#just can they learn to write any relationships instead of ugly messy or rushed out of left field??

[neversatisfiedwithlife]

Yes I felt Canaan and Kimberly, but that was before Whitney being his VERY RECENT ex and still very sensitive about it, came into play.

#the sex lives of college girls #like the issue isn't that they're together it's the way everything played out. like why is there a love triangle between the girls #just can they learn to write any relationships instead of ugly messy or rushed out of left field?? #whitney chase #kimberly finkle

[lotusthekat]

Help is just around the corner (for us)

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: G

Relationships: Platonic Lars & Steven

Characters: Steven Quartz Universe, Lars Barriga, Lion; other characters are only mentioned

Summary: “Hey, it’s not a big deal. I’ve been through worse,” Steven insists.

“Dude, you’ve been wincing the entire time, don’t tell me it’s not a big deal,” Lars mocks, annoyed.

Steven can’t help shivering inside - both at Lars’ observation and his tone. He’s seen Lars angry, of course… but never because of this.

--

Sometimes, Steven's healing powers don't quite work, but it's nothing he hasn't dealt with before. Yet Lars is... surprisingly upset about it.

Word count: 2.226

AO3 / Fanfiction

A/N: Don’t mind me writing self-indulgent stuff for my boys in the very year of 2021 *peace sign*

Half inspired by loubuttons’ “Rare and Sweet As Cherry Wine” and a comment on another Lars & Steven fic, Novantinuum’s “The Brother on the Other Side”. Both are great fics and they’re on AO3 :)

Title is from Help Is Round the Corner by Coldplay.

TRIGGER WARNINGS - past bullying/abuse, major character injury, flashback and trauma

--

“Hold on – what the heck is that?”

The outraged question was so far from expected, that Steven almost drops the bowl he was supposed to grab. The boy wonders if there’s something wrong with the bowl, until he realizes that Lars’ eyes are glued to his arm. His pink sleeve has fallen off, revealing the wound from earlier.

“Oh, I- I got in a gem fight earlier, but it’s nothing really!” Steven reassures him, “My healing powers will take care of it… eventually,” he then doesn’t sound as confident, admittedly.

Immediately after, Lars grabs him to the nearest chair and rushes to find a first-aid kit somewhere in his house. When he returns, Lars is inspecting his arm with desperate focus.

“Hey, it’s not a big deal. I’ve been through worse,” Steven insists.

“Dude, you’ve been wincing the entire time, don’t tell me it’s not a big deal ,” Lars mocks, annoyed.

Steven can’t help shivering inside - both at Lars’ observation and his tone. He’s seen Lars angry, of course… but never because of this.

Basically, Steven got into a fight with a group of gems in outer space. He’s received plenty of reports of gems that turned against Homeworld’s new system – and Steven’s decisions specifically – yet he found out too late that a specific group was larger than he anticipated. There was no time to call for help when he was attacked mercilessly, but he called the Diamonds after it was over, at least.

His healing powers usually do most of the job for him after battles, but lately they haven’t been working as well as they should - even though Steven consistently watches over his hydration and health. He’s not sure what’s happening, but he believed he could figure it out for himself, so he hasn’t told the gems… yet.

Regardless, Lars works on soothing the wound as gently as possible, despite his serious frown. Steven struggles to swallow through the pain, though it eventually gets better once Lars is almost finished.

“Are there any other injuries you’re hiding?” The pink boy demands.

Steven shakes his head. Lars then begins bandaging the former’s arm, and it’s definitely better now that it’s not burning… yet Steven can’t help raising an eyebrow at his friend’s behavior.

“Hey, don’t be mad,” Steven tries to tell him.

It’s no use in saying that, because Lars promptly and angrily ignores Steven as he insists on bandaging his arm.

“Lars,” the younger boy tries again, “I’m okay, you don’t need to–”

“Except I do, because you’re a knucklehead .”

Steven blinks and frowns, affirming, “I can take care of myself.”

Lars simply stares at him with an unamused look.

“What? It’s true!” Steven exclaims in defense. “You don’t believe me?”

As a response, Lars shakes his head in disapproval and looks away. Before the other thinks through it, Steven’s voice raises, “Fine, it’s not like everyone else takes me seriously!”

The older boy’s eyes widen. “Wait, Steven, that’s not what I meant–”

“Oh, really? Because I’m tired of everyone treating me like a baby!” Steven steams. “I’m sixteen now! I saved the entire galaxy! What else do I have to do for you to realize I grew up?!”

“That’s exactly the problem, Steven!” Lars argues. “You can’t keep doing everything alone because you think you have to!”

“What do you know? You’re not a Diamond!”

“But I know you’re still a kid and you deserve help!”

“I’m not a kid, and I didn’t ask for your help!” Steven pushes his hand away, harshly.

Instead of yelling more, however, the look on Lars’ face disperses Steven’s anger. He looks… hurt. Really hurt, like those particular words left a wound on him. Steven’s heart drops in regret.

“Lars… I…”

The other boy looks away and mentions nothing for dragging minutes. Steven doesn’t know what to say, because what he feels is true, but he didn’t mean to sound so ungrateful, either. This is why he’s never confronted anyone.

When Steven senses a hand hesitantly reaching his, he almost flinches.

“I think you should go rest, at least,” Lars suggests, not demanding like before; yet his voice is awfully quiet. “We don’t want you getting worse, right?”

Steven would have protested but he genuinely doesn’t know what to say to make up for it.

“... Right.”

Lars nods in silence. “Do you want to go home?”

Maybe he shouldn’t, Steven considers. He should really apologize to Lars; he’s not one to run away from his mistakes.

“Yeah… okay,” The sixteen-year-old replies.

There’s no other argument. Steven gazes at his bright, messy pink hair that covers his friend’s eyes. Sighing, Steven enters the pink, hairy dimension and arrives home in no time. When there, he greets Lion taking over his bed. This time, the half-gem doesn’t tell him to get off.

Lion’s gaze already tells him the big cat is looking through him as usual. Steven knows Lion can’t talk, but it’s not like there’s anyone else.

“I shouldn’t have been so hard on Lars,” Steven admits. “I know he cares, it’s just…” he pauses once remembering Lars’ look from earlier.

It hurt, but not only because Steven was rude. There was something else about it, too. It was a different kind of hurt. A pain so ingrained, so deep that words might not be able to describe it. And to think Steven brought this hurt to Lars…

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Steven whispers wetly. Right now, he doesn’t sound like he’s sixteen.

Lion snuggles against Steven to comfort him. The boy leans back on him, tears filling his eyes.

You’re still a kid and you deserve help!

(Does he?)

--

Honestly, it doesn’t look that bad.

He manages to sneak to the bathroom, after quickly replying to the usual “how was school today?”. His parents don’t really check in on him – though he doesn’t know if he’d want them to.

Because Lars knows he’s just a stupid, whiny kid. He cries too easily, he yells a lot and gets pathetically hurt too often. Who would want to help him? His teachers certainly don’t. If he went to the nursery again, they would call his parents and he’d be exposed and punished. He’d be even more humiliated for having both of them baby him in front of everyone.

Lars locks himself in the bathroom, contemplating his dirty t-shirt, his scratched arms and the ugly purple smudging his face. Well, it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with. He’s hidden some of his mom’s make-up to cover the worst of it, and the first-aid kit can be easily found. It’s far from perfect but it’s enough not to raise too many questions. As for the t-shirt, he could lie he was playing in the dirt and tripped. He’s said this for so long, they believe everything he says.

Problem is, he won’t stop crying.

He knows it’s his fault. Everyone tells him that. Lars has to deal with this alone. So what? This shouldn’t make him so emotional.

Yet his head hurts from crying too much, even more so than the purple in his cheek. The tears are burning hot, and all Lars wants is to hit something, yell, do anything because he wants so badly to give up .

… but he can’t. He shouldn’t.

Lars is twelve , for crying out loud. A teenager. School has never been easy. He should’ve learned at this point.

He can’t keep being lame.

He’s…

He’s a big boy now. It’s what his dad tells him.

Lars dries his tears with his arm, and glares determinedly at the mirror.

Yeah, he’s a big boy now. He doesn’t need coddling.

Lars will prove to everyone he can be cool and he will finally be accepted. Yeah, that’s right. He’ll get over it and be great.

(Lars tells no one, however, that he might still cry himself to sleep some nights.)

--

This time, Steven takes the longer path to Lars’ house – because he can think of something to tell him on the way. Today is cloudy, with high chances of raining. If anything, it makes him a little more uneasy.

Steven shouldn’t have left Lars alone yesterday, but at the same time he knew he couldn’t do much. He still hasn’t quite processed what Lars meant – that Steven deserved help, and the way Lars reacted to Steven’s outburst… he didn’t want to assume anything, so the half-gem figures it wasn’t the right time to ask. Well, that’s what he’s telling himself. He can only hope Lars is okay.

When he gets to Lars’ home, Steven swallows the hardest lump he’s… ever swallowed. He has to do this, though. It’s the right thing to do, and he cares about Lars. He’s not going to run away.

… but then he notices Lars isn’t inside. No, he’s actually standing on the porch, gazing at seemingly nowhere in midst of the many other houses. He holds the same distant and pained gaze from yesterday. Steven takes a deep breath and heads on awkwardly. Lars doesn’t seem to notice him until Steven has already climbed the few stairs.

“Steven?” Lars greets him with relative shock.

The younger boy clears his throat. “Hey… are you, um, doing okay?”

Lars exhales, in what sounds to be exhaustion and… fondness. “Yeah. Yeah…” As soon as Steven rubs his arms, though, his reaction is quite another. “Does it still hurt?” he asks, eyes wide and worried.

“No, no! It’s fine now, I swear,” Steven tells the truth. Lars believes him and sighs.

“Right. Okay.”

They both look away.

“D… Do you mind if I…” Steven nervously gestures at the space beside him. Lars thankfully gets it as he nods.

Steven settles in close, almost enough for their arms to brush. He plays with his hands for quite a while, unsure how to begin. Lars lets out no words, either. He’s as quiet as the town today.

“Lars,” Steven tries, “I’m…” His eyes begin to twitch. He swallows again, “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lars speaks up, tone low. He pauses for a moment before saying, “I shouldn’t have called you a knucklehead.”

“No, you’re right! I am a knucklehead. I always take up a lot more than I can. It’s…” He sighs as he rubs the back of his neck, unsure if he should go on. “Everyone always expects me to do all these- these things, because if I don’t…” Steven swallows, “I feel like I won’t be worth it. I fear everyone’s going to pay for what I do wrong.”

He senses Lars staring back at him, maybe in shock over how strong these words are. Steven has never quite admitted it to anyone else, and never so clearly to himself.

“And I didn’t expect you to be upset, either,” the half-gem continues. “Like, it’s become so normal to me that I feel like I’ve convinced everyone not to worry about me. So, they don’t. I don’t get many questions and then I’m…”– he clenches his fist –“I’m alone.”

Steven leans on the porch, isolated raindrops hitting the wooden house. He smells the rain, the wet plants and flowers from afar. Some of the rain hits his face softly. The ambient noises are the only ones to speak at the moment. Despite the rain, everything seems so… clear.

Eventually, though, Lars is the one that approaches him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“Listen, I… I get it,” Lars tells him. “Maybe not the ‘being a Diamond’ part, or the ‘savior of the galaxy’ part, but I get you have wounds you can’t show others. Even if you want to, even if you’re hurting badly”– his eyes fall upon Steven’s arm sadly –“you’re not ready to show them. You might not be ready to show in a long time, you don’t know.”

At this, he turns Steven around slightly to face him.

“I just want you to know, you can trust me with that stuff. You don’t need to hide your wounds from me,” Lars reassures him. “I might get upset, yeah… but I’d rather know than have no idea what’s going on with you. Because I care about you, Steven, and I can’t stand the thought of you hurt and me not being able to help.”

Steven won’t lie, he might cry right now. He hasn’t realized how badly he needed to hear this. That it’s okay to hurt. Because, being honest, he’s so tired. Nothing ever ends, and his happily ever after might never come.

“But, uh, you don’t have to come to me, if you don’t want to. I won’t judge. Just… know that I’m here for you, okay?” Lars adds. Right after, Steven replies with a jump hug, because he wants this. He does.

They hold one another while the rain goes on outside. Once it’s gotten worse, they go inside, and soon after Steven is wrapped up in a blanket and he’s glued to Lars on the couch.

It’s nice.

#steven universe #steven universe future #steven quartz universe #lars barriga #su lion #fanfiction #bullying tw #abuse tw #flashback tw #brotp

[smilepal]

👥 Describe your initial concept of a character, and what they’re like now.

❌ Share a plot point you were planning that has been scrapped. (If you haven’t changed any major plot points, share something minor you’ve altered.)

🎭 Are there any characters that play a bigger role in the story than initially planned? If so, why?

📚 Name a book or story that influenced you. (Alternatively, name an author/writeblr whose work or advice influenced you.)

Well I’m going to answer this using my cyberpunk OCs because most of the writing I do these days tends to be academic and dreadfully boring (and lacking in interesting plot points/character intrigue 😅)

1.) Hiro started out as an original character that ended up being shaped to fit the cyberpunk universe. I’d known I’d wanted to play with a futuristic universe at some point. I’d recently watched the Blade Runner movies and wanted to explore that genre more deeply, and it got me thinking about grimy cityscapes and lots of neon lights (and ever-present curtains of rain). Hiro started as a street punk/troublemaker and in that regard, not much has changed. He still finds himself neck-deep in trouble, and has a very anti-government (or in the CP universe--Corpo) mindset. His personality has changed/deepened though. He’s become more empathetic, and has a stronger code of ethics. There’s also more vulnerability there, it just takes time to see it/for him to trust someone enough to show them. He did get an even angstier backstory though so it’s a trade-off 😂 

2.) Oh boy how long do I have? A lot has changed. As far as smaller details go--Hiro’s fighting style has changed pretty drastically (not at all inspired by the fact that I apparently cannot aim a gun in-game to save my life). He’s more of a close-range/melee fighter now, that rushes into the fray instead of being patient and using a sniper rilfe on enemies (which was intitally his style). He was also better at stealth. I mentioned it before, but his personality has changed and is a bit softer/more empathetic. He was orignially much more unlikeable/colder and even I didn’t like him very much. He started out as much more of the “asshole main character who is the “good” guy even though he’s not very nice” and I’m way happier with him now. His relationship with other characters has also changed a lot, especially with the inclusion of Vic. His relationships with other characters have definitely gotten healthier--and went from eh he thinks they’re attractive so he’d probably go for them to “you don’t need someone to date--you need a good fucking role model and someone to call you on your bullshit, and healthy platonic/familial relationships” 

3.) One of the biggest characters that has played a role in my story is the inclusion of Vic. I’d intiallly thought of Hiro’s story being completely separate from hers, and it started as “oh how do you think those characters would react?  They have such different personalities, would that work?” and a curious question turned into--”oh my god we’ve been talking about this for four hours and it’s almost 3am and we need to sleep but lets talk more about this tomorrow” She’s definitely helped me to develop deeper nuances in Hiro’s personality, and how he interacts with others, not just with in-game characters. I’ve also learned a lot about writing about character relationships because of her--even ones that, while beneficial for both parties aren’t perfect. They can be messy and ugly, but still have possibilities for growth present too. Both her and Hiro have also made me re-consider how I write characters with trauma/do better research and not just draw on past/personal expriences/have made me a more mindful writer. 

4.) Honestly, I’ve always been really inspired by reading my friends writing/seeing their characters/how they develop them and it’s definitely had a lasting influence on my personal writing style. I did grow up reading a lot of fantasy novels and that’s definitely one of my preferred genres of writing. Sci-fi/futuristic settings are still new for me, and its been fun exploring new settings. I’d previously thought I didn’t like the genre that much, so I’m happy to find that isn’t always the case. I have a definite soft spot for Victorian pieces--I love the aesethetic and elements of horror that are often worked in. 

Hiro is mine but Vic belongs to @shinycorvidae

Thanks for asking! These really made me dig into my writing a lot. Always happy to answer ☺️

#cp2077 #writing about writing #Writing memes #hiro oda #Cyberpunk hiro #victory delvin #character development #character growth #platonic relationships are healthy too kids

[yourmandevine]

Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

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A post shared by Dan Devine (@yourmandevine)

Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so. 

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

Then:

Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

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We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months. 

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much.  Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

[imagine-darksiders]

So, I came up with this idea based on the song Creep by Radiohead, where Strife is absolutely in love with his S/O but doesn't think he's good enough to be with them because of his past, his appearance and what he has done and what he is capable of doing. Do I think you and your amazing writing skills could expand upon this? Yes. So please, m a k e m e s u f f e r ❤

Hi hi! Did my best but I’m rushing off this morning, so sorry if this seems hasty.

Strife has always hated the mirror in your bedroom - A big, ugly thing hanging on the wall opposite your bed, all sharp edges and clumsy, badly made details carved into its frame.

When he first looked into it, he made a revolted noise in the back of his throat and you explained that it was a family heirloom, passed down to you from your great, great grandfather. 

You’d thought Strife was referring to the mirror….

He didn’t bother to correct you. 

Everything else about your bedroom, he loves. From the messy pile of clothes on your chair to the large, sliding window that he treats as his personal VIP entrance.

Tonight, like many nights before it, the horseman picks his way up the side of your house, his bulky armour proving no obstacle given his inexhaustible strength. He clings to your sill with one gauntleted hand and uses the other to nudge your window open carefully. 

You do have a door, as you’re constantly reminding him, but he isn’t about to admit that he lost the spare key you’d given him, and he’s long since learned that you take exception to having your front door bashed in. 

He clambers through the window as gracefully as he can, lamenting that he wasn’t gifted with Death’s agility, before thudding dully into your bedroom, his blood-drenched boots leaving dark, coppery footprints in the carpet. 

You would no doubt be annoyed in the morning, though right now, he couldn’t care less. 

Ambling over to your bed, the horseman stops beside the headboard and stares down at you, his brows pinched together and fists clenching so hard, the metal gauntlets creak under the pressure. 

He’d done something…..bad. Well, you’d call it bad, and that stung at his heart worse than anything. 

He hadn’t cared about anyone’s opinion until you came along. 

It was just another mission, but it went so wrong. Yes, he accomplished the task he set out to do, but innocents had been caught in the crossfire. Far too many civilians died needlessly today, all because he grew impatient and moved too early. A rookie mistake. 

From the day he became a horseman of the apocalypse, Strife never gave collateral damage a second thought. He did what was necessary to succeed and if people got in his way, more fool them. 

But then, he met you….

It’s funny. He’d never appreciated the value of life until he found one he wanted to protect. 

You patiently showed him sympathy, empathy and a myriad of other human emotions that far exceed his abilities to feel. But with a little time, he began to learn. 

Despite only having the lifespan that barely touched a century, you were never in a rush, like he would be if he only had a hundred years to live. Oftentimes, he feels as though he’s always in a hurry, constantly riding on the high of adrenaline and giving himself no time to slow down….

With stiff fingers, Strife brings his hands up to undo the clasp on the back of his helmet and tugs it off, allowing it to drop onto the floor at his feet. 

Meanwhile, you lay sound asleep in your bed, one arm tucked underneath your pillow and the other tangled up around something he can’t quite make out in the darkness. Squinting, the mighty horseman collapses to a knee beside your bed - still managing to tower over you - and leans closer to see that it’s the shabby, green old scarf he’d left at your home months ago.

The horseman recoils and lets out a choked grunt. 

He didn’t know you kept the thing, let alone cuddled it in your sleep. 

Your small fingers curl around the scarf in your sleep, twisting up the scratchy, threadbare ends. 

Strife’s yellow eyes blink slowly. Had you…missed him? He’s only been gone for a few weeks… 

The stench of blood, sweat and entrails finally snatches his attention from your sleeping face and he scrunches up his nose. His silver armour is so stained with blood - innocent blood - that he can’t escape its oppressive odour. It slithers up his nose like smoke and settles there. The taste of it on his tongue is hot and rancid, although any traces of stray droplets that had seeped through the cracks in his helmet have long been washed away by saliva. But the memory of its lingers like a bad aftertaste and churns his stomach. 

The horseman’s teeth clench. He needs something - anything familiar that can abrogate the coppery stench invading his nostrils. 

Swallowing thickly, he runs his hand blindly over your carpet, knowing that you have a habit of leaving your day clothes where they drop after changing into your pyjamas. 

It doesn’t take long before his searching fingers find something soft and he immediately brings it up to bury his broad nose in the fabric. One of your shirts, the one depicting that ‘band’ you like so much…

Your beautifully familiar scent rushes into his nostrils with a long, loud inhale,  his chest expanding to accommodate so much air. It’s so strong, chasing out the acridity of burnt flesh and gun-smoke and replacing them with something far more pleasant. So overwhelmed, Strife’s mouth opens and takes a piece of your shirt between his sharp canines. Biting down hard, eyes squeezed shut, he nudges his face in deeper, huffing in breath after blessed breath until he can’t even remember what blood smells like. 

When the stench of innocent liquid  no longer threatens to overtake his senses, he finally lifts his nose out of your shirt. 

His anguished expression falls slightly as he glimpses your peaceful face, your eyelids fluttering restlessly, caught in the swell of a dream. 

Indulging himself in a moment of selfishness, Strife dares to believe that you might be dreaming of him…

Suddenly, he blinks upon noticing that his hand has crept steadily towards your face of its own accord, so he snatches it back, frowning at the treacherous appendage. How could he think to wake you when you’re sleeping so peacefully. He’d say you looked angelic, but doing so would be an insult to you. You’re ten thousand times more extraordinary than any angel he’s ever met. 

Creator, he feels like such a beast. This whole act of climbing in through your window, watching you sleep and smelling your clothes…It all just seems so….perverse. 

You know he does this, of course. You’ve woken up enough times to find his fingers stroking reverently through your hair, or his ear pressed to your heart, seeking the comforting beat. There have even been a few occasions where you’d been roused from sleep by the sound of contented grunting and the sensation of your horseman’s gentle mouth suckling tenderly on the sweet spot between your legs. You knew better than to ask questions during those particular instances. They always seemed to precede a bad occurrence, though Strife would never tell you what happened to him, only that he just needed to forget. 

But tonight, there’s a tangible heaviness that’s settled over his hard chest. He didn’t know it was doubt until he thought long and hard about his relationship with you. 

When you met, you’d hit it off surprisingly quickly. 

You liked him, you even said as much, and it didn’t take long for him to warm up to you in turn. A few weeks later, and you called him your ‘best friend’ for the first time. Something stirred in the horseman’s immortal soul at that moment, something foreign and unfamiliar. Three months later, he found out what it was. 

Love. 

And that baffled him more than any other mystery the universe had ever thrown his way. A hundred years ago, if someone told him he would one day fall hard and fast for a human, he might have shot them. 

Gradually, Strife wills himself stand up, tearing his eyes off you and catching sight of his own movement in the mirror. Lip curling into a cruel sneer, the horseman stalks over to it, stopping just shy of a foot from his reflection. 

Muscles quivering, he stares into his own eyes, a terrible rage roiling in his chest that slowly builds to a violent crescendo. 

Damn that mirror. Damn it to Oblivion for making him see what he is; Big and loud and dangerous, a force of nature so destructive, it has no business being in the home of someone as trusting and golden-hearted as you. 

He curls his hands into tight fists and snarls, teeth gnashing frustratedly as he finds himself stuck, trying to gaze at you through the glass but only seeing his huge brutality standing in the way. He can’t see past himself to you. With an enraged bellow, Strife draws his fist back and - before he can register what he’s about to do - hurls in right into the surface of your mirror. 

The resounding ‘C R A C K !’ shatters the peaceful serenity of your home.

Behind the horseman, you bolt upright in bed with a sharp gasp, followed by a slurred stuttering of, “Wh-who’s there!?” 

After a few seconds of fumbling around in the dark, your hand finds the bedside lamp and you flick the switch, one hand clasped around the pocket knife that Death made you keep under your pillow. 

Blinking rapidly in the sudden, harsh light, you gasp when you spot Strife, hunched over on himself, his shoulders heaving and his right arm elbow-deep in your bedroom wall. 

Despite the state you woke up in, you instantly relax at the sight of him and nearly flop back onto the pillow. Brain still fuzzy with sleep, you scrub at your eyes. “Strife? What’re you doing here?” 

Hearing your soft voice, his body goes rigid, though he doesn’t reply. Instead, he remains stock still, glaring down at the hole he’d punched through your mirror. Sharp little fragments of glass litter the carpet and he balks at the sudden thought of one getting stuck in your bare feet. 

“Strife?”

Letting a breath of air hiss out through his teeth, he wrenches his hand out of the wall and slowly turns to face you, his once glittering eyes now subdued and morose. 

“What am I doing here?” he spits, echoing your words back at you before dragging his gaze off your perplexed face, “S’a damn good question…”

You’re about to reply when you notice the shattered mirror and your expression droops considerably, igniting Strife’s self loathing that burns like a furnace in his throat. He braces himself for the inevitable, for you to look up at him with those big, sleepy eyes and ask in a soft voice, why he had destroyed your precious family heirloom. 

But, once again, you surprise him. How is it you always managed to do that? Swinging your legs over the edge of the bed, you get to your feet and pad softly across the room. “Something happened,” you murmur, slowly reaching out to the usually invulnerable horseman, “Strife, whatever it is, it’s okay. It’s okay.” 

You can see his lips twitching up over his fangs, a clear sign that your words aren’t having the calming effect you want them to. 

Suddenly, with all the force of a whirlwind, he surges forwards, forcing you to stop in your tracks and stumble back a few steps, away from the broken glass. “What are- unf!” 

You let out a grunt, finding your shoulders gripped by unshakable hands as you’re guided backwards into the wall beside your bed with a dull thud. Blinking, you crane your neck back and catch his yellow glare boring into you, relentless. 

A tense moment passes between you before he abruptly lowers his pale face down to your shoulder and takes his hands off your shoulders, pressing them into the wall on either side of your head. Licking your lips uncertainly, you lift one of your own hands and slide it around the back of his neck, carding your fingers up through his spiked, black hair.  

So softly, you barely hear him, Strife hums against your skin, “You tell me…. why I’m here…” 

“I-What?”

His tone takes on an urgent lilt. “Tell me, what the Hell something like me, is doing with someone like you.”

Shocked, you open your mouth to speak only to find your throat too clogged to get any words out. Swallowing around a lump, you try again, desperate to rectify the situation. Whatever had happened, had it made him question his willingness to be in a relationship with you; a human? You knew some in other species look down upon humans as ‘lesser beings’ on account of their shorter lifespan and general inexperience with existence, but you never imagined Strife would be one of them. 

“I-I…I know I’m just a human,” you manage to stammer, winding your fingers into his hair, unwilling to let him go but terrified of making him stay if he doesn’t want to, “And..and if you want to leave, then….then you should. I don’t know what happened tonight, but I want you to be happy.” 

Strife’s mind reels, struck with the realisation that you think this is about him not wanting to be with you. Groaning, he bares his teeth against your neck and presses closer to you, caging you to the wall as though afraid you’d try to escape if he moved even an inch. “Creators, no,” he growls, “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong, Kid. Why are you with me!? Why don’t you hate me?!” Inhaling the smell of you through his nose, he grumbles gently, “I do.” 

Oh….Oh that’s….not what you’d been expecting. You knew he struggled with self doubt a lot of the time, but this?…..“You h-…Strife? You hate yourself?” 

“I didn’t hate myself until I met YOU!” He slams his closed fist into the wall and you flinch, unable to withhold a gasp of shock. In an instant, he pulls his head away from your neck and meets your round, startled eyes. Ever so slowly, his thick, black brows knit together and he groans, teeth bared as he drops his head again, this time pressing it gently into your forehead. “M’sorry,” he mumbles, “I didn’t mean that…I just…-” He exhales roughly, his breath gusting roughly over your lips. “- I didn’t know there was anything about myself to hate until I started wanting to be liked. And…I only started wanting to be liked after I met you.” 

He shakes his head when you try to speak, cutting you off. “I don’t give a goddamn shit about anyone else’s opinion of me,” he rasps, drawing his head away again, “just yours.” If his eyes blazed with anymore desperation, you fear they might burn out entirely. “You’re my compass, kiddo,” he whispers behind a shaky exhale, “You know about some of the things I’ve done. You know I’ve got all kinds of blood on my hands. I don’t tell you half of the heinous things I did in the name of ‘balance,’ but I think you know. I think you more than you let on.” The horseman’s chest rises and falls. “So, why the hell are you still here? I need you to tell me….why you’re with me. Please? I just -… need to…to-” 

He growls at his own awkward explanation. In his ears it sounds clumsy, like the ramblings of a drunken maker, but you get the gist of it, your face twisting up with worry. 

“Oh, Strife,” you sigh, both of your hands finding his thick shoulders and guiding him down until he has to remove his hands from the wall in order to kneel before you, his head still coming up to your collar bones. You always privately marvelled at his size. Carefully cradling the back of his skull, you pull him forwards and tuck his head underneath your chin, inadvertently flattening the spiked ends of his ebony hair. “What have you been telling yourself?”

Heaving in an almighty breath, he lifts his enormous hands to your waist, steadying himself against you and asking defeatedly, “How long before you leave me here on my own?”

“Strife,” you say in a stern voice, pushing his head off you so he can look you in the eyes and see the sincerity glistening in them, hard as steel, “I’ve only got a hundred years, and I wanna give them all to you, okay? I want you to have them all. You’ve saved my life so many times, it might as well belong to you. I’m not going anywhere, big guy…” 

It doesn’t feel like you’ve conveyed just how irreplaceable his friendship is to you, but you hope it’s enough. 

For several, long moments, he remains in place, breathing considerably more shallow than it had been earlier, and his grip on your sides a damn sight less vice-like. Eventually, the large horseman rumbles contentedly deep in his throat when you snake your hands further around his neck and lean forwards to rest your chin on his shoulder. “Sorry about your mirror,” he mumbles lamely, incapable of forming the grateful words he needs desperately to tell you. 

“Eh, it was ugly as sin anyway.” 

That pulls a rumbling chuckle from his throat. “Yeah. It was, wasn’t it?” 

You allow him to remain slumped over on his knees against you for some time, until his massive weight finally begins to wear on you, and you grimace, his hard chest plate digging uncomfortably into your torso. “Come on. Let’s get you into bed. You look like you need a rest.” 

And Strife, the sharpshooting, loudmouthed horseman of the apocalypse, only nods gladly, letting a comparatively tiny human take him by the hand and guide him onto the too-small bed that he can never quite fit his feet onto, no matter how protectively - possessively -  he curls himself around you. 

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #strife #self loathing #human reader #he needs a hu

[leefelixs]

boyfriend kim seungmin • stray kids

genre: fluff

pairing: kim seungmin & you

word count: 1704 words

summary: dating seungmin and all the quirks/aspects of your relationship

notes: the seventh part of the boyfriend series with our angel seungmin! uhm my goal is to have everyone fall in love with seungmin today because he deserves more love & praise

this boy is new to dating so please be kind to his little shy and excited heart

really though seungmin loves dating you this is so new and fun to him and having someone who likes him back as much as he does is really so nice to him

out of all the members he’s probably the slowest and takes his time with getting to skinship and being affectionate with you

sometimes he’ll be following around hyunjin asking him for advice and hyunjin is like “shoo, it’s your relationship not mine”

literally takes notes and googles how to be a good boyfriend to you because seungmin is a hard worker

loves going on walks with you and sharing headphones with you and most of the time he makes you listen to b1a4 or day6 with him

also likes eating but going to fast food restaurants instead of fancy places because it’s a lot less serious and just more fun and youthful

sometimes he writes stuff about you in his “journal” (it’s a diary obviously but he’s not ready to say that) and you’ll just pop up and try to talk to him

“seungmin what are you up to?” 

“nOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING” and he just snaps it closed nervously

your first date together is bowling and seungmin seems really casual about asking you but in reality he’s planned it forever because he wants it to be special and also he doesn’t want to pick something he’s bad at (can’t have a chan moment can we)

he’s soOOOo nervous and he thinks he’s sweating but like it’s cool he’s playing it cool 

when you guys start to bowl he goes first and he’s a little shaky but manages to knock most of the pins down

and he turns to look at you with a smile, “it’s your turn!”

you’re like oh, haha and sip nervously on your drink before setting it down and cracking your knuckles

and stretching your arms

“uh actually i don’t know what i’m doing.”

seungmin just laughs because he knew you were being weird from all the extra movement and stretching and instantly knowing you’re not sure of what to do makes him less nervous

“hey, it’s okay! i’ll show you. come over here.” and he teaches you how to roll the ball by demonstrating it slowly and describing it to you

and you nod and he passes you the ball to try on your own but you’re still nervous about it and don’t want to mess up in front of him so he just runs over and kind of comes up behind you to move the ball with you

and voila! there goes the ball and WOW YOU GOT THEM ALL DOWN  and he’s so excited for you and 

gives you a high five and wow!! he helped you do something he feels so accomplished it’s so cute

his smile? his lil chubby left cheek? are even cuter when he’s happy

finally at the end of the game you’re both at a tough tie...the suspense... and actually seungmin is kind of tired and he’s like okay.. well...i don’t mind letting them win (he’s too nice whhyyyyy he just wants you to feel proud)

and you win!! 

he hugs you really tight and high fives you repeatedly

“okay, now we should eat. i’m really hungry,” he pats his stomach and points at the little shop at the arena (rink? area? what is it called it doesn’t matter we are focused on seungmin)

it was briefly mentioned earlier seungmin is a lot slower and different from the other members as a boyfriend and it’s not because he doesn’t like you, it’s because he likes you a lot and doesn’t really know how to express it comfortably

he’s more of a thinker and not really a speaker

so seungmin does little actions to show you he cares

likes learning about the things you like, listening to music you like and learning to jam to it with you, watching tv you like, taking notice of your reactions to things and learning how to make you comfortable

he likes having conversations about small things even if they seem pointless because it just lets him really get to know you more

you know the one friend who listens to you and looks at you and nods when no one else does? that’s seungmin

you’ll mention something and stop yourself because like ‘oh it doesn’t matter’ and seungmin is like “NO IT DOES! keep going!” 

your #1 fan always! loves pushing you and supporting you through any ideals you have and helping you get things going

the only downside with seungmin is that sometimes he’ll just go with the flow even if he’s not comfortable or doesn’t like something and doesn’t tell you but you can really feel it radiate from it :(

“i’m fine! it’s okay, don’t worry about me. really. as long as you’re happy i am too!”

“but seungmin i want you to feel comfortable too. you shouldn’t put in so much effort, it’s okay to be selfish.”

“are you sure?”

“positive.”

“okay then maybe i don’t like the idea...but just a little...”

very emotionally in tune and has no problem running into your room and lying his head on your lap to scream or cry about a bad day

but by the end of it he’s calmed down and smiles a lot while wiping away his tears because he feels silly

back to being awkward with skinship

it’s like..rare that he holds your hand...but whenever he does he asks beforehand 

“is it okay if i hold your hand?” (UGH OF COURSE IT IS YOU CUTIE)

always uses lotion if he plans to hold your hand that day because he can’t be ashy duh

just being near you is like skinship for him! he does play with pieces of your hair though and stares at you a lot with his hands under his chin

oh but tip of the nose kisses are nice for him

your first kiss together is kind of planned from his side

i say kind of because...google is his friend for this one

“hey seungmin, why is the first thing on google a search for ‘romantic ideas for a first kiss’ and ‘how to kiss someone’?”

“uhhh i don’t know chan go ask jeongin, i saw him use the computer” and he SCURRIES OFF

he goes to woojin for advice and once chan hears about what’s happening he joins in on helping him but it’s a lot more embarrassing than he intended and he regrets asking for help and stares at the ceiling while listening to them talk about kissing his hand for practice or a watermelon while holding a pillow and sighing

this keeps going for a long long time

and eventually all the members join in and give him terrible advice like the only one who’s actually helpful is changbin but like he’s drowned out by all the bad advice

this tires him out so much he like drags himself to your house in exhaustion because he promised he would see you

and he knocks on the door

you’re so happy to see him and hold your arms out to hug him but seungmin swerves and plants a kiss on your lips and its very quick and simple and cute and he just sleepily walks past you and flops onto your bed

“i’m really tired, i’m gonna take a nap. wake me up in an hour please?”

you try to speak but you’re in shock so you just nod and he sleepily smiles

“okay, thank you. goodnight.”

when he’s bored he’ll draw little animals on your hand and arms with marker and it’s only fair you draw them back

seungmin draws the cutest dinosaurs and his art is very cute but yours is super messy and kind of ugly but he loves it anyway

“wait, don’t move.” he ends up drawing on your face and shoulders and he thinks its so funny

whenever you’re coming over later in the day he sits by the door patiently and just uses his phone on the floor while waiting for you

even if it’s 8 am and you’re not going to be there until 4 pm,, why is he like this

uses so many emojis when texting you it’s kind of weird

but who are you to complain right

also always spamming you with twice lyrics 

“why do you do this all the time omg my phone just froze”

“because you make my heart go jjirit jjirit”

‘Read 3:02 PM’

“please come back i’m sorry i thought that was funny”

WHENEVER AUTUMN ROLLS AROUND HE IS SO EXCITED he takes you to buy coffee everyday and has you listen to all the ballads coming out and tries to sing them for you to listen 

“hey, let’s make a pie!”

“neither you or i have really good baking abilities seungmin this sounds dangerous.”

“i can make eggs, that’s all we need to know. we’ll be fine! trust me.”

spoiler alert: it’s not fine and you almost set the kitchen on fire because you guys get so distracted throwing flour and cracking eggs on each other and chan comes in to help you both save the little apple pie

and because of chan the day is saved and you guys get to eat some good pie (and smear some on each other)

takes you to buy a pumpkin to carve faces into and he’s really jittery you don’t know why

“uh should i trust you with a knife?”

“probably not!”

but he still lets you carve your own pumpkin while he works really hard on his

at the end of the reveal his little pumpkin is spun around and he’s little holding his cheeks because he can feel all the blood rush to them and hes gnawing on his bottom lip nervously

the little pumpkin has “i love you” carved into it

the further along your relationship gets the more he loosens up and is much more goofy, playful, and honest with you

his heart is so big! you are so lucky

please take care of him like he takes care of you

#seungmin #kim seungmin #why am i so soffffftttt #stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #boyfriend seungmin

[mikazukikannagisjourney]

Gemini New Moon x Scorpio Full Moon Energetic Message Combo, May 22 2020 (but can be timeless)

In a nutshell: Retrograde season is upon us, and everything that has been pushed in the backburner for so long are now coming up to be acknowledged. With so many planets slowing down, not only will the pandemic aftermaths cause so much havoc and chaos and destruction in systems that no longer work, but the flexibility or resilience of many people will be challenged. To the max. However, this is not an entirely negative thing as these series of events can give the whole world a lot of time not just to look back and reflect, but also to put closure on things that needed to be ended, even if it means diving down into the pain of doing the uncomfortable things. In everything you are doing right now, please know this: It is time to face who we truly are, and be open to accept everything, from the good, the bad, the ugly, and all that exists in between. Only by doing so can we be free to be who we truly are, as the Source beings that have always been deserving and so worthy of love. Hi everyone, how are you all doing? I hope you are all thriving in these interesting times. And by interesting, I mean it's kinda extreme right now. So if you feel like you're being wrung dry and have nothing left, don't worry, it's a mass consciousness thing. Plus we have a lot of retrograde planets such as Venus (love, relationships, and money), Jupiter (travel, expansion, learning, luck), Saturn (reaping the consequences of your actions aka karmic shits, and surprisingly, agriculture), Pluto (secrets, buried things that needed to be released, death and rebirth, changes) and by next month, our favorite retrograding planet Mercury (communications, commerce), and based on what each planet rules, it's going to feel like a white water rafting ride with no paddles, no light, and no boat lol OK I am not here to bring fear, because retrograding planets just send us a message on what we need to review, to relearn, to release, and whatever re-doing needs to happen in our personal lives. Yeah, I have to put a disclaimer here that right now, it is most prudent to put our energies on our own personal stuff. Why? Because at it's core, we can only control ourselves. We can only change our own self. True change is something that happens innately, and even if you thought you initiated a change in someone, unless that someone has imbibed the impact of your action, they won't change for very long. So instead of using up all of your energies and resources on forcing the world to change and then getting frustrated because you can't change the external, why not try putting all of those efforts into your own self? I mean, it's worth trying, if it's for your own good. Try a new perspective, see different viewpoints, put yourself in other peoples’ shoes? Enter into a new realm of infinite possibilities? If it doesn't help shift your mindset or your energies, or at the very least make you feel comfortable for 5 minutes, well, at least you tried. That's an effort that you made for yourself, to move forward even for a bit, and be proud that you did that for yourself. Not everyone is up for that, and you choosing to put efforts on YOU is a wonderful gift for yourself in this bewildering yet energetically funky times. Because change is inevitable, albeit even necessary, and as the law of evolution mildly suggests: evolution does not favor the fittest or the strongest or the largest, but rather the most adaptable ones. Think mammoth versus elephants. Which animal is alive right now, the fluffy or the not fluffy? Of course, as always, I am not saying all of these stuff sitting on a cloud. Oh good glob no. To be honest, I am not immune to this massive energetic shift, and the reason I was unable to make a Scorpio Full Moon post (my apologies) is because I felt like I was dying, literally and figuratively. My entire body ached, it was too humid that I kept getting asthma, and I just couldn't function cognitively because of anxiety attacks, for lack of better terms. It felt like a drugged stupor, I honestly couldn't remember how I even managed to survive that period. And it felt so dense and heavy, I couldn't complete the full moon release ritual until about 3 days after, but I still got to do it so my energies could clear and be a bit more functional. It wasn't fun but I just simply told myself that I needed to learn how to surrender and it's one way to do it. Despite the bombardment of all the things that I ever did wrong, the regrets, the painful memories, literal PTSD flashbacks, yeah if you felt those and you still have them, I feel for you. I have an energetic support photo below to help you fam. So... What can I expect from the coming weeks and months? Well, I am so glad you asked. The next weeks and months can make things interesting, some unexpected events can happen, people, emotions, memories, events can come back to haunt you. You know, fun stuff. Again, before you explode into a huge blabbering, cussing mess, please, please, let this be an invitation for you to grow into your best self. You don't have to go all the way, you can just try it out, be with yourself, ask what needs to be released, reviewed, redone, revisited, realigned, re-examined, or re-accepted, or whatever re-prefixed word you have lol

But really...

I was gonna write that same stuff for the previous Scorpio Full Moon and I thought there's gonna be a new message for this Gemini new moon, but apparently it's the same, and with even greater intensity as well as relevance. Just a discaimer, I don't watch energetic updates from others anymore, so I won't know if what I'm gonna put in here has been said by others. OK,this post is a combo message, and using the energies of Scorpio (with Pluto energies of death and rebirth) as well as Gemini (with Mercurial energies of communication and basic or foundational learnings) this new moon is giving us all a chance to face a figurative form of death and eventual rebirth by communicating with our subconscious, everything that we have buried and forgotten and lost and all that jazz, so that we can be reborn into our true selves, as children of Source, the universe, God, however you call your higher powers. We deserve such recognition, but nobody is going to do that for us but our own selves, so might as well start that journey now. It is a way to show up to the world, the universe, and for ourselves. No pressure to keep ploughing through though, just keep at it in your own pace, at a speed that allows you to move with changes without meeting any form of resistance. Just remember that with each change comes a shift of everything, and let me tell you that you don't have to rush, but rather allow things to settle in, otherwise your body will rebel, and that isn't the most fun. Symptoms can include bellyaches, gas, a lot of coughing or mucus discharges or respiratory unrest (not COVID-19 related), and if you're a lady having that time of the month, extra-bleeding (probably releasing so much stuff from the Sacral center, I know I did), and your muscles or bones failing you at some point. Just maintain proper nutrition, eat what your body needs. Also, really painful memories can also resurface, and if you can transmute them aka cry them out without putting any thinking, like literally just feel them out until the emotional charge passes, please do that too. Please do not, by any means re-stuff them back, the memories with charged emotions just wanted to get acknowledged and be sent back to source, so just allow them to do that. It's ok to express anger, rage, sadness, being petty, etc. as long as you don't project those energies to other people, because involving other people can make things messy, especially if you're asking for forgiveness but because they're unaware and asleep (unlike you who's awake) they will never do that. Believe me. So if you need more energetic support to make things more manageable and less overwhelming, there are lots of energetic healings out there, you can try one or try them all (ahem, ahem lol). Also, while you're at it, please drink a lot of water, stay hydrated especially when you're living at the latitudes near the equator. I was gonna type in more stuff but my flow seems to have halted. No biggie though, because I'm adding an energetically-infused photo here (my photo of shelf fungi gives me a vibe of a solar system lol) to give support to everyone who reads this, across all space and time. Seriously, these are energetically erratic times but you always have a choice on how you'll react. Whatever works for you is perfect for you in this time. 

Anyway, I truly hope this post made sense to you, made a resonance, or simply acknowledged any of the uncomfortable stuff that you have been feeling lately. If you have any questions, please do not hesistate to ask, my asks are always open. You can even ask anon mode. Thank you for reading this very long post, and may you grow into your best self. Wishing you all the best, Mikazuki

PS. If you found the information in this post to be very helpful, insightful, and of great value to you and your own personal journey, please feel free to reblog, share and heart/like, or if you feel super-generous, energetic exchanges are welcomed! Please click here and use this email address: [email protected]

Thank you so much and be blessed!

PSS. If you’re interested to get a personal card and energetic reading, for inquires please send an email or an anonymous ask in this page. Thank you! =)

#new moon in gemini 2020 #new moon in gemini #full moon in scorpio #full moon in scorpio 2020 #scorpio full moon x gemini new moon post #energetic support #energy-infused photo #reiki support #reiki-infused photo #new moon in gemini may 22 2020