplies that can't be risked.

Galactic standard year 3455 spring week 5 day 5 Warpspace

We are getting close to our destination now. I guess I was too harsh on the soldiers in my last entry. I've shared evenings with them where we played a few rounds of sechnet as one if them had picked up a deck of the cards in one of his old away trips. They are a damn hand at it and truly wiped the floor with me. The one time I won they blamed it on me using "those damn envoy powers to read our fuck'n minds." When I just got lucky with my draws. They are still pretty formal and war focused but I suppose its to be expected from people who were raised both with growth accelerant and trained for war since they were infants. Today they invited me down to the training range. I was supposed to show them some moves so they can get adjusted to fighting along side a plasmasword. And some of the basic abilities they can expect when I channel the will. TS 3654 wanted to see how I held up in comparison to their plasma launchers. So he went a bit more fierce in demonstrations than we had agreed. And once they realized plasmaswords can discharge absorbed energy they had me face off against them in target practice. They had a lot of fun and seemed impressed at the end of it.

It was unnerving to see the androids simply stopped and turned around and started retreating in formation. Forming ribbons and rivulets of metal liquid that flowed out of the ship and back into the troop carriers.

Galactic standard year 3455 spring week 5 day 5 unknown

Everyone is dead or soon to be. We fell into a trap. Somehow the confederacy ripped us out of warpspace. I thought that was impossible. Not only that but in doing so they ripped the battle carrier in half. One moment everything g is fine then the next the ships ripped apart and we are taking fire. They look to be a medium fleet of a battle ship and some carriers. But soon while we were scrambling to ready the particle beams and return fire troop transports had already landed bots in the hull. I suited up in an Eva suit and took a battalion of soldiers to fight through the landing bots and go rescue stranded crew in the fore section of the ship. No mater how many bots we shot they just kept flowing in like swarms of ants and locusts burning away any living beings in their way. Endless waves of machines we fought though. Cutting then down and blasting holes through them. Even the blasts from my plasma saber could only clear momentary breaks. I tried to clear my mind and just let the will flow through me. But even the endurance and strength the will provided could do little more than hold the line against the holds of metal and lancing red plasma bolts. I felt the drone and vibration of the particle beams shutter off. As the power to the ship disappeared. We had made it to a viewport and so the only light was the dull glow from outside and the pressing stillness. A rumble below deck confirmed that they had destroyed the power station. And the bots stopped advancing. They all stared as us with their pointed heads and plasma launchers but they were paused waiting. The only thing we could hear was our breathing. Deep and slow conserving our suit supplies.

As the troop transports receded a single shuttle departed the confederacy fleet and approached the main hangar Bay. Our view blocked its approach. And one of my soldiers remarked on the bots leaving. "Why did they stop they shouldn't have stopped."

"We are dead already its not worth the effort. Without power our life support is out and we can't send for help." Another soldier, TS 3650, remarked.

"Commander. Can I see your plasma sword a second?" One of my solders had asked. I gave it to him and he held the thin blade up to a curious hole bored into one of the corpses. It wasn't the traditional round bolt hole but rather the thin slit reflected the geometry of the sword blade. "I don't think a simple bot could have done a lot of these." He said. "Also…" he grabbed the back of the armor and heaved the body out of an indentation in the wall the helmet was embedded in the wall and it came free of its occupant revealing the face of the man who had called me a cheater at cards thus morning. He had been in our battalion with us.

"We could get to the life pods they should have separate systems we could use."

"We have to be careful and take it slow though. Our EVAs are only about half full." My body tried to panic to breathe heavily as I processed the news. But I steadied my breathing g forcing long slow breaths. Panic would only use the air faster. As we slowly made our way through the empty halls. The massacre became evident. I had five soldiers remaining and it seemed like we may have been the only survivors. But the dark passageways only lit by our lamps attached to our helmets and the dull blue glow if my plasmasword. Sights got more horrific as we progressed. Amidst the piles of eviscerated bots and soldiers shot down in their squads by the bots. We started to find unnatural bodies. Soldiers missing limbs rather than shot. Or in some cases a few bodies were violently pulled into an air duct as though something had grasped them and tried to drag them away with no regard for their bone structure or armor. Shiny red blood glistened on their white beetle armor which caught our lamps and added to the grisly scenes.

The last three of us remaining made it to the escape pods and had started manually disengaging them and launching before we piled into the last one. As we launched I caught a glimpse of four yellow reflected eyes that caught my lamp from the dark as I pulled the hatch closed. We have life support now but with the cruzer disabled and unable to broadcast our signals there is little hope. I write this down to document so that if our bodies are found the republic can be at least warned.

"I only read three of you. I think we lost TS 3650 as well." I observed. Stick together men. We don't know what got the other two and I don't want to loose any more of you. The darkness pressed in around us even more as we made our way along the last few turns towards the escape pods. The trooper behind me started coughing. We paused to check in on him. His oxygen was getting low. And his suit was starting to backfill with nitrogen.

I only noticed the flash of movement and the slamming if the air duct just too late. TS 4567 had gotten grabbed by something from behind and had been rapidly dragged into the vents. His body was folded and floppy as his pulverized bones behaved much more like a bag if gravel when disrupted.

The remaining pages of the journal were blank and an angular charred slit carved into the edge of the journal and through to the chest of the burnt figure that was partially melded with the wall of the escape pod as though frozen in the moment of falling into a pool.

As the escape pod slowly turned in space. The two envoys saw the silhouette of a confederate cruzer. Smooth armor shells interspersed with minimalistic striped down utilitarian beams and girders and greebles. Then they saw a swirling green particle beam tear through their shuttle. They could hear the screams of their soldiers in the adjoining cabin before the escape pods emergency systems kicked in and closed the adjoining hatch. A dark y shaped silhouette of a shuttle broke away from the cruzer. The pods communicator crackled to life with a robotic severe voice. "This is general Horror. I bring the last words of your compatriot. 'Run run as fast as you can.' Do you have anything you would like to tell to tell to those who come looking for your bodies?"

That concludes our story for the evening. The library is currently undergoing some restructuring so you will be unable to find the usual resources with the donation bins. I will simply say thank you shadowy wanderers of the night. I hope you have a wonderful evening.

#disquiet library #podcast #scifi #androids #robots #horror fiction #writing experiment #digital painting