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#ive just been Incredibly busy due to some real life changes that are out of my control

eldritchmochi · 9 months

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okay so, to have a place for consolidated information for the next little bit, since i'm sure folks have QUESTIONS given my incredibly aggressive gallows humour

MOCHI, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?? (guts edition)

if you got here via a link, follow this link instead for the latest update here's updates 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0 !

tldr ive been getting a number of recurrent small bowel obstructions located in my duodenum (first part of the small intestine, connecting the stomach to the rest of the bowel) due to external pressure on the duodenum around the 3rd to 4th (of 4) section. what's causing the pressure?? no clue actually ive done a bazillion scans and none of them have been quite clear enough for a real confident dx so i get to have surgery about it at some point in the near future

current theory is the pressure is from some sort of non-cancerous tumor mass and the plan is to cut me open nice and big, look about, and remove both this mass and the affected section of the duodenum (.5 of an organ) at a minimum, but may involve fully bipassing the duodenum when my guts get hooked back up to my stomach which could (would???) also require removing my gallbladder (1 and 2 organs respectively) (i'm having so much yanked out of my abdomen this summer jfc)

atm i'm still waiting for scheduling to give me a call to set things up. surgeon's estimate was 4-5 weeks from now (8/17 when he called). from that point i'll spend a week-ish in the hospital to make sure all hoses are firmly affixed, and then i'll have a month at a minimum before i'm reasonably healed and can go back to normal life

i have good insurance and the luck (????) of being incredibly ill at the best of times, so i've already hit my out of pocket max and thus this WHOLE THING even back dating to my first er visit end of june will cost a whopping 189$ that i've already paid. i also should qualify for my states paid medical leave and my wife will get a hefty chunk of change for living expenses via student loans. however, both those things won't hit until late september at the earliest

long term, im not expecting much of a financial burden, but short term we could use a hand with groceries and similar while we wait for my backpay and my wife's student loans

for venmo and paypal: i am @/sumomomochi for both and either is fine, though pp is labeled as a business account so pls mark f&f if you can

i also have this amazon wishlist ( https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/N1NSTH3JPCX2?ref_=wl_share ) that is like 90% meal replacement shakes and bulk shelf stable snacks, but also has a couple of other useful things like bathing wipes since i am unlikely to be able to shower well post surgery, pj pants for when it cools down (i went up a size with t because my ass and thighs got just so beefy and thus have one pair that fits rn lmao), and cat food for the penni (gotta keep my nurse well paid)

uuuh what else

like i said, i'm incredibly ill at the best of times so i am a champ at weathering this sort of stuff its nbd. "i'm sorry"s are not helpful, i'd much rather have people ask direct specific questions, either about my health status or things i'm doing to keep busy (ie "any new and fun things causing tummy issues?" or "hows your battle vest coming?" or "whats your fav line youve written this week?"). engagement and entertainment is Important to keep me from climbing the walls but i swear i will bite at straight sympathy

things ive been doing to keep me out of the er include: laying on my left side or stomach (The Digestion Position; helps get food past the squished part); eating a semi-liquid diet (hence ensure, jello, pudding, the like, though its important that i also eat solid food as much as is tolerated, which is such a delicate balance. this is why i cannot currently work); going on stupid little walks for my stupid digestive health (honestly the most important thing i can do, which im mad about, because it requires pants, but not only encourages guts to digest but also will help me not decondition, which i have already done a lot of :I)

things YOU can do to help (because i know *i* am a helper but also what is actually helpful??): financially with the above deets (no pressure); asks, comments, and other conversational interactions (i am absolutely chill with basically any kind of question and i dont mind dms if youd prefer privacy, just dont pedestal me i promise i am just A Dude); fanart for my fics (i do not care if you "cant draw" i will still love it); prompts for fandom but not necessarily fic projects (wardrobe moodboards/meta for characters, playlists/songs, smut writing how to questions, cosplay progress/plans qs, those "what was x's pov in this scene/what specifically happened between x and y in this fic?" qs andor other ask meme things idk dude i haven't been able to do shit for almost three months im booooored)

in conclusion

nurse penni says do not worry about herb patient, he is in good hands, just be sure to offer regular enrichment

#mochi rambles #mochi's medical mischief #pennicore

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notnctu · 4 years

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through the lens ❀ l.jn

❀ lee jeno x fem!reader ❀ genre - slow burn, smut/mature content, fluff (romance?), slight angst ❀ details - photographer!jeno, model!reader, college!au, shy!jeno but he aint shy in bed, strangers to fuckers!au ❀ word count - 8k (this is the longest thing ive ever written) ❀ warnings - nude modeling, swearing, oral (f/receiving), some sweet love makin’ ❀ brief synopsis - jeno asks you to model for his internship project, but little did you know, it was going to be a nude photo shoot.

❝ jeno was too shy to hold eye contact, but he stared at you endlessly through the lens. ❞

❀ a/n - hihihi this is author doie❀ ! im bad at writing smut so pls dont hate me ah ha lol i tried my best i also dont model/do professional photography so really apologize if i butcher any terms lmaoo the only thing i am is that im in college and im shy

Jeno had applied to almost a hundred internships and almost close to none returned with an offer, even after a whole month of waiting. He absolutely needed to start building his portfolio before the beginning of his senior year of college. The embarrassment of possibly graduating without any experience loomed over the desperate boy.

Photography had been more than a hobby to him, to the point where he wanted to take it seriously. His parents weren’t the most supportive of an Arts major, but that couldn’t stop him. Jeno saw the best through a camera lens. He had a special eye for beautiful moments and the impressing urge to capture it forever.

It was too late to change his major, if he wanted to graduate with all of his friends. If he wanted to be successful, he had to act on it now.

The swoosh! of a new email startled the sleeping boy. He stared at the brightly lit screen, reading the words over and over again to make sure it was real. Jeno was so enthralled with excitement that he scrambled out of bed to wake up his roommate, Jaemin.

He shook him so violently that the sheets fell from Jaemin’s warm body. “Dude! I got an internship!” He spoke with incredible glee, a wide smile couldn’t leave his face.

Jaemin groaned and had to hold Jeno by the shoulders to halt the boy from causing the room to spin. “Why--What is going on?” He dazely rubbed his tired eyes to blink at his giddy roommate.

The screen blinded Jaemin as it was shoved too closely to adjust. “Whoa--,” he pushed it away and shut his eyes, “--repeat what you just said one more time.” Jaemin held a finger up and Jeno grabbed it, jumping onto his best friend’s bed.

“I got an internship. Someone got back to me.” Jaemin returned the same excitement the moment he processed his words. He shot up in bed and hugged his friend tightly.

“Wo-w, dude! Congratulations!” The two boys hurried on their feet to cheer together. There was no concern for the rest of their housemates, only celebration that roared throughout the entire night.

Truthfully, Jeno had no recollection of applying to this studio. It could have been a random link on a job scouting website, but he couldn’t be more grateful. An internship was long overdue and Jeno had been itching to get some recognition for his craft.

“Hello, I’m Lee Jeno.” He bowed slightly at the receptionist, who had a stern stare that made him feel vulnerable. The first thing he noted about the office: white and minimalistic.

Jeno’s specialty was landscape photography. His aesthetics consisted of black and white filters, city lights, dark mood lighting, and background commotion. He enjoyed capturing chaos the most, a scene where more than one thing was happening. The only reason being that there was more to look at.

“Nice to meet you. The name is Lee Taemin, but you can call me what you please.” A young, lean man strolled his way towards Jeno with a wide grin and his hand for him to shake. Taemin was slightly shorter than him, but his stylish, expensive boots made up for his height. He had to be only a maximum of five years older than Jeno as Taemin appeared relatively youthful.

Taemin’s firm grip pulled Jeno along inside the studio. A small gasp escaped from Jeno which earned robust laughter from the older man. “I hope you can break out of your shell soon. There is no room for timidness around here, Mister Lee.”

“Please, you can call me Jeno.” He smiled, quite awkwardly at the beautiful man.

The tall glass windows, the concrete, gray floor, the white doors that lined the hallway, had to be all too predictable. Jeno envisioned this is what high class must look like. It was the pristine, bright feeling and the smell of vanilla that lingered distastefully. There was chatter behind the closed doors --- mainly directing, and high praises.

The only off-put was that photographers worked behind closed doors. From the few studios he has visited previously, photographers often worked in open spaces due to lighting fractures or the ability to roam more freely.

“I’m actually very ecstatic you signed up for the internship, since you do seem a bit on the younger side.” Taemin gestured toward the sofa in the middle of his massive office. Jeno sat across from him. Water was already placed on the glass coffee table that separated the two. A laptop was opened to face Taemin.

Jeno slyly rubbed the condensation from his palms on his jeans. Taemin’s stare bore deep into the shy boy, who had to break eye contact from time to time. “I know.” Jeno chuckled nervously, “thank you for getting back to me. I was really hoping to gain work experience through mentorship.”

Taemin nodded at everything Jeno was saying. His face being completely expressionless. Jeno sipped his water to regain moisture in his dry throat. Taemin was more intimidating than he was anticipating. “Sounds great. Happy to have you here. It might be a small business, but the experience is worth investing in. Every photographer who has come in and out of my building has found their forte. Let’s say, it’s eye opening.”

“That’s exactly what I was looking for actually.” As scared as he was of this mysterious man, he really enjoyed the comfort the environment radiated.

Taemin leaned forward and squinted at the screen. “I noticed in the portfolio you sent that you don’t have any portraits or any people, in general, in your photos. Do you have any works with people? Since this is a studio of fine art nude photography.”

Nude. Jeno practically choked on the last remaining spit he gathered. Taemin acknowledged the boy’s shocked reaction and tilted his head curiously, “you did know that I specialize in contemporary fine art nude photography, right?” Unfortunately, Jeno did not.

Jeno cleared his throat, “yes, of course. I wanted to challenge myself.” He had to lie, there was no other way to cover up his disbelief. This internship was the only hope left for him to gain something. Though, even the thought of shooting a naked body made him anxious.

He hated how timid he was. His friends and family say otherwise, mainly for the reason that Jeno automatically lit up behind a camera. In all honesty, he hid behind it. It was the only safe place that Jeno knew what he was doing. However when it came to real life situations without it, he lacked the confidence to be himself.

As ironic as it was, he hated being seen. He liked to be the background character in his own life, because the main character took too much of a toll. It could also be his deafening insecurities and lack of self esteem, but Jeno didn’t mind not being the center of attention.

“You like a challenge?” It was more of a statement rather than a question. Jeno caught a glimpse of the twinkle in Taemin’s dark eyes. “Then for your first task, I want you to show me that you can take on this role.”

Jeno scrambled for his phone to jot down notes. “Send me an emotional portfolio, model of your choice. They could be a friend of yours that you feel comfortable seeing naked. It must include a variation of headshots, full body, and body details. It must also be raw and unedited photos. I want to see if you have the eye for the art to capture these types of images.”

“When would you like it by?” He stammered, completely winded at the sudden project that unloaded on top of him.

“Next Friday, and you’ll present it to me here in person. Feel free to use this studio if you don’t have a place of your own with equipment. All you need to do is book a room with the front desk. Any other questions?” The sound of the laptop shutting caused Jeno to look up at the brilliance in front of him. He needed Taemin to help him succeed.

“Why do you take nude photography?”

Taemin was unable to stop the laughter that erupted into the room. “I don’t run a pimp business or sell soft core porn, if that’s why you’re staring at me so funnily. What I make is an art masterpiece, it has nothing to do with physical features or desires. It’s the pure emotion that clothing distracts from. Clothing conforms the model into an aesthetic, and while that works for editorials, it won’t be a consistent thing here.”

Jeno nodded understandingly. Overwhelmed and lost at words. He was unsure what he had gotten himself into. Where was he going to find a model on such short notice on such lewd conditions? He was really going to need to step out of his comfortable zone, in his photography and social skills.

Taemin stood up and extended his hand once more. “I take pride in my art, so I hope you, too, start finding that in your own.”

Jaemin held his stomach from the endless laughter, tears welling up in his eyes. “Nud-Nude photography? And you didn’t know?”

“Jaemin, keep it down.” Jeno whispered and cautiously peered around at the few people flooding into the small lecture hall. “I don’t want everyone in our club to misunderstand and think I’m some creep.”

His best friend straightened up in his seat and placed his hand on Jeno's slumped shoulder, “first of all, you’re a complete idiot for not researching. Secondly, it’s an art form. If you really got yourself a shady, rated R internship, I would’ve told you to drop it instantly.”

His spirits were slightly lifted, but he was still struggling with who he should ask to model for him. As much as he’s already seen of Jaemin, being his roommate, he honestly would rather leave the rest to imagination. Jeno wasn’t purposefully searching the room for a candidate, but he could not stop his eyes from drifting.

He spotted the most attractive side profile that sat two rows below him. He shook his head to make sure he was seeing her correctly. Peering around, he looked for another possible face to shoot. But oh god, how she caught his eye every time she even slightly moved.

You smiled happily with your friends by your side as your club’s executive board members introduced this year’s goals and events to attend. It had to be the smallest amount of alcohol still running in your system that caused you to giggle every time guys tried to turn around and hit on you.

“Why don’t you focus on our club members instead?” You smirked at the smug older boy, who had poorly attempted to grab your attention. “I think this information is important to you. These events could help you develop your social skills to be much better.” Your voice was barely above a whisper, but your girl friends scoffed by your side.

He got up in disbelief and quickly walked out of the room. There was a brief pause at the sudden movement, but the announcement carried on per usual.

Jeno impatiently waited for the club meeting to finally be over, so he could talk to you. The longer it dragged, the more his confidence was subsiding. “I’m heading to study, wanna come with?” Jaemin poked at Jeno’s knee.

“Yeah, but you can go ahead first. I need to talk to someone.” His voice was shaky and his throat went so dry. Jeno’s shifty eyes scanned the room, hoping no one saw how nervous he was acting.

Jaemin’s eyebrows lifted suspiciously, “who? I didn’t even know you talked to anyone who came today. Donghyuck and Renjun aren’t here---”

“--her, Jaemin... her. I’m going to ask her to model for me.” Jeno motioned his head. His heart beating faster at seeing a small grin appear on your face from a comment someone made.

Jaemin hummed, “good luck with that, bud. I’ve got two shoulders for you to cry on after.” The extra hint of sarcasm only made Jeno sweat nervously. He was seriously doubting his decision, but it wouldn’t be a challenge if he didn’t do it. He knew he’d regret it more if he didn’t just ask you.

Once the meeting was dismissed, you wanted to get out of the room before the heavy rush into the hallways. Unfortunately, a few frat guys pulled you into their conversation and chatted up a storm. Your friends played into their foolery, but you stopped paying attention when they asked for your numbers.

There was a faint tap on your shoulder and you turned to see who the culprit was. You didn’t seem to know him, because you would’ve remembered such a demeanor. His eyes were glued to the floor behind you and his shaky hands ran through his brown locks. His shyness was quite endearing, yet alarming since you weren’t sure why exactly he had approached you.

“Yes?” You asked curiously.

The moment Jeno heard your delicate cadence, he melted like a popsicle left out in the sun. He peered up, but quickly reverted his eyes to the white tiles when he noticed how beautifully you stared at him.

He counted his breathing to calm his rapid heart beat. He cleared his throat to introduce himself, “I’m Jeno. I’m a third year Arts major, um-- I was just--- I know we don’t know each other. I wanted to ask, uh-” Jeno was horrified at how he stammered over his own words. His cheeks burned with a red glow, and if he couldn’t look you in the eye before, he definitely couldn’t now.

“Hey, see you later.” One of the bulky frat guys called and you waved back weakly.

A guy who had been chasing you endlessly scoffed at the pitiful sight and smirked at you, “see you at my house tonight? Been missing you in my bed lately.”

“Thought you would’ve guessed the reason why I stopped coming around.” Jeno heard the sting in your remarks and the disbelief in the male.

You honestly could have left, Jeno knew that. But you stayed and waited patiently for him to finish. Jeno could tell how strong you were just by your intimidating aura that practically suffocated him by standing in close proximity to you.

You sighed and reached to grab your jacket on the folded seat, “look, Jeno. It’s nice to meet you and all, but I gotta get going.”

Shockingly, the shy boy reached out to stop you by your fingertips. His touch lingered before he dropped your hand quickly. “I’m sorry. Are you free this Monday?”

“Uh, that depends. If you’re asking me on a date, then I’m busy.” Rolling your eyes, you weren’t sure why you still stayed to listen to what this random stranger had to say. If it were anyone else, you would’ve walked away the moment he asked if you were free. However, you acknowledged his timidness and the courage he must have mustered up to approach you.

Jeno shook his head violently, completely in shambles from that type of misunderstanding. “Not a date. I need someone to model for my portfolio photos that my internship assigned. It’s actually very important to me because it’s the first internship that responded back to me when I had applied to so many a whole month ago. Basically, I really need this and you because I think you’d be perfect to take pictures of. Oh-- wow! That sounded very bad --- uh --- what I meant is that your facial proportions are perfect and---”

“I’m free Monday.” You cut off his endless ramble and gestured toward his phone. He handed it to you without any hesitation and you typed in your number. “Text me the time, place and what I should wear.”

“Oh actually, it’s a nude photoshoot.” Your eyes doubled in size, completely offended by that statement.

Jeno felt the sudden shift in the air and brought his hands up to block himself, “to be more clear, it’s a contemporary fine art nude photography studio. The pictures are pieces of art and to be seen as that only. I have no intentions or ulterior motive to sleep with you, see you naked or sell, leak your nudes for the profit of your body. But, I understand if you no longer want to do it because it sounds super strange now that I am explaining it.”

Your shoulders relaxed and the fist that formed unraveled. You exhaled deeply, “I’ll do it. We can talk more about it on Monday and I get to leave on my own accord if I don’t feel comfortable. We work on my conditions.” Picking up Jeno’s chin, he was absolutely petrified at the forced eye contact and your incredible, powerful gaze. He was mesmerized by the fire in your eyes, and if he stared any longer, he could’ve lost himself in them.

“Of course.” With that, you dropped his face and left without another look back. Jeno looked down at his phone and the new contact name, (Y/N). It had slipped his mind to even ask what your name was and he slapped his face in utter stupidity. “Do better, Lee Jeno.” It was a remainder to himself to, hopefully, be better the next time you two speak.

Monday, 3:03 PM.

Jeno paced back and forth in the brightly, lit white room. He was trying to find any blinds or curtains to cover the tall windows of the high rise building. It should not be too much of a problem, the extra lighting was a positive. Jeno was only worried for your comfort of the openness.

There was a soft knock before Jeno practically tripped to open the door. His breath hitched at the sight of your bare face. This time, you were the vulnerable one. Jeno only saw purity, yet impressed at how your tired eyes still managed to bid him a soft smile. He admired your uneven complexion, and the sparse moles that dotted your skin.

“Okay, so you want to see me naked now or later?” Filled with jokes, your voice was light and airy this afternoon. There was a bit of a contrast from the first time you two met. Softer, enchanting, almost ghostly.

Everything in the room was white. The mattress on the floor had a white comforter and white sheets. The backdrop. The walls. The hardwood floor. The only color was the blue sky that the tall windows let in.

“Here’s a robe. You can change in the bathroom.” Jeno scratched the back of his neck and his eyes wandered everywhere, but your’s.

“Would you be okay with me just taking off my clothes in here?” You saw the light tint of pink cover his face, and spread to his ears. You examined more of the shy boy’s embarrassed face, finally getting a really good look at him. Jeno was very attractive, and you could only imagine how beautiful he must look if he fully faced you.

Jeno fiddled with his camera strap, “only if you are okay with that.” Clearing his throat, he stood next to the window to give you some privacy. “I’ll go over what I plan on doing. I’m going to take photos of your face details, parts of your body, full body, and portraits. You can lay down on the bed and I’ll direct you in poses. Have you modeled before?”

He was scanning the bustling city below his feet. Cars zoomed quickly and crowds of tiny people flooded the streets. He brought his camera up to his face, not being able to resist the urge to capture such a thrilling sight.

“If Instagram counts, then yeah. Professional model gig would be a no. Nude photography is a definite no, unless we are talking about being filmed during sex.” Jeno chuckled, while also holding the camera steady and stealing a few moments to keep for himself.

For a strange reason, being naked for a non-sensual reason felt even more vulnerable. Laying on the soft fabric, you felt oddly exposed and slightly more reserved. You’ve had countless strangers see you naked. Men were sexually desiring to see a sexy picture. You were always lusted after, but this feeling of nakedness was special.

“Are you ready?” Jeno gulped, finally setting the camera down.

You hummed cheerfully. Your heart was leaping out of your chest as the boy shifted slowly to face you. As he turned, you noticed he had his eyes sealed shut, which caused a small laugh to erupt. “Jeno, you have my permission to open your eyes and to look at me.”

Holy shit, he was trembling with an inexplicable fear. The camera was slipping from his sweaty hands. His mouth was as dry as the desert. Jeno’s pounding heart was loud in his ears.

Jeno has seen his past girlfriends laying naked in bed, but this situation was too different. When he saw you laying there in absolutely nothing, he was overwhelmed, yet astounded at how graceful you appeared.

There was no exchange of words and no exchange of eye contact. He towered over your lying figure and shakily brought the camera to his eyes. He selfishly wanted to capture your elegance. Through the lens, he saw all of you: the curve in your eyelid, your curled eyelashes, the small mole next to your soft lips, the sharp color of your eyes, the way your hair frames your face.

This was the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. You were comparable to the arts found in popular museums. Your body lines were enticing and an impressive shape. Your breasts pooled on your chest, the round nude nipple in the centers. Your details had to be sculpted by gods, who took their sweet time making you. You were a true masterpiece.

Confused, Jeno felt a huge mixture of emotions. Was he aroused? Was he infatuated? Did he just fall in love with a complete stranger? He recognized the same thrilled feelings he felt taking landscape photos. With each click, he grew more excited with how beautiful the photos were turning out.

“Sit up and rest your chin on your left hand. Lean your weight on your right leg.” Jeno’s direction was clear and firm. There was no evidence of a smaller tone he usually spoke in. Sitting up, you placed your elbow on your upper thigh to steady your chin. Jeno had already gotten down to floor level to you.

Without the camera that separated you two, it had to be the first time he faced you completely in such close proximity. There was so much to admire about Jeno. He remained concentrated on his craft, but it was actually very sexy to see his dedication. It was almost like he was a whole new person, like all the shyness drifted away.

Jeno couldn’t take his eyes off of you. It wasn’t simply your beauty that amazed him. Your confidence made everything easy. There was something about your blank stares, when he asked for an emotion, you portrayed it perfectly.

“Can we talk while you shoot?” Your sudden voice startled the photographer. He lowered his camera and his gaze automatically wandered off behind you, which didn’t go unnoticed. He nodded after a short pause and the shutter noises continued.

“Why did you choose me as your model?”

Jeno peeled away from the device, “because you’re you.” He didn’t even know what that statement meant. It wasn’t like he knew you before the first time he asked you to model for him.

The corners of your lips dipped down, drawing an evident frown. Click. Jeno loved that image especially. It was a simple way to get real, authentic facial expressions. He marveled at the photo, but registered the reason behind it. “I wanted to ask you the second I saw you. I just knew that I wanted you.”

“But you don’t know me.”

Jeno looked through the lens once again, welcoming a full view of your stunning attributes. He spoke in a low voice, “then, let me know you.” Click.

It would be the biggest lie to say that you weren’t aroused by Jeno at the moment. He was cool, without trying to be. He really did shine when he had a camera to work with, like a star to a dark night. While he had a distinct demeanor off the bat, you enjoyed unraveling the rest of him. He was, also, the first man you met that didn’t seem sexually driven by a naked woman in his presence.

You had to resist every urge to push the camera away and share the few seconds of his entire gaze before it wandered away. You wanted to rock his world, he was so innocent and beautiful. You wished to wreak havoc on him, have him show you how much he wanted you.

You anticipated an awkward photoshoot, but Jeno made you feel safe and comfortable. He made sure to adjust the temperature when goosebumps rose on your arms and when your nipples became painfully hard. He never touched you or came too much into your personal space. He always asked for your permission.

Nude modeling was a new experience for you, but you were surprised at how much you liked it. or how much you liked Jeno taking your photos. He sat next to you on the bed when you put on your articles of clothing and panned through several shots to satisfy your curiosity.

Leaning close, your head ducked to see the photos. A gasp escaped your lips when you saw just the first few. “Is that really me?” The pictures made you feel an abundance of emotions, you felt what they reflected. Sadness, melancholy, happiness, confidence. You didn’t know images had that much power to make you feel that, especially photos of you.

Jeno nodded, smiling so wide that his eyes turned to moon crescents. He was so in love with the results. He found respect for Taemin’s craft and he was right, he might’ve found a new forte to experiment with. “I can send you the photos digitally too, if you want them.”

“Maybe I’ll print them out, frame them, and gift it to every horrid man who has tried to flirt their way to my body since they want to see it so fucking bad.”

Jeno peered over and saw the tiny glimpse of pain in your orbs, “why would you give horrible people what they want?”

“So they can finally shut up and leave me alone. Plus, this is art and if I tell them it’s actually me, maybe it’ll change their minds to start treating me like it.”

He held his palm up and almost immediately, your fingers filled the spaces between his. “I’m going to need you to start treating yourself as fine art.”

“Keep taking more photos of me and I just might start thinking I’m Mona Lisa.” Your laughters blended nicely into each other. There was mutual mental acknowledgement of the happiness you were both feeling.

Jeno never let go of your hand, and there was a short moment of comforting silence where you two sat in each other’s existence. You were the one to break it, “are you doing anything after this?”

He shook his head. “Well then, you’re mine for the rest of the night. We’re going to pretend we’ve been close friends since first year and eat take-out on my bed because that’s what I need at the moment.”

“I know you respect my body and see this as an art form, but I’m genuinely surprised that you didn’t feel aroused at the slightest.”

Jeno didn’t even realize how much time had already passed being you. You two ate and chatted as if you’ve known each other forever, as if the friendship wasn’t established several hours ago. It felt safe and right, like you two belonged in each other’s existence and nowhere else mattered.

He felt warm inside from your hearty laughter and courage, like he was watching a painting come to life or a photo in movement. You were smitten over how endearing and complex he was. He was more than what meets the eye and that alone drew you towards him.

“Okay, I’ll admit,” Jeno paused to watch your reaction, “in the most respectable way, I was somewhat turned on. But! Before you trail blaze me for being just like every disgusting male in your life, I genuinely didn’t have any sexual thoughts during the photoshoot. That was all professional and it will continue to be like that.”

Getting up from your bed, your mind was working at lightspeed to process his confession. Jeno was fast to pick up someone’s personality, what stood out and what was kept hidden. He knew quicker than anyone else that you were not someone to offend because you were a strong, straight forward woman.

His personality breakdown went like this: you knew what you like, you knew you were going to get what you want, you enjoyed flirty banter (with people of your choice), you weren’t afraid to be blunt, or kick someone’s ass. You carried yourself with confidence that graced your every step, which makes anyone attracted to you instantly. Bold, confident, sexy had to be what came to mind whenever he thought about you.

Nonetheless, he really liked you as a person. He could pat himself on the back all day long for just approaching you, but he knew the real reason as to how this all happened. It was you saying yes to a stranger’s odd photoshoot. You made him the luckiest man in the world.

“Continue? Are you looking for excuses to keep seeing me?” You smirked and Jeno’s voice grew small.

“I--- uh, well,” there goes the nervous stammering, “I know the conditions were a one time thing, so I understand if you don’t want to do it again.” As the night had progressed, Jeno gradually began to hold eye contact and actually looked at you directly without the help of seeing you through a lens. This was the first time he broke it.

“Hey now, I’m messing with you, Jeno.” He had been sitting on your floor, at the end of your bed. You crawled on your elbows to reach him, and to hold his chin to face you again. Deja vu. “I’d love to get naked for you again, and again, and.. as many times as you want me to.”

He stared at you with his mouth hung open in disbelief. His eyes scanned your beautiful face to see your lips pull back into a mischievous smile. Gulping, he swallowed every ounce of courage he had left. “You don’t have to say it like that.” He tried to remove your grip, but it latched onto his hand.

“You’re finally looking me in the eye, sweet thing. I don’t think you realize how much I had been wanting that from you.” You caressed his cheek, rubbing small circles on his texture.

“What else do you want from me?” His implication sounded suggestive, even if his curiosity was innocent.

Your hot breath brushed against Jeno’s lips. “I can show you.”

Jeno, the one and only college guy who has seen your naked body in a non-sexual context. Jeno, the shy, sweet boy who appreciated and recognized you as a form of art. Jeno, the talented and skillful photographer, who consistently made sure you felt comfortable. Jeno, the only person in the world who you’d model nude for. Jeno, the dazzling character behind the camera who you wanted more than anyone else you’ve ever met. Lee Jeno.

He seemed like he was inching closer, already tilting his head to fit your’s. You smiled to yourself, seeing that your words were received well. Diving in, your lips swam together fervently.

The poor boy found himself lost in your enchanting, alluring gaze. He let the trance consume him, selfishly kissing the art he admired so dearly. A small part of him felt the guilt and confusion that began to rise. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly wished to feel your lips on his neck, or run his hands across your hot skin. He swore these thoughts were not present earlier.

A small pop! and Jeno held your shoulder to pull away. “I’m sorry, did I do something?” You asked, honestly concerned that you were taking more than you deserved. The least you desired was to hurt Jeno, who had been nothing but nice and sweet.

“(Y/N),” you could listen to your name roll off his tongue all day, “I feel somewhat guilty. I don’t want things to be misunderstood.”

“Which would be?”

“I don’t want you to think I coerced you into being my model just because I had intentions to sleep with you.” Jeno was already gathering his things, but you hopped off your bed and placed a hand on his chest. “Because that’s what it’s starting to look like at the moment.”

“Was that something you did though? Did you have those intentions?” Your stare bore right through him. The warmth of your hand relaxed his racing heart.

“Never, (Y/N), I would never do that to someone.” Your hand traveled down to grab his belongings and tossed it back onto the ground.

He silently watched as you took off your pants, and stood in front of him in your underwear. “Then, we’re fine. I know your intentions have always been pure. But truthfully, Jeno, seeing you focused while you worked sparked something in me. You don’t understand how aroused I got and how badly I wanted you to fuck me on that bed.” His hand trailed up your exposed thighs, finally touching your softness. “You’re the one guy I wanted first, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that.”

“I-- I don’t know what to say.” His cheeks revealed how embarrassed he was, but his dark, lustful eyes were telling a different story.

A smirk fell upon your face, “then don’t say anything.”

Jeno devoured you, inhaling the light hint of vanilla that still lingered. He hoisted you onto your mattress and kissed you like his life depended on it. His antsy hands roamed your free range, exploring, holding, gripping the parts he marveled over. Small moans from the back of your throat encouraged him to continue.

No one has ever kissed you with the amount of passion Jeno did. It was gentle, with enough vigor to cause your panties to dampen. It wasn’t sloppy, where previous guys had a problem of missing your mouth entirely and slobbered your chin.

His lips worshiped you, highlighting your good sides. Flashes of the photoshoot popped into Jeno’s head as he left purple marks on the places he loved capturing the most. He pushed up your shirt, exposing your chest to him again. His tongue circled around your hard nipple as he made sure to give the same amount of attention to each one.

Jeno knew he was too shy to hold your intense stare, but getting to know you during and after the photoshoot, he could see the softness in your gaze. He was, now, able to see all of you. The sight of you through the camera was addicting enough, so finally taking you all in was more than satisfying.

Your hands ran through his hair as he kissed down your torso. His thumbs hooked the waistband of your underwear, and peeled it off your body. You gasped as the cold air from your apartment grazed against your exposed figure.

Jeno paused to admire your glistening pussy, “would it be okay if you let me make love to you?”

Your heart burned, not out of embarrassment, but at how he still managed to ask you for your permission in the sweetest way. You rested your weight on your elbows, “no one has done that before, would it actually make me want to fall in love with you?”

“It wouldn’t be too bad. I have a lot of love to give and you look like a person who deserves all of it anyways.” Jeno’s finger ran over your wet slit and rubbed your clit slowly.

Your moans filled the room as the electric jolted throughout your veins. The wetness grew, seeping out of you like a waterfall. Jeno dropped down to his knees, and lifted your legs on his broad shoulders.

“Are you usually this wet, baby?”

Chuckling, you smiled at his bold choice in using pet names, “Just for you.”

He hummed, chiming at how he liked your answer. Spreading you open, his tongue met with your swollen bud that begged for his licks.

His tongue darted side to side, up and down and in result, your back arched in pleasure and a darkness clouded your mind. His name and mindless profanities streamlined their way out of you as Jeno ate you out in such a precisely delicious way.

Grabbing a fist full of hair, you pulled him closer, even if there was no more space to fill. Looking down, you two exchanged glances before he thrusted a finger into you. Your hips bucked harder as he eased in another one.

Jeno curled his fingers in search of your sweet spot and found it when a deep moan escaped your throat. His fingertips rubbed and pressed into your plush flesh, causing you to practically scream and squirm in his mouth.

He suckled your clit and fingered you simultaneously and quickly. The pleasure was overflowing and you released his hair to grip your sheets below you. Your legs shook and trembled as he had no caution to stop.

“Please, I’m going to--” you could barely talk due to your face contouring to the splurge of pleasure every single time Jeno rubbed your spot. “--to explode.”

He had to take back what he thought earlier in the day. This was the most beautiful sight he’s ever laid eyes on. The whole scene played like from one of his favorite films. It felt like he was giving his photos life. Your body twisted and turned, accentuating the curves of your lines.

Jeno had become painfully hard against the fabric of his jeans, but seeing you fall apart because of his minimal movements exhilarated him. “P-Please, don’t stop.” A breathy moan followed suit and your thighs tried to press themselves together. Jeno didn’t allow it, his free hand hooked underneath your left thigh to pull one side away from his cheeks.

Your high gradually grew so tall that it all eventually came cascading down. Your legs shook violently and sat up from the euphoria that took over you. Jeno prolonged your buzz and you screamed loudly, having to bite down on your fingers to stop yourself from angering your neighbors.

Jeno drank you up, letting your wetness cover his chin and drip down his knuckles. He pulled away, at last, and you took deep breaths to control your heavy breathing. It was like Jeno knocked the wind completely out of you.

He stood up and you saw the outline of his hard bulge straining itself through his jeans. The next scene was quite animalistic. You, still embodying your high, sat on your knees and unzipped his pants with your needy hands.

“Now, it’s your turn to get nude for me.” You whispered, tauntingly. Jeno groaned when you reached down and gently pulled him out. He stepped out of his clothing, all of it. His shirt was lost in the corner and his bottoms were scattered over your floor. Mirroring his actions, you took off your last piece of cloth.

Jeno was built. Though his biceps did not go unnoticed during the photoshoot, you were surprised at the lines of muscle that sketched his body. It made your mouth water, seeing his extremely hard dick stand against his toned abs. His red tip fell just below his navel. Jeno only kept getting better as the night continued on.

Pulling him closer, his hand found their way to the back of your head as you aligned your mouth to the wetness that spilled from his tip. “I want to make you feel good.” Jeno’s hoarse voice made your knees weak.

Peering up, you batted your eyelashes at him fondly. “Just a little taste?” You begged, having to hold his shaft with both of your hands because of his thickness. Your tongue was already stuck out, your hot breath causing the tiniest bit of sensation for him.

He nodded and his eyes were trained on you. He didn’t want to miss any second of your kitty licks. You flattened your tongue against his warmth, dragging it up to the top. The saltiness hit your palette as you swirled around his redness. “Oh--” Jeno threw his head back and bit his lip, “--lay on the bed now.”

You smiled sweetly and gave his member a quick kiss before reaching for a condom in your drawer. Jeno climbed onto your bed and situated the rubber comfortably. You laid on your back and he was fast to pull your legs around his waist.

He lined himself at your entrance and eased his tip in slowly. Squirming, you craved him to fill you up to the brim. He leaned down to kiss you, letting your tongue lap with his. It’s your hands with the mind of their own when they flew automatically to hold his face whenever you wanted to deepen the kiss. Then, Jeno stretched himself all the way in and he caught your gasp with his lips. He groaned, feeling the mess he created merely minutes ago.

His hips moved so easily with your wetness, but he went slow. Dragging out each pull and then, pushing himself back in roughly. “Jeno!” Your body jolted up the bed each time. His body fell over yours to hold you intimately, letting you bury your face into his neck. Your lips latched themselves onto his sensitive skin, painting a purple sunset.

Jeno’s arms snaked underneath your thighs as he pressed them to your chest, folding you almost into a ball. Your mouth hung open as he fucked you harder, rougher, deeper yet keeping the tempo rhythmically slow. At this point, you could feel his hits in your gut. Your weak hands gripped loosely around his strong wrists that held your legs down. “You’re pussy is so tight and holy shit---, you keep getting more beautiful.”

A familiar burning sensation set in your chest as you saw how concentrated his face had become. You were so fucked out that you could barely speak, “you—” his hips mercilessly slammed into you powerfully, enacting a low moan every time he reached your sweet spot. “—keep surprising me.” His actions came to a halt and he stared deeply into your soul.

You whined, wiggling your hips for any friction. He held them down into the mattress, knowing his grip was strong enough to leave a mark. “I told you, I was going to make love to you tonight.”

“I’ve already fallen for you.” You said breathlessly, tracing the side of his face and pecking his lips softly.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing to me by saying those things.” He whispered and pushed his entire shaft to fill you to your brim.

You yelped his name and gripped his shoulders, but he wasn’t done yet. “Show me how badly you wanted me the first time you saw me.” Jeno blinked at you in slight shock.

As he continued to hold the deep gaze, he kept pushing his dick further and further into you. He was balls deep, almost impossible to keep going. He fucked you without the need to pull out, just burying his cock deeper into your wet pussy. You exclaimed, moaned, cussed at every push. Holding the stare was more than enough to lose yourself all over him again.

Jeno was drunk with the image of your fucked out expression and every time the mixture of pleasure and pressure caused your eyebrows to crease and mouth to open release sensual sound. He had been trying his best not to come undone, to fixate another climax for you.

The feeling of you wrapping tighter and tighter around him drove him insane. “Give it to me, please.” Your muffled plead called for his release, but he could feel that you were close to your second.

Jeno sat up on his knees and pulled you into his arms where your thighs fell over his. You groaned at the empty feeling, though it was quickly replaced with a gratifying moan when he inserted himself again. Your arms dangled around his neck, foreheads touching intimately.

The fucking eye contact again, how could you get enough of it? You giggled, amused at how different Jeno was when he eventually opened up. He wrapped his strong arms around your back and thrusted his hips up into you. The way this man made you squirm, scream, and shake were nothing you’ve experienced before.

He smirked, placing a gentle kiss on your cheek when he went rampage on your pussy. “Not laughing now, are you?”

You whined in pleasure, brushing your fallen strands of hair out of his face. “Shut up before I make you.”

“Then I’d rather keep going.” Kissing up his jawline, you lead your way to his pout. His kisses intoxicated you with his passion and madness, like the most intense part of a symphony, or when the bass drops after a long build up in a song.

Jeno sped up, ramming up into your slick pussy over and over again. He even brought your hips down to match him, guiding you down as he went up. The headboard was knocked against the wall, your windows steamed up, cries of pleasure from the both of you created the ambiance, the smell of sex filled your lungs. Jeno reached between your bodies to furiously rub your clit to where it felt almost raw. It all sent you into the clouds, the familiar queasiness settled in your lower half.

Your eyes rolled back and your back arched, having to pull away from the desirous kiss with Jeno. “I’m cumming!” You announced before the tension unraveled, causing you to see absolute white. The second wave was much more uncontrollable, Jeno felt you squeezing radically around his dick as he tried to fuck you faster to prolong the feeling.

Your legs shook around his and your upper body went limp with pleasure. You reached the peak of the mountain and it came crumbling down underneath your toes. It was catastrophically enthralling, to the point where you physically felt something leave your body.

“Oh shit..” Jeno stopped his motions at the sight of you squirting over his lap. He pampered your torso with fluttering kisses, hoping to calm your spastic body. “...baby, are you okay?” He asked with a bit of concern of how lack of life you seemed.

This man just gave you the best climax in your whole life and he asked if you were okay? Regaining your senses, you sighed a small yes to reassure him that he didn’t actually murder you. Hopping off, you pulled the condom that restricted him.

He hissed when you cupped his balls in your palm. “Cum, my sweet thing.” You purred and Jeno’s hand pumped his member aggressively. You leaned in to help, sucking the tip and flicking your tongue over his slit.

His other hand gripped your neck, causing you to drip on your sheets. Jeno was panting and with every tug, it became louder. He seemed so desperate to release that it made you smile to be the reason behind it. “Can you lay down,” A grunt followed his question, “please.” He huffed.

“Because you asked nicely.” Smirking, your back hit the sheets and you opened your legs to give Jeno a view. He situated himself above your stomach, as he fucked his tight grip.

“I’m cumming---” He couldn’t look any more amazing. With a final moan, the white streaks streamed out in short sequences. It landed across your abdomen, over your nipple, and pooled around your belly button.

Bringing himself back to reality, Jeno stepped back to marvel you, his masterpiece. The white streaks coated your purple skin and your chest rose fast to catch your reality. Gazing upon your naked body, he was utterly infatuated with all of you. He was so in love with the sight of you that not a single photo could capture the beauty that you were.

Jeno pondered the thought of how merely a day changed a small part of him. You were life changing, addicting, an incomparable character that he felt like he’s known forever, and now, couldn’t live without. It was the taste of your juices on his lips, your sweet melodic music that was your voice, your daring smile that enticed him to never peel away from you. It was simply you.

He leaned down to rub his knuckles against your cheek, planting a lovingly peck on your forehead. “I’ll go start the water for you.”

Jeno anticipated the reaction of his mentor. He found himself at the same scene he was when he was first given the task. Taemin sat across from him, hunched forward to analyze his new set of photos on his laptop. Raw, unedited photos of you, your body, your details.

The hum of the air conditioning droned on, driving him mad. Jeno needed one reaction, but Taemin had been silent and expressionless for the past ten minutes. Whenever he did move, it was to click through to the next picture.

Suddenly, he shut it closed and stood right up. Jeno, panicked, did the same. Taemin stuck his hand out and Jeno hesitantly grabbed it, incredibly unsettled and unable to read the older man.

Taemin received it firmly, giving Jeno a good handshake. “Welcome abroad, Lee Jeno. I expect even more great things from you.”

Jeno registered his delightful mood switch and he was fast to follow up, “my photos, --- you --- like them?”

Taemin nodded generously, patting Jeno on his shoulder. Taemin reached up to tap his own eyelids. “What you can see, is very special, kid. You’re an artist and I’m here to recognize that for you. It seems to me, you can do more than take pictures of sidewalks.”

Jeno smiled happily, his eyes disappearing from joy. He couldn’t wait to tell you about it.

The rest of the week, leading up to Jeno’s appointment, had felt nothing short of blissful moments together. You and Jeno spent almost every waking minute together without the cost of your friends’ time. He walked you to your classes, some even being across the campus from his own. You accompanied him for meals, even sitting in his lectures to just be with him.

There were no words that established what you two had become to each other. Jeno wasn’t looking for that anyways, in fact, he somewhat liked the ambiguity. If only he could tell you how making love to you made him begin to actually fall for you.

You were never one to hold a serious relationship, but you found a small want for that festering in Jeno. It was hard to admit to yourself, but Jeno saw you for all that you were. He truly saw you, whether it had been through a lens or through his own eyes. He captured your rawness and you were able to find vulnerability around him.

He ran to you, where you sat in the lobby waiting for him to finish his meeting. Peering up from your phone, you noticed the beaming smile on the boy’s face. You couldn’t hold back your own grin, seeing him apparent with so much joy. “I’m guessing good things?”

“I got it, (Y/N)!” He jumped into your arms and you laughed at the sudden affection. “He loved my photos.”

“I didn’t doubt it for one second. You’re an artist, Jeno. You create masterpieces that make even someone like me, feel like art.”

Jeno hugged you closer to his chest, giving you a tiny squeeze. Pulling away to face you, his eyes examined your outstanding grace. You knew what he was already going to say, but simply wanted to hear him say it. “That’s because you are art.”

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neutron-stars-collision · 3 years

Text

The Art of Inversion

Neil x Reader

Chapter 19 - Holy Ground

Masterlist; Chapter 18

Summary: In the days before the mission in Tallinn, you and Neil have a few conversations to clear the air of doubts. Only, the mission itself proves to be a disruption...

Warnings: Swearing; mild violence.

Author’s Notes: Here we go, my favourite mission (and favourite Neil outfit too). This is only part one of the Tallinn action because so much happens... as you’ll see. I’m sorry. I really am. Hope you enjoy and please leave me feedback if you feel like it!

Song mentioned is: ‘Holy Ground’ by Within Temptation (I’ll share it in a post later but basically listen to it after reading and you’ll know why I’m obsessed)

Edit is courtesy of my amazing friend @sh3tani once again (ilysm and thanks for everything 💕)

The upcoming days were busy. You have been assigned the task of getting hold of some of the vehicles and artillery TP wanted for the heist in Tallinn. It was difficult, not only because it is actually rather hard to acquire a fire truck with no records left from the transaction, but also because you barely had any clue what you were actually doing. And so, most of the time, you were sat at the dining table in the flat, calling various shady people Neil gave you contacts to. Sometimes, a tea would appear in front of you, courtesy of the other team members thoroughly apologizing for how they handled the ‘alley situation’.

It seemed like your late-night walk and the cold treatment you gave everyone (including Neil) for the next 24 hours afterward worked. The jokes have ended, and contrition took their place, usually in the form of extreme helpfulness, random acts of kindness, and, in Neil’s case, a break from teasing. At least for a short while.

The only development you were not so sure of was the fact that the whole team decided to label your relationship. Not just any label but dating, verging on a couple. And that was rather terrifying. It struck you especially the night before when you have minded your own business in the kitchen. Watching over the pasta boiling on the stove, you listened to the plans made by Ives. He was trying to settle on the best way to track Neil during the heist when he suddenly turned to you with a question:

“Has your boyfriend told you what kind of car they are going for in the end?” the neutral tone made you skim over the term at first.

But then your brain caught up. What?! You almost toppled over the whole pot of pasta onto the floor when trying to drain it. Fuck. Ives was staring at you quizzically, as though confused about your current state.

“I… Who?” you stammered out the question, knowing it will only make everything worse.

“Neil” Ives grinned, “Unless you’ve gone for an open relationship and there’s another boyfriend involved”

“Christ, please stop” sighing, you tried to calm down just enough to function “I believe he’s going for a BMW, don’t know what series but something fast enough just in case there was a chase” triumphantly, you poured the sauce over the noodles.

“I’ll need to give him a call about it” Ives smacked his tongue thoughtfully.

“Feel free” using the opportunity, you grabbed the cutlery and escaped into your room.

Boyfriend? Now that was something to cause anxiety. Because despite everything that happened, all the things you have told Neil and got in return, you had no clue what you were supposed to be. Not really. Yes, sometimes you let yourself entertain the idea that maybe you were together, maybe he was your lover. But… was he? Could he ever be that?

With those thoughts occupying your mind, you only managed to last until afternoon the next day before giving in. After failing to contact a car dealer for the fifth time and realising that you have completely messed up the route plan due to forgetting about important details, you closed the laptop. It was hard to think when all your brain did was give reasons for why Neil would never actually want to be with you. To summarise: you were not enough, naïve, hopeless, and dumb enough to think that someone this incredible could think about you seriously. Stifling the sudden desire to breakdown and give up on everything, you dialed his number. He picked up almost instantly.

“Yes, my love?” your heart clenched at the nickname.

“Hi… um… Do you have a moment?” you cringed at the awkwardness.

“For you? Always”

Maybe, on another day, that would have made you smile. But that was not that kind of a day.

“Neil, I’m serious,” sighing, you rested your head on the cold wall behind your bed.

“What’s wrong?” his tone switched from playful to concerned.

Okay… now there’s no turning back.

“I’ve just been thinking...” you started, debating on the best way to breach the topic.

“Oh no”

Damn him. You cracked a small smile, knowing that was the intention. You could almost picture him at this moment, sat in some absolutely strange position in the armchair, nothing but long legs and ruffled hair. You did have it pretty bad.

“Shut up” you took a deep breath and blurted out “It’s probably stupid, and feel free to ignore this but... what even are we?”

There it is. Your whole existence hanged on his reply. But, of course, Neil needed more clarification than that…

“How do you mean?” his careful tone made your heart rate elevate.

The result was a string of sentences you shot out with the speed of a machine gun.

“Because everyone here assumes we’re dating. And Ives called you my boyfriend last night, and I don’t... I don’t know if that’s what’s going on and-”

“Okay, calm down,” he interrupted your rant “Take a deep breath” he waited until he could hear you exhale to continue “What do you want this to be? Because we’re the only people who have a say about it” the diplomatic tone made you frown.

But then maybe he just wanted to get your point of view before saying anything substantial… Trouble was you had no clue. Picking on a loose thread on your sweater, you sighed:

“I don’t know” maybe this was the right time to give him another piece of mind? “I always hated labels because when you name something, it becomes real” you admitted, letting yourself slide down onto the pillows.

Nothing could hurt you there. Apart from potential rejection from the likely love of your life. Basically, fml, as the kids say.

“What about good things?” his question caught you off guard.

“Well, yeah, but… once there’s a couple, then there can be a break-up” the insecurity had an answer for that too.

Your cheeks heated up upon saying the word. Because even that felt like a step too far. Like maybe you were clingy. Obnoxious. Someone he could want to get rid of as quickly as possible. Before you decided to back out of the conversation, he replied:

“That’s a rather bleak way of looking at things” it was still that thoughtful tone.

A burden then.

“I know” you groaned, frustrated with yourself.

But the next thing he said was rather surprising…

“I’ll need to work on making you more optimistic. Not because I don’t like you the way you are, but because I want you to realise how wrong you are sometimes” the conviction and practical implications of the statement made you speechless.

The future tense. The admission that he did like you, with your countless issues and overbearing anxiety. It couldn’t be, could it? Neil took your stunned silence as permission to say more:

“From my side, let me say that dating doesn’t quite cut it because it implies not being sure... And…” despite yourself, your ears perked up, wanting to know what he meant.

“Yeah?” you prodded, trying to toe that precarious line between curiosity and fear of rejection.

“I’m not really in the trial stages anymore. Don’t think I’ve ever been” he clearly wanted to tell you more but was holding back.

Maybe it was for the better. Before you could think about a response to that, Neil added:

“Basically, we don’t have to use any labels. We’re just us” the simplicity of that statement broke through your resolve, making tears well up “Me and you. We know best what that implies and no one else matters” quietly, you sobbed, and he laughed before choosing to put that final nail in the metaphorical coffin “You’re my love, and that’s the only nickname I need” Neil sounded happy, as though despite your worries, he wanted to say that “I can be your idiot, as long as I’m yours” the punchline came with an audible smug smile.

Oh my god. You laughed, with tears still silently falling down your cheeks and heart hammering in your chest. He was impossible. Absolutely impossible. Suddenly asking that crucial question was not that scary. Because maybe today was the day when would tell you, without alcohol or worries prompting the confession. Taking the plunge, you spoke:

“Neil, do you-”

“Yes, I do,” he interrupted you with an answer.

“I haven’t even asked the question” you frowned, unsure whether that kind of an answer was better than a confession.

Because, yes, he already said it once (almost twice), but both those have been anything but thoughtful. And your ever doubting brain was quick to use that fact against you.

“But I know the answer” he sounded certain.

Perhaps too certain.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to tell you over the phone” Neil sighed heavily on the other end “Listen, I have to go… but call me or text if you need to talk” he hesitated before adding, “No matter what I want you to remember what I said that night in London”

Oh… It was the first time any of you brought it up. You just assumed it was one of the things that just slipped out in an unguarded moment. You wanted it to be true, but then that was too risky. But maybe not…?

“I heard you” you whispered despite being alone in the room.

“I know” you could picture the soft smile he sometimes gave you “Goodbye, my love. Good luck with work” at the reminder of the piles of papers still waiting, you groaned, causing him to laugh.

“Will be needed since what you’ve assigned me is close to impossible” the change of the topic was dearly welcomed.

Grabbing the laptop again, you opened it up and felt all the motivation dissolve upon the sight of the route waiting to be planned. Coffee will be needed. And maybe whiskey too.

“I believe in you,” Neil broke your brooding with a comment, “And it’s not really me who assigned it” you rolled your eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. Bye, idiot” unable to stop the grin on your face, you ended the call.

So maybe it was worth calling… Even if only to learn that he was in fact yours. And that he did not mind your insecurity or moments of anxiety. Maybe all this had some more potential than heartbreak and tragedy? Ignoring all the thoughts, you focused on the workload. After all, someone had to get all those bloody vehicles on time for the boys to play with.

*** The closer it got to the day, you could feel the tensions rising within the team. Partially it was your own fault and the fact that you were nervous. The plan was vague enough. What you and Ives’ squad knew was that TP intended to take over the plutonium 241 on the move, specifically on the highway leading out of the city. For some reason, he needed a fire truck and a firefighter suit for that. You had no clue why, but you blamed it on the boyish dreams of being a firefighter. Sure they all had those.

Neil was simply the designated driver and mission coordinator, and you hoped that meant he would stay out of harm. As much as that was possible for an idiot like him. You were not allowed to meet to stop TP from getting suspicious, and so all you could do was rely on texts and daily phone calls to keep you from going insane. The downside of the situation was that you could not slap Neil when he said questionable things. Examples being referring to the heist car as sexy (“And what if I told that it’s not the BMW that’s sexy?” “I’d be flattered”) and calling you his girlfriend on the call with Ives. That second incident resulted in the squad leader acting all smug because he apparently ‘figured it all out’. He did not, but who were you to prove him wrong.

And so, you perfected the plan, finished all the assigned tasks, and waited on instructions concerning the day of the mission. When they came, the message was simple – sit on your assess and wait, just in case the Cavalry was needed. You did not specifically like that ‘waiting’ part. Especially since Ives began insisting that you do not actually join them in the field. In his mind, the safest place for you was the flat. Not being a part of the squad and not having enough experience were the main factors acting against you. And you hated the fact that he was right. That is until the evening before the mission when an unexpected text from TP came. You were busy trying to understand the rules of a strange competition show on the television when your phone buzzed. Expecting something nonsensical from Neil, you picked it up instantly. Only to get shocked by the number on display. The message was straightforward:

“Join the squad in the field in Tallinn. You must be there”

Right… When you were asking the universe for help, you did not expect that. But it was better than nothing.

Without a further ado, you got up and wandered over to Ives, who was sat with Wheeler and Michael at the table. Upon your approach, the Brit looked up:

“Don’t tell me you’ve got some last-minute changes from Neil” his blue eyes were hazed with concern.

“No, I’ve got something better” you passed him the phone and waited for a response.

The widened stare and arched eyebrow was the initial reaction.

“He wouldn’t have sent if it wasn’t important” you added, hoping to win the case.

“I don’t get it” Ives sighed heavily, leaning back in the chair.

He glanced at Michael, who nodded and left the room. You just assumed that the discussion was not meant for any ordinary squad member.

“Apologies for my language, but you’re not a bloody soldier, and it might get rough out there” Ives spoke up again after a beat “And I don’t want to fucking worry about your safety amidst all the other mess” he met your gaze warily.

It was a little embarrassing to be considered a burden. You flinched internally before trying another approach.

“I know, but Neil might need me” as soon as you said the words, Ives scowled.

Of course, that just sounded like a lovesick teenager fighting for a hopeless case. And you hated that. But his very next words triggered the remains of resolve.

“Frankly, darling-”

You broke into a laugh, knowing the quotation well.

“I swear, if you quote Gone with the Wind right now, I’ll do something stupid” as a warning, you grabbed hold of the knife lying on the table, making Wheeler snicker quietly “Please, let me go out there. I can track his GPS signal or something. And well, you know that I’ve got a good aim. It might count for something” pleading was not your forte either but at the end of the speech, Ives’ gaze softened.

Maybe? He sighed once again before leaning his forehead on the folded forearms on the table.

“If you get hurt, he’ll kill me” he muttered gloomily.

“You’re exaggerating” you bit back a dry chuckle.

“No, he’s not” your head snapped up at the sound of Wheeler’s voice “But I’ve got to back you here if TP sent that text, then it’s probably important” she looked at you with a small smile.

“Thank you” you grinned back, grateful for the support.

With the days spent among men almost exclusively, Wheeler’s company meant a lot. Soon she became the only person you were willing to discuss your worries with. Because she was not keen on cracking dumb jokes about your relationship and asked questions that did not only concern Neil. And that was a welcomed change.

“You really need to be careful though, because Neil cares about you. Which probably makes you the most important person on this squad” her voice broke through your thoughts.

You knew she meant well, but the statement still made your cheeks heat up. Because did he really care?

“Don’t. You’re making me all flustered” deciding you’ve had enough of the awkwardness you got up to fix a tea.

“Well, I’m only speaking the truth here” turning back to the table, you saw Wheeler shrug “The physics boy took his fancy upon you, and that’s no funny business” she grinned at your perplexed expression.

Briefly, you glanced at Ives, who seemed to have given up on fighting with you and instead was listening in to the conversation with a neutral facial expression. The kettle boiling was your cue to respond:

“Great” semi-aggressively, you threw the tea bag into the mug poured the water “Did he though?” you asked, not even looking at them or expecting an answer.

“Yep,” Wheeler stood up and gave you a quick reassuring shoulder squeeze.

“I’ve never seen him like this before” Ives added once you turned to face him again.

That tea could not brew any longer…

“Not even with…” you hesitated before adding quietly, “Alex?”

“Not quite,” the man gave you an enigmatic smile, only increasing your frustration “You’ve convinced me though. You’re coming with us. Just please, for the sake of my sanity, be careful out there” you resisted the urge to jump up in relief “Because I’d rather not deal with an angry Neil. He’s a pain in the ass enough” Ives added darkly before getting up and joining you by the kitchen counter.

Smiling, you finished the tea.

“Thanks. I’ll do my best” playfully, you nudged his shoulder with yours “You can always blame me though” picking up the mug, you turned towards the corridor.

“As though he’d care” Ives muttered at your back.

The sudden surge of confidence was surprising yet also inspiring:

“I’d make him care. There are some things even he can’t say no to”

The last thing you heard upon closing the door to the bedroom was Ives choking on water.

*** The Tallinn mission for you began with an early morning phone call from Neil. You got as far as getting out of bed after having been staring at the ceiling anxiously for the past three hours when the phone rang.

“Morning,” you muttered, stifling a yawn.

Espresso was certainly needed. Maybe two, before you would have to head out.

“Hey,” the soft tone felt like a mild punch “I’m glad you’re up already” Neil’s sleepy voice made you wish you could wake up together again.

There was always that slightly husky tinge to it, the way he lazily pronounced some words just because it was early still. So different from the enthusiastic overenunciation when he was preaching another messed up plan of his. Or the cheeky inflections he tended to use with you during banter. It was terrifyingly easy to get to know him that well because of how open he was with you.

“I couldn’t sleep. But it’s okay I’ll manage” you admitted, distracting yourself from the sudden thoughts “I didn’t tell you last night, but I got another text from TP… he wants me to join the squad today”

From the moment you have shut the bedroom door the previous night, you have debated calling Neil about it. But then he initiated another rather amusing texting exchange focusing on his fashion choices, and you felt bad disrupting the peace. It could wait. Not anymore. You held your breath until Neil responded with a simple question:

“Why?” he was careful, and you could not blame him for it.

You perched on the windowsill and looked out at the quiet cityscape. The streets were strangely empty for a weekday morning. Sighing, you answered in the best way possible:

“I don’t know, but Ives said yes after some coaxing, so I might see you out there” smiling despite yourself, you waited for his response.

Since recently you had to rely on phone calls, it became increasingly easy to determine his mood based on the tone of the reply. Or on the various nonverbal noises he sometimes made. Now there was a quiet hum proceeding the sentence. A surprise, mild confusion, and worry. Brilliant.

“As much as I’m happy we might meet… and that you can see me in that sexy car,” you rolled your eyes awaiting the point “Please, be careful. I need you safe”

It was not disappointing. You knew he did not intend it that way, and yet the anxiety fuelled brain was onto it instantly. I need you… safe. Unable to stop the comment, you muttered:

“Just safe, then”

“What?” any hope that he might have missed it dissolved with that single question.

Could he for once not listen to what you say? You know, like men tended to do. But then Neil was by no means an ordinary man.

“Nothing. Don’t mind me” the attempt at saving your dignity failed too.

“I thought it goes without saying that I do need you. And that I want you”

Oh god. At once, you wanted to smash your head into the wall and to kiss the bastard for being the way he was. Adding to that sentence, the mental image of his sheepish smile was enough to make your heart speed up. When the silence stretched, becoming awkward, you whispered a reply.

“It’s good to hear it sometimes” the coldness of the window glass cooled off your blazed cheeks, “Especially when I don’t actually believe it” he knew that by now, undoubtedly.

Here the nonverbal cue was a half-choked sigh. Annoyance. Frustration.

“You should. I don’t go around telling everyone that” Neil’s confident voice was trying to pull you back “And I certainly don’t have moments as we do with anyone else” at the implication, you felt flustered again.

Because there did not an hour go by without you thinking about what happened. The pull between you was startling at times. The absolute desire you felt. The way Neil knew exactly how to make you remember every second of every moment. With the memories flooding your brain, you could only utter a single question:

“Why me?”

It was curiosity. Because apart from that evening months ago when you first tried to make sense of your budding relationship, he never said why he cared about you. And you would never dare ask. But now, with everything that happened, it was worth trying. And Neil was willing to deliver:

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because you’re the bravest, kindest, most beautiful person I know” you could only keep on listening with your mouth agape “You fascinate me, and I want to discover all that you’re willing to give me” he finished in a reverent whisper.

That was not what you expected to hear. Not now. Not ever. Speechless, you wondered whether maybe this time it was not a mistake to give your heart away. It was too late. He had everything but your body; that was just a matter of time.

“Neil, I…” this was all you could manage, afraid you would give away another confession.

“Well, you’ve asked,” he chuckled lightly and then asked, “Are you okay?” you could picture that crease between furrowed eyebrows.

“I suppose-” a loud knock on your door interrupted the sentence; it was time, “I think I should probably join them for the final briefing…” hesitantly, you jumped off the sill.

Only two of you could be interrupted during such an important conversation.

“Go, I won’t keep you. Believe me, though, when I say that I want nothing but to be with you. In every way possible” your breath hitched at the connotation behind the sentiment.

Jesus, this man…

“That’s rather mutual,” like a secret you passed it to him on a sigh “But only when you’re not an ass” that was a much-needed distraction for you both.

There was work to be done, after all. You could hear the commotion in the apartment rise in volume and strength.

“I’ll do my best then. Good luck, darling” you grinned at the nickname he was determined to use.

Darling, you could do with. It was better than the ‘love’ that always made you feel like you were just another one among many.

“Don’t do anything stupid I still owe you a few slaps… and a payback” you added the necessary suggestive tone to the last word.

The rest was up to him to figure out. Which he did, if the pleased laughed was anything to go by.

“I’m very much looking forward to all of those” you missed that smirk.

“You should. Bye, my idiot,” you debated saving his number as that in your phone.

Maybe it was the way forwards.

“My love,” laughing, you ended the call when he uttered the words just for the sake of it.

But then that was Neil’s essence – doing things just because. Or to get a reaction from you. And you would not have it any other way.

*** Only when sitting in that bloody SUV, you learned the true meaning of waiting. And how much you hated to do that. There was nothing to do apart from sweating in the protective gear and avoiding the awkward small talk others were susceptible to. The squad has cramped into two non-descript vehicles, and you being the so-called precious cargo, ended up in the same car with Ives who have sworn to protect you. Only, for the first half-hour, there was nothing to protect you from. Apart from anxiety, boredom, and frustration.

Your role was rather simple – follow Neil’s signal on the map to know where you might be needed should he call for backup. As much as you did enjoy the possibility of tracking his movements somehow, you did not appreciate the cheeky smile Ives had on his face when he gave you the job. Or the comment combined with it: “Well, he’s your boyfriend, it’s only fair you keep him on the metaphorical leash here”. That is how the small blinking dot on the map of Tallinn became your sole focus for the past hour. Just before everything kicked off, Neil radioed you with a simple message: The mission is about to start. Wait for further instructions.

Ever since your morning phone call and the revelations that came out, you only exchanged a few texts concerning the practicalities of the action. Despite the nerves, you did hope to see him in near future. Even if just to check whether what he said was true. Looking for a distraction from the sudden thoughts, you glanced at the screen again. They were near, on the main junction of the highway, heading towards the port. Your SUVs were parked underneath a small overpass, five minutes away in the current traffic conditions. Which proved to be convenient, as it turned out.

“Is he still following the set route?” Ives’s question brought you to the present moment.

“Yeah, they’re-” you glanced to double-check the exact location when you realised that something has changed.

The dot was not moving. It was still blinking, but clearly, they have stopped at a crossing. Traffic lights? Your brain somehow knew that it could not be that simple. You opened your mouth to voice the thoughts when the comm came alive on the dashboard with static crackling:

“We need back up here. ASAP”

“Roger that” Ives tossed you the radio “Ask him about the details”

Without waiting for more information, Michael fired up the SUV engine as Ives contacted the second vehicle.

“Neil” you spoke into the receiver “What happened?” you flinched at the louder noise from the radio.

Gunshots?

“We’ve been ambushed by Sator’s people. TP’s status unknown”

Bloody brilliant. Swallowing down the rising worries, you asked another question:

“How many people?” another gunshot pierced the silence.

“Not sure. They’ve gotten clean up orders” a strained breath from Neil told you how bad the situation was.

“Okay. We’ll be there soon” you glanced at the road ahead.

Still, 2 mins to go. Anxiety was threatening to overpower you at any moment. But now was not the time.

“Hurry up” Neil closed the channel with a final dose of static.

Fuck… Forcing a deeper breath, you could only watch as you got closer to him. The sheer thought of something happening to Neil was unimaginable. That was enough to trigger panic. So you pushed the idea to the back of your head, focusing on the distance disappearing.

There was no mistaking the fact that you have been led to the right place. Crashed cars, asphalt littered with glass shards and broken parts, gunshots piercing the air. The destination looked like a car pile-up from an action sequence. Frantically looking through the windows, you tried to spot that blonde head. To no avail. The SUV came to a sharp halt as the squad members began jumping out of the vehicle. Once everyone else disembarked, you moved to follow them, only to be stopped by Ives:

“You’re staying here. I can’t have you out in the shoot-out” his blue gaze was stern, hand blocking exit out of the car.

The idea that you were so close to Neil and could not see him was enough to make you angry.

“I can handle myself. And he’s-” you spit out the words in the face of the squad leader while trying to push him away.

“I said no. The conversation’s over” with a final glare, he stepped away and scanned the horizon for immediate danger “If someone approaches the car, you know what to do,” he threw as a parting remark and disarmed the rifle.

Fucking hell! Groaning in frustration, you kicked one of the seats. He was so close. You glanced at the device in your hand. He could not be further than behind the first line of crashed cars. Biting on your lip harshly, you quickly went over the options. One was to obey Ives and stay inside the bloody SUV like a well-behaved child everyone apparently took you for. No one seemed to care about the vehicles you parked on the outskirts of the action. Flinching at the further salve from the heavy artillery, you knew that the squad had joined the fray. You could be safe here… but… Taking a deep breath you knew there was no possibility you could stay away from the action. Not when Neil was there, potentially in danger. It was not possible to give up on someone that important just because you were told to. Christ…

Glancing through the windows again, you could see Sator’s people attempting to clear the place. The squad evidently attempted to push at them from one side, hoping to get a clean sweep that way. Then, just as you were about to go back to the internal crisis overwhelming your thoughts, you did a double-take. Surely not? You would recognize that hair colour everywhere. There he was attempting what was looking like a skirting manoeuvre to circle the mercenaries with the Cavalry on the opposite side. Only that left him completely uncovered, in the direct line of fire. Bloody idiot. The instinct to jump out and run to him kicked in. The only thing holding you back was the fact that you would disobey the orders. And leave the car unguarded. All the hesitation disappeared once the comm in the car crackled with static:

“Emergency assistance needed. ASAP” the tension in his voice made your pulse quicken.

The lack of response from the team made all the blood drain from your face. You could see him trying to hide behind some overturned car. The henchmen were near enough to get him with no problem.

That thought was all the convincing you needed. Swearing, you quickly pocketed the tracking device, adjusted your protective gear, and grabbed the gun. You have been offered a rifle (just in case), but you preferred the classic. At least it was something right?

In two leaps, you have covered the distance. With the team trying to get through the attack line on the other side, it was just you and Neil. You shot a round in the direction of the approaching merc, missing the target yet earning attention from the main object of your focus. His eyes met yours across the plane. You could see shock, worry, and something else there. Suddenly a salve whizzed past you. The bullets cutting through the air all around, shooting past your head and piercing the car behind. A strangled yell from Neil was a surprising reaction, yet you did not blink twice. He was all you could see. With a final surge through the field, you reached him. The pure fury and anguish in his eyes took you aback. Have you missed something? But there was no time to ask questions.

“Go, I’ll cover you” you whispered, looking at the approaching group of mercs.

Neil took an additional moment to stare at you as though he could not quite believe you were there. But then he jumped up, aiming the gun at the man closest to you. The same that undoubtedly attempted to take you out seconds prior. When the mercenary fell with a bullet in the head, you stared in shock. There was no time to recover as Neil pushed through, barely looking behind at you. It was surprisingly easy to tune out the emotions, taking out anyone who could threaten him or halt your advances. You worked well together, movements in sync enough to stun the opponents on a few occasions. For a second, you wondered whether it was only bound to get better the closer you get to each other. That was certainly an interesting idea… In no time you have met with the line of the squad, watching on as Ives dealt with the last man standing. You have won. The adrenaline started to leave your body, resulting in tremors and shaking hands. Clutching the gun to prevent it from cluttering to the ground, you met the exasperated gaze of the squad leader. Your only response was a shrug. You did not regret the decision, seeing as you have evidently helped them in the field.

“Neil? Do you know where TP is?” Ives took his attention off you and looked at the blonde man.

You followed his gaze, for the first time actually looking at Neil since you spotted him across the plane. At the moment, you were struck by what a sight he was. Navy shirt with sleeves rolled up to expose the forearms covered with veins. The same tie he had on during your walk. Your pulse quickened. The vest drawing attention to the ratio between his broad shoulders and narrow hips, accentuated with a belt. Brown loose-cut trousers and scrapped leather shoes adding a classy touch. You were aware that you were staring yet unable to look away. Not knowing whether to blame it on the adrenaline rush, you wanted nothing but to touch him. Take off those driving gloves that piqued your interest at the first sight. Or have them be wrapped around your throat with just enough pressure. Get rid of the tie again. And…

“Think Sator took him” Neil’s response broke through your increasingly hazy thoughts.

Shaking off the images that started appearing, you looked up at his face again. The ruffled hair and flushed cheeks were not helpful. Fuck’s sake. It had to be stress. Because what else?

“Their place in the port?” Ives asked, his tone nothing but strict business.

“That’s my bet” Neil shrugged, looking around with something dark in his eyes.

He was tense, like a feral animal that could lash out any moment. You were not wrong. The cold blue gaze settled on you almost remorsefully, but before you could open your mouth, he snapped:

“What the fuck were you thinking?” the hostile edge to his voice was new.

You flinched as though you have been hit. The lack of physical impact did not matter. Your heart stammered. He need not explain what it was about. Please no.

“You needed a cover. They weren’t responding, so I did the obvious” you shrugged, feeling the anger grow “And I could ask you the same question” spitting the sentence into his face, you took a step closer.

You have never seen him that furious. Not even in Oslo after your little fuck-up. The sight was both terrifying and alluring. The dark blue eyes blazed with fury. Jaw clenched. Slight pink tint on the cheeks. And yet, still, you had no idea why he reacted like this.

“I knew what I was doing. That’s the difference” the coldness of his voice threw you off.

So it was real. He did mean it. You tried to save him, and here he was, pissed off at you. Making you almost regret it. Almost, because the love was there too. Not giving away no matter what.

“That’s bullshit” it felt good to admit, “You were reckless, as always, and expecting me to-” your rant got interrupted by a strangled yell.

Nothing prepared you for the revelation then. Or the sudden anguish on his face.

“You were almost shot!” Neil’s eyes glistened as though he was close to tears.

Suddenly it made sense. The rain of bullets you were hit with just before getting to him. The way he reacted. But you made it. Nothing happened. So why was he acting like that?

“Almost” ignoring the growing pain in your chest, you pointed out the obvious.

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Ives and the rest of the squad observing you. You would rather not have an audience, but then Neil seemed determined to drive his point forward. His face scrunched into a pained scowl.

“Fucking hell,” turning away from your gaze, his back tensed even more “You can’t do shit like that just because I’m involved” the defensive tone took you aback.

What? It was getting worse. You could feel the confidence leaving your body as you struggled for a response. You would never think Neil would do something like that. Not after everything you have told him. Figuring out the only way you that could work, you took your own line of attack.

“Who says I did it only because it was you?” the implication hurt because it was partially correct “Quite an ego you’ve got there” his back was still turned to you.

That angered you even more. Crossing the distance, you placed your hand on his shoulder, making him turn to you. He flinched upon the contact as though your touch burned him. Oh my god. The tears welled up in your eyes. It could not be real. But the emotionless look in the eyes you thought you knew was very much real. It was as though before you realised Neil has built up a wall, guarding himself against you. And there was nothing you could do to get through. You got shocked by the cruel smirk that split his face.

“I can see the way you look at me. As though you wanted to-” you interrupted him sharply.

“Neil”

It was too much. Perhaps because it was true. But he was not done. Persistent to keep going.

“Admit it. It’s because you said some things, and now you can’t bear the thought of losing the object of your affection” the careless tone and the words pierced your heart with gut-wrenching pain “Well, you see, sometimes feelings need to be put aside” he added, almost casually.

Fuck. You gasped, unable to keep a straight face. He might as well see what he has done. Some things. So this is how much your confession meant to him. Good to know. You wanted to slap him, but you felt like that could turn back on you. So instead, you made sure to straighten your back, putting on the familiar mask of neutrality. You have done this before. Probably should have expected it. Only why did it hurt ten times more?

“Can we leave the bloody lovers quarrel till later?” Ives’s voice pierced through the tension.

But you were not ready. Raising your hand in a stopping motion, you turned back to Neil. His face was terrifyingly indifferent. Maybe it was all an act. Or maybe it was just that easy for him to get over whatever you thought you had. A lie. Gathering the smithereens of confidence, you forced a levelled tone:

“Says you. As though you’re acting out of reason right now” you gave him your best impression of the sneer visible on his face.

You could crumble at any moment now. Only the pounding in your ears and the wounded pride were keeping you upwards. But Neil wanted to destroy everything.

“More than you” he glanced at the team waiting impatiently “I really thought you’d know better than this” the punchline was more than you could take.

No. Please no. Your knees buckled, and you swayed. But then you caught the flash of concern in his eyes. Just for a split of a second. So it was not all cold and hatred? You heard Ives huff out a string of curses. There was no time for this. Whatever it even was. Honesty it was then.

“Better than to give away my heart to someone like you? Evidently not” you met his eyes for the final time before walking away in the direction of the SUVs.

The shock you saw in Neil’s face was enough to fuel the survival instincts. With the heart broken or not, the mission was still on. And the rest was silence.

#tenet #neil tenet #neil tenet x reader #neil x reader #neil tenet imagine #neil tenet fanfic #tenet fanfic #robert pattinson #the art of inversion

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samwrights · 4 years

Text

When You Wake

I literally cannot believe I wrote this. This was originally started to celebrate Yaku’s birthday (happy belated, my love), and to satisfy the requests for a Noya/Yaku threesome. Uh, don’t come for me. I couldn’t find inspiration in the normal hq world, so we’re making it weird. If y’all thought Between the Lines was long, this monstrosity is 13.2k words. 13,200 words, with a shameful, side amount that is smut. Literally, this is all just plot.

ear candy list is, surprisingly, on the smaller side.

⤞ Revenga - System of A Down ⤞ Violent Pornography - System of A Down ⤞ Question! - System of A Down

pairing: Yaku/Reader/Noya

w a r n i n g s//TW: rape, murder, blood consumption, mentions of getting roofied, gore, blood from wounds, supernatural AU, revenge, temporarily mute reader, reader is converted to a vampire without consent, dubcon, death, spitroasting, dirty talk, senpai kink. PLEASE read through these warnings over and over until it is clear to you that this is not going to be an easy read. The reader literally goes on a revenge spree. ⤞ THIS. IS NOT. AN EASY. READ.

Now that you have been thoroughly warned, enjoy.

The way media and films and television glorified and romanticized college parties never could have prepared you for the fateful encounter in the alleyway on a muggy August evening. Primarily, college parties were depicted as fun—drunk nights on the weekends with your girlfriends, maybe hook up with that cute boy from chemistry that somehow ended up with you grinding on him on the dance floor. Though, in some genres, college parties end up with the protagonist roofied and raped and follows how the heroine spirals and recovers. But it only was supposed to happen in the movies, right?

It wasn’t supposed to end with you halfway to death, knocking on Hell’s door with blood pooling around your lifeless body in a barely lit, bleak alleyway. It wasn’t supposed to end with warbles of light fading in and out of your vision as cars passed you by, unknowing there was someone in the alleyway between a closed down butcher shop and a florist who had already gone home for the evening. You were only in your early twenties with only two more years of university to compete—it wasn’t supposed to end yet.

“We can’t just leave her here.”

“I think she’s too far gone, Yaku. We were too late.”

The voices swirling around you were unfamiliar, or at least from what you could gather. In your condition, it was impossible to discern them in the first place—were they even real voices? They sounded entirely too angelic from what you could process in your catatonic state. Maybe they weren’t; maybe death had taken you without your knowledge and the jury that decided whether or not your soul would ascend to heaven was passing their judgment on you.

“I can save her, Noya.” One of the voices, presumably this Yaku character snarls back with urgency. It is the last thing you hear before your limp body is pulled from the concrete. The movement, regardless of how delicate, causing more blood to rush from your open wounds and draining any ounce of consciousness from your mind. “You mind trying to collect the fallout?”

Nishinoya, though shaking his head, gives a subtle grin that cannot be seen in the dead of the night. He pulls out a large mason jar from the satchel he’s carrying and places the mouth of the jar where blood is pouring out profusely from a knife wound. The man collecting the blood knew entirely too well that once his mate sets his mind to something, there was no changing it. Not that it served as a recurring issue; if anything, Noya was grateful for Yaku’s stubbornness considering it was that exact trait of his that had given the former his second chance at life.

The two of them move swiftly, trying to make it back to their hidden mansion, that was quite a distance away, in secret. Yaku is doing all that he can to make sure not to disturb your body so as not to open any wounds further that could force you to bleed out and meet the grim reaper. He wasn’t a very pleasant creature, but that was a story for another day. At the same time, Nishinoya is almost fighting to keep the same steadfast pace while simultaneously holding the now half full mason jar just under the knife wound. The blood was beginning to thicken, turning from bright red to a deep crimson as it oxidizes.

The moment they enter their private garden, Nishinoya busts down the door to their home with expertise, alerting the other members of their clan. “Akaashi!” He screeches, his voice bellowing out in decibels that should not be used unless trying to project a voice in an amphitheater with no microphone. Thank omniscient beings for noise cancelling enchantments. “We need you!” An almost timid, young looking man enters the foyer where Noya is still collecting blood and Yaku is holding your limp body in his arms.

“So that’s where you two have been,” Akaashi deadpans, unfazed by the steadily decaying girl. “Bring her to my room. You can store what blood you’ve gathered there while I remove the knife and get her patched up.” Though calm, the three of them move at breakneck speeds, laying you face down on an operating table while Akaashi suits up. From what he can tell, this was going to be a real mess, considering how deep the knife is. The three of them knew what was to come and what their designated roles in this moment were—Nishinoya was to separate the blood he had gathered from your body and ration them into IV bags, while Yaku was provide suction in case of a bleed out.

“We can save her, can’t we?” Yaku asks quietly, tools in hand.

“That will depend on her will to fight,” Akaashi says quietly, half due to concentration, half because he genuinely does not have a valid answer. “You’ve done this time and time again, Yaku. If anyone is going to save her, it’s going to be you.”

Upon coming to, the only muscles in your body that can move are your eyelids. Peeling them back as much as you can muster, you notice the only light filtering into whatever room you are currently residing in is coming from the blaring moonlight through an open window. The shadows around you make up areas and shapes that you are entirely unfamiliar with, causing you to sit up impulsively to make sense of your surroundings. A mistake on your part, as you are immediately met with a searing pain in your ribs. With further inspection from your droopy eyes, you learn that your torso is entirely bare, save for the copious amounts of medical grade bandages and gauze around your breasts and stomach. Blood pooled somewhere along your left shoulder blade where the pain felt the worst.

“You shouldn’t try to sit up right now.” The same voice you faintly remember from the alley, the one that didn’t want to leave you, before blacking out calls out from across the bedroom. The room is quite large from what you could tell and his smooth voice seems to be leagues away. “Lay back down before you bleed out again—I’ll change your bandages.” From the shadows, a man whom you presume to be Yaku emerges before you, perfect pale skin and sandy brown locks nearly reflecting in the moonlight as he approaches. His face, while incredibly handsome, is blank and is strictly business as he saunters near. Even as he is gingerly tearing off the tight bindings around you with next to no effort, his face remains nonplussed. Even as he washes the dried, crusty blackened blood off your bare chest, nothing. “Do you remember anything?” Yaku’s voice is quiet and somber as he asks his question. He takes your silence as a no.

Your mind is a hazy smog, trying to recall any type of memory at all. Rather than actual imagery, you see a white light when you close your eyes—you see colors you don’t remember seeing before, you hear crying. You hear your name. Not just your first name or a nickname either, you hear your entire given name along with your birthday, even the time of birth.

Any attempt to recall memories is interrupted by a sharp pain. You suck in a breath as Yaku tries to lift your arm to wrap the fresh bandages around your torso, causing him to grimace ever so slightly. This task was a bit easier for him when you were still unconscious, but nonetheless he is glad you’re awake. When the pain subsides, you peel your eyelids back once again, staring at the man sitting at the edge of the bed in wonder. Why was he tending to your wounds? How did he fit into the story? “You needn’t worry about that right now, [name],” he murmurs quietly, reintroducing the same delicate tone you heard before blacking out in the alley. Yaku can tell you’re wondering how he knew what to respond with and how he knew your name but, after a small deliberation, he decides it’s best not to overwhelm you right now. “Get some rest, little one,” he speaks again, “I’ll be here when you wake.” Before you know it, you’re out like a light once again.

Yaku exits his and Noya’s shared bedroom to dispose of the sullied bandages, only to be greeted to the sight of his mate leaning against the bannister closest to their room. “How’s she doing?” Yaku’s lips tighten, the seam becoming a hard line as his grimace deepens.

“She doesn’t remember anything but when I asked her if she did...”

“What?” Noya presses, perturbed at the silence. Very few things in their lives rendered Yaku speechless.

“She started seeing memories of her birth.” The two shorter leaders of the clan meander their way down the grandiose staircase in silence, each step accompanied by the dramatic chimes of a grand piano coming from the foyer. The music stops when they reach the bottom of the staircase, Sugawara pausing his fingers and quirking a brow at the couple. It was a rare occurrence to see both of them, or Nishinoya in the very least, look so morose.

“What’s got you guys looking so down? You look like someone just died.” The musician muses. Sugawara Koushi always did have the most twisted sense of humor—that was partially the reason that Yaku had kept him around. The other primary reason was solely for bragging rights and an inside joke between the clan because no matter how many times Sugawara introduced himself as Beethoven or Bach, people assumed that they all just meant he was talented. Not that it was literal and Sugawara was just a name he’d adopted when he earned another century of life.

“Ha ha,” Nishinoya drawls satirically, for both himself and for Yaku. The latter excuses himself, parting ways because he knows he can’t handle conversation right now. “Come on, Suga, that’s not funny. Yaku’s already taking this really hard and if we lose her...”

“Humans die all the time, Nishi. A conversion isn’t a guaranteed shot at a second life and Yaku knows that so why is he—“

“Because she was found just like I was. Wrong place at the wrong time and it ended with...” the shorter of the two can no longer find the words to speak. It didn’t matter how many centuries old everyone in the clan was, it didn’t matter that they had watched plagues take countless lives or even bared witness to some of Jack the Ripper’s victims—it was a different monster entirely to genuinely watch a person become prey to another human. “I hope she makes it through, if only to rip out the guys throat that stabbed her.”

Three months had passed since you had first woken up. Strength is returning to you little by little, though not enough for you to hold consciousness for more than a few minutes a day. Regardless, Yaku is relieved to see you making some form of progress, to see that you’re somewhat handling the conversion well. The head of the clan was almost always present when you did awake, though there were instances in which his partner, Nishinoya, had been the one to greet you.

Nishinoya was much more boisterous than his other half—much more talkative and, considering you haven’t found the strength to speak quite yet, that was entirely okay with you. You learned that Yaku and Nishinoya had been together a very long time and Yaku had saved his life ages ago, as the latter phrased it. In admiration, Noya mentions his partner’s abundance of patience—a skill that he himself lacked—and determination to see justice being served had swayed the younger of the two to continuously stand alongside him. Through these little vignettes of their life, however, Noya makes it a point to acknowledge the fact that he was once almost too overbearing for his senior, often intimidating him with just how open and blunt he was. “Nishi, are you boring her with details of our mundane life?” Yaku asks bemusedly as he enters the room you’d been resting in.

“Hey, we aren’t boring. I’m not boring you, am I?” Noya looks to your face, your expression not giving much away save for the light in your barely live eyes. It was far from mundane—if anything, hearing the stories made you so curious considering from just barely glancing with the two, they seemed to be a strange couple.

“We are,” Yaku confirms, though as to what, you aren’t sure. You were certain you hadn’t said anything aloud, considering you practically can’t. “Let’s just say I can hear your thoughts. It’s how we’ve been communicating with you.” The head of clan saunters over casually, sitting at the edge of the mattress opposite to his partner. Both of their rich, golden irises are gazing at you, gauging a reaction from you as he shares this bit of information. Weird, was the only way for you to describe it. Though Yaku didn’t need to read your mind to know that; the slightly panicked look on your face gave away your thoughts.

“Don’t think we don’t know about those vivid wet dreams you have of us—“

“Yū, you weren’t supposed to tell her that!”

“What? We’re all adults here—“

“Nishi, get out,” Yaku covers his face in utter horror, even more so as his partner exits the room laughing as he does so. Shameless Noya. The door closes, leaving you and Yaku alone—were he able to go red out of embarrassment, he probably would have. “I-I am so sorry about him.” Testing out the information that the man beside you supplied moments ago, you reassure him that it’s fine—that you have no control over your dreams and that he probably doesn’t have a way to turn off this strange ability. For a moment, he’s relieved because you seem to be accepting everything with grace thus far; maybe telling you the truth wasn’t going to be the worst case scenario.

But the thought of the truth makes Yaku hesitate—there was no way you were ready to handle the entirety of the truth. At the moment, you could barely handle your weekly check-ups with Akaashi—the household doctor. After a formal introduction, you learned that Akaashi was the one who patched up your wounds when you were first brought to the little mansion. From what you gathered, he was quiet and direct, kind even, but you hated the weekly visits. Not only was Yaku carrying you rather painful, as you’re still recovering from your injuries, but Akaashi had to do regular blood transfusions because, according to the young doctor that you swore could not have already completed medical school and residency, you had lost a lot of blood during the incident.

An incident in which you still can’t recall.

“It’ll come to you,” Yaku says morosely, probably responding in accordance to your thought. The man beside you gets up from the bed, holding his arms open to you, silently asking for permission to pick you up. “Sorry, I’ll try to be more gentle.” His arms are cold as he lifts you up, but all you can focus on is the throbbing in your back as he moves you. A sharp intake of breath leaves your lungs as Yaku supports you physically, adding gentle words of encouragement because he can almost feel how much pain you’re in. Every step down the steep staircase adds another metaphorical bruise to your tender skin, a small groan leaving your throat each time. And while you’re not uncomfortable with the idea of being in Yaku’s arms, you’re grateful when you’re laid down in Akaashi’s office along the leather exam seat.

“How are you feeling today, [name]?” The young doctor asks as he preps you for your blood transfusion. Much to your surprise, you feel hungry—ravenous, even—like you hadn’t eaten a meal in months. Maybe you hadn’t; it wouldn’t be that ridiculous to consider since your memory was a little shoddy.

“You’ll feel better after the transfusion,” Yaku reassures from the chair he’s sitting in beside the exam bed, “we’ll get some food in your system before we start your physical therapy.” There’s an interesting intonation in the way he speaks this, you notice. Like there’s an underlying joke or hidden agenda that you don’t quite understand, but at the same time, the strange phrasing doesn’t trigger your fight-or-flight system in any capacity. If anything, it just seems that Yaku wants to help you regain strength as best you can.

Though, that was currently proving to be a challenge as well. While you weren’t entirely sure how long ago your injuries occurred, you knew a decent amount of time had to have passed. One of your first check-up appointments with Akaashi led to the explanation of the muscle atrophy in your legs from lack of use. Once you slowly became acclimated to being awake for more than just a few minutes a day, Daichi was introduced to you as your physical therapist. He was another enigma—entirely too young to be as experienced as he was in his field, but you decided against questioning it—temporarily mute or not.

Being mute was another issue that was taking much longer than you liked. You hated only being able to communicate through Yaku’s inexplicable talent of being able to read your mind. There were many occasions in which you wanted to ask Akaashi about your condition and how bad of a state you had been brought to him in; how you wanted to ask Sugawara how he’d learned to play such a vast variety of melodies so expertly; how you wanted to tell Nishinoya that every time he tried to feed you a soup or something, it tasted foul and metallic no matter how fresh it was.

You’d have to wait until you found your voice again.

After your check-in with Akaashi, Yaku brings you to Daichi’s office just down the hallway. “Hey, there’s our little fighter.” Daichi was probably the kindest out of everyone in the household. He had a warmth to him that seemed to contrast his icy fingers when he’d hold and guide you for your therapy sessions—a little uncanny that everyone in this mansion had freezing finger tips. Maybe everyone had poor blood circulation?

From the opposite end of the room, Yaku stifles a laugh by biting his cheek. Glad to know that your deconstructed concept of time hadn’t waned on your sense of humor. Meanwhile, Daichi lays you gingerly on a mat on the ground with you back flat as he wraps a resistance band around one of his ankles, as well as your own. “Alright, [name], I’m gonna help you get your leg up and I want to see you pull your leg up as high as you can go, understood?” Five didn’t seem like a very large number, but for now it was the goal. If you could at least lift your legs five times, it was progress considering the severe muscle atrophy in your legs.

Some days, it was difficult for Yaku to sit with you through therapy. He can see the way you wince in pain because you’re trying to relearn and rebuild your muscle groups; other times he just wanted someone, anyone, to blurt out the truth about the situation and hope that it inspires you to push yourself to heal. Some days, it was difficult because Yaku found himself just wanting to hold you in his bed that you’d taken over while the two of you plot out the revenge you didn’t even know you needed. But it wasn’t always bad. There were days, like today, where the progress on your therapy was going much better than anyone in the clan anticipated. There were days where Yaku would ask what you remembered about...anything, and you would have some form of answer for him.

On those days, Yaku began to realize that your memories were coming in chronological order. From the first time you sat up or crawled, to your first word even. In fact, Yaku’s favorite moment that he’s witnessed thus far was watching your father teach you to take your very first steps—it seemed to recur during your therapy sessions, as if subconsciously encouraging you to try to walk again. Maybe that’s why today, you were able to provide Daichi with double the repetitions that he asked for—a sure sign that strength and muscle were returning to your legs. But even with what progress you’ve made so far, Yaku makes it a point to carry you back to your room and lay you back in bed to rest. As always, Yaku tucked you in as he spoke, “get some sleep, little one. I’ll be here when you wake,”

For weeks on end, dreams stop becoming dreams. Per usual, Yaku awaits in the corner opposite of the bed where you rest, allowing your memories-turned-dreams to flood his mind. Each night, they’re progressively becoming more and more clear—you’re able to recall outfits that you’d worn twenty years ago with perfect detail, scars and scrapes that your friends had, even when that one sock was in the corner of your closet from when you were seven. But the clearer these chronological dreams became, the less frequently you were waking up and it was beginning to worry the head of the clan. While you were still obtaining your weekly blood transfusions to help sustain your life, it seemed to be that they were no longer providing you with enough energy to move past your current stage of recovery. “Yaku, she needs to start feeding,” Akaashi had instructed him during a consultation.

“I still haven’t told her—“

“Come on, man, it’s been almost eight months,” the house doctor groans. There was no reason to coddle you anymore as your life-threatening wounds had already healed for the most part. Sure, there was still discomfort from your broken ribs but even those had almost entirely healed over; your physical therapy sessions and rehabilitation with Daichi were going rather well but, at this point, if you didn’t start getting more substance in your body, this would be the end of the line for you. Akaashi had advised him this for weeks now, but Yaku still hesitated. “We’ve got to tell her.”

“I know, I know. I just—“ the sandy brunette ruffles his claws through his mussed locks in frustration, “I think her power is developing. And I’m afraid if we drop the bomb on her now, it’s going to halt or hinder that progress.”

“Either tell her or feed her,” Akaashi bites, “if you don’t, she’s not going to have any power because she’s going to starve to death.” With that, Akaashi walks away because he has nothing left to argue at this point. While he may be the youngest of the brood, this made Akaashi the most volatile of the group. More often than not, he was relatively kind and patient, timid even, as he was in his human life, but also very stern and strict—all of it coming from a place of love. And Yaku, knowing the tremendous amounts of emotional pain that the former had received, the leader of the clan dare not disrespect him.

Rather than making it an argument, Yaku roams around the lodge to grab a couple bags of O negative out of storage before heading back to his room. Much to his surprise, Nishinoya is sitting at the edge of the bed already, a slight look of panic washing over his features. “Yaku, I think something is wrong.” Without another word, the creature in question hands the bags of blood to his mate before resting his forehead against yours—a sure fire way to make sure that the mental images he picked up from you were pristine and uninterrupted as you dreamed—ignoring the cold sweat beading on your forehead.

You were at the Pike house. It was the first week of the new college semester and your roommates had convinced you to tag along to a frat party they were invited to. The night was going along exactly like a corny romantic comedy—you had locked eyes with a man from across the dance floor. He was sweet—much kinder than others you had met that night. He grabbed you drink after drink, but your memory begins to go fuzzy after that despite being able to recall memories of your own birth or the stupid girl that picked on you when you were twelve and even the small pimple on her temple that you figured was probably making her insecure. So if you were able to recall these memories, dreams, whatever they were, with such perfect clarity, why could you not remember leaving that party? Did that mean he had been drugging your drinks? It was entirely possible, considering Pike wasn’t exactly known for their hospitality. You vaguely remember the man holding your hand firmly as the two of you weave and bob around people and being met with the sweltering humidity of a muggy August night and your roommates, Yukie and Kaori, were nowhere to be found.

You were dragged into a dimly lit alleyway, stumbling with every step that the man had nearly carried you by your wrist alone, reeking of trash that had been long overdue for pick up and maybe even rotting carcasses. It was difficult to tell considering the drugs you assume that had been placed in your system and it was even more difficult to recall the memories. Bits and pieces of your memory were coming back in patches—though the face of the man that had brought you there was not one of them. Nor were any of his friends that had joined in, appearing at the opening of the alleyway. You remember the sound of tearing fabric, salacious laughter of the group of men surrounding your body. You remember feeling searing pain as one held a knife to your throat, warning you that he would slit your throat if you tried to scream.

The threat was replaced in the form of one of the frat boys ramming a half-hard cock down your throat, knife still in place along the jugular vein, while every orifice and inch of your skin had been violated. Vaguely, you remember trying to bite down on the cock in your mouth and run away. The one that threatened to kill you had missed your throat when you ran and threw the knife into your back instead. Foul screeches of demeaning slander left their mouths as they kicked your ribs in at full force, as if the knife deep in your back wasn’t bad enough.

You remember them leaving your bare, naked body in the alley for death to take you.

You remember their faces.

Awakening with a start, you sit up abruptly, only to fall back into the pillow with a resonant clacking noise followed by a dull throb to your forehead. Yaku recoils, mostly out of shock rather than pain—maybe laying his head on yours wasn’t his finest moment. “You remember,” he balks after he’s recovered from the impact. You’re trying to scream, no sound leaving your lungs while tears barreled out from your eyes. Remember? Why was that a memory? Why did it have to be a memory?

Nishinoya acts hastily, tearing open one of the O negative packs and draining half the contents into his mouth and holding it there as he shoves Yaku out of the way. The smaller of the two slats his lips over your silently screaming mouth, puncturing a small wound to the inside of your lip with his teeth and letting the blood trickle in the hole. It feels like pudding trying to push through a sieve, the flavor of copper and iron tampered out by an earthy, meat flavor—maybe venison? The desire to scream fades away as well, rather being over taken to have whatever nourishment Noya is giving you to enter you more and more. Out of necessity, you mold your lips over his, sucking hard on his lip while wrapping your arms around him because it just didn’t seem that he could get close enough in this moment. Despite the fingers you have threaded in Nishinoya’s gelled locks, he pulls away with a shit-eating grin, his tongue swiping away at the trail of red liquid dripping from the seam of his lips. “Careful, might make a guy a fall in love with that kinda kiss.”

“M-more,” you croak out, deflecting the younger one’s flirty comment all together. Yaku and Noya’s eyes go wide upon hearing your voice for the first time. The former acts on instinct, downing the remaining contents of the bag in his partner’s hand before reenacting the same gesture as the latter. Yaku’s lips are much softer than his partners—or maybe it’s the quelling of whatever hunger that hadn’t been satiated that eased the desire. With Yaku, his tongue laves against the wound that Noya had made, coaxing the fluid to enter at a much more steadfast, intimate pace. Even well after he was done feeding you, Yaku sucked on your tongue, encouraging you to reciprocate, so as to get every drop. “W-What was t-that?” You pant out brokenly as soon as the two of you break apart. The question startles the two sitting at the edge of the bed—now that you had your voice somewhat back, Yaku no longer needed to communicate for you. That also meant he couldn’t control the flow of responses to not overwhelm you.

“I think it’s time you finally got your answers,” Noya mumbles, treading carefully as he looks at his partner. It was a silent reassurance that, no matter how this scenario proceeded, he would be here to support Yaku. To make you more comfortable, he adjusts the pillows behind you so that your back can rest properly along the headboard.

“M-my d-d-dreams?” Having just rediscovered your voice, it still came out in sharp, staccato-like whimpers, but the boys weren’t going to discourage you from speaking. Much like everything else Yaku had done in his life, he had done with patience and your recovery and rehabilitation were no different. But your throat was still raw and it still hurt to speak—thankfully with your mind rushing like a bullet train, Yaku was able to grasp the entirety of your question.

“I think they’re more memories than dreams.” His words come out like a condemning nail in a coffin—like a doctor telling you you only have a few months left to live—because that means everything you recalled from Pike house, the drinks, the party, the alley, all of it was real. “Noya and I found you that night barely clinging to life. Naked, soaked in blood and semen. You died that night, [name].” As he speaks, his cold finger tips traced along your breast until you feel the throbbing mound of flesh—a scar of where the knife had been thrown into you from the back and exited out the front. “The knife had gone through your aorta. Akaashi spent a long time trying to repair it but was unable to.”

Your body begins to tremble as silent sobs wrack through your body. You died? “S-so how ‘mi h-here?” Yaku looks over at Noya in discernible worry—not because the head was afraid of telling the truth, no. He was afraid how you would react to the truth. His partner looks at him poignantly, mentally reminding him that this was eerily similar to how Noya had reacted when he had learned the truth as well. Yaku’s head bobs in agreement, swallowing his hesitance before speaking again.

“I made you like me. Like the rest of us.” Your brows furrowed in confusion, suspicion even, because there’s no way that he’s saying what you think he’s saying. But rather than offering a verbal response, Yaku holds his hand out towards Noya, in which he places the other bag of O Negative in his palm. While the original plan was to just feed you once again, the second Yaku tears open the bag, the hunger you thought had eased returned at full force. You rip the bag out of his cold hands, elongated claws scratched at you as you do so, before you down the contents like a shotgunned beer before you could realize what you were doing.

“T-This is a joke, right?” You balk, voice clear as day due to the strength returning to your body once again from freshly consumed sustenance. But the tensions have gone down significantly, to the point where Noya feels relief and excuses himself to feed, leaving you in Yaku’s solitary care. Once the two of you are left alone, Yaku can only shake his head as he continues to press on with the truth. This had to be a cruel, sick joke. But it wasn’t funny and you certainly weren’t laughing. Yet Yaku had no reason to lie to you and the snack you had just consumed moments ago was meant to serve as a final nail in the metaphorical coffin to make you understand that he was telling the truth.

“We have been alive for centuries—storytellers dubbing our kind as vampires—but originally, we were simply called the Damned.” Yaku proceeds to go through the history, much like he had with all the others before you, because he feels the need to share the truth, needs to tell you that your death isn’t the end of your life but rather the beginning like it had for all those in clan. The most recent addition to the family was Akaashi. He was less than a century old, compared to the others. Akaashi had been tied to a tree and shot repeatedly, only to watch his lover drown to death, who had been tossed into the ocean before shortly before with a thirty pound weight attached to his ankle with his last few breaths. Yaku and Sugawara were the ones to set his nearly lifeless body free with the head of the clan performing Akashi’s conversion. This lead to the newborn to coming back to slaughter the community that decided to his partner needed to die for being a man in love.

Each of their stories was nearly identical. Sugawara, who apparently has been every major known classical musician in history hiding under the guise of his shapeshifter ability, and Daichi were hanged together for being a homosexual couple after their village had carved unsavory words on their bodies to remind their reincarnations of their sins. Yaku and Noya had saved each of them respectively, and allowed the two of them to go on a rampage to annihilate their executioners.

Lastly, or rather firstly, was Nishinoya himself. As Yaku goes into detail about transforming his partner, he tears up ever so slightly. And as you listen actively with no interruptions, no questions even, as he tells you about how Nishi was wrongly imprisoned for theft and how the other prisoners constantly violated and sodomized his body because he was smaller than the rest; how he ended his own life by ingesting whatever toxic chemicals he could find and how Yaku broke him out of prison to start a new life together. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” the aforementioned prisoner re-enters the room, a fragile smile on his thin lips as he takes a seat beside his partner. “So you finally told her?”

“B-but why m-me? Why not just let me die?”

“Do you not want revenge against the assholes that killed you a year ago, [ name ]?” Noya bit before Yaku could jump in. “They’re still alive after what they did to you—how is that fair?!”

A year?

You had died a year ago. How did your family take the news? Your roommates and best friends? Nishi was right—it wasn’t fair at all. Yaku raises a hand towards his partner in attempts to get him to calm down before he got too riled up about the situation and before he could get out the most important question. “I have to know, [ name ], if you want to continue on with this lifestyle or not before we proceed with the real rehabilitation.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You tilt your head to your newfound savior. He said it so nonchalantly, as if learning how to walk or learning that your diet was blood wasn’t rehabilitation.

“Well, we have to teach you how to feed properly so your strength gets back up—unless you just want us to feed you for the rest of your eternal life.” Noya jokes, waggling his eyebrows suggestively in what you’ve come to understand is his typical, joking demeanor.

“I mean, I wouldn’t complain.”

“Noya, can you maybe save the flirting for later?” Yaku grits out—once again slightly mortified. It brings laughter to the man in question; it was like rewatching his own life all over again, seeing him get flustered at the smallest amounts of forward affection. It was endearing, if anything.

“Sure. Let’s get [ name ] healthy first then.”

After coming to terms with your transformation and feeding more regularly, still off of a supply stock that the mansion carried, you were able to attend therapy sessions with Daichi more frequently. And while you hadn’t entirely regained muscle or use of your legs, you were able to at least stay awake more often than not. Rather than being cooped up in the bedroom, you found yourself lounging near the entryway where Sugawara would entertain you with the countless pieces he had written over the years. It was soothing and peaceful and Sugawara’s jovial personality kept you from spiraling into a deeper hole knowing that you died. It was still an insane concept, but the five men in your new home had worked hard to keep you sane. “Ready for your session?” Yaku asks gently as he takes a seat beside you on the luxurious sofa. He’s not as uptight as he was now that you knew the truth, though he still did get flustered when you would openly show affection. Even if it was something as simple as leaning your head on his shoulder like you were now.

“I think so,” doing what you could, you scooted and clambered onto Yaku’s lap, wrapping your arms around his neck firmly while your weakened lower limbs splayed across his lap. He tucks one arm under your knees while the other supports your back, effectively scooping you up and brings you to the kitchen where the blood stock is kept. You quirk a brow at the creature carrying you, knowing you’ve already had at least three bags since you woke up.

“Gotta get your strength up so you can recover faster,” is all he responds with before he sets you down on a bar stool. Yaku tears open the bag of O Negative and, much to your shock, he drinks half the contents without swallowing before his lips are on yours. One of his fangs finds purchase on the inside of your lip, sinking down and creating an opening for the blood to flow in for quicker delivery. Usually, Yaku would only have to feed you like this when you were in a weaker state, so it felt a bit out of place for him to be doing it right now, but it certainly wasn’t unwelcome. While the blood trickles into the wound, Yaku’s tongue swirls with yours intimately, coating the cavern with the liquid and he doesn’t stop until every ounce is clear from both of your mouths.

“Not complaining,” you say slowly, “but is there a particular reason you wanted to feed me instead of just letting my chug the bag?” As you ask your question, Yaku is draining the rest of the contents of the bag into his mouth before pulling you towards him in another kiss. The question is repeating over and over in your head, he can hear it loud and clear, but the other thoughts are spurring him on further. The thoughts of how Yaku’s touch makes you crave more, makes you want to feel his lips along your skin and his large hands gripping your thighs tightly. Sometimes he’s unsure whether or not you conveniently forget that he can read your mind, sometimes he wonders if you let your salacious thoughts run wild on purpose. His chest is heaving, deep intakes of breath are plunging through his nostrils despite the blood being long gone. He doesn’t want to stop but centuries of control are begging him to.

“We’re going somewhere today, after your PT,” Yaku pants out after he pulls away, tilting his head down because he can’t look at you right now—he’s afraid to. He needs to try to dampen whatever feral thoughts are running through your brain so that his own self-control doesn’t just get tossed out the window. “Noya and I are taking you out for your first hunt.”

“Uh, am I ready for that?” Shit, you can’t even walk in your own yet. Yaku laughs, grateful for the reprieve from your sexually charged thoughts when you point out the setback.

“That’s why the extra feeding tonight. I needed to make sure it was in your bloodstream so that you had enough strength for PT and the hunt,” Yaku adjusts you from barstool, scooping you into his arms once again to bring you to the mansion’s back garden. Daichi is standing a short distance away adorning a tight muscle tee and joggers, while Noya and Akaashi are sitting at the small table with cigars in hand. Yaku steadies you in front of Daichi, the latter holding onto your hands to make sure you don’t fall, before the former joins the rest the clan at the table. Sugawara emerges from inside the mansion as well, passing off a cigar to Yaku while lighting his own. It was uncomfortable in some capacity to have everybody watching—you couldn’t help but feel as if you were being critiqued on your performance.

“I’m going to be one step ahead of you, and I won’t let go, okay?” Daichi holds his arms out to give you space to take your first step. You take in a sharp breath, the scent of scent of cigars and pine trees overwhelming your nasal cavity. When did you sense of smell become that strong? With trembling limbs, you cling onto Daichi’s muscular forearms, praying to god you didn’t fall as you took a step forward.

“Hey, look!” Noya cheers from a distance, nudging Yaku in the stomach. “She took a step!” The excitement in his voice was evident because, after months of constant aid, Noya has come to have a soft spot for you almost as much as Yaku does. The two of them are watching, utterly enthralled with the way you’re only moving mere millimeters—but millimeters is better than nothing considering the muscle decay and atrophy that had taken place over the last year.

After the first few steps and curling your toes in blades of grass, your feet begin to relax as you tremble forward. Gripping Daichi with all the strength in your hands, you pick your right foot off the ground and place it forward. “That’s good, [ name ]! Gimme one more,” Daichi, a therapist in more ways than one, encourages you to continue moving, wanting to make sure both legs were receiving equal treatment. You repeat the motion with your left leg, taking two full steps. While not perfect, you kept moving forward with his guidance until his calves hit the stone wall of the garden fountain. Considering where you started, twenty five feet was a tremendous distance to cover. “You did amazing, [ name ].” The vampire holding onto you smiles big, pride swelling in chest like a father praising his daughter for taking first in a beauty pageant.

Yaku and Noya are by your side immediately in celebration, the latter much more overt with it as he’s hugging you and holding you up. “What do you think, Daichi? Is she strong enough to at least witness a hunt?” The former asks. Mentioning the “H” word again perks your ears up because a part of you almost wishes to not have to engage with whatever a hunt entails, but part of you also knows that this is your life now. Everything you thought you knew was no longer valid—this was your rebirth, your awakening.

“I think she’ll be okay if one of you carries her for it—“

“Ooh, I’ll do it!” Noya cheers almost too loudly in your ear as he’s still holding you. Without so much as a chance to offer a rebuttal, you’re swept up into his arms as he stands at full height before glancing at his mate. “Ready to go?” Yaku gives a nod, gripping tightly at the satchel over his shoulder before the three of you are off at breakneck speeds. They’re silent as they travel—perhaps because were they to open their mouths at this speed and velocity, they would be catching a whole lot of bugs in their mouths. To your surprise, the three of you end up outside ten-foot-tall brick walls and a chain link fence.

“This is a...”

“A prison,” Yaku answers simply, as if he were answering with what his favorite color was rather than his favorite meal, “considering our diet, we choose to collect our sustenance from those who do not deserve redemption.” There’s a malignant, dark twist in the headman’s words.

“Personally, I prefer going after the rapists and child molestors. Those bastards deserve to be drained of every ounce of blood.” Noya snarls—you could tell it was personal for him. But how could he tell? Surely it wasn’t just written on placards outside of prison cells.

“Easy. Walk in, ask them what they’re serving time for, and their minds fill in the blanks.” The foreboding you sensed from Yaku deepened even further; deepened to the point where it felt like a magnet drawing your eyes towards your savior. But he looked anything but. Yaku stood merely a few inches taller, his claws sharpening and turning black while red overtook the once golden hues of his irises. You look up at Noya curiously, wondering if he’ll undergo the same sort of transformation, but before you could even question it, the gold in his own eyes had already molded into crimson rings.

The three of you enter the building with ease, aiming for the top floor because, according to Nishi, that was where they kept the worst criminals. It played out exactly as Yaku said it would—ask them what they were imprisoned for and, if they were in captivity under the basis of rape, first or second degree murder, sexual assault, or anything involving a minor, he would sink his fangs into their jugular vein and drain them dry. Though he announces his satisfaction, he remains in this strange form that he has presented you with as Nishinoya passes you off into his arms.

The smaller of the two repeats the same process, taking down two prisoners of his own before taking the satchel off of his partner’s shoulder. Noya continues questioning prisoners, letting Yaku’s power of mind reading acting as the judgment call, before pulling out a small, sharp knife from the satchel and slitting each victim’s throat while holding them downcast like a gavel banging down the rule. As blood fountains from their necks, Nishinoya holds fresh IV bags over the openings to collect whatever comes out like rain. Was this how they ended up getting blood for you to feed over the past year. “Yes,” Yaku answers evenly, looking down at you with his crimson eyes, “but we were hoping to actually teach you how to feed tonight. Are you up for it?” Every nerve in your body seemed to scream no, like you shouldn’t be witnessing these events let alone doing it.

But your guts are telling you yes, yes this is now your way of survival. These men were horrid, their victims needed justice. You needed justice. Giving Yaku a small nod, he gives you instructions while the three of you search for your very first meal. Considering neither your fangs nor claws had grown in, as you were very much still a baby by all intents and purposes, Noya would have to incapacitate your prey for you while you bit the inside of your lip, reopening the same puncture wounds from earlier, to allow easier access for the nutrients to enter your body. Once they were out, Noya would puncture the jugular vein for you, while Yaku dipped you down far enough to feed.

Your lips latched on to the raw skin, hooking your own canines for leverage as you draw the blood from your dinner and the moment the warmth seeped into the opening, all doubts about what you were doing had flown out the window. You adjusted the way you’re sitting on your victim, your hands finding purchase on his shoulders as you continuously sucked every drop of life from him. “Did she just—“ Noya questions, not missing the fact that you had just moved your atrophied legs. And while Yaku is very aware of his mate’s balking, he can only focus on the way your lips mold against your meal’s neck or the muted slurping noises bubbling from your lungs like a woman starved. In a sense, that was quite literal. Noya looks over at his partner—silence wasn’t typical of Yaku when asked a question—but words are lost on him when he sees the way Yaku’s eyes are hungrily staring at your form and he’s unsure if its due to hunger or hunger. The moan that leaves your tongue when you finally pull away from the now empty body confirms the shorter one’s suspicions. “Not that seeing you turned on doesn’t turn me on, but you might wanna put that away, Morisuke.” Noya teases before walking towards you, the call of his given name causing Yaku to snap out of his stupor. Well fuck, he snarls bitterly in his head. He was gonna have to feed again, considering all the blood he had just consumed went straight to his cock.

You feel alive—more alive than you felt in ages. And despite your attempt being incredibly shaky, you managed to stand on your own two feet, using the wall to brace yourself. Noya rushes over to your side to try to hold you steady, asking if you’re alright. “I’m more than alright, Nishi, holy shit.” He has an arm under you, carefully bringing you back towards Yaku, though for the most part, you’re walking entirely on your own.

“So what, have you guys just been giving me snacks this whole time?” You sneer teasingly, though Yaku looks away because your accusation because it isn’t entirely wrong. The blood packs were indeed “snacks” but were usually only used to stave off hunts, that way they didn’t just decimate the prison on an every other day basis, but were also used as post coitus replenishments.

“One more?” Yaku coughs out, as if choking on his own spit. “We can do this one together, if you like.” He’s trying to be polite, despite the feral look in his eyes while also trying to calm down the lust and adrenaline running rampant in his system.

“Yeah, that’d be nice.” As opposed to carrying you this time, Yaku flanks to your empty side, helping you walk between him and Noya until you came upon your next victim. This one was larger than the last few—stocky and skin marred with stories of a brutal past. No matter which way you looked at him, he looked bitter, and after asking him what he was in for, you figure he was a perfect candidate. After all, intentionally murdering his wife and three children was heinous by definition. Yaku approaches the much taller man, crouching ever so slightly in the event your meal tried to escape; not that he could even if he wanted to. The leader of the Damned was behind him in seconds, snapping his neck to disarm the threat that was his build.

To everyone’s surprise, you made your way over slowly to the now lifeless, six-foot-three prisoner while Yaku punctured holes on both sides of the victim’s neck, allowing the both of you to feed. It was oddly intimate, being so close to someone while sucking the literal life out of somebody. The lapping, sucking noises brought back salacious thoughts to the man beside you, and he’s doing all that he can just to avoid trading sustenance for an erection again. Meanwhile, Noya is watching both of you in amusement. Does his partner realize that he’s gingerly scraping his claws along your spine? Is it out of encouragement, or interest? Yu can’t quite tell, but he finds it entertaining nonetheless. Even more so when Yaku squirms at the throaty moan leaving your lungs when you pull away, lips plump with a bead of leftovers dripping from the seam of you mouth.

Either way, Nishinoya knows it won’t be long now until Yaku cracks. Despite the great amount of self-control he tends to exercise, Yaku is but a simple creature that cannot stave off his desires and Noya is no different. They were going to give way to their desires sooner rather than later, but they made a vow eons ago that revenge must always come first.

One year, three months, one week, and four days. That was how long it had been since you died in the alleyway. Today was the day those boys were going to die for what they did.

By now, you were fully functioning; walking on your own, feeding on your own. The only difference between you and the others was that you still slept, though not very much anymore, and according to Akaashi, it would be a trait that you would grow out of maybe two decades after your first century. That was actually the sole reason there was even a bed in the house—Nishinoya still slept merely because he enjoyed it. He wasn’t like the others who had found a passion project that kept him up around the clock, so more often than not, he would join you in bed. After all, it was originally his bed.

And more often than not, Yaku would sit in the spacious window sill while Noya wrapped his arms around you protectively in your shared slumber, as if to abide by the repeated mantra he had said over the last year—he’ll be there when you wake.

Your dreams are no longer memories, as you’ve got caught up to current events thanks to the playback speed that they paced themselves at. Now, you’re able to recall on every single event of your life that you’ve witnessed thus far with perfect detail—including the faces of your five murderers. Each of them belonged to your university Pike fraternity; two of them were a year older than you, two the same age, and the one who had the knife to your neck was a freshman not yet old enough to drink legally, but apparently old enough to to pull the metaphorical trigger and throw the knife that had gone through your entire body, severing your aorta in your heart.

After researching in the form of disguise, you learned that tonight Pi Kappa Epsilon would be holding their annual holiday gala; fancy words for a giant frat party for those who chose not to return to their hometowns for Christmas. Knowing how these events tend to function—it was relatively easy to sneak in, even with Nishinoya and Yaku flanking your sides. You flashed the doorman a crisp fifty, knowing males always had to pay a fee for entry while women always got in for free. The bouncer grins upon seeing you in a tight, red body-con dress, but the grin is immediately displaced when his eyes land on the two men beside you. Giving your best, most flirtatious smile, you grab both of their wrists before heading inside. “Don’t lose me, okay?” You yell over the pounding music.

“We won’t,” they say in unison. Noya gives you a reassuring smile, hand pressed against Yaku’s back gently, while the latter purses his lips together in discomfort. “Just keep talking to me through here,” he adds, pressing his cold lips to your forehead chastely, “and I’ll find you.” You give him a confident nod before you throw yourself into the throng of people to find your targets. It proved a bit of a challenge, considering the strobe lighting and the myriad of people—all of the men looked the same on top of that. But once your eyes narrowed in on the man you first lured you, it was game over.

Like a tiger ready to pounce, you sauntered over to him, pushing aside whomever he was with at the moment before wrapping your arms lewdly around his neck. He looks down at you skeptically, but otherwise pleased with the bold actions. From a short distance away, Yaku and Noya are hiding like wallflowers, listening to the resounding chant happening in your head that screamed to kill him. “You know,” Noya chimes in lowly, distracting Yaku from the way your hips are grinding and gyrating against the strange man’s, “we could just kill the entire fraternity.” Yaku shakes his head—Noya was always fond of the idea of revenge against all who were guilty by association. While the others in the clan gave into his persuasion, Yaku never found it amusing.

“What if they had no idea that their brother killed someone?”

“They probably bragged about it,” Noya grumbles. From his own experience, the shorter of the two liked to think that he knew how these people tended to operate.

“It’s go time.” Yaku says abruptly, eyes locked onto your retreating form as you pull one of your rapists by the tie and lead him out the frat house. The two Damned maneuver their way towards the quietest space, hunting for a window they can exit out of to follow you without garnering too much attention towards the situation. When they end up on the sidewalk outside of the Pike house, they see you parading—brokenly, complete with fake stumbles to allude to you being drugged again—the man by the tie until he shoves you into the same alleyway.

Close behind were four others, all built and stocky as they traveled in their pack and making their way towards the alley. You were cornered amongst trash and dead rats, the five of them trying to zero in on you, yet you showed no fear. Instead, you stood at full height with the addition of your stilettos, as your body transitioned into it’s more predatory form. “Remember me?” You ask sweetly, cracking your knuckles nonchalantly. Your hair that’s covering the ugly mound of flesh scarred over from your injury is swept over the opposite shoulder, giving them full view as your short, blackened claws graze over the skin. “Over a year ago, the five of you brought a woman to this alley, raped her and you,” a feral snarl leaves your lips as you point to the youngest fraternity brother, “threw a knife into her back that went all the way through her heart and killed her.”

The five of them begin looking over at each other, wondering who ratted out who considering they had never spoken of the night since it occurred. It was easy to avoid, considering the body was never found. There was never any evidence. “W-who are you?” The youngest one squawks out.

“Don’t remember?” Your head snaps in the direction to one of the older members. “I should have bit your dick off when I had the chance.” There’s no more room for talking, no room for rebuttal. Instead, you grab the same man you lured into the alley by the tie, bringing him close enough to snap his neck. When he was neither moving nor breathing, the remaining four began to back up.

“Yo, this bitch is crazy, let’s get out of here—“

“You think you’re just gonna get away?” Noya laughs dryly as it crescendoed into full volume, shaking the walls and mimicking an earthquake that did not expand beyond the walls of the alley. The remaining four fall to the ground, not prepared for such loud noises let alone a trembling earth to accompany the sound. Yaku shakes his head in utter disgust before the crimson ring in his eyes locks with the prey.

“Done eating, love?” He calls out, causing the four other frat boys to look over in horror at the “e” word. Once again, you’re standing at full height, the back of your hand wiping away the blood that had escaped from your mouth from your feeding.

“Not quite yet,” With every step you took, they trembled back, only to be met with your two saviors blocking their only exit. The youngest one is hiding all the way in the back, trepidation causing his bones to rattle within his skin as his back hits Yaku’s calf. “I’m still hungry.” Noya lets out a snort at this—he truly did love your sense of humor.

“You’re next.” Yaku looks down at the young boy, only nineteen-years-old, who had been your executioner. That same boy looks at the leader of the clan in horror, eyes wide because he never in a million years saw this as his end. Effortlessly, Yaku picks him up by the collar of his shirt before tossing him in your direction. Rather than catching him, you gathered your claws together to form a single point, driving the makeshift lance through the stomach of the one who had ended your life. Without verbalizing it, you gave the boys permission to feed on the other two—so long as it wasn’t the one that you had tried to bite down on when he rammed his cock in your mouth.

You had plans for him.

In the mean time, you pull the now lifeless body off of your bloodied hand, drinking down whatever was dripping down your arm before tossing him off to the side; you had one more pressing matter to deal with. The last of the boys—the dessert to your meal was pressed against the wall as he tried to run from this situation, watching in mortification as Yaku and Noya beheaded the other two brothers with their bare hands, feasting on their prey. “Like I said,” you sneered as you approached the last one, ripping off his pants and boxers much like he had when he violated your mouth. “I should have bit your dick off when I had the chance.”

And so you did.

“Remind me to never get on your bad side,” Yaku muses, having finished his meal, gawking at the way you had just left the last one along the wall with his penis bitten off all the way down to the base while you returned to the youngest member again, draining your murderer for all he was worth.

“I dunno, it’s kinda hot, babe.” Noya jokes, watching in amusement as well.

“I’m actually kinda full,” You shrug, having drained the stabber entirely—that put your body count to two full bodies. “D’you guys wanna have the last one? I got all I wanted from him.” At sound of your permission, Yaku approaches the last one with a predatory glare, not daring to break eye contact as he asked you one more question.

“[ name ], do you feel that justice been served?” With a nonplussed grimace, you gave a shrug.

“If anything, these assholes got the short end of the stick. They murder a girl they raped so she comes back from the dead and kills them all with two beautiful men by her side? Yeah, I’m happy with that.”

By the time you returned home, you were an entirely different creature. You felt...free. Like there was nothing else anchoring your dead heart, like you no longer had a tether to this world. Like you had no purpose.

So now what?

Silently you meander back to your shared bedroom to further contemplate your existence, the boys you left behind glancing at each other in concern. “Want me to talk to her? I might be able to better sympathize.” Noya asks quietly so that your now heightened hearing can’t quite pick up on the conversation. Regardless, Yaku shakes his head. He knows exactly what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling and not just because of his ability to read minds.

“I’ve got a few things I want to say to her anyway.” Noya presses a tender kiss to his mates cheek before he flits away to hang out with Daichi as he normally does when he’s not with Yaku, while the head of the clan makes his way to the room. You’re lying in bed already, the dress and stilettos shed and traded for bare feet and a slip. Despite your back turned towards him, you feel the bed dip as he lays beside you, something atypical of Yaku. “How do you feel?” His voice is merely a whisper as he cautiously wraps an arm around your waist.

“Shouldn’t you know the answer?” You retort, but Yaku doesn’t recoil because he knows. He knows the sort of limbo you feel you’re placed in now that your postmortem mission had been carried out. What were you supposed to do for the rest of eternity besides act as an impromptu executioner, feeding off of the worst criminals within a hundred mile radius?

“Is that all you see us as?”

“No,” You say quietly. These Damned men had accomplished great things, from what you knew of them, in their lifetimes. Sugawara has continued composing even well after his other alias’ deaths, Akaashi has been working on a research piece for decades regarding cancer in the form of preventative measures rather than a cure, in addition to a cure. Daichi had participated in the Olympics a number of times, Yaku was once a politician in multiple countries and Nishinoya had worked closely with electronic developers over the years including Microsoft and Linux. “You guys have accomplished so much in your lifetimes, I just don’t want to be some sort of disappointment—“

“[ name ], we never knew were going to do those things. We just kept pushing on, finding out things we were passionate about and since we have unlimited time, we’ve had time to hone and perfect those skills.”

“What if I never do anything that great?” Yaku lets out a sigh, turning your now fully restored body around to face him and pressing his face into your neck. Over the duration of your rehabilitation process, he’d become so over protective of you, wanting what’s best for you in any capacity yet never fully being honest with himself.

“You have time to figure it out,” he mumbles into your own icy skin, lips tickling your veins. “Until then, just stay? With me?”

“Yaku...” he had never fully outright asked you to stay—only alluding to it in the past with talks of the future.

“I-I want you,” he whispers almost uncharacteristically. Being a diplomat, stuttering was not a thing that Yaku did very often. “To stay with us forever. To stay with me forever.” This is it, he figures. It’s now or never. Yaku can’t stand the idea of you leaving the clan, leaving him when he hadn’t yet had a taste of you, had you in any other form than a few mere kisses for feeding or in fantasies. Pulling away, Yaku shifts once again so that his arms are holding his weight above you, his lips ghosting intimately over yours.

Both of you are overly aware of the attraction that’s there—you knew of the daydreams you’d had of him throughout the year and with his ability, he was unwillingly subjected to them. Reaching up slightly, your lips press against his hungrily, your tongue immediately dancing along the seam of his lips, begging for permission to enter. Yaku doesn’t waste a second dropping the support from his arms in favor to press his body fully into yours because he’s been waiting for this moment. It’s evident in his fervent kiss, it’s evident in his ever present erection. A mewl warbles in your throat as you feel him grind against you.

Why the hell had you waited so long for this? Why did he wait so long for this?

There was no more waiting.

Breaking a part for a moment, you pull the slip off your torso hastily while Yaku unbuckles his belt and frees his lower half. Impatience floods you as you tear off the thin Henley he’s wearing, leaving the two of you entirely bare in front of each other. The large scar on your bosom that had made you self conscious for months suddenly felt dull in comparison as you’re met with the varying marks that marred Yaku’s skin. From what you could tell, they looked like whiplashes. “I need you now,” he pleads, ignoring your wandering thoughts as he hungrily pulls you in for another kiss. Though rather short lived, your overwhelmed with warmth and pulsing in your core as his fangs run along your neck before sucking lovingly at your collarbone.

“O-oh,” you moan out wantonly, clutching at his shoulders to keep yourself steady. With no preparation, not that you needed any, Yaku slowly sheaths his member inside of you, the girth stretching you deliciously. For a moment, the two of you remain still to bask in the reprieve you both felt, unaware of the third party member watching pleased in the lounge chair across from the bed. “Fuck,” you hiss out between your teeth as he’s pushing in inch after inch.

“You’re doing so good, princess,” for a moment, he’s impressed—taking eleven inches with little to no preparation can be torturous, and he knew that from experience. “Come on, baby take the last of it—oh fuck yeah,” Yaku groans out as soon as he’s balls deep within you. The two of you are still, enjoying the moment of togetherness before he bottoms out entirely in your sweet little hole. His hips move almost languidly so as not to hurt you but good lord for all that is unholy, is he holding back.

Soft whimpers leave your lungs each time his hips snap back into yours—why the hell hadn’t you fucked Yaku sooner?! A throaty chuckle grumbles in his chest at the thought. Even with him slamming his cock in you at half-force, his mind is intertwined with yours to the point where your thoughts feel like his own. “I had to take care of you princess, wanted to make sure you could handle me fucking you.”

“Then fuck me harder, ass-hat.”

“He likes it better when you call him senpai.” Nishinoya calls out from the opposite corner of the room, as if he wasn’t just leisurely watching his partner ream himself into your core. You let out a scream and at this point, you aren’t sure if it’s because Yaku have a particularly hard thrust with the head of his dick meeting with the edge of your womb or if Nishinoya’s presence surprised you. Even more so to see that he was stark naked, stroking his cock that he’s presenting to your mouth.

“Suck off your senpai, princess.” Yaku whispers devilishly in your ear, holding his cock still within you as he does so. Tentatively, you give a kitten lick to the head before you, testing out Nishinoya’s reaction to the motion before deeming him worthy. A soft grunt escapes him, his body more than welcoming of the sensation—but it just wasn’t enough for you.

“I need a better reaction than that, Nishi,” You joke.

A poor plan on your part.

The shorter of the two looks down at you curiously, a wicked twist of his lip displayed for you as he briefly tosses an amused look towards Yaku, to which the latter lets out a chuckle in addition to the shake of his head before he starts to withdraw his cock from within you. “How’s this for reaction?” Noya chirps before deftly wrapping his claws in your hair, slamming his engorged member down your throat while Yaku simultaneously thrusts back inside you. The carnal desires that had run rampant through your mind on occasion had built to this moment, built up the needy desire that the boys finally had the chance to release with you. “Yeah, you take that cock in your throat, baby. Show us how much you’ve wanted us from the start.”

Nishinoya is absolutely relentless as he repeatedly withdraws and replaces his erection in your mouth, pulling so far back as to have his tip tease and smear pre-cum along your lips, all the while chanting praise and how much he loves you; how much he’s dreamed of having you between him and Yaku. The latter can’t help the stuttering motion of his hips as he unabashedly strokes his member along your walls, the tip of dick all but moving into your womb. “Yeah, princess, take your senpais cocks so fucking good, yeah? You want us to fill all your holes with our fucking cum, don’t you?” You can only wail out around Nishinoya in your mouth in response, clenching and squeezing your pussy tightly around Yaku inside you. The clan head lets out a very audible groan at the abrupt friction. “Oh, fuck yeah. Fuck yeah, senpai’s gonna cum so fucking hard inside you, yeah yeah yeah.” Yaku is absolutely wrecking and ravaging your lower half while all the foul, salacious words leaving him were only serving to turn on his partner even more until the both of them hold still to empty their first loads inside you.

After a momentary reprieve, the two of them withdraw from you, the smallest whine leaving your lips at the distinct emptiness. Between pants, both of the males look to each other before letting out a laugh. “Princess,” Noya calls out from your left, golden eyes light and airy as they gaze at you, “did you think we were going to let you cum?”

“Y-yes?” Why wouldn’t they? Wasn’t that just normal, sex etiquette between partners?

“Oh no, love,” Yaku adds, “We’re gonna show you just how much we love you, gotta coat every inch of your skin in our fluids before you can even think about cumming.” Before you can blink, the boys are up again with Nishinoya taking his position with the tip of his still hardened member teasing the outer lips of your pussy. Meanwhile, Yaku makes it a point to slap your cheek with his own erection, making sure to keep your attention and focus on him. Simultaneously, they thrust into their respective orifices that they’ve traded—Yaku treating you much more delicately versus Noya who shoves his entire mast inside your depths.

“Oh damn, babe, you’re so fucking tight!” The latter howls, throwing his head back in ecstasy. Despite having identical lengths, Nishinoya was much more rough and rigid, your walls acclimating to every vein out of necessity before relentlessly pounding away at your insides. At his pace, your pussy doesn’t even have a chance to miss the feeling of fullness. Your voice is no longer coming out in moans or screams due to the damning pace—only in a broken staccato of warbles from the speed that Noya’s fucking you. “Yeah, baby? Gonna stay here with us forever and get dicked down every night? You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

But with the almost tender, loving way Yaku is holding your throat while repeatedly sliding his cock in from tip to base, there is no actual way you can reply. Instead, you let out grunts and cries of affirmation because you would stupid not to welcome the way these two were screwing you. It’s also more than just that.

These two, as well as the rest of the brood, had taken you in being inches from death, presented you with another opportunity for life that served as an opportunity for you to seek revenge, while caring for you and almost...loving you.

“We do,” Yaku bites, withdrawing his cock from your lips offended at the thought of almost, “love you, that is.” The hand that is cupping your throat moves to brush the backs of his claws along your jaw before pulling your chin and torso up so that Yaku can kiss you fully. There is no lust or wanton desire in this kiss—it’s love through and through that is simultaneously cold yet warm.

“You’ve been dreaming about us for a long time, princess,” Noya grits out, his peak approaching all too quickly with the way you’re clenching around him with no relief. He’s panting heavily, no longer caring about his need to assert his dominance in any capacity; all he can think about is cumming deep inside you while you cum around his thick cock. “We want to make your dreams come true.”

Yaku pulls away from the kiss in time to hear your cries—a delicacy he had never had the pleasure of knowing in a past life—as you cum with Noya. The latter is holding still for a brief moment before withdrawing, his spent body collapsing beside you. You’re sensitive, you realize, as Yaku slides back in to reclaim his space. Your walls are still trembling in the aftermath of your orgasm, but Yaku is much more gentle this time around. Pressing his body flush against yours, he wraps both his arms around you with one cradling your head, the other around your lower back to pull you as close as possible. His shallow moving thrusts in accompaniment to his pulsing girth are enough to trigger yet another orgasm in direct succession, and coercing his own orgasm. “Please stay, [ name ].” He mumbles into your hair as he feels his seed spurting within you. Though you supply no answer due to trying to catch your breath, you only nod in response. Yaku remains still inside you, so as if to seal both his and his partner’s emission within you with his own softening cock, smiling at the simple fact that you had nodded in response. “Get some rest, little one,” He adds, adjusting so that he’s on the opposite side of you and a now sleeping Noya. “We’ll be here when you wake.”

66 notes · View notes

comicteaparty · 4 years

Text

June 10th-June 16th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from June 10th, 2020 to June 16th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

How does poor web design affect if and/or how you read a particular webcomic?

carcarchu

it's a huge factor. if a comic is amazing in every way but the website or app makes it difficult for me to read i'm simply NOT going to read it. there are a lot of great series that i've put on the back burner just because the website is so annoying to navigate

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've honestly never run into a website so bad it stopped me from reading a comic i was interested in

carcarchu

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

Deo101 [Millennium]

The worst things with sites that I see often are 1: huge headers, and 2: laggy sites (not really site design, but its adjacent I think) Another is if the pages are too big on the screen, so you can't, for instance, see some panels all at once. Those kinds of things can really ruin a reading experience for me

carcarchu

One example of a website that is hostile to the reading experience is ZMYK which for some reason hosts vertical scroll comics but cuts them up into little pieces as if they were comic format so you can't actually scroll through the entire chapter as it was intended to

That kind of thing grinds my gears so much how can something you have to pay for be that incredibly bad

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've also seen some sites that have graphic design issues, where elements are illegible due to their color, and some have very busy and distracting backgrounds. Those kinds of things won't necessarily ruin it, but they're distracting

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

forward comic's website was doing this weird thing where the further I read the longer pages took to load. Near the end it seemed they were taking 10 full seconds. Still read the whole thing though. Reading manga on shady sites with terrible internet connection as a kid has desensitized me

Oh one comic I was interested in but didn't read because of the site: I was kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space. It doesn't have a website. To read it you have to pirate (hehe) copies of the archive.

It's a pretty sad story- the author was young and tricked into giving up the rights to her series

She ended up taking the site down to prevent the company from getting any more money off of it

https://rosalarian.tumblr.com/post/65353128180/its-with-extreme-sadness-that-i-announce-that-my

Here's her post about it

I think it can be a good warning message to us

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

For me, the biggest thing that deters me from reading a comic is if the website isn't well optimized for mobile (as someone who reads a lot on the go). This includes the images loading bigger than the page, or navigation being hidden on mobile, or glitchy scrolling, or any number of ungodly things. Also, too many ads. That'll turn me away in a heartbeat.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah ads are definitely a huge turnoff for me too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@carcarchu okay i just digested this comment and wtf

no search bar is laughably bad omg

how did you even find out about it

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah that's ridiculous hahahaha

carcarchu

it's a shame because there are genuinely good comics on there you can't read anywhere else?? and i found it because an artist i adore did a series for it but it got AXED after only 2 chapters and after that was pretty much scrubbed from the internet. i think it's a shame because it really had so much potential and it ended before the story was really able to start

it's a screenshot from the app. you can see that it is categorized reverse chronologically by week

the point of aqua kiss is to emulate monthly/weekly style manga magazines but in app form. however i think the execution of this idea was horrendous

SteffieMusings

Oh no! It must make reading there so challenging. As for me, if the navigation is so hard to understand/pages don't load properly when you click a link or when the website's colours hurt my eyes so much I can't stay there for too long.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Honestly nowadays most of the CMS's out there share the same basic functionality and adaptability, so it's getting harder to screw up on that. Most sites are OK, if only a bit laggy. If the site takes less than 2 seconds to load and it's not so crowded that I have to look for the comic, I'm generally good.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much bad/inaccessible web design I'll tolerate is directly proportional to how much I care about the comic.

I've dropped a couple series in the middle of the archive just because they changed the site design to screw up the tracking of bookmarking sites, so I would've had to figure out an alternate way to keep track of it, and it didn't seem worth the effort

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh yeah, I've totally had that happen too where I was deep into an archive, had taken a reading break for a month or two, and came back to find the urls had been updated and my spot was lost it isn't so bad if a comic also has an archive page, but ive stopped reading a few stories that it would have been too hard to track down where I was.

DaeofthePast

I haven’t had to experience weird websites in a while, but I do sometimes go to an unknown website to read the comic/manga I’m looking for. Mostly what I’ve had trouble with is unnumbered chapters, of that it’s unclear where/how to start reading in general.(edited)

Like, I get to the page for that specific comic and then there’s no easy “start reading here” button anywhere

And when I do find the chapters list, I don’t know which end of the list is the beginning bc it’s unnumbered

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Is a "First page" button enough or are you looking for a "new readers start here" button? (<- is redisigning her page)

DaeofthePast

Is there a difference? :0

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

hm, sometimes yes.

Some old running comics have different jump-on points (schlock mercenary for example).

DaeofthePast

Ooh I see

Well when I first go on the site, I just want to start reading so idk

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

So, I always try to read every comic that's featured in the book club all the way through. Like even if I don't particularly like the opening, or if the comic is thousands of pages long, or I don't have time to meaningfully discuss the comic, I do try to at least give the comic a fair shake by reading through the entire archive. There have been four exceptions. One was because of content (it was a gag a day comic, and the content was SO horrible for SO long that I just couldn't stand it anymore. real "punching down" type of humor). Another was because the comic was literally deleted before I could get to it. The remaining two were because the site design/organization were so awful that the comics were unreadable. One of the two comics had a custom built, hand-coded site (I assume), and it just... didn't work properly. Like the "previous" button seemingly took you to a random page, the "next" button and the "latest" button led to the same place, etc. I'm not sure the creator ever bothered to test the site. The other one used some pre-built stuff, so it was ok... but you had to scroll to the top of the page to go to the next page. Not only that, but the author was posting all their comics to the same archive - which means one page would be the comic that was actually meant to be read for the book club and the next few pages were a completely different comic entirely. And this wasn't a gag-a-day either - it was a story based comic, so the three action minimum to get to the next page made things absolute hell to keep track of.(edited)

DaeofthePast

Wow

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Uff, yeah, that sounds horrible.

Nyx+Nyssa's page is currently a barebone mess, but I made at least sure the navigation works. :/

DaeofthePast

Having the comic be deleted while you’re reading it sounds like such a weird experience lmao

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i mean, it wasn't thanos snap style lol

DaeofthePast

Was the website gone too or?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

it was in between days

nah the website was still there, it's just that the author had decided to reboot their comic and forgot that they had submitted it to the book club

DaeofthePast

Oh okay I imagined Thanos snap style

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not really a design but a site thing: I can't do comics without an archive of some sort. On platforms like Tapas or WT, the episode list serves that purpose perfectly fine. I personally need to be able to see how many pages there are, and I need a way to go to specific pages easily. It might sound like a small complaint, but it's a big thing for me! There have been comics that piqued my interest, but once I saw that there was no archive of any form, I left forever. Sure, I might be missing out, but there are also lots of good comics out there that have accessible archives. My life isn't long enough to read them all, so I'm letting myself be very picky.

copperine

I can manage a very basic site just fine. But if a site is hard to navigate, or just makes reading the page/getting to the next page difficult - I'd be likely to give up eventually. Doesn't matter about the quality of the comic, but if it's a chore to just read it, it's going to put me off after a while

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I will note - if you want me to actually discuss your comic in the book club, please do have an archive link, and probably a cast page too. Like the lack of one doesn't stop me from reading entirely, but I can't discuss anything without being able to look back at specific moments. (and one of those archives that just has dates doesn't count - lemme know what the chapter is!)

copperine

For example - when I read webcomics on dA, I was absolutely fine with either the author having a dedicated folder with the pages in order. Another option was to link next and prev pages in the description. But if I had to go find each next page, I just wouldn't.

DaeofthePast

By an archive do you mean kinda like a chapters list?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

A list of all the pages, ideally

That also list the chapters somehow

copperine

Short version: if I feel like I'm spending half as much time navigating the site as I am actually reading, it's gonna get old real quick

DaeofthePast

And same copperine. As long as it’s organized well, I will probably read it

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like maybe you click on a chapter link to get to a list of the pages, or maybe it's just a list of the pages with the chapter names as headers

some sort of organization

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! (I admit my own comic's archive page isn't the prettiest, but it's 100% functional.)

DaeofthePast

I only have a chapter list so far ^^; idk how to go about getting an archive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Chapter list is totally fine if your chapters tend to be on the shorter side

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I like having chapter lists around, although coding them can be a handful Not sure if to go for an archive with thumbnails or just with page numbers though.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's also workable if you also have like... a dropdown menu for individual pages on the actual pages? So it only takes 2 clicks to go to a specific page (first click to go to the chapter, second click to go to the page)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

OH yeah, there was also a dA comic in the book club once that didn't have any next/previous buttons. However, it was a short comic - the bare minimum for getting into the book club - so I still read it all the way through. But it was pretty annoying to do so. (it was also pretty obviously a fetish comic, but that's not really relevant to the discussion XD)

DaeofthePast

I want to post by scene so I’ll be dividing chapters like “chapter 3 part 1” to hopefully that will be better

copperine

I'll always take functional over pretty

DaeofthePast

Haha I’m not sure if I want to know the comic for that one

Also what is “punching down” humor?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, the author was a straight man, and nearly every joke was making fun of people who weren't those things.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

it's like making fun of people but

copperine

Yikes

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

you're intentially trying to put them down

that's punching down in my imo rip

DaeofthePast

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yeah....

DaeofthePast

Well at least I know what to call it when I see it in the future ._.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, occasionally I see a shitty joke in a comic and I keep reading because maybe the author improved (we do sometimes get comics with archives that date back decades in here) But this comic was just so consistently awful for so long that I couldn't stand it

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oof that aint good

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Though that's kinda off topic lol

DaeofthePast

Oh yeah

So bad site design...

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Anyway, I don't really wanna post the examples of the comics I talked about in here cuz I don't wanna call anyone out

Actually, hold on, lemme check something

DaeofthePast

I feel I haven’t had too much experience with bad site designs, but I might have just forgotten(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

ok yeah

so, the comic where you had to scroll up to the top of each page to click to the next one, and the site was multiple comics alternating pages that made the story rough to follow

copperine

Oof yeah having to scroll up to click next won't stop me but it is a bother

DaeofthePast

I like having the next button both on top and the bottom, even if they update page by page(edited)

It just feels convinient

copperine

Yeah same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Re: punching up/down, here's an overly simplistic set of examples: billionaires making fun of poor people is punching down. Poor people making fun of billionaires is punching up.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

's good webdesign pattern for everything with continous content - e.g. blogs, web-novels, webcomics.

Ideally you have one on top, between content and comments and under comments

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

the comic that alternated storylines & required scrolling back up to go to the next page was Antibunny: http://vinnied.comicgenesis.com/d/20061002.html if you see that page I linked and click next a few times, there's no obvious distinction between the main story and the spinoff story (no, like, header change between the two, and the art style looks similar), so you can see how it'd be confusing to follow and the scrolling is just icing on the cake (it used to be even worse) the only reason I feel comfortable sharing that is because the author uploaded the comics to new sites, and fixed all those issues in the process: http://antibunny.net/

DaeofthePast

Oh nice. So they realized the problem

copperine

Aren't they in this server? Or am I thinking of another one

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah, the author is in this server

copperine

I thought so

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hence why he realized, because we told him that there was a problem during the book club

copperine

I'm not gonna take anything said here as a comment on anyway btw

DaeofthePast

It’s cool that submitting their comic to the tea party resulted in some good feedback :3

copperine

You love to see it!

It always makes me happy when webcomic community stuff helps people out, that seems like the ideal outcome

DaeofthePast

Yess

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

i agree on that yeee

DaeofthePast

It’s like having a friend point out a spelling mistake. Embarrassing but you can live with the knowledge that your work is now a little bit better(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah kinda off-topic, but I love it when the author of the comic for the book club joins the server. Like not only does it mean that the author could join in on others' discussions in the future (pay it forward 'n stuff), but... it's just really sad when I see a comic pop up in the book club and the author seemingly forgot they submitted it.

DaeofthePast

How long does it usually take to get to a comic? :0 that they would forget they submitted it?

copperine

I always hope I can help others out or support them, and I hope they feel the same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The book club had a very very long wait list in the past. These days, not so long.

DaeofthePast

And I guess if you submit a comic with a website, the people here can be your beta testers

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

what's odd is that five months ago, the wait list was six months but now, the wait list is two months y'all need to submit/resubmit your comics

DaeofthePast

I tried going to submit mine yesterday and the site doesn’t let me v.v says you’re booked for July

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

oh yeah, so it is

DaeofthePast

Maybe later :3

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i guess Rebel doesn't want the queue to get too long

copperine

I would submit mine but I'm only at 10 pages and I believe you need to have 20 to submit

DaeofthePast

Ooh they have a minimum?

Gotta count my pages now

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean it makes sense. Hard to discuss a comic that only has the cover for chapter 1

DaeofthePast

Tru

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"Let us dissect this cover image for an entire week"

DaeofthePast

It would be a hilarious April fools challenge

copperine

Idk I think it was 20 minimum?

DaeofthePast

shrug

copperine

@snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) can you shed any light on this

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The sign up form is where you would normally find that information.

copperine

... very good point

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But the form is currently unavailable, and it's possible that Rebel might change the requirement when it becomes available again

copperine

Thank you for the heads up

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

FYI, https://comicteaparty.com/ is where the form will be available eventually

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

They accept resubmissions now?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I def like arrows on the top and bottom of pages for sites to be more of a thing, as well as clicking the image for the next page too! Honestly there hasn't been a make or break, mainly preferences, and the most complaints i have are with the mobile formatting. I think most comics have been pretty solid in functionality that i've read, and it's clear that having their own website is becoming mainstream enough for there to be help, tips, and tricks to making it work!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I definitely prefer if I can just click on the comic image to go to the next page especially for mobile.

copperine

Agreed!

Idk about resubmissions tho

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... Wow. I absolutely HATE clickable images on mobile, because they usually mess with the pinch-zoom.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i've had sites that didnt have image click throughs and the arrow..... was like SO TINY XD

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Didn't think anyone would actually like it, so... huh.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i kept going back and forth

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

yeah, navigation needs to be bigger on mobile for safe tapping.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh, re:resubmissions, I'm pretty sure you can if it's been long enough? I think @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) mentioned it recently as an option. But maybe a tangent for #general

boogeymadam

i dont mind the pinch zoom being a little more difficult from time to time cause usually the clickable image is worth it to me

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same

boogeymadam

am also fond of sites that allow left/right arrows to let you move forward and back on desktop

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Mainly it's just for like Krispy said, reading on mobile and tiny next/previous buttons.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ye my dummy thicc fingers prefer the click through image for sure

ohh yes Boogey that too

boogeymadam

it took me hours of googling to find the very simple comicpress option to just turn that on on my site

copperine

Mmm I do like sites that allow pinch zoom though

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I also prefer clicking on the image to go to the next page

mariah (rainy day dreams)

My fingers small, but still dummy T-T

copperine

It makes it easier to get a better look at the page

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

iweudhweiu Mariah XD

copperine

Especially if it's got smaller font

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

nyxandnyssa has a seperate navigation for mobile that's much bigger and skipping scene select to make tapping easier.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I've had the hover text def bum me out for some comics, where you click the image and it just displays the text, then you gotta click the tiny next bar def killed me there

copperine

I've never had issues with pinch zoom affecting clickable images but I can imagine it would be annoying

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

but! never breaks me out of a comic for me to stop reading-! i persevere in the face of adversity XD

boogeymadam

i've never encountered a site so bad i couldnt continue reading. maybe stuff where i'd stop reading until i was less frustrated but i'd come back later.

DaeofthePast

That’s something I’ll have to consider for my site then

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I feel like Smackjeeves had a really obnoxious auto pitch & zoom before they updated most recently. I like when I can turn it off on my phone. I'd rather do it myself most of the time and let my phone try to auto it X')

DaeofthePast

I usually read on desktop more often than on mobile so it’s good to hear from other’s experiences

copperine

Idk I've never used a custom site yet

boogeymadam

same dae, except on tapas and webtoons!(edited)

comics with their own website i'll boot up my computer for a single update of

DaeofthePast

Even on webtoons I read on desktop

boogeymadam

omg your power, webtoons feels so choppy on desktop to me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

im definitely lucky that our site got a mobile friendly version i remember the 'ol pinchy zoomz was tiresome on our site for sure

DaeofthePast

I get headaches from reading on my phone unfortunately :/

Idk what the difference is between reading mobile and on a desktop but my brain doesn’t like it

Like, I can text fine???? But reading a comic for some reason is like “no”

So yeah, comics on desktop for me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohh!! it could be the close proximity!

DaeofthePast

Ooh :0 maybe?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i know i get motion sickness depending on how close/ far i am from screens

DaeofthePast

Maybe it’s something like that... :O

boogeymadam

whatever the reason sorry you get headaches and motion sickness from comics :'0

DaeofthePast

Every once in a while I’ll try again to read on mobile I never learn

boogeymadam

the only reason i dont like mobile is sometimes comics text is a combination of too small there and the font is hard on my dyslexia

DaeofthePast

Rip

boogeymadam

so i see if zooming in on my computer helps

DaeofthePast

The lesson here is that it’s good to have both mobile and desktop options

boogeymadam

yep :'D

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohhh yea def agree. I know that feeling and i sometimes ... have a Time reading my own work XD (i admit it lol!!)

boogeymadam

sometimes my own comic is hard on my dyslexia for The Effect so i never have hard feelings with other comics

copperine

(brb)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ewiudhiwue the things we do AT WHAT COST XD

DaeofthePast

Asdfghjkl

Meanwhile I use the same font for everything

boogeymadam

wait im gonna generalize this more so it can be a party

DaeofthePast

Please post that on pillowfort so I can reblog it

boogeymadam

you can post it for yourself if you want dae!

i'm having a hard time logging on asdfgjh

DaeofthePast

Rip sure

copperine

Ah see I have both

Because hand lettering

It's great for feeling right for a comic but also eternally wondering if it's readable

DaeofthePast

Ooh yeah I guess that would count as both

What’s your comic btw :0

Wait, we’re supposed to be talking about website design right

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yep! If it gets too off topic, you can always continue in another channel that's more fitting.

copperine

Ah sorry! Sure thing

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Mobile is too small for me

DaeofthePast

Yeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(oHHMYYGOSH BOOGEY XD)

boogeymadam

mm archives were mentioned already, and how it can really turn readers away to simply not have one at all? my favorite archive is https://www.vaingloriouscomic.com/comic/archive 's but i've seen some where they attempted an all picture archive and it backfired by just being a page of all empty boxes. this didn't deter me from reading it and it got fixed pretty quick tho~ mine is one of these and its a very chonky slowmoving page cause i uploaded the first 90ish as fullsized pictures. nobody's ever complained so idk if it's ever deterred anyone from reading but i know i gotta fix it someday.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I really dont mind any kind of web design in particular though tbh. I prefer desktop sites but it’s fine if the design isnt great

DaeofthePast

Have you guys ever gone to a comic website (for a single comic) and the colors used in the background were so bright that it felt like they were blinding you to the point it was hard to read the actual pages?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My archive is down right now becayse it broke and I dont know how to fix it lol

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i def want a fully view-able archive but we're gonna be hitting 800 pages and i dont know how well that will work XD

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

But I have a navigation bar now

boogeymadam

u could have multiple pages of archive, krispy!

i'm starting a new page for chapter 2

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Or dropdown menus

boogeymadam

but its probably important to have a dropdown if u have more than 1 page, yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I want to switch to picture archives, but I haven't found a good plug in/way to get my word press to do it :( if anyone has recommendations...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wish I knew how to make dropdown menus

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i'll have to bring that up ! we dont do the tech work for our site ( thank gosh seriously) but i love archives that show full pages

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

If I could make dropdown menus I would be unstoppable

copperine

I miss the drop-downs on SJ

boogeymadam

i feel like dropdowns are smth i pretty much only exclusively see on hiveworks comics

i wonder what their secret is,,,

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I’ve inspected the elements on so many hiveworks sites lol

I want to know

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

they use word press I think

for their comic sites

just have to do some digging with the site html and csss

copperine

Right click and inspect maybe...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Php stands for my Personal hell pit

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

if i could go undercover for yall i would XD

boogeymadam

also!! @mariah (rainy day dreams) i use elementor for mine

its not perfect and breaks like every time i update it but it works asdfg

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... I'm currently writing a sparkling fresh wp-plugin for my page (comic easel wasn't doing what I wanted), but I am also a software dev who enjoys coding.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My template I use functions in mostly php and xml and its gibberish to me but functions so well I dont know how to improve it to have specific things I want

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

my knowledge with site design is basic at best lmao

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

wordpress is a bit special in that it does most things more complicated than strictly necessary.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but I do like fiddling with stuff

^that too lmao

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I know Shiza of osarilho is really good at web designing? she's made some beautiful work with her site!

boogeymadam

i want to ask shiza for more help but not before i have some money to pay her :')

she's helped me a lot already

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can do html and css at the babiest level

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'll check that out Boogey, thanks! Even if it does break X') And I guess I'll just make a note to start stashing money to hire shiza XD im definitely at the point where my site needs a general face lift, but I don't have the spoons for it.

boogeymadam

imo i've made some really pretty pges with it. it's a drag and drop that's excellent at galleries, but it doesn't like when you don't have even rows for some reason

the wordpress plugin, Elementor, i mean.

copperine

I've been wanting to try comicpress for ages

I just don't know where to start

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm gonna move over to #shop_talk for my response

copperine

I had someone who was gonna help me out but we lost contact so it's on the back burner

boogeymadam

OOPS yeah

copperine

But for websites in general I prefer to have one that feels very basic than one that feels too busy or crowded

I'm not a graphic designer at all lol

If I do try an independent site I'm planning to pay a coding friend to help me

DaeofthePast

yeah i have no idea what I'm doing when working on my site, it's kinda basic, but at least it looks nice

copperine

I just use a premade theme on my ComicFury site

It works and that's good enough for me so far

Oh I guess the other thing that would put me off reading a comic is if the site isn't formatted for mobile, and/or particularly if the site doesn't have adaptive formatting

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same, but editted it hard core so it looks like it's own thing lmao

copperine

I usually read on my phone because my computer is where I work so I like to get off it for hobbies

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but for me uh i guess mobile i try to read it either on tapas, webtoon or its own site

I find just clicking the page to the next one helps me a lot lol I don't do a lot of zooming

copperine

Mmm

copperine

It's personal preference a lot tbh!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I like my comuter because its big

copperine

Valid

Mine is not

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

did anyone talk about paying me please you don't have to do that

copperine

Idk but you can pay me

Idk what for but

I'll take money

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I absolutely would have to if you made my site awesome X') work is work, and you should be paid for it

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

fair enough

Just send me a DM whenever you're up for that and lemme take a look at what you already have

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I would hire someone to do web design for me but I dont have the funds & I dont wnat to make someone do work for me for free

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I've been meaning to set up my own website for a while now, since the collective i was originally hosting my webcomic with kinda fell apart, but it's so much work and i'm hella intimidated :'''D

copperine

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) there's been some related discussion in #shop_talk and I believe @boogeymadam might be able to advise (I'm sure others can too but I'm going off the convo from earlier)

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) depending on how much it is I can help you out

RebelVampire

Admin Reminder Remember this channel is for experiences as a reader first and foremost, so #shop_talk and #general are better if you want to discuss your own stuff.

DaeofthePast

thank you for the reminder :3

RebelVampire

I would say poor web design is something I have a complicated relationship regarding webcomics. On the one hand, outside of a site being 100% completely broken, I'm willing to sit through a lot to read. So in terms of affecting whether I read a comic the first time or not, there isn't much to say there. But it does affect how engaged I am with the comic. Cause if I can't easily go back to re-read a page, easily find things like character names, have to deal with extreme lag cause the host is garbage, have to deal with eye bleeding color schemes, etc. you can bet your bottom dollar 1 time is all that comic is going to get in terms of reading it. I can only subject myself to so much, and if I don't feel like reading a comic again because of the site itself, I'm going to quickly forget it in favor of comics whose sites don't make me cry. I do give more leeway to sites created by creators in many respects. But professional bigtime hosts like Tapas or Webtoons literally have no excuse for some of their garbage design choices. And some of their design choices are super duper garbage.

DaeofthePast

that's true yeah, there's a big distinction of the quality expectations between sites by small creators and those of big companies like Webtoons

RebelVampire

At the same time, though, I know from first hand experience that poor design choices are literally influenced by user data for bigger companies. So for every decision I consider stupid- at the same time they probably did the AB tests that showed crappy design A had better results for their conversion rates than user friendly design B.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Which boggles my mind

I wonder if there's some kinda causation-correlation thing going on that the A/B tests could not detect accurately

boogeymadam

Rebel mentioned sites that have eyebleedy color schemes and I'm in the same boat; will read the comic, just will be turning down the screen brightness a looot. Sites that have a huge space of extremely neon background that distracts from the comic make me reluctant to read on the site, and I'll look for a mirror before trying. That white background of the 2 big comic hosting sites can at least be affected and turned dark by nightmode when needed, while nightmode doesn't work on half the bright comic sites I've tried it on. u-u

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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doctormage · 5 years

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hi i just need to be really dramatic and long winded bc if i dont get it Out im going to fucking explode

ive actually been trying really hard this semester with my thesis and its REALLY fucking difficult for me. my depression makes me catatonic and unable to complete simple tasks or be motivated to do literally anything; my anxiety paralyzes me at the slightest unexpected change and then obsess over whether everyone in my life hates me because of my anxiety; my sleep schedule is constantly fucked and my doctor is unhelpful; my bdd will sidetrack me from my work and responsibilities for literal hours or days, and sometimes if its feeling spicy send me on a full scale fucking breakdown; and my adhd makes all this shit worse on TOP of all the NORMAL adhd shit. like thats just!!! my life!!!! at all times!!!!! and there have been several times where i have genuinely considered leaving this program or not continuing school after bc i was so fucking overwhelmed and exhausted and scared but i didnt!!! like i make a lot of jokes about procrastinating and wasting my time and doing the least and whatever but in reality its really fucking difficult for me even when im medicated!!! but i dont like admitting that bc of all my exhausting childhood baggage and shit but that is not the point of this rant so anyway

this semester i made a specific effort to try and be a better student even tho all of this stuff has been exacerbated by grad school. i felt i owed it to my director and one of my committee members because theyve been so fucking helpful and put their faith in me and took a lot of their time to help me. i wanted to show them i was worthy of it and capable of being a good student who does all the shit she’s supposed to do, does it well, and does it on time. i overloaded my fall semester and nearly lost my goddamn mind JUST to have a lighter class load this semester so i could focus most of my time on my thesis (like for real that was actually incredibly stupid of me. i lost almost 30 pounds from september to december without conscious effort just because i was so fucking stressed. not a brag and actually kind of concerning bc that has LITERALLY never happened to me). it has been like....significantly taxing, but i wanted to show them how much i appreciate their time and effort and help by being responsible and respectful. my Trying Hard is a lot of people’s Barely Doing Their Best and i know that. turning something in 2 hours early is below average for some but for me, literally anything more than 30 minutes before its due is an actual goddamn miracle. but i wanted to work hard and do things right for my committee members because they deserve it

this christmas my parents asked what i wanted and the ONLY thing i asked for was help with my library dues. last year from like march to october i was significantly depressed and entirely out of my head, and i racked up some pretty bad overdue fees. i didnt even ask them to pay all of it, just some of it. less than $100. im really truly grateful for the gifts they DID get me, but i didnt ask for them for any of it, and my overdue fees were left alone. i was under the impression that they got paid and, like a fucking idiot, i didnt check up on it to confirm. ive been so hell deep in my thesis and teaching and grading and applying to phd programs and looking for apartments and shit that it really just slipped my fucking mind!!! crazy!!!!

today i was in crisis bc i thought i fucked up with scheduling my defense/exam/whatever the fuck. im going to call it defense and i dont give a shit bc everyone calls it some other shit and i dont CARE. anyway i really thought i fucked up but i went and talked it out with my director and it was all sorted out. i’ve gotten like 50% of her feedback on my thesis draft, which i’ve incorporated, and im waiting on comments from another reader (the other helpful person on my committee). we have to run some dumbass software before scheduling, so i ran it today and tried to schedule it but couldnt bc theres a hold on my account. i went on a fucking....ALMIGHTY QUEST to figure it out and i finally discovered that guess what!!!!!!! its my GODDAMN LIBRARY OVERDUE FEES!!!!!! THAT I THOUGHT WERE PAID!!!!!!! i had to pay them myself which is fine idc but it takes several days to process. this fucks up my life on SEVERAL levels

for one, its fucking impossible to get a hold of my third committee member. she is a vapor in the wind. shes like super busy and thats all good and well but the point is theres like zero communication there. i finally got confirmation on a defense date from all 3 members and had been literally planning MY ENTIRE LIFE around this date. after todays first scheduling crisis i was so happy i was still on track, but now this? now i have to wait 3-4 days before i can even SCHEDULE the defense. the super delightful part is that we have to schedule a minimum of 2 weeks in advance. so now i cant schedule my defense until tuesday at the absolute earliest, but that ALSO bumps my defense date several days ahead. i have no fucking clue if my committee is going to agree on another day that works for everyone bc theyre all busy as shit and we’d been working toward the original date for weeks if not months, and im so fucking upset because this is exactly what i DIDNT want to have happen. i havent tried to email them yet because im hoping beyond fucking hope i can call somebody at the university tomorrow and see if the hold is something else besides the fee, but it makes me sick to think of having to be like “oh sorry i know i constantly fuck up everything ever and im a piece of shit but can we change this date we’ve had set since january because i was an extra shitty piece of shit this time??” like OHHH MY GODDDDD

and the thing thats really fucking with me is that like, yes its my fault but this one time its not ENTIRELY 100% my fault. i asked for a favor and had the understanding that it was taken care of. yes the fees were my doing and yes i shouldve checked but oh my fucking god. i feel like all the effort ive put into being a better student this semester has been for fucking nothing because im going to have to email my committee asking for a different date and ruin all their fucking lives and theyll be so disappointed in me. i have like legitimately been crying on and off about it since like 4:30 today

it so shitty in and of itself but i especially dont want to do this to my director bc she is legitimately the reason im finishing this program AND that im going to a phd program. a year ago i’d barely spoken 20 words to her but she still agreed to be a reader on my committee just because she heard me explain my thesis for all of 30 seconds and decided to give it a try. she literally had not read a song of ice and fire at the time and she started reading them for me to help me with my thesis. in the fall when my original director basically threatened to leave my committee if i didnt change all my ideas, my current director stepped in and helped me and talked me through it and then offered to take her place even though my research is BARELY distantly related to hers. through all of this she’s been so insanely patient with me, super encouraging of my ideas both in this project and in others, helped me decide whether it was right for me to get my phd immediately after my masters, proofed and edited and helped me with ALL my phd application materials, and STILL is in the process of reading these goddamn books just to be a better director. i have lost my head so many times and shes always been there to help me figure my shit out, and i wanted to have it figured out for once. how stupid of me

like bumping the date isnt the end of the whole world but its really not just about the fact that i have to reschedule. i was trying real goddamn hard to be a better student this semester and i REALLY fucking owed it to my director and other reader, but especially director, and i still managed to fuck up this bad. i feel like such a DISAPPOINTMENT and it just will not leave my brain bc im so mad at myself. i tried watching shows and youtube compilations about game of thrones and shit but now my bf is asleep and im alone and its all i can think about. im so fucking tired of being the person i am honestly and i dont mean that in an edgy way its just like jesus christ i wish there was less shit wrong with me. i wish i had any kind of willpower or discipline so i couldve learned these skills and been a better student from the start. i wish i wasnt a giant piece of shit!!!!!

and now im going to be up late being anxious about all this which means that i will, once again, wake up late but also still be really exhausted, which means i’ll do a shitty job teaching and get overwhelmed by everything and who the fuck knows what fun bullshittery will ensue because of it. i am so fucking tired of me and my fuckery and the fact that it fucks with other people even why i try so hard for it not to. tired!!!!!!!! fucking tired

#p #this is literally like an essay #on why im a piece of shit lmao #ignore me!!!!!!

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jolie-auletta · 5 years

Text

Lose Yourself, To Find Yourself.

So, I had the honour of being part of an international women’s day seminar yesterday. Hosted by the beautiful Gaia Rose, at her annual awakened woman gathering.

Part of a 7 woman strong team, I made my first public speech.

Stood in front of 50 women I didn’t know, I spoke about something that had impacted my life. How I fully and completely lost myself, but found my true self by doing so.

So here goes;

When I first found out I was going to be speaking today, I was an anxiety ridden mess, I was almost automatically filled with all kinds of insecurities. What if my story isnt as exciting as everybody elses. What if people judge me. What if I dont even inspire any one?

And as normal as that thought process is for someone who has never spoken in public before, it isnt actually very logical.

While I was writing this speech I sent it over to my friend to read over and I told her I felt somewhat guilty for mentioning someone from my past.

I am literally about to say things to a room of strangers that I've never even said a loud before!

But that's when it hit me, I want to be part of teaching our daughters and the next generation of women to not be afraid of simply speaking the truth!

I was always an intelligent kid. I taught myself how to speak other languages, play musical instruments, top of the class.. so I should have been a grade A student, gone to uni and I could have been living 'the dream' right now.

I know that the dream is just perspective. The dream is what you make it. But what I’m trying to say, is I could have had a smooth and easy life, if things had been different.

I don't dwell on that though, devine alignment is something I speak of often. All that is meant to be, will be.

My secondary school days were awful. I started later than I should have, so perhaps that had something to do with it? I don't know. But I felt like I was just always having to try harder than normal, just to make friends. Constantly seeking approval from my peers, constantly trying to be ‘one of them’.

What I've realised it comes down to, is I've just never had good social skills. Which no body believes when I tell them because I come across so confident and eccentric!

But honestly I'm what I like to call a social chameleon. I can blend in with any group, but it's all down to analysis of behaviours and mimicking. In a sense it's just acting.

And that's what school was like for me, I shuffled between groups, making friends then falling out with them over things I just didn't understand at the time

It's like I just didn't know how to integrate with people , or be myself.

So along with feeling like I has no real friends.. I was actually bullied too. The entire time.

I remember having to leave school early just to avoid confrontation. The worst part is, I didn't tell a soul I until I was 25? So a whole 10 years went by without even telling my own mum that I was bullied!

That's something I really regret now. Because I believe it all stems from there and if I had reached out to someone, it could have all been different.

Anyway, the last year of school rolled round and I'm obviously so happy to leave!

But then this fear kicked in. What if I get bullied again!?

So I had an ingenius plan. (in hindsight this was not an ingenius plan at all)

I firstly completely went off radar. I chose a college in a new area, where no one would know me and heres the ingenius part. I made a new personality. Who is the most unbullyable person, I thought? All my previous bullies where quite 'rude girl' personas, so thats when i pieced everything together and decided who I’d be.

And it worked. No one picked on me and I was actually popular.

The mask was working, but that’s all it was, a mask.

I was still constantly seeking approval from people, always trying to be what I thought other people thought was cool, not what I actually thought was cool.

About 8 years ago, i was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and BPD. I was on medication but I took myself off of them when I fell pregnant. I did see a psychiatrist for a number of years, but I'm due to have another evaluation because I tick a lot of the boxes for autism!

This was literally a lightbulb moment! When I found out I could be on the spectrum- everything in my life made sense. And it turns out its really common for women with autism to go under the radar, or be diagnosed with depression, anxiety or bipolar/bpd like I was, and that's it, autism isn't even considered.

I am quite obviously high functioning, but every day scenarios like dealing with my emotions, sensory predicaments and simple socialising are a daily battle for me.

I have done A LOT of self healing and I have made a lot of progress, but I have come to the conclusion that whether I'm one, none, or all of the above , I just don't fit in a box and that's okay!!

I found my release in music, it was a coping mechanism, a world to get lost in.

But this leads me onto the second part of my story. During my music years, I met someone who would change my life.

A narccissist.

As i said before i do believe everything happens in devine order and its all lead me to where I am today. And I don't even hold a grudge towards this person. What's done is done.

And we were actually friends for a long while before getting together, we were best friends in fact, I can't even fault the friendship.

But the relationship was TOXIC!

The mental abuse was off the scale. And he also introduced me to cocaine. Now, in the beginning, it was all fun and games. Parties, recreational and I had no responsibilities in life so I thought why the hell not.

But it became more than that. He got me involved in not only taking it, but selling it too.

The entire relationship became based on that.

And ultimately it was detrimental to my soul.

I didnt even recognise myself. My family didn’t recognise me. It was like I had all these layers of personality I had invented to hide behind, but I couldn’t even remember who I was underneath it all!

I became more and more involved in this crazy lifestyle, so much so I ended up in prison because of it.

Honestly I look back and just think, how could I be so STUPID. It took me so long to admit that I was in a controlling and abusive relationship.

This guy had a hold on me. The kind of hold only a narccissist can have.

This wasnt some teenage crush where i 'loved' him so much and I'd do anything for him. I was a crushed soul, bowing down to a dictator.

I did what he wanted, when he wanted. I didn’t even exist. It was all about him.

My mental state was in pieces.

Im honestly so embarrased to tell people Ive been to jail. I mean even saying the word jail. It makes me cringe. I rarely tell people. There are family members that don’t even know!

But that prison freed me. From the jail that was my own body.

Its almost heartbreaking to think of myself all alone in a cell, no friends or family , but I had time to be on my own. With ME! The actual me, not the me I had been playing the part of for the last god knows how many years.

I honestly remember the day the penny dropped, it was when I put my nose ring back in. It sounds so crazy, but when I put it back in, all the pieces of me started to sort of fall into place too. I wore the clothes I wanted. I wore my hair how I wanted and I was starting to love being me again.

The mask was off! I existed again! And that was a beautiful feeling!

I can’t believe I’d kept up this charade for so many years! I should have been an actress, seriously 😂

So fast forward to today, I have a daughter, My Isabella Amethyst. I honestly love her more than I ever thought was even possible and she has played a major role in me becoming the person I am today, because she deserves me at my best and no less.

Another point to make is… As some one who was too foreign for the white folk; yet too white to be black… my whole life I had never fit in to a ‘group’.

I started researching my ancestral heritage and had a deep spiritual connection with the Italian and Spanish parts of my DNA. I even discovered I had Amerindian and oceanic DNA. Which was amazing and even more soul grabbing for me, it gave me a sense of belonging.

A lot of people say wow jode, you've changed so much!

But i am now, who I actually was before I was pressured in to believing I wasn't good enough as myself! Before I invented a new me, just to fit in with everyone else!

So along with becoming a parent, Ive managed to start my own holistic business too!

I do everything I love now, everything that makes my soul happy. I say yes to my intuition and say no to anything that doesn't serve me. We as women have to learn put ourselves first! We have to learn to trust ourselves, love ourselves and actually learn to be a bit selfish!

Life has given me some lemons, as they say. My world was incredibly sour at times and I have found my self in the darkest of corners, alone. But as clische as it is, after the darkness comes light.

I can wholeheartedly say that although I may not be 'living the dream' I could have been, if I had chosen all the 'right' paths in life, I am infact HAPPY. My soul is content and I am ME.

No matter what any of us have been through in life, we not only grow through it, we can flurish beyond it. These awful things happen to us, but they do not define us.

Sometimes we just have to lose ourselves, to find ourselves.

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zf7 · 5 years

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I feel like a ghost. I’m a 35-year-old woman, and I have nothing to show for it. My 20s and early 30s have been a twisting crisscross of moves all over the West Coast, a couple of brief stints abroad, multiple jobs in a mediocre role with no real upward track. I was also the poster child for serial monogamy. My most hopeful and longest lasting relationship (three and a half years, whoopee) ended two years ago. We moved to a new town (my fourth new city), created a home together, and then nose-dived into a traumatic breakup that launched me to my fifth and current city and who-knows-what-number job.

For all these years of quick changes and rash decisions, which I once rationalized as adventurous, exploratory, and living an “original life,” I have nothing to show for it. I have no wealth, and I’m now saddled with enough debt from all of my moves, poor decisions, and lack of career drive that I may never be able to retire. I have no career milestones and don’t care for my line of work all that much anyway, but now it’s my lifeline, as I only have enough savings to buy a hotel room for two nights. I have no family nearby, no long-term relationship built on years of mutual growth and shared experiences, no children. While I make friends easily, I’ve left most of my friends behind in each city I’ve moved from while they’ve continued to grow deep roots: marriages, homeownership, career growth, community, families, children. I have a few close girlfriends, for which I am grateful, but life keeps getting busier and our conversations are now months apart. Most of my nights are spent alone with my cat (cue the cliché).

---

Also, within the past year I’ve had a breast-cancer scare and required surgery on my uterus due to a fertility issue. On top of that, I’m 35 and every gyno and women’s-health website this side of the Mississippi is telling me my fertility is dropping faster than a piano falling out of the sky. Now I’m looking into freezing my eggs, adding to my never-ending financial burden, in hopes of possibly making something of this haunted house and having a family someday with a no-named man.

----

I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years? What reserves or identity can I draw from when I feel like I’ve accrued nothing up to this point with my life choices?

h/t sean.

this is a really poignant, vulnerable, self-deprecating letter in a tough situation. how do you even react to someone with such a life-consuming issue that spans every facet of her life?

i don’t love polly’s advice, but the comments are incredibly interesting. some of them are “i told you so”, others seek to provide optimism. there’s a lot of pretty antifeminist stuff. see a psychiatrist! get a dog! do shrooms! go to church! volunteer! date yourself/love yourself! make an action plan and be strategic! i was in the same place but everything got better! i was in the same place and life sucks!

aren’t women stuck between a rock and a hard place if people reach professional/emotional maturity at a later and later age (let’s say 30) but women’s biological clock deadlines still stay the same (let’s say at 35)? what happens if they don’t want to date un-successful/matured men in their 20s, but then by their 30s, the successful/matured men want to date younger?

more generally, the comments made me feel like the self-actualization self-fulfillment everyone-is-awesome movement has someone done us a disservice? like if we are so focused on the no-wrong-choice rhetoric and we-are-all-beautiful and seek to squash people who are negative, isn’t that potentially giving people blind spots when they make decisions because they aren’t adequately aware of the drawbacks?

but like... that’s sort of the moral of the advice, also, right? is that everyone IS awesome, just given the right framing and approach.

the comments are so varied.

anyway. my favorite comment was the following:

To Haunted: I did everything the opposite of you. Right now, we're in just about the same place. With a few exceptions of course. I invested. I bought my house before the bubble. I married my high school sweetheart, to whom I had every hope and intention of spending the rest of my life with. When that 18 year relationship ended (nearly a decade ago now), I figured I'd be good to go for whatever was next. I was in my early-mid-thirties, athletic, a great business person, smart as heck, and good at being in love. I wanted kids, wanted a life-partner, wanted to work hard, and was ready to make a great life out of the divorce my ex-wife chose. But I had just spent most of my savings on a masters degree. And I'm only 5'8" and went bald at 18. My beard already had a little grey in it. And I had no idea how to date. I'm charging into my early 40's now and, earlier this year, took the lowest paying job I've ever had. (Hooray for starting a non-profit!) I've got plenty of savings, but I'm earning less than I'm spending. And the job sucks, honestly. I've been mostly single (with some serial monogamy in the mix) since becoming single. And my occasional romantic partners keep getting younger. It feel bleak as hell, honestly. My point has nothing to do with my own personal shit-show. It's simply this: (y)our choices, (y)our actions, and (y)our "energy" are only a small part of what led to this situation. Our paths, looking back, are influenced heavily by the terrain through which we wander them. When the terrain helps dictate our paths, a lot of them tend to cross at the same saddle. (Apologies for the back-country hiking metaphor.) Keep wandering, friend. You could have made all your decisions differently. You could have made all of my decisions, the opposite of yours. And we'd still be high-fiving at the same saddle, the low-point, regrouping, on the way to the summit. Cheers, Eric P.S. If you're ever in Southern AZ, give me a shout. I'll buy you some tacos.

side note, one of my friends is having difficulty having a kid. some of these lines are crazyyy

Date every night.... move home or move to a city with a high male to female ratio. Whatever it takes. I’m 39 now with a newborn and she has filled me with the worlds largest supply of heroin concentrated love. Your friends won’t tell you that because they don’t want to make you feel bad - but stable loving husband and baby will make you love every minute of your existence.

They didn't tell us the peace that you feel when holding a sleeping baby.

I'm 42. I have single female friends of the same age who bitterly regret not having children. I used to attend legal conferences where 50% of the people in the room were single 55 year old female lawyers. Almost none were married and almost none had children. None of them looked like they were particularly happy with life, even though they were probably top 5% income earners.

also this comment lol:

"my fertility is dropping faster than a piano falling out of the sky." According to Galileo's law of motion; all bodies accelerate at the same rate regardless of their size or mass. :)

#advice #ask polly #self #friendship #career

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nellie-elizabeth · 7 years

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Sherlock: The Lying Detective (4x02)

Okay. So. Anybody who has read ACD's short stories might be familiar with "The Dying Detective," a story wherein Holmes pretends to be grievously ill in order to catch a bad guy, and he doesn't clue Watson in on the plan. Going in to this episode, I knew that Sherlock would have a trick up his sleeve. How did it all pan out? Let's take a look.

Cons:

I have a lot of questions and complaints. To start with the briefest of plot summaries: Sherlock is in a terrible drug spiral, John is roped in to help him take down Culverton Smith, a very wealthy man who Sherlock believes to be a serial killer. In the end, John sees the video that Mary left for Sherlock, and realizes that Sherlock has "gone to Hell" in order to force John to save him, thus helping him to save himself. John shows up in time to stop Smith from killing Sherlock. John then confesses to the hallucinatory Mary that he's been seeing that he cheated on her emotionally for the last weeks of their relationship. Then there's a big giant twist, which I'll talk about in the "pros" section a bit later.

So. Problems. I have 'em.

I seriously want to punch Steven Moffat for the way he writes his female characters. It's gone beyond what I can in good conscience ignore. Molly gets like two seconds of screen time, as we see that she's been helping babysit Rosie. She also shows up to do a drug test on Sherlock and confirm that he's got weeks left to live if he keeps using at this rate. Then she's never there again. What a waste of a talented actor and a dynamic character. She has become nothing but a plot convenience, whose entire character is there to serve the emotional needs of the male leads.

Speaking of which, Mrs. Hudson was sort of a bad ass in this episode, as she cuffs Sherlock and stuffs him in a car to bring him to John, tired of his drug addled ways. This was a cool scene, but take a closer look: we later learn that Sherlock had predicted John's whereabouts and had told Mrs. Hudson to take him there. We also learn that Sherlock's entire emotional state is a long-con to "save John," so anything that happens to him while he's high is still all part of Sherlock's brilliant plan. We also get Mrs. Hudson saying that she's "not their housekeeper," but all she does in this episode is take care of poor baby Sherlock.

Irene Adler. You've got to be kidding me. She doesn't show up or anything, but she does send Sherlock a text on his birthday. This gives John the emotional catharsis he needs to tell Sherlock that he should grab the opportunity to go make out with Irene or something, since Mary's dead and John knows that chances don't last forever. Or something. My God, the forced heterosexuality is making my brain hurt. (As a side note, even Mycroft is given a female love interest in the form of Lady Smallwood. Can you not just throw us a bone? A tiny one? Nothing?) Irene literally, literally said that she was gay when we met her back in Series Two. I cannot believe they're still pulling this thing wherein she's supposedly attracted to women except Sherlock Holmes because he's just so awesome. Ew.

Mary spends the episode as John's hallucinatory guardian angel, constantly encouraging him to get back to his predestined life on Baker Street with Sherlock. It feels a bit like a slap in the face. Mary was never my favorite, and I thought a lot of the crazy crap she did was forgiven way too easily. But to have her in the story just to remind John that he belongs with Sherlock is just... it's just... oy vey. It's almost like saying "oh, that was a fun little experiment having a woman around to mess with our bromantic relationship. But Mary's gone now, back to business as usual!" And you have Mary herself giving John her blessing for this. And John "confesses" his affair to his mental delusion, so that we can see Mary smile sagely and tell John to go be the man she always believed him to be. This is just blatant proof that Mary's entire character arc, including most definitely her death, was there to serve the emotional catharsis of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. It's Moffat's woman problem all over again. Some things never change.

And John... John's actually kind of a bad person? I don't know how to feel about this. Basically, Mary's plan was to have Sherlock fall so deep into despair that John would come through for him. But the fact is, John didn't. He didn't come to save Sherlock until he saw the video and realized that Sherlock was putting himself in harm's way to get through to John. Here's my big problem with this: earlier in the episode, Molly Hooper confirmed, with John standing right there, that Sherlock would be dead in a few weeks if he didn't stop using. And John did nothing. He knew how badly off the rails Sherlock was, and yet he still beat him to a bloody pulp and accused him of killing his wife. These things can be explained by John's anger and grief, absolutely. But for him to actually follow through with being a dick? For him to actually leave Sherlock to his drug-addled fate? The fact is, John's not an idiot. He sees how bad off Sherlock is, he believes it to be the actual truth. He'd need to be an idiot to not connect Sherlock's current state with Mary's death and their estrangement. And John does nothing until his dead wife shows up in a video to let him know that Sherlock is basically killing himself for John's sake.

I'm sorry, but... what a dick. This is sort of explained in the emotional catharsis moment, where John and Sherlock talk about their hetero love interests (barf) and John says that Mary was wrong about him being a good man. He says he wants to try and be the man she believed him to be. But that's just not... it's not... it doesn't hold true with anything we've seen of John's character. He is a good man. We've seen that time and again. He's loyal and forgiving and brave and smart and all of those things. His behavior in the last episode and in this one comes across as completely out of character. It's like they turned him into a jerk so that he could have an emotional breakthrough about how he's a jerk. That's not good character development. That's a lazy backslide leading to a cheap payoff. This development is also, apparently, supposed to be so that Sherlock could realize that John was "only human." I take it this was supposed to be a clever inversion. We've been so focused on how John views Sherlock, that we missed how Sherlock views John as this morally upstanding, untouchable god of goodness. Interesting in theory. In execution? Weak sauce.

Sherlock Holmes is always going to be a million steps ahead of everybody else. This is what makes a Sherlock Holmes story. I get that. In fact, this episode pulled it off successfully when Sherlock shows up at John's therapist appointment, having arranged to be there a full week before John even made the appointment. This was clever, and showed off Sherlock's deductive powers. The whole idea of going in to a drug spiral and using it to save John is also okay. But what I can't abide? He's drugged to the gills and being kept in Culverton Smith's grasp. At Smith's request, he says "I don't want to die" several times, actually choking up and starting to cry. We later learn that not only did he swap out his IV with saline, so that he wasn't actually being killed of an overdose, but that he also had a recording device placed in John's walking stick, because he somehow deduced that John would leave it as a parting gift for him, and that this would be how he'd catch Smith's confession on tape.

Nope. I'm sorry, nope. The whole thing works better if Sherlock actually does lose control over his faculties. I wanted him to be in actual, real danger of dying due to his drug use, not just the fact that Culverton decided to suffocate him. Sherlock was pretty messed up all episode due to his drug use, but at the end we learn that his actual plan went off without a hitch. Which is... pretty lame.

Lastly, we've got Culverton Smith, the villain who ended up coming across as even more of a cartoon than Moriarty. He was creepy, sure, and there were a few really great and chilling moments, like when he's messing with the corpses in the morgue. But in the end he's just a standard ego maniac who confesses to all of his crimes once the Great Sherlock Holmes takes him down with an elaborate plan that nobody else could have put into motion with such perfect ease. It's a little bit of a letdown. I thought this guy was going to be the real deal.

Pros:

Oh boy. I had a lot to complain about. One of the most difficult things about this damn show is that right alongside all of these legitimate and very serious complaints you have... off-the-charts incredible acting.

Benedict Cumberbatch gave an insane performance as Sherlock Holmes. Last week, I thought he was a bit hokey when playing high, but this week he was on it. My God. I really don't even know what to say about this. I won't bore you with too many examples, but just... the look on his face as John tells him he killed Mary, and then the look on his face later when John takes it back. The unbalanced, out of sorts way he deals with Faith Smith (Culverton's daughter... I'll get there in a minute). I think my favorite bit was his breakdown when he tries to attack Culverton with the scalpel. That was pure unadulterated panic on his face. He was scared and confused and I really don't think that level of animosity was in his original plan. Sherlock spends an entire evening with Faith Smith, and later meets her and realizes that the whole thing was a hallucination. (Sort of. Discussion of plot twist is forthcoming). His reaction when he realizes just how far gone he is... wow. Sherlock needed to let himself fall out of control for the sake of the plan, but I think even he wasn't anticipating it to go this far.

I mentioned how annoyed I was by Mrs. Hudson's service in the plot, but I do have to mention she was a total bad ass. She turned on the tears to get John to agree to see Sherlock, kidnapped Sherlock, held him at gunpoint, shoved him in her car... which is an awesome sports car, by the way. She also called Mycroft a "reptile" and kicked him out of her home, which was just beautiful in like twelve different ways.

Sherlock and John's relationship. Okay. So. It annoys me that Sherlock was so many steps ahead of everybody. And it annoys me that John wasn't going to save him until he learned it was a plan. It annoys me that they talk about their female love interests in their one and only intimate scene together. But my God. That scene. Sherlock is timid and apologetic and everything else in between. He desperately doesn't want John to leave, and John makes it pretty clear that he's only there because he has to watch Sherlock and make sure he doesn't get high again. There's this moment when John gets up to leave, and Sherlock asks "are you alright?" He's not saying it because he thinks he should. He's saying it because he really, really needs to know the answer. Everything he's been through, all the pain and the drugs and all that, he was doing because he wanted John to be alright. In this moment, he just wants to know if his plan was worth it. John breaks down, after talking to Hallucination!Mary for a moment, and then. Then. Sherlock Holmes gets up and holds John while he cries. He rests his head against John's and just cradles him. It was just the perfect moment and even if the lead-up to it had its problems... wow. I'm so grateful I got to witness that.

We've arrived at the last thing I need to talk about: the plot twist. Which was actually sort of several plot twists nested within each other. Everybody has been waiting for the secret Holmes brother, Sherringford. Mycroft actually brings up the name multiple times. We still don't know who Sherringford is, though... unless it's a code name meant to represent Eurus. Eurus Holmes, the East Wind... Mycroft and Sherlock's secret sister. Not only is she a secret sister, but we've actually already seen her. Three. Times. She's the girl on the bus that John had been texting with back when Mary was still alive. She's "Faith Smith," the woman who spends an evening with an extremely high Sherlock Holmes. Turns out, not a hallucination after all... just Sherlock's sister. And finally, she's John's therapist, a woman who sits across from him and listens to him talk about himself. As the episode ends, Eurus reveals the truth to John, and then points a gun at him, holding him hostage.

Eep! These little shits have been planning this for so long. Sherlock talks about the "East Wind" back at the end of last season, and how Mycroft once used it as a scary story to frighten him. And we all knew something was fishy about that woman on the bus. And when Sherlock thought he'd hallucinated a whole person, something seemed wrong about that. And then suddenly John's new therapist... just... wow. We're all culpable, because we all (or at least most of us) didn't see it coming. This woman was in last week's episode, and she was in this episode twice, playing two completely different characters, and I didn't notice it was the same person. That's... really impressive. Not only from the actress, but from the script and the care it took to make these people blend in. Sherlock saw "Faith" through a haze of drugs. John interacted with his therapist across an emotional and physical divide that made him never truly looking into her eyes. I cannot believe John was having an emotional affair with Sherlock's sister. I cannot believe John is being held hostage again. How many times does that make it? I can't believe that Moffat used his disgusting and unfortunate trend of setting women aside in the narrative in order to trick us into ignoring the answer that was right in front of us. It was... brilliant.

I'm forced to admit that this plot twist did a lot in making me come away from the episode with a positive impression. I can't wait to see how the newest Holmes sibling shakes things up. Apparently this is what happens when somebody as brilliant as Mycroft or Sherlock truly goes over to the dark side. It should make for an interesting finale.

My concern, going in to our last episode of Sherlock, maybe ever, but at the very least for several years, is that there's really no way to wrap up all of these dangling plot threads. What about all the ominous hints we've been getting about Mycroft's death? If he does die, will there be enough time to handle the fallout? And what about Moriarty? Is he tied in any way to Eurus, or is this another dangling thread? I feel concerned about what they've taken on, since this show has never been super great at wrapping things up to anybody's satisfaction. We'll have to see how it goes!

7/10

#review #sherlock #sherlock review #sherlock bbc

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Bookshelf Briefs 2/25/20

DAYS, Vol. 16 | By Tsuyoshi Yasuda | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Usually with sports manga I can find some emotional beat to highlight, but this volume really is just a bunch of soccer. Not that that’s a bad thing. Seiseki has progressed to the second round of the All Japan High School Soccer Tournament and their opponent is Ichiboshi Academy, whose unpredictable playing style proves challenging. Tsukamoto takes a bit of a backseat this time as Yasuda-sensei focuses on some older players like Oshiba, whose experience gets him past Ichiboshi’s impressive defence and allows him to score the first goal of the game, and Usui, who is shockingly bested by Ichiboshi as they score a goal of their own. It may not be deep, but it is fun, and I always appreciate how clear Yasuda’s panels are, particularly in depicting pass and shot trajectory. I’ll keep reading! – Michelle Smith

Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro, Vol. 2 | By Nanashi | Vertical Comics – When it comes to teasing titles, I like this better than Uzaki Wants to Hang Out (which I’ve dropped), but it’s still well below Teasing Master Takagi-san. Where it does succeed is in the art—Nanashi is really, really good at drawing embarrassment, and knows it, so the entire title revolves around both leads getting red-faced and twitchy. The problem continues to be that Nagatoro does not get enough scenes where she’s shown to be teasing rather than just torturing him, and the “senpai” remains a thoroughly wet protagonist. That said, the addition of her two friends did make a nice addition, as it brings out her jealousy. No one toys with my senpai but me! – Sean Gaffney

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?, Vol. 2 | By Yabako Sandrovich and MAAM | Seven Seas – The blatant fanservice is still there, but there may be slightly less of it, or perhaps I’ve just gotten used to it, as I was not as distracted by it this time around. Instead I remain fascinated by the workout advice, as well as the wacky adventures of the girls getting the advice, primarily Hibiki, who remains the best thing about this book. We’re also introduced to a new character, Zina, a Russian girl who really wants to be true to the stereotypes that Japan has about Russians. She’s fun, losing to Hibiki in a competition and then transferring to challenge her… and ending up in a different class. Again, I’m surprised that, despite some really blatant service, this remains refreshingly non-sleazy. – Sean Gaffney

An Incurable Case of Love, Vol. 2 | By Maki Enjoji | Viz Media – Maki Enjoji’s titles always seem to have heroines that I really enjoy, even when they’re screwing up. Case in point: Sakura at a party gets drunk and basically talks FAR too much, both to the group and later on to Tendo. Despite this, it’s really rather adorable and not pathetic, which is sort of what you’d expect. The manga also gets good later in the volume, as she deals with something that nurses also have to handle: a stalker who became obsessed with her as a patient. As for Dr. Tendo, he’s dealing with a rival for Nanase’s affections… and also a rival in teaching her how to be a good nurse, as he valiantly donates his poor arm until she shows she can put in an IV properly. This is just fun. – Sean Gaffney

Kase-san and Yamada, Vol. 1 | By Hiromi Takashima | Seven Seas – This is not the first Kase-san book, but the title change signals a sea change: the girls are in college, and Kase-san and Yamada are now definitely the focus rather than flowers, pastries, etc. That said, their couple status is both the plus and the minus of this book: as Erica Friedman and others have noted, both of them are dating but decidedly in the closet. And this is a problem on both sides: Kase becomes jealous when Yamada is invited to a group date, and takes steps to intervene; likewise, Yamada realizes that Kase has a roommate, and that, when her love is sick, she cannot simply rush to her side to take care of her. Real life tends to put crimps in a relationship. Maybe next volume they can tell the roommate about it. – Sean Gaffney

Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 5 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – The majority of this volume is devoted to a culture festival, where our class has decided to do a maid cafe, mostly as Komi wants to do one. She may have trouble communicating, but she’s still the princess of the school, and a lot rides on her opinions. Of course, there are challenges. Tadano ends up being forced into a maid costume as well, Najimi’s attempts at making money break school rules and come close to violating actual laws, and Yamai exists. We also meet one or two new characters, including a sempai type and an “easygoing” type who tends to wander off, get lost, etc. Komi-san runs on cliches—deliberately so—but it remains at its heart sweet and heartwarming, especially when the two leads are interacting. – Sean Gaffney

Let’s Kiss in Secret Tomorrow, Vol. 1 | By Uri Sugata | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Saya Kanra and Yuto Kozaki have been friends since elementary school and chastely dating since junior high. Yuto gets a makeover prior to starting high school, wanting to look cool and gain some confidence. The makeover proves too successful, alas, and now he has so many fangirls that Saya, fearing ostracism, has pretended not to know him and adopted the guise of someone disinterested in love. Now they’re trying to keep their relationship secret, occasionally aided by nerdy junior high classmate Amabiki, and talking mostly over voice chat, where things have started to get steamy in the tamest possible sense of the word. This may not be the most robust premise for a series, but I did like that the situation causes Saya to question both her own identity and her past assumptions about Amabiki’s quality of life. This series is complete in three volumes, which feels about right. – Michelle Smith

Living-Room Matsunaga-san, Vol. 1 | By Keiko Iwashita | Kodansha Comics – Originally a digital-only title, Living-Room Matsunaga-san has now achieved a print release! Due to family circumstances that aren’t fully explained, second-year high school student Miko Sonoda is shunted off to live not with her uncle but at her uncle’s boarding house with a bunch of strangers. Miko’s mother seems utterly unconcerned about this, and expects Miko to handle things herself. Thankfully, Miko is pretty capable for a teenager, with occasional lapses, and though she’s initially intimidated by her new housemate Jun Matsunaga, who comes across as belligerent and domineering, she soon realizes that he’s kind, caring, and passionate about his work as a graphic designer. Various situations ensue and Miko finds herself falling for him. While I’m not enthusiastic about a teen/adult romance, I do like these characters, the art style, and the kitty, so I’ll be proceeding on to volume two! – Michelle Smith

The Man Without Talent | By Yoshiharu Tsuge | New York Review Comics – While several of Tsuge’s shorter manga have previously made their way into translation, The Man Without Talent is his first long-form work to be released in English. In the accompanying essay, translator and historian Ryan Holmberg describes it as “Tsuge’s most popular and accessible work.” Originally serialized between 1985 and 1986, The Man Without Talent incorporates semi-autobiographical elements into its narrative. The story follows a cartoonist who seems to have largely given up on cartooning despite the pleas of his wife. Instead, he tries, struggles, and ultimately fails to make ends meet by selling stones he finds along the river near his home. The manga is an occasionally surreal but compellingly honest work, in part an examination of poverty, creativity, society, and self-determination. Readers rightfully intrigued by The Man Without Talent will soon have more of Tsuge’s manga to look forward to—Drawn & Quarterly has a seven-volume series of collected works planned. – Ash Brown

My Androgynous Boyfriend, Vol. 1 | By Tamekou | Seven Seas – Hooray for more josei! Souma Meguru is a beautiful guy who gets profiled in magazines and has many followers on Instagram. He’s been dating Machida Wako, busy editor, for seven years (ever since high school). This slice-of-life series depicts their domestic bliss as well as some of the challenges they face, like rumors that Meguru is actually dating a fellow male model or Wako’s coworker’s assumption that Meguru is female. I particularly enjoyed the chapter in which they go to “Ikeya” and Wako invents backstories for Meguru as he sits in various display rooms. It’s nice to read about a couple that has been together for so long; their relationship exudes trust and devotion. That said, it’s a bit weird that Meguru looks about twelve throughout, when he’s supposed to be so hot. Overall, this was pleasant and I’ll most likely check out volume two. – Michelle Smith

Our Dining Table | By Mita Ori | Seven Seas – I have read thousands of volumes of manga at this point but seldom have I encountered one as intensely charming as Our Dining Table. Yutaka Hozumi is a lonely salaryman who lost his parents at a young age and was never accepted by his adoptive siblings. When a pair of brothers comes into his life, exuberant four-year-old Tane Ueda and harried college student Minoru, Yutaka finds a family that will not only accept him but actively desires he be present as much as possible. I loved the slow progression of Yutaka and Minoru’s relationship; it’s one of those where it’s absolutely clear how they are healing each other of their trauma and what each finds appealing in the other. Also, Tane is incredibly adorable and it’s obvious how much fun Ori-sensei had when drawing him. I loved this without reservation. – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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patheticphallacy · 5 years

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This is part of my Music Monday series on my blog, where I talk all things music, from recommending songs to discussing my favourite music videos to compiling playlists based on prompts.

Summer is over!

I don’t want to say finally, because being off University has been pretty great, but I’m also so relieved the weather is going to get cooler. The weather fluctuated between INCREDIBLY HOT and ACTUALLY IT’S QUITE CHILLY in July and August and I just want it to be over please oh please.

So for Music Monday I figured I should do a little wrap up of the music I’ve enjoyed! I’ve made about 5 new music playlists for absolutely no reason at all other than I have no self control, and I keep having to edit down my 2019 playlist due to impulsively adding songs and then realising two weeks later that I honestly didn’t really love the song that much.

FAVOURITE SOLO ARTIST

My favourite solo artist this Summer was probably Sigrid. Generally with solo artists I get into one or two of their songs, and while those songs list in my favourite songs, the artist generally isn’t a new top favourite.

I’ve been a fan of Sigrid since 2017, and I finally felt like I was in the right space to listen to her new album Sucker Punch, which ended up solidifying her as one of my new favourite solo artists. She has a really intriguing voice and I love that you could dance to over half of this album because of how upbeat it is. There’s something to be said for lyrics that aren’t complicated, are easy to understand, because sometimes that makes them all the more relatable for a listener.

I also love how so much of her music is inspired by more than just romantic issues. There are crushes and friendship songs, songs about breaking free from toxic friendships– something that helped me as I reconcile with some of the more toxic elements of relationships I’ve had in the past– and there’s also a song inspired by not only Studio Ghibli, but also her attempt to control her image in the media, which is something I always love in music. Artists can be publicised so much we forget they are real human beings, and hearing their music about their public image is always humbling.

FAVOURITE BAND

(Take This To Your Grave isn’t here because it wouldn’t fit, don’t fight me)

2008 Connie and 2019 Connie have one thing in common, and that’s their intense adoration of rock bands that formed in the 2000s. I’ve always been a fan of Fall Out Boy since I was little, but it’s only the past year I’ve actually started listening to all of their discography properly and begun appreciating what they’ve come out with.

This might be divisive, but I honestly think Fall Out Boy, of the ol’ rock/punk rock scene, have had the most consistently good albums since their debut. I think other bands have had decent albums and, in some cases, bad ones that only have one or two good songs in my opinion (Paramore’s self-titled album, I’msosorry), but not ones that have absolute hits.

Fall Out Boy are always great for me, every song on their albums that I’ve heard so far, and that’s why they are my favourite band of the Summer. They’ve changed with the times and the kind of music that’s popular in the moment without ever losing what made their earlier music so great. It’s just all very idiosyncratic, from the music videos to the content to the actual song titles, and I love them.

ALBUMS I LIKED

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Doom Days // Bastille

While doing some research on this album, I discovered that the concept for Doom Days is that it follows different points in the night at a party, a party that has a lot of “turbulent emotional chaos”. This explains why I love it so much.

In general, Bastille are a band that put a lot of thought into their music, and I think some really visceral imagery can be created from the concepts they shape the album around.

The titular song is actually my favourite of the album. It describes escapism from modern anxiety, and how, no matter how fucked the world is, you need to shut off sometimes. I struggle a lot with this– I constantly describe my own anxiety, something that I struggle with a lot, as having an IV line of straight modern horror flowing into me that I can’t disconnect from– and I think, as a song, it confronts modern fear– from climate change denial to porn addiction– without ever demonising those who make the decision to shut their brains off from it sometimes.

I think the Peter Pan reference especially reaffirms this. Yes, Peter Pan himself is a symbol of innocence, but at its core, Peter Pan’s narrative is about a girl who finds escape from the ‘real world’ long enough to figure out the issues of adulthood and growing up without losing herself along the way. In a way, that’s what this song, and the rest of the album, enforce. Escapism is good sometimes.

Third Eye Blind // Third Eye Blind

God of Wine has been one of my favourite songs for god knows how long, and after listening to a really bizarre mash-up of Welcome to the Black Parade with Semi-Charmed Life, I finally figured I should give the rest of the band’s music a try.

I’ve started with their self-titled first album, just because it’s easiest as I make my way through their discography, but I kind of stopped on this one. I just really love it. It mixes different sounds, sometimes crossing several in one song (Narcolepsy has an ending that jolts you out of your seat), with grim lyrics reflecting on suicide and mental health conditions, crystal meth, and sexual abuse.

Fun story: Semi-Charmed Life was very familiar to me before I’d even listened to the album, and when I researched into it, I realised that was because it was used in trailers for The Tigger Movie and, as a massive Winnie the Pooh fan and YouTube user, I had most definitely seen the trailer when I was younger and not put the pieces together. These trailers were obviously recalled because the song is about crystal meth, but I just think that’s a fun look into how little people actually pay attention to lyrics!

Sucker Punch // Sigrid

I’ve obviously discussed Sigrid in length earlier in this post, so I won’t say as much here. My favourite songs on the album are Basic, Don’t Kill My Vibe, and Business Dinners.

FAVOURITE SONGS

Arms Unfolding // Dodie

Oh, our fire died last Winter

Heavy Metal Heart // Sky Ferreira

I describe the chorus and instrumentals of this as the musical equivalent of a headache, and I stand by that. Sky Ferreira’s voice is great, and I love the chaotic noisiness of this song.

Django Jane // Janelle Monáe

I actually only just listened to Dirty Computer. I tend to prolong listening to things until well after the hype surrounding them dies down, and I’m glad I did, as I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed the album otherwise.

I’m With You // Avril Lavigne

Can you tell I grew up goth? I remember memorising the lyrics to this when I was in year 3.

The Archer // Taylor Swift

Definitely the best song to come out of Taylor Swift’s latest album so far! I love the juxtaposition in the lyrics. I also wrote a whole post assigning her songs to Shakespeare Plays, if you’re interested in that sort of thing!

goodnight n go // Ariana Grande

I… don’t have much to say about this? It’s one of three songs I actually like off Sweetener.

A Brand New Day // BTS&Zara Larsson

Everytime the first notes of this song play I get immediately hyped. I love the instruments used in this song, and I think the voices and sounds of the different collaborators in this (V and J-Hope, and Zara) all compliment each other really well.

Nightmare // Halsey

I Smile // DAY6

DAY6 were sold to me as a Korean rock group and I immediately jumped on that. I really love their album Sunrise.

Doom Days // Bastille

Someone You Loved // Lewis Capaldi

This has some iffy messages, especially concerning the idea of your partner– or a sole person– as a sort of therapist instead of pursuing other avenues (i.e. actual, paid-for therapy) to help you begin to tackle emotional issues. I do love Lewis Capaldi’s voice, though, and I think there are more ways to look at the song than just that. Remember kids: it’s okay to ask for help from loved ones and there should be a quid pro quo of support, but if your emotional issues are that bad, please seek professional help!

Kataomoi // Aimer

Baby Don’t Stop // NCT U

After how much time I’ve spent crafting paragraphs about music I love and trying to remain somewhat intelligent, I’m breaking that here: this song is just sexy. That’s the whole reason I love it. I’m sorry.

Ça Ira // Joyce Jonathan

This is a really fun song, it kind of reminds me of Sara Bareilles, only French. The fact that the music video is staged as her going on blind dates with people of all genders is also really adorable and not something I see a lot of in music videos!

FAVOURITE MUSIC VIDEOS

Spring Day // BTS

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I spend most of my time attempting to deconstruct every music video BTS have ever come out with, but Spring Day is almost the be-all-end-all for me. There’s so many layers to this music video, from the philosophical references– The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin is a direct inspiration for the music video– to its context within the general BTS ‘Universe’ they’ve created with their music videos. I know this isn’t considered a direct part of the BTSU, but it is to me, and I love it. I really love the music video for Lights as well!

Nightmare // Halsey

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This is a fact not many people know about, but I desperately wanted to both be in a rock/heavy metal band when I was younger, and also date someone in a heavy metal band. So all of those black and white sequences of Halsey as the frontwoman for a rock band are honestly my favourite thing ever. I love the messages of this song; I know people are divisive over their opinion on Halsey, but I’ve always loved her honesty, so I really love this song.

Kataomoi // Aimer

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It’s a very quiet music video and I love that! People can do a lot with smaller budgets and minimal people partaking, I think this music video is beautiful. My best friend actually recommended this song to me with the assurance that Namjoon from BTS talked about it before.

Winter Bear // V

youtube

Speaking of quiet music videos: THIS. It’s soft and mostly uses shots and clips V got himself walking around and touring, including a few Jimin got for him. I’m very much on both ends of the spectrum concerning music videos: I love so many large-budgets videos, but I also love ones that are minimalist and filmed on smaller budgets (if you don’t count the cost of what Taehyung is wearing, obviously).

What have you listened to this Summer? I’d love some music video recommendations especially, I think it’s amazing how carefully people can form stories and messages without ever using speech, especially when the imagery isn’t overt and you can do research into shots used to understand what it could mean.

Thank you for reading!

If you liked this post, consider buying me a coffee? Ko-Fi.

Goodreads|Twitter|Instagram|Letterboxd

Music I Enjoyed This Summer This is part of my Music Monday series on my blog, where I talk all things music, from recommending songs to discussing my favourite music videos to compiling playlists based on prompts.

#bastille #fall out boy #music #music monday #playlists #sigrid #summer music #third eye blind

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outletggdbsale-blog · 5 years

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

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What No One Tells You About Having a Baby

http://fashion-trendin.com/what-no-one-tells-you-about-having-a-baby/

What No One Tells You About Having a Baby

Sarah got pregnant in January 2017 and gave birth in October. She’s been shocked by the experience since the very beginning and worries the lack of education, support and dialogue around what it’s like to conceive, give birth to and care for a child does a disservice to women. She wants to speak honestly about what it’s like as much as she can to help reverse that. Below is her as-told-to story. -Haley Nahman

Realizing My Ignorance Early On

My husband and I were married for five years before we decided to start trying for a baby. Just a few months before I got pregnant, a close pregnant friend’s baby died the day she was due. She never found out why, but in doing my own research, I found out that one out of every 160 pregnancies in the U.S. ends in a late-term death of the baby, or stillbirth. In about a fourth of the cases, doctors can’t even find a possible cause. I had heard of people having miscarriages, but I’d previously thought that once you’ve passed four months, you’re pretty much home free.

It made me realize that if I’m an educated adult who lives in New York City and I didn’t know about this statistic, there have to be so many people out there who also have no idea. That she couldn’t find a support group in a fairly large city highlighted how so much of what women experience in pregnancy is left out of the cultural dialogue. So I approached my own pregnancy through that lens. It was always in the back of my mind that I didn’t know anything about having a baby, and that it could happen to me too.

Losing Control of My Body

I was really sick at the beginning of my pregnancy. People talk about morning sickness as a common symptom, but they act like you throw up once in the morning and it ends in four weeks. I was sick all day, every day for 18 weeks. I could not eat, couldn’t function, couldn’t go out to dinner with my husband, couldn’t have lunch with a girlfriend. It was the most alienating, isolating and miserable four months. I would go for three days eating the insides of bagels and little slices of apple because that was the only thing I didn’t puke up. That level of nausea is very hard to describe. My husband really didn’t understand, as wonderful and good as he is.

You can’t tell anyone that you’re pregnant for months, either, so you have to get up and go to work every day. I felt compromised in every possible way. Finally that ended, I started showing and the pregnancy part became a little bit more fun. But there were endless side effects that no one ever told me about, like an intensified sense of smell, horrible breakouts and other changes in my body. On the flip side, I also felt a certain type of euphoria the whole time, which was hormone-related.

The Weightiness of Pregnancy

Pregnancy wasn’t the blissfully happy, magical thing that everyone told me it would be. It’s only nine months, but it seems so much longer. Every day was different. I’d ask myself, “What’s going to change about my body today? Or my mindset? Or my relationship with my husband? Or my sex life? Or my relationship with people in my family?”

There’s a lot going on in your body when you’re pregnant; I felt so emotionally heavy through all of it. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders because every decision I made impacted me and this hopeless little thing that I was building. I also felt immediately so much closer to my mom, who I was already extremely close with. I would cry myself to sleep three nights a week, worried that my mom was going to die before I had the baby. I would try to explain all of this to my husband, and while he’s awesome, I don’t think he had the emotional capacity to understand what any of this would be like.

I can’t speak to the very real decisions people who have depression have to make when they’re pregnant (like if they’re going to continue with antidepressants); I don’t have that type of depression, but I felt emotionally heavy the entire time, and there weren’t a lot of people who I could talk to about it. Even though my friends who don’t have kids are empathetic, amazing people, they had no fucking clue what I was talking about. And my friends who did have kids, who did understand what I was talking about, were busy because they had kids.

Around the five-month mark, I had a real mental breakdown. I was inconsolable for a week. I couldn’t stop crying. On the one hand, I was very grateful that I was able to conceive and that I was making this baby, but I also felt like my choices were suddenly so limited. I felt kind of like my life was ending. My husband didn’t feel that way. But I just kept thinking, Holy shit. Why did I decide to do this? My whole life is about to get turned upside down. What if I didn’t really understand what the implications of that were? Did I really want this? I was questioning everything.

The Process of Giving Birth

I was pregnant all summer and gave birth on October 3rd. The process of giving birth was horrific. Once I got to the hospital, every step of giving birth was a trauma on my body, from the giant IV that they stuck in me to my water not breaking enough for the baby to come out. They had to re-break my water with what looked like a giant knitting needle. It was so gruesome and gross and painful. I was doing that kind of crying where I couldn’t breathe. I was in labor for almost 19 hours.

No one tells you so much of the horror of giving birth. It’s such a disservice to people, especially to people who don’t have access to the kind of care that I do. I had it better than most: I had incredible medical care at the best hospital in New York City. I saw a private doctor who doesn’t accept insurance in New York — it was a very expensive and rare opportunity that only a very lucky and privileged person would have.

I had a friend in Chicago who was pregnant at the same time I was. She had more of your “standard” experience, a standard doctor who took all sorts of insurance. I cannot tell you how different our experiences were. I had a sonogram every single time I went to the doctor; she had a sonogram twice. I went through maybe four types of genetic testing, some of which weren’t even offered to her. There were just so many ways in which her much more accessible medical care was subpar compared to what I got. It just wasn’t right. What’s more is I think that compared to most people, she was in a privileged position. A lot of families have it much worse than she did. Women are making the future of our species, and for most of them, the medical care is so far beneath what they deserve and need.

There Is a Lack of Dialogue

Did you know that you bleed for six to eight weeks after you have a baby? Because I had to wear adult diapers — no one ever told me that. No one ever told me that you look physically pregnant for months afterward. One study showed as many as six out of 10 women have a condition called diastasis recti where their abdominal muscles stretch so much that they separate and their bodies are often not capable of putting them back together without physical therapy. I never heard about that — I never read about that in a biology textbook. Like so many postpartum complications, it is also severely under-researched.

Part of the reason no one told me this stuff is that women forget; your body makes you forget what the experience was like to protect you. But also, people just don’t want to talk about it. This should be the shit you learn about in science class when you’re an eighth-grader! All of this should be normalized because it’s something women have to go through in order for the human species to continue.

I’ve heard people say, “They don’t tell you this stuff because if you knew you wouldn’t have a baby to begin with.” That’s not a reason not to give people medical, scientific information about their own bodies. There’s something inherently misogynist about it that this isn’t common knowledge.

After I had the baby, I had no clue what to do with him. Everyone says, “When they put that baby on your chest, you’re gonna immediately fall in love. It’ll be the best moment of your life!” When they put the baby on my chest, I honestly felt like he was an alien and I did not know what to do next. I didn’t really feel connected to him. It wasn’t a magical fireworks moment at all, and I felt really guilty about that. When I told other mothers that, they said things like, “Yeah, I didn’t love the baby for the first few weeks either.” That was good to know, but I wished I hadn’t spent weeks thinking I was missing a chip.

The Pressures of Motherhood

I am three and a half months postpartum, and my friends say it takes about a year for the hormones to level out. When I say that I don’t feel connected to my child, it’s not that I don’t feel a deep sense of responsibility and respect for this little creature. It’s just that I didn’t fall in love immediately. That glittery version of having a baby wasn’t reality for me. My stomach is still distended, I am bleeding into an adult diaper, I pee in my pants if I jump too fast, I cry all the time, I feel every emotion more deeply and I’m losing my hair because of the drastic change in my estrogen levels. The thought of anything happening to the baby is devastating, but what am I going to do? Sit up all night and stare at him? It’s such a clusterfuck of emotions, and it doesn’t stop.

I was told that I had to breastfeed, but I refused to do it. It was a decision I made that made me feel less tethered and weighed down since I was already feeling a lot of anxiety, pressure and depression about my life changing completely. Deciding not to breastfeed gave me a sense of autonomy and was the right choice for me. But when people hear me say that, they look at me like I have seven heads. You have no idea how many men have asked me about that decision. When I tell them, I feel like they look at me as though I’m a huge asshole for not feeding my baby solely from my body for six straight months.

Women Need More Support

Even though I’m a vocal person, I still feel shame for saying that I have postpartum depression. It’s almost like I think I don’t deserve to say it because other people have it worse. But the fact that it’s hard for me to say is cultural brainwashing. So I’m supposed to accept that this is my reality and that any amount of complaining makes me a bad mom or a bad woman? Or that I’m airing my dirty laundry in public, which is impolite? In reality, that is inaccurate and is why this problem persists. I love my baby, I love my husband and I know that all of this will work out. But I cry every single day. I feel sad and lonely.

We all have our opinions on how it feels to have a baby, but the lack of widely shared scientific, medical information about what happens to your body bothers me. Women are not properly prepared for and supported in motherhood. It makes me so angry. I don’t understand why women aren’t rioting in the streets. We need to make sure women are given proper care and proper help. We need to make sure women are not tricked into doing this, and that if they get pregnant and decide they don’t want the baby, they’re not villainized for having an abortion. I’m in a depression because I don’t see a way for it to get better for women without massive amounts of change. I’m one of the very lucky few — for most people, it’s even worse, and I can’t imagine that. I’ve never felt more militant about women’s rights, abortion rights issues and health care issues than I have after going through a pregnancy.

Photos by Louisiana Mei Gelpi; Art Direction by Emily Zirimis.

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somedaypast-thesunset · 7 years

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i feel upset today because there is a continual expectation for me to put myself out for other people and get next to nothing in return as they ask for everything. and if i ask for something, it just goes ignored.

i’m tired of my work being devalued. i’m tired of people just taking it for granted and using it to their own benefit. i felt nothing but anxiety and animosity at the last show our group put on because i was knowingly bullied on more than one occasion by another member and then forced to put on a show with them - and was even questioned why i might pull out my art.

i was going to perform at this event. but as the weeks passed i realized i was putting in more work than anyone else and when i asked for certain things, they were ignored or put off. and yet there was an expectation for me to complete something for them ‘asap’. this made performing for the first time really devalued. like sure, i worked hard to create the event but why? what was the purpose of this? it was never to bring anyone together, it was never to showcase anything but the organizers themselves and the lack of good promotion means the likelihood of selling something at a venue not known for after hours shows and not joining our marketing is pretty low.

i am 27 years old now. i have no fucking desire to put on shitty teen shows that are half assed thrown together with a bunch of my friends. thats not what this is about for me - it lacks a certain amount of organization and class. it lacks a curation in performers. i thought i might be the worst one - and that’d be okay. they cant all be winners. but now it’s just open mic - and if i really wanted to perform at a open mic, i’d go to a real one. if i’m going to do a large amount of the work - outside of meeting with the owner one time and putting up 5 flyers on street poles - i want the results to be worth the work i put in. and IMO it’s not. it’s mediocre and thrown together.

and i feel a personal insult about this because of how much work i put intothe group itself. ive dedicated time on a semi regular basis to all the admin work, the promotion, keeping social media active, posting new submissions, fielding a majority of the questions and i’m not asking for praise - i’m asking for people to respect the work i’ve done. don’t come in and draw on it with magic marker and tell me its acceptable quality when theres folks painting in oils. i dedicated time to create an entity that could be used and harnessed; i ask for the quality of our output to match whats already there.

and i think it’s asinine that i would hve to argue doing better than average. if this is just a hobby or random activity for you - fine. it’s not serious. you’re not serious. none of this matters. but it was presented as serious. it was presented as a showcase of people’s craft. there is no effort into making it somewhere one would wnt to be. we’re all going for the ~decor. we print posters because we want to see our name on a poster in the street - not becuse we’re really advertising an event. it was acceptable that the only people in attendance would be the performers and a few of their friends. acceptable!! that’s an unsuccessful house party, in my opinion.

you know whats missing locally? proper use of social media to network between people. it’s impossible to find other artists in the area unless you scour through obscure hashtags. but yet theres dozens and dozens if not hundreds of artists in the local area. this means you get stuck in one influence and within that influence you may be chastised for going against the “norm” of their influence. instead of new ideas being welcomed, they’re constantly turned down or argued against.

i’ve met all of the people i know through facebook and instagram in my art world. thats a very powerful tool.i know models who only book through instagram. and ive had arguements about the use of hashtags. as if theyre not relevant.

i’m tired of questioning what i know. tht honestly gives me the most anxiety. and its not like im tired of questioning what i do - its healthy to question your actions - but what i know and believe makes me feel unsure of myself and the skills i have. i have had experience working in the creative industries since i was 17, freelancing. and i have a wide variety of skills in graphic design, retouching photos, photography of models & landscapes & products, glamour modeling & product modeling (of which i’ve done for dozens of photographers in the local area), web design & blogging + knowlege of e-commerce platforms, wordpress, seo, promotion & marketing both online & offline, i’ve sold crafts online for almost four years and switched my primary creative tool from artisan crafts to trditional & figure art that i studied & practiced extensively for over two years, i have skills in copywriting & journalism, i have a handle on the basic laws of creative works & how they can be used, basic knowledge in building & selling a brand, communicating with clients & customers (of which i’ve had no complaints in regards to my communication - ive had complaints about shipping because post offices are not so nice), creating organized file systems which can be used by multiple people -- i have paid my dues. i am still growing, absolutely. i am not the best at any of the above things i listed. i could be even better. i could spend two hours today on one of these skills and be better than i am right now. i can always be better.

but just because i can be better doesnt take away from what i know now, what i have learned, what i have studied - like i took the time to study and read up on research and marketing & promotion techniques. a good portion of my first shop was spent reading about how to sell stuff, not so much making stuff to sell. as i did not realize at the time how much work went into being successful online. and i did not realize until my shop closed how i had taken that skill for granted - because i had done all that work & effort, it was able to pull in a few sales a month with little to no effort now. if i worked harder, maybe i couldve been even better.

i also (un)willingly have worked full time as an artist and only an artist for at least two years. this is the “luxury” ive been allowed in life even though i am the definition of starving artist. i didnt have it as a part time job or hobby - it was something i did every single day and i marketed & promoted for hours a day. an acquaintance of mine upon hearing of my mental state now told me that i had gone so hard for so long - and i kind of appreciated that he saw that on the outside. that someone could see that i actully did work incredibly hard. that i was dedicated.. that i AM dedicated.

i’m not saying any of this makes me better thn anyone else or knowing more - it just means i’m experienced. i am very very experienced in not only practicing a craft but marketing that craft to sell, displaying that craft in it’s best light, knowing the best places to sell. i also work in quality over quantity. i am not interested in doing 9 - 10 shows a year. i’m not interested in shitting out 5 - 7 paintings at a time. it means before i touch anything to paper or canvas or wood - i’ve thought about it. i’ve really, really thought about it. i didnt just sit down and throw paint on the canvas. i couldve been thinking of this image for days before i do it. or the craft itself - my bone jewelry came because i absolutely neded to make a necklace out of fish bones i found and they needed vials attached. why? i dont know. but it just needed to be.

when i started the group, i asked about names. i didnt choose a name or dictate the name. i was given a suggestion by someone i actually dont like at all and was given a reson for why he felt it was a good suggestion and i agreed because business-wise it was a good suggestion. i respected that he hd different ideas and experiences that shaped that suggestion that i did not have. i learned through it that i should expand my reach - both in my personal creative life and my ‘business’ creative life.

my ~partner was disappointed i wasn’t going to perform. i could tell it was frustrating and dissappointing to him because i think he thought it wouldve been good for me and that i would hopefully find something in it that would bring me something. and through his disappointment he told me that it wasn’t totally right to drop out of something you planned to do or that peopl expected you to be at.

but i’d like to turn that around - my partner is someone who also puts himself out for others on a regular basis. and for a long, long, long time he was fucked around and fucked over by many people. an old friend came to his door and asked to borrow money and he allowed him to despite knowing he might be a drug addict now. he had no obligation to this person but it was like since he was asked, he should. and i think if he lerned to say no, or learned to walk away from an unhealthy situation, he would be happier as well. i’ve learned first hand the benefit of walking away from something toxic. and you will feel misplaced guilt for a bit, i feel some guilt now but it’s for the best.

i try to think how i can change my perspective on it but i cannot. i wold not walk down the street if this was held in the local gallery, nevermind 20km away. like once i took myself out as a performer i realized i wouldnt even want to go. i dont want to see anyone perform but my partner; who will already be subdued because of the venue. ive been completely taken out of the organization of the event - despite having been continually involved in the promotion and a few conversations since the lst one where i said i didnt want to keep doing this. so ive deleted my advertisement efforts online andi’m just halting any further promotion on my part of this event. i’m 97% sure i’m personally not even going to go. i no longer ant to see half of the people there on a personal level so it’s not even worth going to to hang out and i dont care about displaying my art.

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