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tossawary · 3 years

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Chapter 19: “Weddings and Funerals” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines with commentary because I’m doing a re-read. Not a full list or full commentary.

When Shang Qinghua told Mobei-Jun that he didn’t need Shen Qingqiu assassinated, it wasn’t because he thought everything would somehow work out if he just sat back and didn’t do anything. It definitely wasn’t because he was planning a so-called “perfect murder” and didn’t want the demon lord messing up his plans. The Problem of Shen Qingqiu has always been a lot more complicated than “just get rid of the guy potentially making my nephew’s life a living hell”. That’s why it’s a real problem!

AN: Shang Qinghua’s thought process: “Can this problem be solved by:

A) Waiting for the problem to go away?

B) Murder?

C) None of the above?

If the answer is C...

Fuck, it’s a real problem.”

Shang Qinghua thinks that might actually be possible, though he’d have to do some research and smack his head until his Author God memories hopped into line. He thinks that the youth-restoration procedure would probably do the job, but he also thinks that Shen Qingqiu would probably rather be dead than be physically sixteen again or something (super fucking understandable) and have to start the cultivation process over from scratch (ah, that would be so annoying and embarrassing).

AN: Given that I actually invented a de-aging potion for this fic (if one that’s difficult to put together), the AU of “Original Shen Qingqiu is physically 16 again” has been rattling around inside my head ever since I wrote these lines. Shen Qingqiu was like, “Wait, let me picture how unbearably overprotective Yue Qingyuan would be... hmm... no, I’ll just stay like this.”

Luo Jiahui seems a little anxious about the empty spaces at the table, but she fills the space as best she can by chattering about assorted restaurant business. At least until she abruptly takes a deep breath and says, “Hua-Ge, I have something to tell you.”

Shang Qinghua freezes in the middle of taking a drink. His unhelpful brain immediately races to guess the worst possible conversational subjects. His sister-in-law has somehow figured out that he’s a transmigrator?! His sister-in-law has decided that her son is not going to the Demon Realm under any circumstances?! His sister-in-law knows Binghe better than he does and has realized that the young protagonist is being abused after all?! Oh, fuck, what is it?

“I’m getting married!” Luo Jiahui announces, breathlessly.

“Oh,” Shang Qinghua says, heart rate going at the speed of sound. “Wait, what?”

AN: This chapter is why I didn’t go into the details of LJH/LQG in the last chapter, immediately post-timeskip. I wanted to blindside everyone with an “Oh, it’s THAT serious?!” moment. The last chapter established that “SQH is handling things”, then this chapter establishes that, as the plot goes on, “SQH is only barely handling things”. Which helps prep the following breakdown with the System World Update in chapters 20-22.

“You didn’t have any time for yourself,” Shang Qinghua agrees, following this conversation of very obvious things that he already knew so far. He didn’t have any time for himself back then either, between organizing a conference and finding a cure on top of the usual day-in-day-out of the sect. “You did a really good job looking after them all by yourself!”

“They don’t always agree with that,” Luo Jiahui says, smiling but self-deprecating.

“Aha, well, they’re young.”

The disagreements of what was best for the children is why Shang Qinghua really had to get Fanli (who didn’t see herself as a child) out of the house by any means necessary. He was at a bit of a loss at how else to help. She was never part of Proud Immortal Demon Way! Not even as a fragment of backstory mentioned in passing! Shang Qinghua struggles to compensate for these extra people who were never characters sometimes.

“Qingge was very understanding,” Luo Jiahui says. “But… well… then Fanli was gone and I had the restaurant keeping me busy, but that was all my own choice… and what good was waiting really doing us? It didn’t have to be everything or nothing. So… we talked… about what we wanted and what- what we were afraid of… and we decided to go forward slowly.”

AN: I said in the Author’s Notes on AO3 that I was going to use Jiage to shame Moshang and Qijiu, and I meant it. TALK TO EACH OTHER!!! Shang Qinghua, you need to talk to Mobei-Jun about what you want! Shang Qinghua, you can’t keep putting things on hold because of the plot!

No offense to either his sister-in-law or his junior martial brother, but aren’t love stories supposed to be a little more… fiery?

“When I was younger, I thought that falling in love was supposed to be all excitement and passion and not being able to live without someone even for a second,” Luo Jiahui admits, a little wistfully. “I thought that it was supposed to be thinking about them all the time, not being able to stay away from each other, and needing to know what they’d been doing every second they were away. It was like becoming a completely different person. I thought that being in love was about one of us getting horribly jealous every time we even talked to someone else, doing things I didn’t really understand and changing myself just to keep him happy, and keeping secrets and sneaking around just to keep things from exploding. Because love is not being able to help yourself like that, right?”

Shang Qinghua can’t really manage to speak right now.

It’s like someone has cut his fucking throat.

Which is fine!

“But that ended really badly for me,” Luo Jiahui says, with a nervous huff at her own understatement. “It was very exciting, but looking back, being in that kind of love was also very frightening sometimes… and it was a little lonely too… being in love with someone I couldn’t really talk to or trust.”

AN: This is more specifically vagueing SVSSS Bingqiu than Moshang, but it’s also shaming Moshang too. Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky wrote some extremely messed-up romances and he would have said, “Yes! It’s all super messed-up! That’s kind of the point!” But it also means that the man can’t really conceptualize (at least at first) or articulate the kind of relationship he would actually be happy to have with Mobei-Jun, especially when his relationship with Mobei-Jun had such violent beginnings

The first person he tells himself is, weirdly enough, Qi Qingqi. Liu Qingge apparently already told both Liu Mingyan and Luo Fanli before he left, so Shang Qinghua heads over to see how the girls are handling it. (Also, he wants to pump Liu Mingyan for information on her mother’s opinions on weddings and marriage, in a really pathetic attempt to ready himself for the rumble.) He makes her agree to keep the information to herself before telling and she does, like a bro!

And then he tells and she laughs in his fucking face! Eventually, she realizes that he’s looking for sympathy, he’s not just here to let her enjoy his suffering, as a form of payment after everything he and Liu Qingge have inflicted on her. Then she laughs at him again, even louder.

Sure, he’d laugh too if he was in her shoes! But not to her face! Rude!

AN: Qi Qingqi also pointed while laughing, I think. It’s funny because it’s not her dealing with Liu Family shit this time.

Shang Qinghua expected, this time last year, to be laser-focused on the plot! His attention was not going to stray even a little bit, he promised himself; he was going to be 110% dedicated to making sure that everyone he tripped into caring about made it through the least shitty version of Proud Immortal Demon Way possible. He was going to be a machine of a transmigrator! No distractions! All he wanted was for his family to make it through the quickest, least shitty bare bones of a plot! And he was going to achieve, damn it!

Instead, he finds himself planning his sister-in-law’s wedding and it eats up time he didn’t fucking know he had to give. Immortal Alliance Conference, eat your fucking heart out! Cang Qiong Mountain Sect? Did he work there? Nope, he’s never heard of the place! He’s the Peak Lord of wedding planning now!

AN: This is me telling myself I’m going to get my life 100% together and then getting into a new video game and baking cookies instead. Or ditching my housecleaning plans to hang out with friends at a moment’s notice.

At the wedding itself, Fanli tells her sister’s father-in-law that Binghe is also very into birds and Shang Qinghua’s nephew spends a good chunk of the rest of the celebrations (and his precious time away from Qing Jing Peak) held hostage by his own politeness, listening to his new grandfather earnestly tell him about the various migration habits of demonic birds.

Well! Better him than Shang Qinghua, honestly!

AN: Inspired by that time we went on vacation and one of my brothers got mistaken by one of our travelling companions for a budding serious birdwatcher instead of someone who just thinks they’re neat - and also likes to point at them and intentionally call them by the wrong name.

Also, LQG’s Dad in this fic and SY would probably get along super well.

LQG and his dad in this universe have gone out on month-long camping trips to in which they pretty much don’t talk the entire time. They stalk monsters through the wilderness and have a great time.

Shang Qinghua is too busy keeping an eye on Luo Fanli and being not talked to by Liu Mingyan, who is eighteen-ish years old now he thinks and still deeply embarrassed by the fact that he told her off for her real person fiction. (He doesn’t want to discourage her passion for writing! She’s pretty good for a kid! It’s pretty cute! Everyone needs their escapist hobbies! He just doesn’t want identifying information about his family being spread around freely, even if the characterizations of the couple are… uh… wildly reimagined, and he doesn't want to have to spend his very valuable time keeping a lookout for more illicit fiction.) It’s difficult to read her expression through the ever-present veil, but… yeah, she’s still pissed off at him.

Ugh, teenagers.

Binghe is not allowed to bring several hundred nieces-in-law into Shang Qinghua's life. Just... no. Fuck, no.

He doesn’t even get a date to commiserate about this with.

It’s a very small wedding, family only (Luo Jiahui’s shitty parents don’t count and her older brother was forced to decline the invitation), so that Luo Jiahui and Liu Qingge can keep their privacy. Madam Liu huffed about it - the battles in talking her down were both great and terrible - but her son stood his ground! Sure, people might whine someday about not being invited, but the great thing about Liu Qingge is that they can more or less just say, “Well, we couldn’t stop him from doing whatever he wanted!” And people just have to take that unless they want to claim they could take on the Bai Zhan Peak War God!

AN: Trying to imagine the AU in which SQH brought MBJ as his date to this wedding. SQH would’ve liked to be able to bring MBJ as a date, but alas, they are not dating and the groom would probably try to kill the man.

Shang Qinghua is not expecting, soon after returning from his sister-in-law’s happy and long-awaited wedding, to be solemnly informed that Shen Qingqiu’s health has only really deteriorated these past months. Wow, that’s a huge downer.

Also, he already knew that? He’s been getting Mu Qingfang all the right supplies to treat their shixiong. He didn’t actually abandon his duties to the sect for a family wedding. He knew that Shen Qingqiu had fallen sufficiently ill to need tending on Qian Cao Peak in the past month and he considered it, well, convenient timing in regards to Binghe’s permission to attend his mother’s wedding not being randomly revoked. Cold-hearted, maybe! But he had lots of other things to worry about at the time, like informing Mobei-Jun that his sister-in-law was getting married and so he’d be regrettably absent to attend the wedding.

Then he’s told that Shen Qingqiu is not expected to improve this time.

“Oh, shit, they really think he’s dying,” Shang Qinghua realizes.

This really wasn’t in Proud Immortal Demon Way.

AN: I seriously contemplated cutting this chapter in half because of this mood switch. Like, I went in intending on writing a serious mood switch, but in practice, wow. It felt like a lot more in practice.

“Our sect leader asks about the boy and his progress,” Shen Qingqiu rasps, his voice turning more and more accusing. “He’s so very concerned about the boy. We can’t have such a beloved child crying to his devoted family that he’s been mistreated or neglected, can we? How flattering these assumptions are. It makes a man wonder what exactly people think he’s going to do to the boy.”

Shang Qinghua might have an itemized list somewhere, honestly.

“Ah, I can’t speak for anyone else,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “But please don’t take it personally, Shen-Shixiong. I don’t really trust anyone. Anything can happen behind a locked door, you know?”

Some honest cynicism can go over well with the man.

Shen Qingqiu laughs bitterly now.

AN: It can be fun in media where Character A is like, “Ahhh, I hope no one discovers my secret!” And Character B is like, “So, about this extremely obvious thing that you’re doing...!”

Shen Qingqiu is as honest and open as he is throughout this scene because he honestly thinks that he’s dying. He’s determined to be blithe about it.

Shang Qinghua at least gets to see Mu Qingfang’s face journey as Shen Qingqiu accuses their sect leader of letting him think that he’d left him to die. As Shen Qingqiu yells about being treated like an unwanted ghost, as a potential blackmailer, as an embarrassing disappointment, as a petty troublemaker, as a spoiled child, as a problem to be solved, and as the last blemish on Yue Qingyuan’s reputation - anything but as someone worthy of being trusted with Yue Qingyuan’s problems and of being treated like an equal friend.

Yue Qingyuan tries to explain that he didn’t think Shen Qingqiu wanted to hear his excuses, and Shen Qingqiu shoots back that he would rather fucking die than beg the man he’d thought had forgotten about him to explain when exactly he became not worth rescuing as soon as possible.

Yue Qingyuan tries to explain that he didn’t want Shen Qingqiu’s pity or to force the man to be grateful that he’d tried.

Shen Qingqiu tells the man to go fuck himself. How could it not hurt for someone he loved to hurt him and then just… move past the hurt like the pain wasn’t who they were?

“All the world could revile me… reject me… leave me to die… and I would pay their hatred no heed! What do they truly know of what I am? Of who I am?” Shen Qingqiu demands. “But if Qi-Ge could throw me away… decide that I just wasn’t worth the trouble anymore now that he’d had a taste of a better life… then I really must be wretched beyond all things at the root! If he believed it, then… then it had to be true.”

AN: Because I just wrote a Qijiu confrontation over this exact thing, like, a few days before, I thought that I could get away with writing out this entire confrontation in full. I think it works better if the audience has to imagine some of it. And because SQH is the POV character, it felt right that he not be in the room and not be a full witness to this scene. He doesn’t get to see everything.

#tossawary svsss #pride is not the word #tossawary commentary

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celosiiaa · 4 years

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Cook Out || Sawamura Daichi

So I got to take part in this awesome collab with the Haikyuu!!-Simps server that I’m a part of! Looking back to when I joined them, I never truly thought I’d ever take part in a collab like this, I always believed I’d just be a background support kind of character there. I really enjoyed writing this! Especially since this was just me spilling on and on about my love for Daichi….

I’m not really sure how links on tumblr work so if you check out @nekomaliberos feed you should be able to find the masterpost with all the links on it there!

The entire Karasuno Volleyball Club decided to go on a camping trip at the end of their summer break, a great idea right? Well… for the most part it was fine!

The main problem was you had split up the responsibilities for bringing the supplies

The third years prepared the camping supplies, mostly making sure there were enough tents

The second years were in charge of planning the activities, and making sure the campout was going to be fun

And the first years were in charge of bringing enough food for everyone to eat, and for bringing the meat for the BBQ you all had planned for the last night of the campout

You’d expect everything to go decently from there, and it did, mostly. . .

Daichi, Kiyoko, Sugawara, and Asahi had brought enough tents, sleeping bags, and fire-starting supplies to last the 3-day campout you had planned.

Noya, Tanaka, Ennoshita, Narita, Kinoshita, and you had planned a variety of exciting group bonding activities

And Hinata, Kageyama, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, and Yachi had surprisingly brought enough food for the three days worth of meals.

Until you had started to prepare for the BBQ

You and Daichi had started preparing the fire

Sugawara was unpacking the meat

And then you hear a groan come from Suga

“Hinata, Kageyama?” He called out

“Yes, Sugawara-Senpai?” They call out in unison, stopping their roughhousing

“Where’s the meat for the bbq?”

You and Daichi stop setting up the wood and look at each other in despair

“They forgot the meat?” You mentally sigh

“Ummmm….” Hinata turns back and calls out to Tsukishima, “Stingyshima! Didn’t you grab the meat for the bbq?”

Tsukishima gives Hinata a deadpan stare, “that was you and Kageyama’s task, Yamaguchi, Yachi, and I grabbed all the other food.”

Feeling the tensions rising between the other members of the team, you quickly jump into action

“Hey! It’s all good! Daichi and I can go grab some meat from the market that’s only like a 10-minute drive from here!”

“Yeah! Y/n and I can go grab it, but that means when we get back I expect the rest of the bbq supplies to be prepared and the fire to be started.” Daichi adds on, “And it should only take us about 30 minutes to do this, so get started!”

As the rest of the team scrambles to get started on preparing the different tasks you and Daichi start towards the car

Feeling brave you intertwine your hands and start swinging them in between the two of you

As you do so, you notice that Daichi turns towards you and a small smile appears on his face

You turn your head back up to make eye contact

“Did you really have to volunteer us for this job, Love?”

You respond as blush colors your cheeks. “Well i- I could feel the tensions rising between the first years, and…” You trail off

He squeezes your hand, relaying the fact that he’s proud of how you handled the situation

“Alright, let’s go grab some meat for the bbq then”

The car ride there is pretty quiet and calm, the two of you just enjoying the presence of each other

As he parks the car, you check your phone looking to see if Suga had sent you a message that they had forgotten something else

Thankfully they had everything else there

You enter the market and grab one of the handheld baskets( IDK the name, but it’s not the carts)

Daichi enters after you and grabs your free hand in his and then takes the basket in his other

You walk towards the meat section, deciding which cuts of meat to grab

You grab some Short Rib, Skirt steak, and some tenderloin to grill over the fire

Daichi loads it all into the basket and then moves to go to the checkout, but you drag him towards the candy aisle with your still-connected hands

“Love, what are you doing?” he asks, confused

“I’m grabbing some candy for us for later since we came all this way to get what the first years forgot. Some compensation”

Daichi looks at you, then sighs, “Fine, but only one thing from the candy aisle”

You grab your favorite candy and then the two of y’all head towards the checkout

After you finish there, you grab the bags and head out to the car, getting ready to head back

Daichi is in the driver’s seat again, you’re in the passenger seat

As he starts the car, one of his hands is on the wheel, the other has made its way to stay intertwined with yours

“Are you ready to head back to the chaos we call the Karasuno Volleyball Club, love?” he asks, his eyes on you

“Ready as I’ll ever be, baby” You retort back

The car ride back is almost identical to the first, but this time you get to hold your loving boyfriend’s hand

When you arrive back at the campsite, Noya and Tanaka are waiting for you in the parking lot

And as you exit the car, they grab the bags of food from your hands and run off to where you set up the tents

You and Daichi share a look and let out a quiet chuckle, walking slowly towards the campsite

“You ready for the cookout my love?” Daichi asks as you walk

“I’m excited to be able to spend more time with you! It feels like we’ve been babysitting the team this entire trip”

As you approach the fire, you notice Suga and Kiyoko are working on cooking the meat

You and Daichi settle down onto one of the benches to wait for the food to finish, once your both seated you nestle your head into his shoulder

He puts his arm around you and y’all just sit there, being all cute

Until you notice Noya and Tanaka staring at the two of you, their expressions dripping in jealously

You stare back at them confused until you notice that they keep looking back at Kiyoko as well as staring at you and Daichi

Then it clicks, they want to be able to cuddle with Kiyoko like you and Daichi are

You send them a smirk and snuggle in closer to Daichi, who presses a kiss to the top of your head

You let out a yawn and close your eyes, telling Daichi to wake you up when the food was ready

You drift off in your boyfriend’s strong embrace, only to wake up to the smell of cooked meat

As you open your eyes you notice that Daichi had gotten up and gotten you a plate of food

You send him a lazy smile, eating the food quickly so you could get back to sleep as fast as you could

After everyone finished their food and cleaned up their plates, you all sat around the fire

You sat next to Daichi again, your position quite similar to the one you were in earlier

And similarly to last time, you were falling asleep on his shoulder again

And again you fell asleep to the rise and fall of his chest

The perfect end to the perfect vacation with your perfect boyfriend

Taglist: @nikki--han

#alex simps for haikyuu characters #daichi x reader #sawamura daichi #summer camp #cookout #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #daichi fluff #celosiiaa writes #hq fluff #hq x reader #haikyuu headcanons

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caitlesshea · 4 years

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just let me adore you

Happy Birthday @bestillmyslashyheart - here’s some hurt/comfort Tarlos! With a twist. Love you!

TK has been feeling off all day. He can’t describe it, other than feeling like he just worked a double shift and didn’t get any sleep.

He makes it through their first three calls by the skin of his teeth. He can feel the crew watching him and his dad is starting to look worried, but he just brushes them all off.

His right side is twinging and it would be weird, it is weird, but he pushes the thoughts away. It’s been a couple of months since he was shot and he knows he uses his right side more often than not to compensate for his left side. It’s been a couple of weeks since his left shoulder finally stopped twinging so he figured all was okay.

“You okay, kid?” Judd asks as TK struggles to lift something.

“Yeah. Must’ve tweaked something.”

“If you say so.”

“What?” TK snaps and instantly feels bad. He rubs his right side, hoping the pain will recede. “Shit. Sorry.”

“All good. You just look a little flushed. Maybe you’re gettin’ sick.”

“Maybe.”

TK goes to finish cleaning the truck when the pain in his side flares to unbearable and he falls into the truck gasping in pain.

“Shit, TK.” Judd helps him sit down and TK reaches for his side again.

“Owwww.”

“You’re hurt. Let me help.” Judd helps him untuck his shirt and starts looking over his side. They’ve attracted a crowd now and his dad comes running.

“Someone get Captain Blake!” Owen shouts through the Station.

“TK! What’s wrong, son?”

“I don’t know. It’s been hurting all day.” TK says through gritted teeth.

“What has?”

“My side.” TK tries to turn in on himself. The pain is similar to when he was shot but he knows he hasn’t been shot so he doesn’t know what’s happening. As if random pain wasn’t scary enough, he’s having trouble breathing through it.

Michelle comes running with her team and she takes one look at TK and groans.

“Shit.”

“What? What is it?” Owen asks her frantically as he and Judd try to calm TK down.

“He didn’t tell you?” Michelle asks him quietly.

“Tell me? What are you talking about? Who?” TK grits out.

“Carlos.”

“What about him?” TK asks as his eyes widen. His breath catches in his throat and Michelle nods.

“Based on your symptoms, I’d say he was shot.” Michelle says quietly as she helps TK sit up.

“Shot?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is he okay?”

“Why is TK hurt?”

The questions come in such a rapid fire from everyone that TK can barely keep up. It hits him at once though, washing over him like a warm glow, even while he’s in pain.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” TK whispers as he holds his side.

“I don’t know. I thought he did. Especially after you were - ”

Michelle doesn’t answer but TK knows what she was going to say. Carlos would’ve felt TK getting shot, too.

“Tell you what TK?” Owen asks him and then his eyes widen.

“At the hospital, I could’ve sworn.” Owen curses to himself. “Alright, we need to find out where they’re taking Carlos.”

“I’ll call his Captain.” Michelle says as she walks away to grab her phone.

“C’mon.” Owen and Judd help him up and he leans on his dad.

“Dad, I didn’t. I can’t. I can’t lose him.”

“You won’t TK. You won’t.”

Everyone is looking at him in confusion except Judd and Paul.

“You could’ve told me.” TK grits out and Owen laughs.

“Kid, the only person who could’ve told you is Carlos.” Judd shakes his head and he can hear Paul explaining to Marjan and Mateo what’s going on but TK doesn’t want to listen. He only wants one person to tell him, and right now, he doesn’t know how he’s doing.

“I found out what hospital he’s at and I told his Captain. They should be able to hold off on surgery until we get there if we use the Rig.”

~~~

“No. For the last time. I don’t want it.” TK grits through his teeth as he paces the hospital waiting room.

“TK.” Owen tries to placate him and he hates it.

“No. He didn’t for me.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

“No. They are not putting me under. It’s not that bad.” TK lies. And okay, he can admit that the pain is pretty bad, and he probably should be unconscious but Carlos stayed awake for him, so he’s doing the same thing.

“Carlos was a mess, TK.” Michelle whispers and TK’s eyes snap to hers. “It wasn’t until after the surgery that he was even able to move around.”

TK’s heart breaks. To know that Carlos wasn’t okay because of him is almost too much to bear.

TK sits down heavy in one of the plastic hospital chairs, leaning close to his dad. He closes his eyes, telling himself it will just be for a minute.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep but suddenly his dad is shaking him awake.

“TK. Carlos is out of surgery.”

“Is he okay?” TK sits up too quickly and grabs his head. He immediately reaches down to his side, noticing that the stabbing pain is gone, replaced by a dull ache.

“He is. They’re moving him to a recovery room and then we can see him.”

TK feels like he can finally breathe. He slumps back into the chair, not caring that tears are sliding down his face.

“Where’s Michelle?”

“She’s talking to the doctor. She’s his emergency contact, since his mother is out of town.”

TK nods, remembering Carlos telling him that his mom was going on a much needed vacation to visit his sister. TK frowns, he didn’t even think to call them. His dad must notice him spiraling because he grabs his shoulder.

“TK, Michelle called them. They’re on a flight back to Austin and should be here in a couple of hours.”

“I didn’t - ”

“No. No one expected that of you.”

“But, Dad…”

“No, TK.” Owen looks at him sharply. “There is nothing you should’ve done except exactly what you did.”

“I need to see him.”

Owen’s eyes soften. “I know, TK.”

TK leans back, letting the buzzing underneath his skin wash over him. Now that he’s aware of it he can’t seem to stop feeling it. His heart breaking for a moment at the thought of Carlos keeping this to himself, of being afraid to mention it to TK.

“He’s in the recovery room. We can go see him.” Michelle’s voice startles him out of his spiraling thoughts. TK jumps up and starts following her, Owen chuckling behind him.

TK takes one look at Carlos in the hospital bed and the tears come in waves. He practically runs over to Carlos’ bedside to grab his hand. The buzzing under his skin settles like a warm blanket at the two of them finally being connected.

TK squeezes Carlos’ hand and leans his head against his arm. The tears keep falling down his face as he leans further into Carlos.

“Ty.” Carlos croaks as he fingers twitch around TK’s and TK shoots his head up to look at Carlos.

“‘Los.” TK whispers as Carlos smiles softly.

“I’m okay.”

TK leans up to kiss Carlos, the taste of both of their tears between them.

“You scared me.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

TK sits back down and leans against Carlos.

“It’s okay. How are you feeling?”

“Like I was shot.” Carlos quips even while his eyes are laced with pain.

TK laughs and rubs at his chest and his right side. Carlos notices the movement on the right side and he winces.

“Tyler.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t - ”

“Why didn’t you tell me we were soulmates?”

#tarlos #911 lone star #happy birthday marlo!!!!#love you!#bestillmyslashyheart

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minabels · 4 years

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“How to be a financially prepared Adult”

by: Carmina Rafael

Indeed nowadays, it is really hard to save money because of the high cost of living whether in the province or in the city. I admit I was one of those people who had a hard time budgeting my income for my family’s necessities back then. At 19 years old, I was a single mom and the breadwinner of the family. Being raised in a poor family, I learned to value hard-earned money and spend it wisely. However, on my part, there is a guilt feeling with not being able to save for my child’s future. Also, we do not have enough cash ready for emergencies like sickness, so whenever it happens, we seek help from relatives. Being a high school graduate back then, life is tough and got fewer options and resources to turn to. My parents were not able to send me to college due to financial problems. I don’t want to have the same fate for my daughter. I remember a long time ago, my mom had to work for a couple of months for my aunt so that she can bring home little food and medicine as my father was sick. It’s painful being helpless and I don’t want to repeat history. We were a typical family that is among those that they call “ isang kahig, isang tuka”.

For years of working, I tried selling different kinds of products for extra income. I also do part-time job during a day off. I use it to sustain my daily allowance so that my whole salary can go to my family. I also tried to go back to school sometime, but odds were not in my favor. It is prioritizing necessities first before anything else because I have mouths to feed. Then eventually, with hard work, faith, and prayer, my life became better. I got better opportunities. I secured a better job and it became my stepping stone.

I remember one time, I read a random quote that says, if I was born poor, it is not my fault. But if I die poor, it is my fault. Ever since it was always for the family and never thought of myself. What would my life be when I get old? Am I ready? When will I be ready? Then I realized that maybe, it is time for a change and somehow give myself a time also to grow. I realized that I don’t want to be financially dependent when I am old. That would probably be the reason why I became a financial advisor now. Financial literacy is not something that our country is giving attention to. We are accustomed to the culture of helping our family to the point of teaching them to be dependent. I understand that we Filipinos are very family-oriented that we wanted to always look on our families all the time. But I realized that, before helping them, I should help myself first.

For people who share the same sentiments as mine, I want to share with you guys the things I did to be financially prepared for life’s uncertainties most especially in this trying time. It is a long process that requires motivation, consistency, and discipline but believe me it is all going to be worth it.

1. INVEST ON LEARNING - Since I was a high school graduate, it took time for me to get myself to college juggling work and studies and at the same time. Do not pity, instead, help yourself to go back in track so that you will not be left behind. Also, attend trainings, seminars and short courses that will help you gain knowledge and improve your skills. This can help you find a better job with better compensation or can help you build a business. They say, no one will help you except yourself. Always surround yourself with positive and motivated people, it will help you to push and do more.

2. Get insurance - I never thought that this intangible product can be helpful in reaching a long term goal. We as the breadwinners should also have income protection. If your car/gadget or house has insurance, why haven’t you, right? It will cover the unexpected happenings in our life like sickness and accidents. In my case, I do not want to burden my family since they have little for themselves. I got insurance with life coverage of 2M and 1M for critical illness if ever I would be diagnosed with covered illnesses including stroke. It is in our bloodline since it is the cause of my father’s death so I might as well prepare for it. Besides, I don't have a hefty amount of cash as such if in case I will be needing it for hospitalization. If my time comes, I will not have to worry about how my family will pay for the debts that I would be leaving them.

3. Invest in stock market – Buy shares from big companies. Invest in the stock market. It will help with your short term goal or in time emergencies. It does not need to be a huge amount. Some insurance companies offer life insurance and investment in one, better talk to a licensed financial advisor. As for me, I started my investment 2 years ago with a manageable amount and consistently paying for it. The amount blossomed not that much but fair enough compared with the time frame. It is as if you are part of the business but someone else is managing it.

4. Live within your means- it is not bad to have leisure and buy something you want, we only live once. But always know your boundaries or up to what percentage of your earnings are you willing to spend. Every time we plan for a vacation with family, I plan it months before so that I can have enough time to save while not having to rip my pocket. I list down for budgeting and always look for sale. I don’t buy expensive things, I am a fan of “tiangge”. Being affordable does not mean being cheap, it is being practical.

5. Build personal savings- at least set aside an amount that you can manage to keep for a long time and will not use it for something unnecessary. It is ideal to have an equivalent to a 6-month salary for savings. But don’t get rush, you’ll get there. It will be helpful in case of an emergency like this pandemic COVIOD-19. You will not have to worry about tomorrow because you have enough cash ready that can sustain you longer and will not only rely on the government's help.

6. List down expenses- List down all your priority bills so that you won’t skip it. Write down all your expenses especially for someone like me who is always forgetful. It will help you backtrack records and the money you spent.

So there! These are the things I did and still doing now. Being financially ready does not mean you need to be rich. It is being worry less for things that most people bother about. It is waking up every day knowing that you have at least the resources you need to secure yourself in times of need. I hope you guys learned something that will be helpful for you in some ways.

Thanks for reading! :)

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hisgirlwonder · 5 years

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Atonement - Part Four

Length: 3.2K words Warning: Oral and sex, humiliation, degradation, allude to a drinking problem, abandonment issues, probably other stuff too (plz see notes) Synopsis: With his trust broken, Michael is doing all he can to make you regret ever crossing him. Notes: Don’t read if you’re easily triggered by things as this series is made to be somewhat horrible; here, as I’ve said, we write for many kinks. The idea with Michael and Y/N is that he sways her with his powers - the ones that allow him to charm a room, see into her thoughts, feel what she’s feeling, and allow her to give into her desires. She’s 100% consenting because I won’t write noncon. Also, thinking I may divulge onto Michael’s mommy issues so... hope you enjoy if you read. Other stuff can be found on my masterlist :)

The dining hall seemed to be empty for the most part but that still didn’t stop you from feeling mortified at what was going on. Nausea made you feel sick to your stomach as you wait for Mallory - Michael sent her away to grab something from another room and your entire body tensed in fear as to what it may be.

Mallory eventually returns and you notice there’s a double dished pet bowl in her tiny hands - one side held water and the other contained some kind of food. Whatever was in it smelled amazing and your stomach begins to rumble. Michael instructs you to get on the ground once the bowl is placed down and you cringe at the thought but you’re too hungry to care. You immediately drop to your hands and knees and begin lapping the water up so you’re able to swallow the food without it getting stuck.

He laughs when his talented nose picks up the stench of your embarrassment but stops when he realises you haven’t eaten anything. Michael squats down so the two of you are eye-to-eye only to scoop up what looks like mashed potato and shoves his fingers deep in your mouth all the while tormenting you about being ungrateful. You liked potato but not when it was being forced down your throat to make you gag.

When he’s done he wipes his dirtied hands clean with your hair in a display of dominance and rises from the ground. Michael only says two words get up and you follow without hesitation. Once you’re on your feet he decides to take it a little bit further, shoving you into the table close by. The pain from your hip bone colliding with its edge causes you to double over and lean into the piece of furniture.

The space between the two of you condenses when Michael draws his body into yours like a magnet; his crotch pressed against a part of your ass and the fullness of his concealed erection is made known. His hand pulls and pushes the plug in and out repeatedly to stimulate your hole and you’re left feeling weak because the throes of humiliation were replaced with ones of want.

“Close your eyes and stay right there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The sound of Michael’s shoes hitting the floor fill your ears upon his arrival back in the dining hall and every nerve in your body is throwing a fit over the uncertainty. He removes the tailed plug from your ass, placing it to the side of the table, and slips the mask he retrieved from his office over your eyes. Michael’s slender digits brush through your locks far too slow for it to be an accident and when your thoughts transfer to him and how sweet it seems, he tugs at your hair to bring some order to your wandering mind.

You can no longer feel hands touching you and, little do you know, he’s signalling for his suck up loyal follower, Duncan Shepherd, to come over. Duncan commended Michael on his punishment of you and apparently now Michael wants to offer you up as compensation for unwavering loyalty. This man wasn’t someone you got up close and personal with but you knew exactly who he was. Everyone did. He was egotistical and inexorable in his denunciation of the Greys (or lesser beings, as he calls them) but even that wasn’t as harsh as the way he’d look at you; with even more disdain than the others.

Female Greys would fawn over Duncan like he was famous and you found it sickening. He berated them on the daily and yet they’d just giggle as if the misogyny was endearing. I guess as girls we’re taught that if a boy is mean he likes you and that’s why girls must go for the asshole, right? Duncan is physically attractive and if he came up to you in a bar with a proposition you wouldn’t say no but that shit-eating grin and wolf whistles in your direction, while you walked around in the god awful outfit made you wear pissed you off to no extent. Punishment alluded Duncan because Michael had one law for him and another for everyone else and that’s the way it was because man is above women and, according to the pair of them, they were even above man.

It was near impossible to escape the allure of Duncan Shepherd but you did try. In his presence, you’d keep your legs firmly shut to prevent relighting the fire in your loins that had a tendency of raging when he was especially revolting. The thought crossed your mind often as to whether or not Michael told him about your desires – it made a lot of sense for the way he treated you because he’d think you loved his chauvinistic behaviour.

Michael hooks his hands around your arms and pulls you back so Duncan can sit on the table and purrs vindictively about the present he has just for you – apparently his harsh behaviour warranted for a reward in the form of something you’d been fantasizing about for months. You were so desperate for Michael to return to his old self that you didn’t give it a second thought. The idea didn’t even cross your mind that it could potentially be another person because Michael didn’t exactly seem like the type to share his toys. However, if it was, you’d gladly do whatever he asked because that’s how devoted you were to him and he knew it.

All you hear next is the word open and you oblige because after everything you’d still answer his every beck and call. You’re all too willing and you part your lips so fast it was almost as if the last few weeks hadn’t existed at all. A cock is guided into your mouth and the first thing you notice is that it’s thick. You run lengths up and down the shaft and it seems as if the person filling your mouth is rather ardent as your lips become glossed with pre-cum – you run your tongue over the mess to find it doesn’t really taste like much of anything.

You travel over every inch of this member, learning the route of its veins with your tongue, and get lost in the heat of the moment. It seems like forever since you last went down on a guy and you imagined it would be quite a while before you did again unless Michael decided otherwise. Overcome with lust, you deep throat the weeping cock as far as you can as if it were the key to your survival and Duncan’s biting at his fist to keep quiet; it would all be over the second you heard the moans.

He has no other choice but to vacate your eager mouth and off the table in a bid to gather himself. Michael points first at him and then at you and mouths you wanted her, didn’t you? Duncan mouths back I do but it feels too good and I’m about to lose it. He tiptoes around you and Michael whispers a reminder in his ear that there are other ways to use your body besides oral – almost as if he was egging him on.

You weakly whimper at the fact you wanted more because the hunger for a man you’d locked away had been set free when you were blindfolded had your mouth used like it was nothing. Fingers push through your exposed folds and into the depths of your pussy. Curled movements hit the soft spots inside and sounds of pleasure escape your mouth before you can hold them back.

“Ooh little grey, you’re burning with such an intensity right now. Do you want more?” Michael asks, Duncan’s fingers still hitting you in all of the places that had been neglected for so long. The person who got you into this mess was nothing more than a five-minute fuck and you hated wasting your time but thought maybe, for this moment right now, it was worth it.

You sink into the pleasure and struggle to string together a sentence which doesn’t please either of the men watching because they want to hear your words with their very own ears. Duncan decides to remove his slick-covered fingers from inside you and his palm meets head-on with the supple skin of your ass. Michael asks you again do you want more and this time his tone that of a parent demanding a child to own up to their bad behaviour. When you finally do manage to say yes clearly and clicks his tongue and grabs at your arm, taking you away from where you are.

You know exactly where you are with the crackling of flames and the rise in temperature - part of you hoped that Michael led you here to keep you from freezing but you know you were stupid to entertain a thought like that.

Michael demands you to kneel on this but you have no clue what he’s referring to so feel around and come across the couch. With a sneaking suspicion as to what could be coming (because what really comes after a blowjob?) you manoeuvre yourself into a position where your face is resting on your forearms and your lower half is sticking up in the air. If you were going to be humiliated further in front of everyone then you figured you may as well get some enjoyment out of it and let Michael roam free.

Little do you know, it’s Duncan behind you with a cock in his hand waiting to fuck you. The truth is that the disdain for you was actually pent up sexual aggression because he was attracted to you, a Grey, and didn’t want anyone to find out. Michael had called him into his office a few weeks ago, livid after your betrayal, and propositioned him about the idea of using you for a little fun and admitted to him in confidence how he knew you wanted it. Duncan didn’t take much coercing because Michael’s words made him salivate and basically jumped at the chance; admitted his desire to fuck you senseless.

Duncan guides his cock to your pussy and slides it in with ease as if this whole situation had flicked your switch on; unaware that Michael was the reason your slit was dripping. As he moved in and out of you it became clear to both him and Michael that the way your bodies worked together spoke volumes.

“Mi-mi-mi-ahhh”

You completely let go and begin to cry out in sounds all too familiar to the ears of Michael. Duncan was oblivious but Michael smirks, feeling pretty pleased with himself. You were being fucked by someone else’s cock yet so enamoured with the thought it was him you were trying to say his name.

Duncan doesn’t care that there are multiple pairs of eyes on the two of you because as far as he’s concerned he’s getting what he wanted and that was that. He pounds away at you like waves crashing against the shore; careless, messy, and unrelenting. They kept coming and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. When he finally cannot handle any more he pulls out and unloads onto the curves of your ass, groaning through a closed mouth and clenched jaw. He puts his weakening erection back in his pants and wipes the sweat off his palms on the side of his thighs. Duncan walks past Michael, slightly breathless, and jokes how fun you were and how he’ll do it again sometime if needed.

Something hits your leg and lands on the indent of the back of your knee. You reach around and get a grasp on it – it’s a cloth. Michael sits down beside you and pulls the mask off, telling you to wipe yourself up. You do as your told and he’s smiling at you with an expression that’s almost unnerving.

“Ah, you enjoyed that. I bet you weren’t expecting it though, were you?”

He drags a few fingers along and up your face, tracing over your cheekbone followed by a push of the fallen strands of hair behind your ear. You timidly shake your head and your attention shifts from those knots in your gut to how cold his hands were against your flushed cheeks.

For the first time in a while, it seemed like the closeness has come back between the two of you when he’s caressing your face and rests your chin on top of his hand. That didn’t last long because the familiarity was broken by a smirk and drilling of unfriendly words about how right you thought you were but actually, in fact, you were very wrong. He snatches your face up one of his hands, applying pressure to your cheeks with his fingertips.

“See, there’s a thing I possess and you seem to forget it. I can feel every emotion and feeling that’s running through your body. And, those dreams? you weren’t the only one who felt them. You thought I was doing those things and you loved it, didn’t you? I could feel every wave of pleasure coursing through your veins.”

Michael turns your head, allowing you to see who committed the sin against you that brought you shameful enjoyment. You shut your eyes at the sight of him because his presence makes you feel uncomfortable knowing that now you have to face up to your disgusting attraction. Maybe you weren’t that different from all of the other girls at the Outpost.

“My oh my, I can feel your humiliation from here. You’re humiliated by the fact you enjoyed being defiled by Mr. Shepherd. You think he’s disgusting, but what, what’s this.. It was the most enjoyable experience you’ve ever had? Oh, Miss L/N, I think Mr Shepherd already knew from the sounds you made.”

When it hits as to what happened you forget for a moment where you are or about Michael’s reign, you get up and instinctively go to walk out of the room. He lets you walk until you’re almost at the door before taking a fist full of hair and pulling you back. You stumble and fall to the ground and a mix of sadness and anger rattled your ones. Anxiety kicks in and allows you to gather enough strength to push yourself up off the ground, onto your knees, and then up onto your feel.

As you look into the eyes of the man before you, you notice that those baby blues now appeared colder than ever.

“Now, why would you want to do something silly like that?” he mocks. In a split second you’re slammed into the wall behind by your throat. Michael applies pressure to the hand around your oesophagus and gives you a death stare of sorts for a brief moment.

In this moment he doesn’t see you, instead, he sees his mother standing before him as you tried to leave the room and the anger overwhelmed him. She abandoned him when he was young and needed her the most. You try to pull his arm down to stop him strangling you but it doesn’t budge. He huffs, “Why would you do this to me?”

You're turning red as he’s restricting your airflow but Michael realises he can’t kill you. He isn’t quite sure why exactly because usually he’d snap the necks of those who betrayed him without a second guess. He loosens the tightness, you gasp for breath, and it becomes apparent at this point his heart is broken when tears are glazing over his eyes but he’s trying to force them back to where they came from.

“Michael, please believe me, I never meant to hurt you.”

Both you and Michael locked as you eye the other off and you’re suddenly wondering if Michael could feel the apology you were silently screaming through your thoughts. Mead rushes over to interrupt and yells at Michael to let you go which displeases him - he storms off after shooting a look of confusion at her.

Ms. Mead takes her jacket off of you and hands it out as a gesture of kindness. “Are you okay?”

You put the jacket on to cover yourself up and gulp down the hurt. Mead can sense this and tells you not to talk but instead go and have a shower and she’ll bring you something to help.

The door to the office slams behind Mead as she bursts into the room in a fit of anger. In the moments to come Michael would realise that it was a woman against a man and not a mother and son.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, pulling some shit like that? It’s one thing for you to call her names but it’s another thing entirely for you to use something like that against her. Duncan told me exactly what you two planned and I have to say I just feel pity for you, Michael.”

He’s too full of pride to say anything other than she hurt me. Mead doesn’t enjoy the lazy excuse and Michael can’t be bothered listening to this conversation any longer. He opens his laptop and unlocks it but as he’s typing in his password she slams it down; not caring if it gets broken.

“Look, I know you have some deep rooted issues but you need to get over yourself. I hate to break it to you but this girl is only human. She wasn’t thinking when she did what she did and clearly you know what that’s like.”

Mead was referring to the ongoing indecency towards the apple of Michael’s eye, regardless of if he would admit that his rampage of fury was actually a crime of passion.

“She doesn’t need to bear the brunt of your abandonment and mommy issues, Michael. You don’t even realise how devoted that child has been to you and now here you are, destroying her soul.”

Michael regresses into the state of a teenage boy to avoid confrontation of what he’s doing and rolls his eyes at her before attempting to open the laptop. Mead slaps his hand away because she was tired of this charade.

“You didn’t spring from my womb but I let you into my home and heart and loved you like your mother should have. You hurt my feelings constantly but I don’t try and ruin you, do I? I want you to really listen to me when I say I love you but I’m beginning to really not like you. Stop treating this girl like garbage or else you’re going to break my own heart and push one of the other people who truly cares for you away too.”

She figures she’s said almost everything she can and heads over to the door to leave. Mead looks back and can see by the look in his eyes he’s pondering something; knowing full well what it is. He’s thinking about how deep down he knows she’s right.

“She’s one of the only ones in the Outpost who isn’t trying to suck up to you because they’re desperate. She cares about you.”

Once Michael is alone with his thoughts he dives into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulls out a flask of alcohol. His heart had frozen over at the betrayal from you, but, as he’d come to realise that was the least of his problems as the ice started to melt.

Taglist: @avesatanormalpeoplescareme @sensitivethot @sacredlangdon @taintedaffairs @langdonsdemon @violett124 @queencocoakimmie @1-800-bitchcraft // Tagging because they specifically they like the series: @icylangdon @langdonsrapture @cocosfern @creamy-pasta-boi (let me know if there’s anything you want to be tagged for!)

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romanticatheart-posts · 6 years

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King Sized Revelations - 10

Pairing: Liam x MC (Catherine) OC Constantine x Regina Introducing: Jeremy (A former beau of Catherine’s) Rating: NSFW (by requesting to be tagged, you acknowledge that you are at least 18+) Disclaimer: Pixelberry owns all characters, except for the ones I created for the story.

Tags: @umccall71 @3pawandme @indiacater @katurrade @lodberg @heatherfilliez @eadanga @missevabean @furiousherringoperatortoad @flowerpowell @cheeseedreams47 @tornbetween2loves @smalltalk88 @hopefulmoonobject @stopforamoment @blznbaby @ao719 @cocomaxley @perfectprofessorherokid @femmeshep @sarwin85 @wannabemc2 @gardeningourmet @krsnlove @mrsdrakewalkerblog @annekebbphotography

Master List --

While waiting for Liam you undress and slip on your robe, climb into bed and grab a book on the bedside table. After reading for a while, the door opens suddenly, and Liam enters. His expression is unreadable. “Liam? What’s wrong?” He walks over and sits beside you, taking your hand and stares intently into your eyes. “Regina told me what happened this afternoon. Is there something you forgot to mention?”

You look at him confused, trying to think of what he’s talking about. Nothing major had happened while you and Regina were organizing for the upcoming Apple Festival, so what did she tell him exactly?

“I don’t think so.” He can see that you are baffled so he tries to calmly explain. “Regina mentioned that a friend of yours called this afternoon and it’s my understanding we’ll be having a guest in a few days.”

That afternoon-- Your phone began to ring while you and Regina were sorting through the decorations, but before you could find it, the call ended. Apparently, you’d laid it down and it was inadvertently buried underneath the scattered debris. Within seconds it beeped indicating you had a voice mail, so after punching a few numbers, you listened.

“Hey Cat, this is Jeremy. I got your message and I’m guessing you’re busy, so I’ll try back later.”

After realizing who had left the message, you immediately press the redial button and before the second ring, he answers.

J: “Cat?” C: “Hey Jeremy!” J: “How the hell are ya? It’s been a long time.” C: “Yeah it has.” J: “Wow! It’s good to hear from you.” C: “How have you been?” J: “Oh, you know me, same old same old… kicking ass and taking names, but what about you?” C: “Same as you, but with a little more hutzpah…” J: “Fearless as ever, huh?” C: “Yeah, I guess you could say that... Hey, I won’t keep you, but I did have a reason for calling. I hope it’s not asking too much, but I need a favor.” J: “I guess I do still owe you for keeping me out of trouble over all those unpaid parking tickets… So, what’s up?” C: “Well… I need your architectural advice.” J: “So… ready to draft that restaurant slash general store you always talked about?” C: “Heh. No, I think someone else beat me to it, but I do have another project I’m having some trouble with. Have you got a minute?”

Back to the present -- “Oh yeah… I’m sorry, it must have slipped my mind. You seem a bit edgy. Is everything okay?” Liam ignores your question and responds with one of his own. “Who is this friend anyway?”

You are a little bothered by his tone, but figure this does warrant an explanation. “You remember me talking about Jeremy, and since he’s an architectural enginee--” Liam cuts you off mid-sentence. “Wait. THE Jeremy?” “Yes. I wanted his opinion about that problem with the structure of the school and I thought he might have some insight.” As Liam tries to hide his growing anxiety, he lifts your hand to his lips. “My queen, we have perfectly qualified architects in Cordonia, already working on the issue I might add.”

“I know, but they haven’t been able to figure it out yet and I’m impatient.” There is something odd in his demeanor, but you just can’t put your finger on yet. “While I understand your desire to have this school in full operation sooner rather than later, I feel our best course of action would be to allow the experts more time to collaborate on the issue.”

You protest. “More time? Why should those kids have to wait until your so-called ‘experts’ stop their pissing contest and get down to the business of finding a solution?!” Liam pays no mind to your upheaval because at the moment, he has his own agenda. Whatever that might be. “They are simply trying to work through the different angles and find the best possible result. Jeremy on the other hand, what’s in it for him? I have to wonder why he accepted your invitation on such short notice. Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?” You think to yourself, ‘You seem a little odd to me at the moment.’

“No. Not in the least. And I didn’t invite him, he offered.”

“He offered? Well that’s even more suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” Liam nods his agreement. You take a deep breath trying to steady your nerves and then calmly explain. “He’s taking vacation next week and hadn’t made specific plans, so he thought it would be the perfect excuse to visit Europe. He wants to see the blueprints because it would be unethical to make an educated guess about a stability problem over the phone, especially since it involves the safety of children. And what was I supposed to do, tell him no?”

Without flinching, Liam responds. “Yes. That would have been a perfectly acceptable response in my opinion.” By now you are more than a little annoyed with this line of questioning and his delivery of them. “Liam, what’s gotten into you? Why are you being so difficult about this?”

Liam coolly adjusts himself and doesn’t make eye contact, but it’s clear to you that he is upset. “Liam why does this bother you?” He finally looks up and after a few seconds he sighs woefully. “Catherine, since Jeremy is a former lover… It raises questions as to what his motives are for coming here.”

“Such as?” “Well… why would he be willing to fly halfway across the continent, for no compensation I might add, just to share his architectural proficiency? Is he expecting something in return for this selfless act? Does he even know of your current marital status?”

And there it is! How did you not see it before? “Why King Liam, I do believe you’re jealous.” You can’t help but puff out a faint laugh when you realize the reason behind Liam’s behavior, and needless to say he is less than pleased by your lack of sensitivity to the situation. “I’m glad this is so amusing to you Catherine. I didn’t realize my concern would translate so humorously.” Seeing the hurt on his face, tugs at your heart and you reach for his hand, looking at him lovingly.

“I’m sorry Liam, I should have talked to you about this first. And, I don’t think your concerns are funny at all. I think it’s sweet.” He looks at you a little less annoyed as you begin to explain. And it doesn’t hurt that running a finger along his jawline causes him to shiver slightly. “It’s just… I’ve never seen you react that way before and… it was kind of adorable when I understood why.” Liam relaxes somewhat as you continue. “I love you. With all my heart. And I would never allow anyone to come between us.” After absorbing your words, a smile begins to form on his lips. With his arms wrapped around you, he brings you flush against him and kisses you tenderly.

Realizing how ridiculous he must have sounded before, he smiles sheepishly. “I suppose I was being somewhat unreasonable about the whole thing, but… when I heard he was coming here… well, I didn’t know what to think.” “Liam...” He kisses you soundly and when he pulls back, he is wearing a loving smile. “Although, it would ease my mind if I knew a bit more about him… about the breakup, I mean.”

You think for a minute and remember that your split from Jeremy happened just before you met Liam. Knowing it would only create more unnecessary questions and emotional trauma, you decide not to mention that part.

“Well, as in most breakups we just drifted apart. He was busy with an important project and what time I wasn’t at the bar, I was volunteering at the children’s home.” Liam’s expression turns more serious. “Did you love him?” The answer is written on your face before you even speak it and it doesn’t escape Liam’s notice. “I thought I did, but…”

You spend the next half hour highlighting the reasons why your relationship with Jeremy had failed. Liam is very attentive and is never judging. “In the beginning, it was both new and exciting, but as time passed it was obvious that he wasn’t ready for a commitment…”

The final blow had been when you discovered the ‘project’ he was working on wasn’t entirely about architectural design. He was cheating. Which came as no real surprise, but that was ultimately the reason the relationship ended. “Liam, I have no lingering feelings for Jeremy, if that’s what you were thinking. And I can guarantee he’s not coming here to win me back,” “I never thought it was you Catherine, but how can you be so sure of his intentions?” “Well for one, he’s engaged, and… his fiancé will be joining him on this trip.” Liam’s relief is evident from the brilliant smile that flashes across his face and then his expression becomes more thoughtful. “Catherine, I hope you know that I would never be unfaithful to you.”

You think back to the time when Liam was engaged to Madeleine and what he’d said about having a relationship outside of marriage and how it was acceptable behavior for the royal family, as long as both parties agreed. You hadn’t questioned it then, but suddenly you needed an answer. “You know, we never really discussed that arrangement you had with Madeleine. I mean, weren’t you willing to keep me as your mistress if you’d married her?” Liam sighs. “That is a valid question and yes, it’s true. However, I was only willing because it was you. I suppose it was selfish of me, but at the time that was the only way I knew to keep you in my life. It was never about just anyone Catherine…”

“So you’ve never thought about having a lover on the side?” He looks at you, shocked that you would even think such a thing. “That’s not who I am at all. Our marriage is more important than that… you are what’s important to me.” Liam takes your hand and gently kisses the back of it and then looks deep into your eyes. “Catherine, I would never bring cause for you to doubt my love for you… you are all I’ll ever need. Nothing in this world could distract me from that.” Smiling, you kiss him as he lowers you back onto the pillow and you moan slightly when he leans into you. “Mmm…” With your hands running through his hair, you finally part and shoot him a playful grin. “In case you were wondering, I’d never agree to it anyway my king.”

Liam smiles and you catch a twinkle in his eyes as he raises up, leaning on his elbow. His gaze falls toward the opening of your robe and with his free hand he lightly traces along the seam just inside it which causes you to quiver. When his eyes meet yours again he speaks in a low tone of voice. “I’ve never been one to share either... especially when it comes to you my queen.” Before you can say a word, his lips crash into yours with a passion so intense, that you feel the flow of electric corpuscles running through your veins and merging cohesive at your core. He breaks from your lips and trails kisses down your neck as his hand pulls your robe open and halfway down your arm, exposing one of your breasts. You gasp as he glides his tongue over your hard nipple and commands the curve of it in his hand. “Ohh…!”

Within a few minutes, he’s managed to completely remove your robe and throws it to the side. He pauses, drinking in the sight of you as you lay bare before him. “I’m not sure how it’s possible, but you are even more beautiful each time I see you like this.” You sit up and kiss him while unbuttoning his shirt, feeling his muscled arms as you slide it down and then off. Liam draws in a sharp breath as you run both hands across his chest and down his abs, enjoying the feel of him. “Mmm, yeah. I’d say you’ve definitely developed more tone since we were married.” He smiles mischievously. “It must be those rigorous workout sessions…” He chuckles. “…multiple times each day.”

You smile as your hand slips inside his trousers, between his skin and his underwear, earning a deep groan from Liam. “Oh, Catherine… You have no idea what that does to me.” Not waiting for a response, he leans in kissing you slow and deep. His breathing wavers as you gently stroke up and down his already hardened length. After a few moments, you slowly withdraw your hand and then reach for his belt. He gently grabs your hand. “Allow me.” Liam removes the remainder of his clothes where they end up in a pile on the floor next to the other discarded items.

You gently guide him where he willingly lays back with his head against the pillows and then pulls you on top of him. He catches you in a lingering kiss as his hands wander to the small of your back, pressing you even closer. You remain that way for several minutes until Liam suddenly rolls you on your back and braces himself above you with a smile on his face. You playfully smirk. “What’s this my king?” Before answering, Liam scans your body with his eyes and his hands. “A little taste of you is never enough my queen.” He almost growls as his hand reaches between your legs and finds your wet folds. “God, you’re so wet.”

You moan as he swirls his fingers in your juices and traces slowly around your sensitive bud. “It’s your fault…” He kisses you, then follows a line down your neck, your chest until he reaches your thigh where he slowly kisses his way inward and groans as he slips his tongue into your moist pink flesh. “Mmmm...”

You moan, enraptured by his every touch. “Oh Liam…” While his mouth is positioned firmly over your entrance, his tongue plays copiously in and out of you. He takes his time, extracting every ounce of sweet nectar. You writhe and moan in the process, but he doesn’t relent… if anything, it just arouses him more. He clutches your hips securely so as not to betray his intentions, which only heightens your own desire. You close your eyes and let the waves of energy carry you to the height of ecstasy.

When his fingers move slowly and deliberately over your swollen nub, you cry out as your body finally gives in to the overwhelming pleasure. “Liam… Liam… Ohhh…!” Liam moans when he feels you squeeze his tongue and relishes the taste of sweet victory as he grasps tighter trying to pull you even closer. “Mmmm…” He stays in that position for several minutes until the spasms stop and then slowly moves up to capture your lips in a passionate kiss.

He aligns his body with yours and slowly slides his throbbing length inside you. You both inhale sharply at the moment of impact as Liam grips the headboard for leverage. He goes slow at first, keeping a steady pace until you’ve caught your breath. Soon you’re moving in perfect sync as an intense heat begins to build inside you again. With his arms resting at your head, he looks deep into your eyes and then kisses you tenderly. “I love you Catherine.” You run your hand through his hair while the other caresses his back, feeling his muscles stretch and expand as he pushes against you. “I love you too Liam.”

You wrap your legs around Liam’s waist allowing him to go deeper. As he does, his breathing becomes labored and he groans while you move flawlessly together. “Oh Catherine…” You close your eyes as a surge of pleasure crests within you. “Mmmm…” Within minutes, you are riding the waves of ecstasy… for the second time. “Ohh! Liam!” When Liam feels you tighten around him, he follows soon after. “Oh God…! Yes!”

Once the trembling subsides, Liam withdraws and collapses beside you. You snuggle against him with your head on his chest as he idly plays with your hair. You both sigh in unison as you each catch your breath. “Catherine, you are perfect for me in every way.” “I swear, I was just thinking the same thing about you.” You both laugh contentedly.

After a few blissful moments of silence, Liam yawns and then turns to you. “We should probably clean up and then get some sleep.” You nod in agreement. “It has been an exhausting day.”

Once you both return to bed, you nestle in his arms and smile. “I forgot to ask, but how was the afternoon with your father?” Without going into too much detail, Liam admits that with everything out in the open he finally found a peace over the whole incident and their relationship was on the mend.

You lean over and kiss him. “Good night Liam.” He nudges you closer. “Good night Catherine.” He reaches to turn off the light and then settles in. With the only sounds being his steady breathing and the rhythm of his heartbeat, you drift into a deep and peaceful sleep.

Next chapter: It’s your last day at Applewood before heading back to the palace. After spending a lazy day in the orchard with Liam, he has some important news to share with you.

#kingliam #playchoices #choicescommunity #jealousliam #theroyalromance #the royal romance

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ellcrys · 5 years

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“We are encouraged to strategize and scheme to find places, times, and roles where we can be effectively put to work,” Harris, the Kids These Days author, writes. “Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machines.”

Burnout isn’t a place to visit and come back from; it’s our permanent residence.

This is a super long article but so worth the read.

The part that definitely resonated with me the most was the part on self-optimization. I can see this shit reflected in my daily habits and mindset. If I’m not being ‘productive,’ I’ve not had a good day. Every single part of my schedule is dictated by crossing things off my to-do list and what I’ve been able to accomplish. I’ve known this to be unhealthy since day 1 but couldn’t/can’t reverse the mindset. And now I get why.

Some great quotes below.

Topics that hit home for me in order of appearance:

On Branding:

“Branding” is a fitting word for this work[1], as it underlines what the millennial self becomes: a product. And as in childhood, the work of optimizing that brand blurs whatever boundaries remained between work and play. There is no “off the clock” when at all hours you could be documenting your on-brand experiences or tweeting your on-brand observations. The rise of smartphones makes these behaviors frictionless and thus more pervasive, more standardized. In the early days of Facebook, you had to take pictures with your digital camera, upload them to your computer, and post them in albums. Now, your phone is a sophisticated camera, always ready to document every component of your life — in easily manipulated photos, in short video bursts, in constant updates to Instagram Stories — and to facilitate the labor of performing the self for public consumption.

On Self-Optimization[2]:

Even the trends millennials have popularized — like athleisure — speak to our self-optimization. Yoga pants might look sloppy to your mom, but they’re efficient: You can transition seamlessly from an exercise class to a Skype meeting to child pickup. We use Fresh Direct and Amazon because the time they save allows us to do more work.

This is why the fundamental criticism of millennials — that we’re lazy and entitled — is so frustrating: We hustle so hard that we’ve figured out how to avoid wasting time eating meals and are called entitled for asking for fair compensation and benefits like working remotely (so we can live in affordable cities), adequate health care, or 401(k)s (so we can theoretically stop working at some point before the day we die). We’re called whiny for talking frankly about just how much we do work, or how exhausted we are by it. But because overworking for less money isn’t always visible — because job hunting now means trawling LinkedIn, because “overtime” now means replying to emails in bed — the extent of our labor is often ignored, or degraded.

The media that surrounds us — both social and mainstream, from Marie Kondo’s new Netflix show to the lifestyle influencer economy — tells us that our personal spaces should be optimized just as much as one’s self and career. The end result isn’t just fatigue, but enveloping burnout that follows us to home and back. The most common prescription is “self-care.” Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But much of self-care isn’t care at all: It’s an $11 billion industry whose end goal isn’t to alleviate the burnout cycle, but to provide further means of self-optimization. At least in its contemporary, commodified iteration, self-care isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting.

On “The Double Shift”:

Millennial burnout often works differently among women, and particularly straight women with families. Part of this has to do with what’s known as “the second shift” — the idea that women who’ve moved into the workplace do the labor of a job and then come home and perform the labor of a housewife[3].

The labor that causes burnout isn’t just putting away the dishes or folding the laundry — tasks that can be readily distributed among the rest of the family. It’s more to do with what French cartoonist Emma calls “the mental load,” or the scenario in which one person in a family — often a woman — takes on a role akin to “household management project leader.” The manager doesn’t just complete chores; they keep the entire household’s schedule in their minds. They remember to get toilet paper because it’ll run out in four days. They’re ultimately responsible for the health of the family, the upkeep of the home and their own bodies, maintaining a sex life, cultivating an emotional bond with their children, overseeing aging parents’ care, making sure bills are paid and neighbors are greeted and someone’s home for a service call and holiday cards get in the mail and vacations are planned six months in advance and airline miles aren’t expiring and the dog’s getting exercised.

On “Adulting”:

“The modern Millennial, for the most part, views adulthood as a series of actions, as opposed to a state of being,” an article in Elite Daily explains. “Adulting therefore becomes a verb.” “To adult” is to complete your to-do list — but everything goes on the list, and the list never ends.

That’s one of the most ineffable and frustrating expressions of burnout: It takes things that should be enjoyable and flattens them into a list of tasks, intermingled with other obligations that should either be easily or dutifully completed. The end result is that everything, from wedding celebrations to registering to vote, becomes tinged with resentment and anxiety and avoidance. Maybe my inability to get the knives sharpened is less about being lazy and more about being too good, for too long, at being a millennial.

On Errand Paralysis:

There are a few ways to look at this original problem of errand paralysis. Many of the tasks millennials find paralyzing are ones that are impossible to optimize for efficiency, either because they remain stubbornly analog (the post office) or because companies have optimized themselves, and their labor, so as to make the experience as arduous as possible for the user (anything to do with insurance, or bills, or filing a complaint). Sometimes, the inefficiencies are part of the point: The harder it is to submit a request for a reimbursement, the less likely you are to do it. The same goes for returns.

Other tasks become difficult because of too many options, and what’s come to be known as “decision fatigue.” I’ve moved around so much because of my career path, and always loathed the process of finding family practitioners and dentists and dermatologists. Finding a doctor — and not just any doctor, but one who will take your insurance, who is accepting new patients — might seem like an easy task in the age of Zocdoc, but the array of options can be paralyzing without the recommendations of friends and family, which are in short supply when you move to a brand-new town.

Other tasks are, well, boring. I’ve done them too many times. The payoff from completing them is too small. Boredom with the monotony of labor is usually associated with physical and/or assembly line jobs, but it’s widespread among “knowledge workers.” As Caroline Beaton, who has written extensively about millennials and labor, points out, the rise of the “knowledge sector” has simply “changed the medium of monotony from heavy machinery to digital technology. … We habituate to the modern workforce’s high intensity but predictable tasks. Because the stimuli don’t change, we cease to be stimulated. The consequence is two-fold. First, like a kind of Chinese water torture, each identical thing becomes increasingly painful. In defense, we become decreasingly engaged.” My refusal to respond to a kind Facebook DM is thus symptomatic of the sheer number of calls for my attention online: calls to read an article, calls to promote my own work, calls to engage wittily or defend myself from trolls or like a relative’s picture of their baby.

To be clear, none of these explanations are, to my mind, exonerating. They don’t seem like great or rational reasons to avoid doing things I know, in the abstract, I want or need to do. But dumb, illogical decisions are a symptom of burnout. We engage in self-destructive behaviors or take refuge in avoidance as a way to get off the treadmill of our to-do list. Which helps explain one of the complaints about millennials’ work habits: They show up late, they miss shifts, they ghost on jobs. Some people who behave this way may, indeed, just not know how to put their heads down and work. But far more likely is that they’re bad at work because of just how much work they do — especially when it’s performed against a backdrop of financial precariousness.

Footnotes:

[1] For many millennials, a social media presence — on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter — has also become an integral part of obtaining and maintaining a job. The “purest” example is the social media influencer, whose entire income source is performing and mediating the self online. But social media is also the means through which many “knowledge workers” — that is, workers who handle, process, or make meaning of information — market and brand themselves. Journalists use Twitter to learn about other stories, but they also use it to develop a personal brand and following that can be leveraged; people use LinkedIn not just for résumés and networking, but to post articles that attest to their personality (their brand!) as a manager or entrepreneur. Millennials aren’t the only ones who do this, but we’re the ones who perfected and thus set the standards for those who do.

[2] One of the ways to think through the mechanics of millennial burnout is by looking closely at the various objects and industries our generation has supposedly “killed.” We’ve “killed” diamonds because we’re getting married later (or not at all), and if or when we do, it’s rare for one partner to have the financial stability to set aside the traditional two months’ salary for a diamond engagement ring. We’re killing antiques, opting instead for “fast furniture” — not because we hate our grandparents’ old items, but because we’re chasing stable employment across the country, and lugging old furniture and fragile china costs money that we don’t have. We’ve exchanged sit-down casual dining (Applebee’s, TGI Fridays) for fast casual (Chipotle et al.) because if we’re gonna pay for something, it should either be an experience worth waiting in line for (Cronuts! World-famous BBQ! Momofuku!) or efficient as hell.

[3] (A recent study found that mothers in the workplace spend just as much time taking care of their children as stay-at-home mothers did in 1975). One might think that when women work, the domestic labor decreases, or splits between both partners. But sociologist Judy Wajcman found that in heterosexual couples, that simply wasn’t the case: Less domestic labor takes place overall, but that labor still largely falls on the woman.

#this! article! is! everything!#thoughts and more quotes under the cut #i read about 3/4 of this article on my phone and then was like #i need to pull out my laptop so i can copy paste quotes and take notes #a long but very good read #good reads

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chriscoleman · 3 years

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St. Martin with the Donald's

June 27 - July 6, 2021

Saint Martin is part of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean Sea. It comprises 2 separate countries, divided between its northern French side, called Saint-Martin, and its southern Dutch side, Sint Maarten. Julia and I met up with the Donald’s for a week of vacation.

David Sr, Melissa, and their 15 year old daughter Allison arrived on the island a week before us. David Jr, Liz and their 2 year old son Jack were also there. 8 of us total.

Sunday June 27th we left Seattle on a red-eye flight to JFK. Prior to departure we were required to have a negative COVID test, which was reviewed/approved by Sint Maarten Electronic Health Authorization System (EHAS). Once the logistical paperwork was out of the way - it was smooth sailing into SXM.

David Sr. picked us up at 2pm island time. He chauffeured us to Hertz rental car and then onto Zee Best for baguette sandwiches. We finally met up with the full family at our rented villa - Mariposa. The rest of the crew had switched from a smaller villa near Orient Bay to Mariposa in the Les Terres Basses neighborhood for our 8 nights together.

Pool time allowed us all to catch up before dinner. Chef Cee at Big Cee’s restaurant served up a laid back 1st dinner on the island in Porto Cupecoy. Our waitress was energetic and friendly, leading us to the restaurant as we entered the plaza. My tuna steak and Julia’s grouper fillet were exceptional, as were the fried plantain appetizers. Never too full for ice cream - we got scoops on the way back to the car.

Tuesday the 29th we started with the closest beach to the villa - Plum Bay. Julia and Allison walked around to the point while I swam and relaxed in the shade. David Sr. and Melissa joined after a while and we navigated the rocky entry for chill ocean time. Although the girls were gone for a while - no sunburns in our first afternoon of full Caribbean sun.

Lunch at Maho beach, Sunset Grill, provided us with one of the most popular tourist activities - watching the planes land at SXM airport. Big commercial jets landing on a runway only feet from the beach. The grilled chicken, burgers, and frozen drinks were all delicious. Then a quick grocery shop so David/Melissa could cook us shrimp dinner at the villa (plus brownies!).

Wednesday we got up early to hit Marigot for pastries. Chez Fernand Bakery served up AMAZING baked goods of all kinds. Choosing was the hardest part. I settled on a croque monsieur and Julia with a pistachio roll of some kind, both huge. Also an almond & chocolate pastry from Sarafinas by the marina - which turned out to be my favorite of the entire trip. Then a quick walk through the street market for souvenirs (shirts, hats, spices, and coconut coasters).

Friars Bay was empty when we arrived at 10am. We picked 6 beach chairs + umbrellas in front of Friars Bay Beach Cafe to be home base for the day. They were $5 each, as long as we agreed to have lunch at the restaurant.

Happy Bay was around the corner, so after some relaxing at Friars we took a short trail to the next cove. It was obvious right away why this was one of David Sr.’s favorite beaches. Near deserted, silky soft sand, and no commercialization of chairs/bars/massages/etc. We only spent an hour but on future trips I’m sure it will be more (especially if they have live music).

Dinner was at a fancy Sicilian / Italian restaurant Sale & Pepe. We got to pick out the whole snapper we ordered - which was cooked to perfection. Then Julia ordered a mysterious frozen dessert - almond semifreddo.

A beer at The Hole in the Wall finished off our night. Ronny ‘Santana’ and Tanya Michelle sang hit songs while everyone at the bar cheered along. We danced on the patio since Allison wasn’t old enough even for Dutch bars.

Thursday July 1st was another early morning. Up and out with a 30 minute drive north to Orient Bay. David Sr. has visited the island many times, staying in Orient the majority of the time. Unfortunately the winds had blown in massive amounts of seaweed - sargassum. It was in the water and on the beach. Too much to make a day at Orient enjoyable - so we bailed for a bakery breakfast at Good Morning Cafe.

Grand Case was the backup option - which turned out fantastic. Rainbow Cafe hooked us up with a cabana for the day and buckets of Presidente beers. We got loose and bobbed in the ocean for hours.

Vacations with the Donald family involve a mix of restaurants and home cooking. Typically each family will cook 1 dinner, with a light breakfast at the house and lunches on the beach. David and Liz chose to skip their home cooked assignment - instead buying us all dinner at Gutside restaurant on Thursday night. An unexpected treat where our family was the only one dining there all night. Ribs, snapper, shrimp, and conc were tasty, plus an in-shell crab appetizer. Jack even ate a rib or 2 while making friends with the staff.

Vacations with the Donald family also involve card games. Crummy Rummy is a classic. Melissa dominated us all, with me and Allison bringing up the rear. Not my finest hour - but hanging with the family is what it’s all about. We got to chat about Allison’s upcoming driving test and her plans to try out for the high school swim team.

Friday the 2nd David cooked us a breakfast hash before rolling with Julia, Allison, Jack, and me to Plum Bay. We swam, trying to keep our feet off the rocks unsuccessfully. A pair of high school graduates jumped from the nearby rocks in celebration in their full cap-and-gown. Jack napped on David’s shoulder as we chatted and the girls walked the beach. David Sr. and Melissa showed up as we were leaving to have lunch at the villa.

Baie Rouge was our afternoon spot. First attempt at accessing the beach was stopped by a gate guard. Luckily he pointed us in the right direction and we were taking photos at the colorful doorway entrance in no time. Another near-deserted beach, very natural without any restaurants. We swam around the point to see ‘Davids Hole’. A bit precarious but totally worth the effort once we were there.

Ocean 82 is a classy restaurant in Grand Case. A favorite of David and Melissa, as they like to celebrate anniversaries here. We started with a delicious tuna tartare appetizer, fresh salads, and ice tea. Then we picked out a 4 pound lobster to share - as a special treat. Unfortunately the lobster was prepared with cajun seasoning and flambé, when thermador was the order. The good news is that the waiter took the responsibility and discounted our meal heavily for compensation. Rough ending to an otherwise fantastic restaurant experience.

The night didn’t get better after that… Julia’s ear pain grew to the point where an emergency room visit was necessary. Water had gotten into her ear a day or 2 before and became infected. Antibiotic prescription was acquired relatively quickly at a Dutch ER.

Saturday July 3rd we went to the pharmacy first thing to fill the antibiotic prescription. Then onto Mullet Bay for beach time. Yes - Julia is a trooper and wanted to go to the beach after being diagnosed with an ear infection less than 12 hours prior. We got chairs in front of Da Water Hole restaurant. The virgin frozen Miami Vice drinks hit the spot. Then we jumped in the waves all afternoon.

David Sr. hired a professional photographer for family photos, Alex Julien. We met up on Plum Bay beach and sweated our butts off during a sunset shoot. We used the Le Château Des Palmiers villa owned by Donald Trump as the backdrop. The palm trees on his property really were stunning. Results turned out beautiful!

Julia and I cooked fajitas for our group dinner. Quick and easy. A decadent chocolate cake from Chez Fernand for dessert. Early to bed as Julia continued to recover.

July 4th began with a parade at Club O on Orient Beach. Odd to see an American holiday celebrated on a French beach, but apparently it’s a tradition as many expats called this beach home. There was still some sargassum, but a command decision was made to roll with it. We set up shop at Orange Fever bar for the day with front row chairs + umbrellas. The pizza was fantastic with service directly to our chairs. I even walked the entire beach with Julia and Allison on a mission to document each bar, in order, of Orient Bay. We also tried to hit Club O for happy hour, missing it by 30 minutes. 4:30pm is pretty much the closing hour for beach bars, so we left to acquire dinner. The Grand Case LOLO, Cynthia’s Talk of the Town, was perfect BBQ chicken for takeout.

Monday July 5th was our last full day on St. Martin. We started with a dip in a nearly deserted Baie Rouge then got cleaned up for our COVID test at 11:45am. The USA currently requires a negative test before allowing anyone into the country. The test at a medical facility in Simpson Bay was extremely convenient. In-and-out in 5 minutes flat for $70. Then onto Mullet Bay after picking up Cuben sandwiches at Zee Best.

Mullet Bay was calm this time. The beaches really were different each time we visited. Any time 1 was windy/wavy we were able to find one that wasn’t. The sand may be out 1 day and back in another. It was interesting to see the terrain change over such short periods. Hurricane Elsa was passing the island a few hundred miles west, increasing the ocean’s power. Luckily we weren’t affected by Elsa otherwise. Rosie’s Rib Shack had amazing ribs according to David/Liz and the banana frozen daiquiri was a treat for Julia and me.

Heavy rain as we drove to the grocery store - Carrefour. We bought burgers and sides for a quick final dinner. A fancy restaurant reservation at Mario’s was the original plan, but the family was tired of 3 hour meals so we offered to cook instead. Not a meal to write home about (fries were soggy and buns were airy), but it was easy and gave us time to chill together. David Sr. spun up a curated playlist of songs for each family member. I got the Superman theme and Julia the Leia Star Wars song, along with many other thoughtful songs as we ate rock solid ice cream.

Go-Home day was July 6th. Pack, eat, clean the villa, and load the vehicles by 10:30am. Then gas the vehicles, pickup sandwiches, return the vehicles, and check into the airport for our 2pm flight. Lines were long - but we managed. Emigration / customs at Miami airport went smoothly and we boarded for Seattle at 8pm. Midnight local time we were at home petting the increasingly vocal black cat.

Lucky buggers David Sr. and Allison get to stay in SXM for another 2 weeks. Julia and I return to Seattle to a Sounders game, ultimate league, a siding project, and work. Life is beginning to feel normal again after a big COVID break. Happy to have seen the Donald’s and allow David to share St. Martin with us. I know we’ll be back again.

For now - I need to eat a salad and run a mile - I’m fatter than ever!

Next up… Iceland!!

#SXM #vacation #beach

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stonecoldhedwig · 3 years

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Et puis, épuisée // And then, exhausted

This article was posted in the summer of 2019 by Pauline Harmange, but it’s something that has resonated with me ever since I read it in August 2020. I find myself returning to it, thinking about it.

There’s one phrase that hums around in my head a lot from it: J’aurais pu faire sans toutes les micro-agressions d’un quotidien qui n’a pas de place pour les doutes. J’aurais pu apprendre dans la douceur. // I could have done without all the micro-aggressions of a daily life that has no room for doubt. I could have learned gently.

I’ve translated it into English below (thank you, trusty French dictionary), trying to keep the tone of the original piece in mind. Numbered footnotes are the author’s, asterixes are mine.

Tw: abortion; pregnancy; sexism

For several weeks, I’ve been trying to write this article, and I can’t find the right angle. I want, or even need, to talk about the questions I’ve been posing to myself for months now about femininity, about what it is to be a woman at the moment, but how do I talk about all this without falling into an incredible pathos? I feel so out-of-touch with Insta accounts and the warrior-witch-superwoman trend, I don’t know how to articulate these intense, almost negative emotions that come over me as soon as I start to think about it.

Because I’m going to be very honest: right now, I’m exhausted by being a woman.

Before I became a feminist, I was a girl, and that was enough*; it didn’t cause me any headaches. Once I became a feminist, I had to question a lot of things: why I denigrated girls more feminine than me, why I forced myself to wax when I didn’t like it, why I let men comment on my appearance and didn’t stand up for myself, or why I was scared when I was out on the street by myself. It was tiring, but I didn’t feel myself being overwhelmed by the weight of a burden too heavy for me. The truth was that I needed to take breaks. To create sacred rituals that celebrated my period, or to read books with hypernormative gender representations, so as to forget for a few seconds the numbers that made me feel sick (which numbers? Simply put, all of them, because they are all horrible).

And then, I was betrayed by my own flesh. I got pregnant when I had an IUD. (1) I experienced a heartbreak that it is illusory to want to put into words: the heartbreak of ending a pregnancy that should never have occurred, even though I’ve wanted a child for a long time. I nurtured, and still nurture, a black anger towards this life (this society, too) for forcing me to make a choice I don’t regret. How complicated life is.

And ever since that moment, I have had the feeling that life is becoming even more complicated. I feel like I’m suffering. Suffering because my body has struggled to recover from its tiny 5 weeks of pregnancy. Suffering because of my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which ruins my life, as well as suffering from my contraception because no matter where I look, there’s no ideal solution. I am suffering the after-effects of an anorexic adolescence, strewn with bad people, which has crippled the way I look at myself. I suffer that mental load, always so strong, when my IUD is removed and I have to calculate the risk, and deal with the terror of getting pregnant again, the reminders on my phone not to forget my pill, waiting for the next period. I suffer the mood swings, the water retention, the irritability, I suffer that sticky feeling every month before I bleed, of not being able to do anything, especially of not being able to create.

I am even more affected than before by what I already felt: that I am a woman, socialised as such, and that if I want to exist in this world, I must constantly do violence** to myself. In a utopian version of life, I wouldn't need to force myself to speak louder, I wouldn't need to fake it till I make it, I wouldn't have to take on more masculine ways and a self-confidence that I don't have. Because in a utopian version of life, doubts, fragility, sadness and uncertainty would be respected, and I would not be encouraged to be someone other than myself. My body betrays me there again (unless it’s just too faithful this time): whenever I’m confronted with a situation where I don’t want to have to pretend, I sweat a bitter sweat that confirms to me I’m going against what I am. I was going to say “against my nature”, but that’s not it; against my culture, perhaps, or against what I was educated to be. (2)

I'm exhausted by being a feminist, but then again, what can I do about it? I cannot take a vacation from my downtrodden condition, nor from my empathy for the horrible things happening all over the world. I am exhausted though, and angry too, for being a permanent spokesperson for my cause but speaking in an echo chamber. Writing those feminist articles that only women will read. Reading those feminist books and talking about them with other women. I don't listen to any feminist podcasts, by the way, because I'm fed up with content that doesn't teach me much (3) and I'm sickened to see so few men taking their place (silent and humble) in the discussion. What good are all these podcasts and all these articles and all these books, if it's women who buy them, consume them and then regurgitate them to the men around them? Who compensates for the time spent, the energy wasted in teaching men too lazy, too selfish and too vain to educate themselves? (4)

Maybe that's why I don't identify at all with movements of self-gratitude or of celebrating femininity. Being a woman and realising it has made me harder on myself and on others (for example, I really don't have any patience with men anymore, and I’m not ready to apologise). Certainly, I'm stronger, too. I know better how to say no, I know my body better, I have much better tools to manage conflicts than the ones I started with, I let myself do less and I pretend better. But I am convinced that I could have acquired all this knowledge without the violence inherent in a society that does not really want us, we who are not able-bodied, old and wealthy cis-straight white men. I could have done without all the micro-aggressions of a daily life that has no room for doubt. I could have learned gently.

There are, of course, unexpected joys that being a woman brings me. When I read an excellent book written by a brilliant woman, I am overcome with the emotion of being inspired, and I also allow myself (which I never would have done before) to include myself in the circle of these creative women, I allow myself to feel close to them. When I think of the women around me, incredible in their strength, their refusal to compromise, their talents, I am filled with incredible gratitude, because I finally know how to recognise that the work, the luck and the happiness of my sisters do not diminish the value of mine.

But I’ve never had the courage to be a role model, an “inspiring” woman. To exist, women must either fit into boxes (do we really exist then?), or get out of them in a total, radical and claimed way. So much work, once again. I was thinking about this issue this summer as I considered my body hair: to shave? not to shave? I realised that as soon as I went out with visible hairy legs, I tended to dress better, do my hair, and even put on makeup, thus carrying the image of an assumed feminist, whose hair is a message, a standard. Actually, I'm just a big slacker with hyperpilosity, but without my drastic disguise, I was afraid I would simply portray an image of a neglected woman.

It makes no sense, it's not even a liberation anymore. I am discouraged.

I know that it's my fault too, it’s up to me to take a step back and let go, and that my anger and exhaustion are symptoms to deal with, not necessarily emotions from which I will draw positive things in order to move forward. (5) Still, I am where I am today. At war. Feeling like I’m not very far from losing, by the way.

I'm going to take a vacation (from the internet, from life, and from myself) and put things back in an order that makes sense. Who knows, maybe if I put my head deep enough in the sand, when I bring it out in September, the patriarchy will have been abolished? We can but dream.

________________________

(1) Yes, it does happen, but no, it’s not common. Whenever I mention it, women around me who have an IUD look at me in horror and I feel compelled to reassure them, as if I was the only one in the world to whom this could happen. This is not the case, and I do not have the energy to reassure, I’m afraid.

(2) You might call it “stepping out of your comfort zone”, but listen, after a while staying in your comfort zone doesn’t strike me as a delusion-like desire***.

(3) I'm not saying that to brag; it's just that after almost 10 years of feminism and a passion for reading, I'm relatively familiar with a lot of the topics that are now more mainstream.

(4) You don’t need to write to tell me “not all men”. Thank you in advance!

(5) We could talk forever about the idea of “positive”, about how it is often a way of silencing our anger and sweeping away injustices, and that it is a new, fashionable way of policing women, but hey... we need another article for that, and this is not it.

________________________

*the term used in the original article is basta; the Italian for stop. I've treated it as an equivalent of ça suffit, or “that’s enough”.

**I was a bit iffy on whether this should be do violence to or violate so French speakers who are less rusty than me, please forgive me xoxo

***It honestly took me about twenty four reads to work out what this sentence meant, but I did learn the verb “to strike”, so there we are.

#tw abortion #tw pregnancy #tw sexism #feminism #french to english

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kalon-confessions-blog · 6 years

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Hello my dears,

[asap if you will tree]

phew okay so please please bare with me on this, it's going to be long and rambling and im sure it will jump back and forth a lot so you've had a fair amount of warning :p

im going to start off with the long "essay" posts from yesterday, just to kinda get my foot hold on things c: and guys please understand that in writing this i am really not trying to come off as rude or attackful or anything, and i apologize if i do or if i come off overly "unprofessional" it seems a lot of the time when i try to be super professional i come off as condescending or cold and when i try to be a bit more relaxed im just being silly or unprofessional.

"artists not doing anything for months and then getting to come back whenever they want, taking up a slot that could’ve been an active artist filled with energy and vigor to create instead."

I've seen this mentioned a lot ,, the whole slot thing. the thing is guys, that we don't have a set number of "slots" on staff ,, really we base what we think we need on how efficiently the staff we currently have is functioning. I know recently [the last month or so] things have been a little slow but you have to remember that it was the end of the year, many staff members [and heck people in general] we're busy with finals/vacations/family/the holidays and a whole slew of other things. Bringing in more staff during the holiday season because there a bit of a dip in activity doesn't really make a whole bunch of sense in my opinion because its just the natural ebb and flow of how things go, it happens every year.

"nursery slots being weeks and even months overdue while dozens of personal work and things for other people get put out"

I'll be the first to admit ,, this is actually a bit of a problem ,, it doesn't happen with every artists but I do understand that sometimes owed work gets forgotten, especially when the artist keeps taking on more and more in an attempt to keep up with demand that the community has created. we are aware of this, and myself and Karmel have been discussing it for quite awhile and throwing ideas back and forth for a way to manage it ,, at the time I think we have a pretty solid solution and it after a bit more discussing and working out the kinks it should be able to be implemented fairly soon and shouldn't take too long to see the effects c: i do apologize to anyone that has been on the brunt end of having to wait. one thing you can always do though is message the artist directly to see whats up, and if you don't get an answer then you can always come to myself or Karmel [or if you're noticing something that you aren't a part of you can even submit it to us anonymously via ask or tumblr!!

"hardly anyone but a handful of artists having hm customs open almost constantly, and i’m sure we all know why that is, other than the few artists who genuinely can’t open slots right now."

HM customs have always been a bit of tricky situation since it was switched so that only offical team members could do them and I do apologize that it was never fully explored how to best impliment this system. in the beginning i dont think it was set up to handle a community the size of which we have and hasn't ever really been revised to help fix it. with that being said though we do have a fancy new thread you may want to check out !! its still in the works as all the artists find their spots but there are already several artists who have started using it if you would like to keep track. its called the <a href="http://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=3701780">Kalon Artist Alley</a>!! essentially every artist on the Kalon team has a post here and they will be able to detail what work they are open for, lay out what projects they currently have, and list any examples or prices [as they may apply] for their work! with this it should make it a lot more easy to find an artist that is open to HM customs and browse just who you might want to partner with!

"staff not responding even to help questions until it’s irrelevant or the other person completely forgot they even asked. not enough nursery artists who are actually active to compensate for the rise in kalon members looking for batches."

I do apologize for any questions that have went unanswered! Its really unfortunate that we've gotten this reputation, but I do swear to you that it is never intentional! Sometimes I so wish I could just show you guys a day in the life of the staff chat, it is honestly off the hook 24/7 with people chatting about all kinds of different business from questions to designs/growths/rule breaking and a whole slew of everything in between! And often times our inboxes are just the same, I know mine is! Things fall through the cracks sometimes in a community so big and id be willing to bet that more often than not we actually have discussed the question at hand and it may just be that the conversation rolled over to something new that distracted the original staff member handling it from responding to you and then never picked it back up. that is something that we will have to start working a lot harder on, but like i said, it is absolutely never intentional that we are forgetting responses. if you dont hear back usually within 72 hours it is absolutely okay for you to resend the message or to send it to a new staff member !!

"staff don’t have an obligation to be active since if they aren’t, they don’t get the activity rewards, but again, like i said in a previous point, artist activity is a serious issue that isn’t taken seriously enough, or at all. if people aren’t active but get on to post maybe one kalon every few months, that’s an issue and needs to be talked to with the person. if they can’t get on enough to post kalons more than every few months, maybe they should take a break and someone who can be more active can be brought in."

like you mentioned, i kinda touched on this one in the first response, however I would also like to point something else out. while i dont consider Kalons to be a business and myself and Karmel dont run them as such, even if you are looking at this from a real world employment there are actually a lot of different levels of activity that are acceptable!! normally you have full time ,, part time ,, and PRN [as needed] employees all working for the same company. my artists are just like that in a lot of respects and its completely unfair to say they dont deserve compensation for what they do when they are able to do it. they aren't taking up a slot from anyone else and they are still providing amazing designs and input into the community ,, heck a lot of the time when an artist is unable to make designs they are still active in the staff chat and in other areas that may not be their primary duty as an artist.

" staff apparently being too big to manage properly"

[cutting this one a little short]

you are absolutely right !! we have said this a lot and that's because we really do mean it !! and when we talk about staff being too big to manage we dont actually mean that all those names are just too much, we mean that the active people that we are currently managing is quite a lot !! looking back on our activity documentation for the last 6 months there has consistently been an average of 30+ active artists working !! and that not even including our mods or myself and Karmel ,, for two people who have adult lives off the internet that is a lot to manage and we are trying our absolute best while still not spreading ourselves too thin because then the issues that you have already expressed just become more exaggerated when we have to provide them with even less attention than we already do. and while we think that the staff we have right now is very strong and putting out a lot of work already [did you know that last month alone over 200 designs were put into the community just from the nursery and main adopts ?? and over the last 6 months over 2,000 designs were?] we have opened the nursery search again and may soon be opening the main artists search as well to alleviate some of the demand that you guys are throwing out there c:

I'm not going to quote any of the last point as its quite long but to a degree I would like to agree, just in all honesty. I haven't been able to be a real part of the actually community for quite some time since becoming a co-owner and in that time from the position i am in I have seen a lot of stuff. I know that it may seem like no body cares but really I think the issue is just in a community this large in general it can be hard to find a foot hold. now im not making any excuses for those that go out of their way to ignore everyone or only talk to their friend group, but I do also know a lot of people that try their hardest to talk to new people or as many people as they can. i wish there were some easy clear cut way that I could address this and have it fixed in just a couple of days but the sad truth is that you are right, this is more than just what we as staff can tackle by ourselves and really takes the effort of the entire community but we are trying to promote it !! our events have shifted from just token grabs to be more development and cooperation based and often offer or require the interaction with community members that you may not know !! while I dont have any wonderful news for how we plan to fix it please know that we see the rift and we do want to fix it ,, if you or anything really has suggestions or just wants to talk about the experiences that made their introduction to the community better/worse i would honestly really urge you to come talk to me or any staff member. i promise you for all the anxiety it can cause to message one of us we are really just a group of massive dweebs and our side chat would definately prove that. we don't ever aim to make anyone uncomfortable or to be rude when responding to you guys and i apologize if it has ever come off that way when dealing with one of us with Kalon related things. one good thing about such a big staff is that if you have an issue with one of us you can always find someone else <3

Im sure i've missed some stuff and i know i had origianlly planned to address more than just the essay posts but its getting late for me and I have a really big day tomorrow ,, so if ive missed someone or you guys have anything else you would like to have addressed I would actually really urge you to send it on over to the Kalon tumblr. you can find it at kalon-adopts.tumblr.com [where this was submitted from] !! i vagued it earlier but yeah !! its brand spanking new and still under a lot of construction as far as coding and the like goes but it is functional !! as much as i despise the premise of both of the confessions blog i have realized that Tumblr has become quite an ingrained part of the CS and Kalon community and I would love to continue engage with you guys over it. I know its not the same as the confessions blog but hopefully you will feel more at ease contacting us anonmously there or just sharing your views and opinions in general c: we plan to eventually link the blog on our CS pages once its compeltely set up so please keep in mind nothing explicit will ever be allowed to be submitted there.

ack so yeah here's my really long and drawn out submission that i promised earlier c: i hope you guys read a bit of it and maybe understand a bit more now. i know sometimes it can seem like the staff is being really quiet and maybe not doing anything at all but i can assure you that we are always abuzz and honestly we are just about everywhere listening to just about everything and in some way or another almost all complaints are brought up and discussed. we may not post or announce every little move we are making but i cross my heart and pinky promise that we are working tirelessly to try and improve this community for you guys and for ourselves ,, we love this species and we know that without each and every one of you there wouldn't be anything for us to love so we want to make it as friendly and functioning as we can. all i ask is that you give us a little understanding and patients and i promise you are going to see the positive outcome <3

[also please forgive any mistake its late for me and im tired and not the best at typing anyways lol]

-Wicced!

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allenmendezsr · 4 years

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trainwreckedconductor · 4 years

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((Took a peek at the FB announcement of Magia Record being cancelled, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who was upset and angered about this. This was the one gatcha game that I thoroughly enjoyed and actually spent IRL money on. I know I’m not the only one who spent money on it, either... but I think the biggest burn of them all is the fact that there’s no way to transfer your account to a different localization of the game. So you know what that means? The 60+ magical girls whose ranks I maxed out, the 25 doppels I spent countless hours unlocking, the money I spent to get some of the rare, limited-time girls... all gone. It’s gone, and there’s no way I’m getting it back. They’re not going to even refund people for the money they poured into the game...

It’s just... so disappointing. Especially after everything happening with the pandemic, this game was the one thing helping me to keep my sanity. With my drive to create cosplays shot this year, as well as a lot of my vacations being cancelled, this was a fun way to fill up the time I’d normally be devoting to sewing or spending out and about. Yes, it did have its problems, but for the most part I was able to overlook a lot of those. The events were rushed, but I had always assumed that this was because they were trying to catch up with the Japanese version so they both could be on the same release schedule. They gave you hardly any warning before a new magical girl gatcha was announced (usually they only gave you about 24 hours of warning), which gave FTP players no way of being able to save their magia stones to prep for these girls’ releases (and the event release schedule didn’t follow the Japanese release schedule, so they couldn’t even use that as a gauge of who was to come next. I got burned on this when I spent all my FTP magia stones on Ashley Taylor only for Homura’s limited time fate weave to get released immediately following). It cost a butt-ton of money to buy the magia stones to get said magical girls ($70 for 30 rolls at the gacha, which meant if there was a limited time girl, you could be spending $300 just to get the girl and $1000 or more to get her completely maxed out).

But even despite those flaws, I had so much fun playing this game. The combat system was unlike anything I’d seen before, and it really made battle and strategy more unique than I’ve ever seen in a turn-based RPG. The story was really cool and I enjoyed this idea that there was a possibility for these magical girls to escape their fate, and was really invested in how the characters were going to deal with the upcoming challenges. I loved how unique each character felt, even the minor or supporting characters or the ones that were basically holiday re-skins of different characters (like the Swimsuit Homura or New Years Madoka). I enjoyed the side stories, and loved how it rewarded long-time players by giving clever nods to past events throughout the game.

I think the game would have done better had they done a few things differently. Put in-game advertising to help with revenue. Yes, it’s annoying, but by this day and age most people know it’s necessary to make money and can deal with it. Make the magia stones cheaper in the shop so more people would be willing to spend their money on them. Make the English app game available to all regions, not just the US and Canada (while idealistically, one app for the whole world would be best, I understand that there has to be a translation team that has to translate everything from Japanese). Let people transfer their info from the NA version to the JP version so that way all their time and hard work doesn’t feel like a waste! Because now, if I want to play the game, I have to start all the way back at the beginning. All my 4-star girls, all of my story progress, all of the items I’d grinded for... just gone.

Sorry to make a big fuss over this, I’m just... really butthurt over this. I’ve never dedicated myself to an app game like this one before. 300+ consecutive days of logging in and collecting bonuses... all for it to be snatched away without warning and with no explanation. They released a NA-only magical girl a few months ago that people spent so much of their time and money to get (They went around to SEVERAL big-name conventions advertising her). They just released an ultra-special character last month that was limited time that, I know from reading the FB comments that people spent over $500 to get... and now it feels worthless. As much as I’d like to keep playing just to get whatever I could unlocked before the servers shut down, it just... doesn’t feel like there’s a point anymore. Why waste my time when I know it’s not going to last me? Why pour those extra hours into getting the last girls unlocked only to have them taken away from me right as I unlock them?

Like, it feels like an even bigger FU that they’re keeping the paid shop open for two weeks past this announcement. They’re giving you a gatcha where you can select what girl is most likely to appear. But why? What’s the point if there won’t be enough time to actually get to use her or unlock all of her abilities? Just to get that last little bit of money out of us? It feels shallow, and almost like a bit of a betrayal. Like, “haha! We just took all your money from you! Suck it, nerds!” Like, does your fanbase mean that little to you? Especially since, like I said before, they’re not even offering a simple explanation for why the servers are suddenly being shut down? Like, we can assume it’s because of costs, but like??? At least say something along the lines of “we haven’t made enough revenue to keep the servers going” and give some kind of better compensation to those who have been playing for a year straight. Maybe give them a chance to choose a couple of rare 4-star girls for free and let them have fun with those characters while the servers are still up. Or hand out enough in-game currency so that players can unlock the doppels of the girls they have without having to grind to be able to afford it. I have eight girls whose doppels I had yet to unlock, but even if I maxed out their levels, I’d maybe only be able to get two or three of their doppels unlocked, leaving the others to waste away...

I’m sorry, I’ll get off my soap box now. I’m just... so incredibly butthurt over this...))

#Behind the Scenes ( OOC )#long post #vent #negative cw #((GOD I'M SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW SHDKJFHS))

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hilivingbnb · 4 years

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28 Crucial airbnb house rules - the Ultimate Guide

Airbnb house rules are your first line of defense to guard against parties, unauthorized guests and many other problems airbnb issues today. Use these samples rules to protect yourself and your property from headache.

We will explain in depth what the crucial house rules are and why we chose them. If you're looking for the version we give to guest: 28 House rules in PDF here. We may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story.

What are Airbnb House rules?

Airbnb house rules are a set of rules that you can post on your listing and share with your guests to set expectations, what to do and what not to do. Ex: limit smoking, limit visitors. Guests must agree to your house rules before they book. Once the reservation is confirmed, your airbnb house rules are also sent to guests. Your airbnb house rules need to complied with airbnb terms and conditions as well as local laws and regulations. If guests break one of the house rules you set, you can choose to cancel the reservation. This is different from a House Manual. House manual is where you can explain to guests where things are in your home. To add or edit House Rules after you’ve listed your space: Go to Your listings on airbnb.comClick Manage listing on the listing you want to editClick Booking settings at the top of the pageNext to House rules, click EditSelect your expectations and rules for guests, then click Save

28 Sample airbnb house rules

We have put together 28 house rules any airbnb host should have. You can use all 28 of them or a combination of them. Below we will explain why we choose these house rules. 1. AC / FANS / LIGHTS / HOT WATER/ COOKTOP Utilities can cost you an arm and a leg if you don't manage these well. You might think that if the unit is not occupied then you will have low utility bills. Guests can leave your AC on high and blasting all day in a hot summer month while they are not even in the unit or when they check out already but your cleaner won't come later in the evening or the next day. Ask guests to turn these off when not in use. You can mention there will be additional fee if someone has to enter the unit and turn those off. It's common to have hot water tank and cooktop to have a switch that you turn on or off. Leaving the hot water tank (the types you find in Asia) will keep it running all day and waste a lot of electricity. If you're the US, you don't need to mention this. Tips: consider installing devices that would save you money like a Nest thermostat if you've central air. Not only that it will save you money in electricity bill, you can also remote control it. If you don't have central air, Cuby Smart might be your solution. It took me 3 months searching for solutions before I came by this one. Now I can control split ACs in our rental remotely. 2. PARKING To avoid confusion and dispute, ask guest to park in designated parking spot(s) only (if your unit has one) and abide by all street signs when utilizing street parking. The last thing you want is for guest to block neighbor mailbox or cause upset in your neighborhood.

Tips: beside giving clear direction to guests where to park, investing in some parking signs on the property. 3. PETS We are pet-lovers ourselves but for a vacation rental, pets can add additional cleaning time and additional wear and tears. We generally don't allow pets on these rentals.

We had guests brought pets into our units without telling us at all. Cleaner had to roll so much dog hairs on the blankets and deep clean the whole place, instead of the usually turn-over cleaning. The urine smell on our carpet was the worst. We had to use OdoBan for 2 weeks straight to get rid of the smell. You want to state clearly that No pets are allowed on premises. Failure to adhere to this policy will result in additional cleaning fees to be assessed, as well as eviction from property. No refunds will be given. Tips: You can choose to allow pet and charge a higher rate and set a higher cleaning fee. You might get more bookings at a higher rate. Many travelers prefer to bring their pets with them, especially on road trip to stay close to their furry friends and also to save on pet-sitting. amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "false"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "hilivingbnb-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Must have if you allow pets"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "25efd741bac4990875d60a3905882e72"; amzn_assoc_asins = "B07CMM6JVF,B07VZ324J5,B079K9B4XV,B06XXQNRYC"; We use the carpet roller a lot even for units that are not allowed pets. We found that if we roll the hair off before washing, we don't have to worry about hair afterward. 4. NO PARTIES Parties are the biggest headache for hosts. Did I tell you we had a unit damage for over $25K due to a party last December (2019)? The question for hosts is not if it will happen to you, but WHEN it will happen. Absolutely no parties allowed! Make it very clear in your house rules that no parties is allowed. Tips: ask for ID for verification purpose. Once we started asking for ID for our unit in downtown Dallas, we don't have party yet so far. Guests are also more inclined to treat the property better. Verbage: Please provide a picture ID after booking, the name on the ID needs to match the name on the reservation for verification. 5. VISITORS

airbnb 1-4 visitors during the day that are not staying overnight might be ok. But if you charge additional guest fees after a certain guest count, you will want to make sure no unauthorized guests are allowed to stay overnight. We also note in our house rules that inaccurate guest count will result in additional fees and might lead to eviction. Tips: Install security cameras or video doorbell help tremendously to protect yourself against unwanted guests. You can set notifications to be sent to your phone. We once stopped a party from happening by calling the guests as we started seeing cars and people start coming in from the driveway. Blink camera: I like this the most as they are affordable and best of all, I don't have to pay for monthly subscription of the videos.Ring doorbell: If you live in an apartment complex that you're not allowed by the condo board to put up cameras on the outside wall, you can use a ring doorbell on your door. There are 2 versions, one you can wire into an existing electronic doorbell, one you can just use batteries that charge it from time to time. 6. SMOKING Our units are 100% non-smoking. We find it's easier to clean and keeping it healthy for all guests (yes, including smokers). But we do strike to establish a spot outside the unit they can smoke. To deter smoking indoor, we put signs in the living room and in the bedrooms to remind guests not to smoke. 7. QUIET HOURS "This is a residential area- quiet hours are from 9pm-8am" is that we usually post in the units and in our house rules. You can choose what time works best for your neighborhood. Sometime our neighbors would let us know it's too noisy at night. Having this house rule in place, all we need to do is to remind our dear guests about the quiet hours. 8. CANDLES We used to have candle holders are decoration but due to fire hazard, we don't allow candles anymore. But we do provide flashlights just in case there is an power outage. 9. FURNITURES No moving of furniture! Believe it or not, guests have moved furnitures around to make an arrangement works for them; it's fine as long as they move it back. We have a heavy baby crib in the master bedroom. By the time the guest checked out, the crib was in the other bedroom. With just one cleaner came for that day, it put us way behind schedule to get someone else to came since we needed two people to move the crib back to its original location. Since we had this rule in place, we were able to send the guest photo the the misplaced crib and charged for the additional time needed to turn the unit over. 10. REMOTES & OTHER ITEMS Verbage: No moving of remotes and other items. When you checkout, be sure to leave items where you originally found them. Missing remote controls and other items will be billed to you. We even label the location of the remote with a label maker. This will save your cleaner a lot of time not have to search around and put things back where they should be. Thus, this tip alone will save you money in cleaning fee over time. Even with the best cleaners, when they go through their days cleaning different houses with different setups, all the details might not be perfect all the time. The last thing you want is the next guest coming in and can't find the remote. As you scale up, you might have a reservation coordinator or work with a hosting company that manage guest communication for you. If you have a clear system in place with items being labeled and are in their designated spots, your reservation coordinator can tell guest exactly where the remote is without having to double check with the last cleaner or you. 11. CHECK-OUT On Airbnb, you can specify the checkout time in the listing (under Availability). It doesn't hurt to emphasize this again in the house rules. Delay in checking out can delay your cleaning screw's schedule, you don't want that to happen. And when it does happen, you want to be in a position that you get compensated for it. 12. DAMAGE We ask guests to report any breakages or damages to us as soon as they happen. Unreported damages will be charged to the guest. Tips: Post a list of inventory of all the items in your rentals on the fridge. When things go missing, you have a list ready on hand to proceed to next step to file a airbnb damage claim or vrbo damage claim. Your guests can be another set of eyes for you and let you know if anything that needs to be replaced. Ideally the cleaners should be the person to spot it but sometime they miss it. 13. TRASH If you've multiple single family houses that are scattered across town, it's not cost effective to have someone driving around and bringing your trash bins and recycle bins out and in all week long. In these cases, we ask the guests to bring the bins out and in. The longer the stay, the more the guests will be willing to do it. At the beginning, we thought we might get a lot of complaints. Surprisingly, there have been no complaints at all so far. If you think this is too much to ask your guests, of course, you can manage this yourself or pay extra for your cleaner to take care of this. Verbage: Guests are responsible for removing all waste from the unit and placing it in the appropriate bins outside (this includes removing all open food items from the refrigerator and cabinets, trash, recycle). Additional cleaning fees will be assessed to guests if trash is left in the unit after checkout. Please take the bins out to the curb to be serviced as posted inside your unit. 14. DISHES Washing pile and pile of dishes would turn your turnover cleaning into a forever cleaning. If the unit has a dishwasher, we ask guests to rinse the dirty dishes and run the washer before they checkout. For other units, we ask dishes to be washed before checking out. You can specify how much you want to charge (depending on how much it costs you) to handle dirty dishes in your airbnb house rules. For us, we just wrap it up into the additional cleaning fee rate. 15. SUPPLIES There is no amount or type of supplies can delight all guests. At the minimum, we provide the basic supplies airbnb requires like salt and pepper, etc. We then go above and beyond with larger quantity of basic stuff like trash bags, paper towels and plenty of toilet paper and even a welcome gift. Setting expectation is key. Our rule of thumb is "under promise, over deliver." In our room rental rules and regulations, we listed that supplies will be a small start up even though we do stock more. Once the startup supply runs out, guests are on their own to purchase additional supplies if needed. This way, when guests want more of a certain item, instead of asking us (where we would have to pay the cleaner an additional shopping fee to buy and deliver the item) or complaining and giving us a bad review, they understand they need to get their own supplies. 16. LOCK In our sample house rules for guests, we ask them to always lock all doors/windows when leaving the premise. This also means locking the lockbox right after they use it. Leaving the lockbox open will expose the property to risk of theft (with lockbox, the combination code can be seen when the lockbox is open). 17. PEST CONTROL Even with diligent pest control, properties will tend to have a modicum of bugs, ants and geckos. We listed in our room rental rules and regulations that contacting with a pest inside or outside of property is not a reason for terminating the rental agreement, nor is it a reason for a refund of monies. The property interiors and exteriors are treated regularly for pests. Guests are encouraged to report any pest problems so follow up professional treatment can be scheduled as soon as possible. We do schedule quarterly pest control with Terminix. Prevention is the best course of action. 18. SHOES In Hawaii or in asia, where it's customary to remove shoes before entering the house, we leave a "Please remove your shoes" sign to ask guests to do so and provide a shoes rack. It keeps the unit cleaner and better especially if you have carpet. We also try this for our units in Dallas; however, we provide Finleoo Lightweight slippers in addition to shoes rack. Most guests complied with no question or concern. We love these rubber slipper since they last long and when they are dirty, we can rinse them outside and then wash them in the dishwasher, they come out nice and clean. 19. DRAIN Have ocean front property or rental in a beachtown? Sand will be your concern. Beautiful beaches are great for your guests but not so much for your drain. We always state in our airbnb house rules pdf to remove sand before they enter the house. If there is an outside water hose, we point it out to renters. Also mention clearly in room rental rules and regulations that there will be charge if they clog your drain. To combat hair clog, we use these 2.7 inch sink strainer drainers and they work wonder. 20. LAUNDRY

If multiple units share the same laundry area, you will want to have some clear guideline like laundry hours, what to do when someone leave their clothes inside the machine for an extended time, etc. At the very least, provide instructions on how to use the machines. If you have international guests, this will help them tremendously. 21. KEY Common issues with keys and lockbox: Keys can be lost.Guests forget to put the key back into the lockbox when they check out (usually they left the key inside the unit). Cleaner can't come in because there is no key in the lockbox.Guests don't close the lockbox after taking out the key; therefore, they expose the lockbox code to any passerby. For these reasons, for units that have keys/lockbox, we make sure to include in our airbnb house rules: Place the key back into the lockbox as soon as they open the door, and leave it there when they don't need the key.Always close and lock the lockbox itself. Charge a fee for key replacement and a fee to deliver a new key if they get locked out.We keep another set of spare key (in another lockbox) and hide it somewhere. Tips: The best way is to get an electronic lock, especially one that you can control remotely and change the code remotely. The best setup that we love so far is Schlage with Samsung SmartThings hub. The smart app we use to control the lock remotely is Lock User Management by RBoy SmartThings Apps. We only paid $39 (one time fee only, but per hub, so expect each rental to use 1 hub) to control it remotely (lock, unlock, change user code, etc.). If you want to have it automatically sends a unicode for each stay directly to the guest, you can do that too for a $99 lifetime subscription. 22. MAIL/PACKAGE

Handling guest's packages can be another logistic operation by itself. Packages can arrive early or late, outside the timeframe of the guest stay. Your cleaner or someone will need to locate the package, secure it and mail it to the guests (if the package arrives after the guest has left). Squatters can establish their tenancy by receiving their mails at your rental among other tactics. For this legal concern, if you can avoid allowing mailing of packages, that's better. A solution for this is not to let guests mail their packages to your rental but let them know about USPS General Delivery, where they can mail the package to their name and address it to a local USPS location that offer general delivery service. They can pick up the package at the USPS store. 23. MAINTENANCE Letting guests know you or your maintenance crew might need to enter the unit for the purpose of general maintenance, bug spray, etc. in your airbnb house rules so you will not startle your guests when you do need to come in. When guests review their stay, airbnb asks the a question on whether or not there were unexpect people there. Review question: There were unexpected people on site Answer choices: Yes, No, Not sure Airbnb questions to guests when they review their stay

Managing expectation is everything here. 24. VIOLATION OF HOUSE RULES

Here you want to mention what the consequences of violating your house rules will be. In our sample house rules for guests, we clarify that violation of airbnb house rules may result in a fine and/or eviction. Per airbnb, if guests violate your house rules, you can cancel the reservation, and usually that means you should be able to keep the money for the reservation. 25. LINENS / TOWELS

AIrbnb: https://airbnb.com/h/seascapecottage Little items can add up in cost quickly. If you lose 1-2 towels, it doesn't seem like a lot. But if you have 20 units, 40 units, constantly replacing towels can affect your profitability. "If linens or towels are rented from Owner or supplied with Rental Property, Guest is responsible for lost or damaged items at the cost of two (2) times the published standard rental price for such damaged or lost linens or towels." This is what we stated in our airbnb house rules template download. 26. REFUND Setting clear refund policy will help you and your guests deal with unpleasant situation when something goes wrong. In our sample house rules for guests: No refunds will be provided due to inoperable appliances, pools, hot tubs, elevators, etc. The Owner will make every reasonable effort to assure that such appliances will be and remain in good working order. No refunds will be given due to power blackouts, water shortage, flooding, snow, construction at adjacent properties, or mandatory evacuations of the area by county officials due to hurricanes or other potentially dangerous situations arising from acts of god or nature. 27. COMPLIMENT ITEMS

Providing beach gears or recreational toys for guests is fun. Getting sued when something wrong happens is not. Make sure you put language into your airbnb house rules and ask guests to sign a waiver. Consult with your favorite lawyer for specific language for your state. 28. PORTABLE AC (if applicable to your unit) Last but not least, portable AC usually requires draining the inside reservoir from time to time. If you have a long stay, guests might have to empty it. Anticipate something like this and put them into your airbnb house rules, will help you when you need to ask your guests to do something.

Conclusion

When setting your airbnb house rules, it's all about setting the right expectations and preventing surpries when something goes wrong. Definitely having a refund policy in place and no parties rules is a must. These two alone will save you a ton of money and headache. Which of these rules will you implement right away? These airbnb house rules worn you out? Why Not Listing Your Properties with HI LIVING Hospitality and let us do all the work for you? Check out our service: https://hilivingbnb.com/services/ Disclaimer: These house rules are for sample only. We make no guarantee about the validity and enforcement ability of these samples. Please consult with your real estate expert or lawyer. Read the full article

#airbnbhouserules #houserules #roomrentalrulesandregulations

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asryakino · 7 years

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Trigger Warning - Emaciated dog, rescued from the streets, and now in a loving, happy, home.

On Saturday, August 12th, 2017 I was driving to my secondary job in Springfield Tn. As I always do, I took highway 848 in order to get there. This highway is a back way, filled with little more than farmland, and a single small town called Keysburg.

As I passed through Keysburg, and came out the other side, this great black and brown beast came running directly at my truck. I thought he was a deer, but since he was running straight for the hood of my truck I stopped, only to realize it was this majestic fucker. After I stopped, he jumped in the back of my truck just as if he belonged there, and when I opened the back seat, he loaded up as if he were used to doing so. He licked my mom’s cheek one time, the lay down and breathed in the AC for the rest of the ride to my dad’s house.

Upon which I took him in, asked my dad for his dog’s old leash and collar and introduced him to the newest family member. Named, as is the tradition in my family, for where he was found.

Meet Keysburg. AKA Keys.

These pictures are mostly taken on Sunday, the 13th, when we took him into town after securing him to the bed of the truck carefully. To see if he was chipped. Seeing as he’s pretty clearly a pure blood Dobie. This poor fella is currently weighing in at 64 of the 150+ pounds he’s supposed to weigh, he is not chipped, and there is no report of a lost Doberman for four counties, and five cities. We know. We checked. He has no chip, had no collar (he has a nice shiny new one that we bought him now) and no identifying tattoos or markings. He’s neutered, and has had his tail docked, apparently badly, as the scar tissue has built up and he’s been chewing on the nub.

Someone abandoned this handsome devil of a Warlock Dobie, likely because of his size (which is not unimpressive, let me tell you)

Keys is severely emaciated and was very dehydrated, but appears to be otherwise healthy. He has fleas, but that’s to be expected, and every vet assistant who saw him when we took him to have him scanned for a chip was impressed that he was even standing up considering his severe malnutrition.

I don’t expect his owners to come forward. I don’t expect a single person to claim him within the thirty days it takes for the “stray hold” to end. And so, I expect that we are going to be keeping Keys, and I plan on making the rest of his long and healthy life as loving, comfortable, and fruitful as possible.

We’ve come into a unique situation, as my mother is actually in need of a service dog, and Keys is eager to please and be trained. He’s partially trained, understanding simple commands, and has an entirely different personality the moment a harness is put on his back (we tested this theory today, Tuesday the 15th) and we are now making plans to not only keep Keysburg, but to train him, have him certified, and have him become a full on Service dog to help my mom, who has a lot of trouble bending over, is confined to a wheelchair, and has trouble holding onto things. She has multiple crushed vertebra in her back from an accident when I was young, a congenital heart problem which makes strenuous activity extremely difficult, and most recently fell during an ice storm and shattered her arm in multiple places, which has required three surgeries, will require more, and due to an odd form of genetic dwarfism has caused the implants to not fit correctly. She’s severely depressed, suicidal, and bipolar.

Why tell you, tumblr all of this?

Because my mother is currently unemployed, living on a disability cheque that just barely covers the bills, while I cover what she can’t, and pay for groceries and other finances that come up. I take care of her nearly 24/7, I try to keep a modicum of a social life, which is difficult, and my vacations are usually me going to an anime convention in a small attempt to forward my own dreams of being a featured panelist and artist/having my own small business.

My dreams are largely on hold already, largely due to financial straits. And I’m asking for help. I’m asking for help to take care of Keys and my mother. He’s going to require a lot of vet care, especially in these first few critical weeks as I try to get his weight back up to where it’s supposed to be. I’m going to have to get his shots updated, register him, and I’m going to have to construct a fence, proper housing, and a comfortable dog run for him.

Because I would like for Keys to become a working dog, he will also require training, certification, and regular checkups. And while I may be able to squeeze all of this out of the small budget I have already, it will put tremendous pressure on our already stretched thin purses.

I do my best not to ask for money, especially from strangers. I really do try to cover my own costs of life. But this is a large, sudden, financial stretch that I have taken on. (He will never be a burden in our family) and with, or without, help we will not abandon Keysburg. If I have to give up on my business, get a third job, and go without. I will.

But if anyone out there can offer a little help, I would be grateful. I am not a very good artist. But for every donation, I will happily compensate you with whatever art I can offer that you would like; physical, digital, written, spoken, sung, or spoken.

I will give updates on Keysburg each week, regardless, because I know a lot of people would like to see how he’s doing and how he’s adapting. Right now he’s still skinny, but he likes being on a harness and becomes an ideal ‘working dog’ when he’s got a harness on. Which is phenomenally wonderful if we can get him trained as a fully certified Service Dog. He’s a warm, loving, and wonderful boy. And I can’t wait for him to be healthy again so he can begin living his life to the fullest.

#emaciated dog #dog #please help

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