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darkparablesthorst · 1 year

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Hi there! I'm new to your blog, but I love your DP headcanons!

Can you make headcanons on the Fairytale Detective please?

By virtue of being a thirst blog, I believe you’re asking for dating headcanons? Otherwise, I’ll write both general and dating headcanons in that order. Since the general headcanons got a bit too long, the second part will be a follow-up.

Also, believe it or not but this ask reignited my passion for Dark Parables and Cursery after a year HAHA. Thank you for that!

A Brief Overview:

When it comes to being a world-saving detective, we know that the Fairytal Detective is smart, resourceful, clever, and tenacious. She takes her job seriously with a will as strong as the daunting task of saving the world at least sixteen times over. However, she hasn’t been alone in all her heroic pursuits. Her strong sense of justice has made her several friends of great import in the world of divine and immortal creatures, making her a well-respected and well-connected woman. Many have witnessed her reliability, loyalty, and trustworthiness, all of which attest to her value as a strong ally and an invaluable friend. However, one cannot save the world when there is no one to save it from. Ending world-damning scheme after scheme has made her the most detested enemy of those whose plans she foiled, and her increasing reputation raises the hackles of magical creatures with nefarious purposes.

General Headcanons:

The detective is better at thinking on her feet rather than deliberately planning things through. Coupled with her ridiculous good luck and strong intuition, this trait made her one of the biggest assets of the detective agency. Preferring to work outside of the box to see things through, the bureaucratic processes and paperwork used to frustrate her earlier in her career, but time has tempered it down. She learned that jumping right into it is the better option than procrastinating and prolonging the stress as a result.

Even if she isn’t one to brag, the detective is passionate about her job and is proud of how far her career has panned out. With her fair share of colorful experiences, she has an endless repository of stories to share… as far as her NDAs would permit (which isn’t a lot, to be honest). But even with that limitation, she is an incredible storyteller who can craft a clever tale or an engaging rundown of her cases with the sparse details she is allowed to share. Unfortunately, it has led to some of the more curious interns to dig into the strictly confidential “fairytale” section in the archives, so she has decided to ease up on the wit a bit when asked about her cases (unless a bottle of wine is involved lol).

That said, due to the sensitive nature of fairytale cases and the whole shebang of keeping it under wraps to prevent mass hysteria, she practices due diligence in labeling evidence and keeping a pristine record of her reports to prevent any possibility of information leaks.

I think that the Fairytale Detective has a good reputation at her workplace, but it took a while before the name caught on. Despite working at an agency open to paranormal activity, the more “conservative” employees would scoff at the title and turn their noses up at her. As she solved case after case with flying colors and received numerous accolades from upper management and local governments, they were quick to swallow their words.

The condescending attitudes got on her nerves and disheartened her for a while, but the sense of justice to do right by the world easily trumped over these insecurities. And when the time came for them to be proven wrong, she’d send a cryptic smile their way whenever she’d pass by them.

When the detective is not working on fairytale cases, she’s deployed to work on cases considered to be paranormal. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because her long exposure to magic usually amps up the paranormal activity and makes the spirits more active. It’s a blessing because with the spirits getting chatty, they can glean information more easily. Unfortunately, the more malignant spirits tend to get aggressive. Phantasmaphobia, anyone?

When not on a case, I think that the Detective likes to indulge in a variety of recreational activities. She has her own cozy library where she spends her time reading novels and/or poetry, and solving puzzles on days she wants to take it slow. When she craves for a thrill, she goes out camping or hiking. She camps solo, but prefers to hike with a group for social and safety reasons. In fact, she’s formed a close and tight-knit bond with her hiking group who she has been on several excursions for years. Her descriptions of the terrain from her travels abroad make her a favorite in her group.

The detective is a polyglot. She picks up languages relatively fast. A month of immersion allows her to converse casually with the locals.

She’s a collector of puzzles of all sorts. She particularly enjoys coin puzzles for their aesthetic and surprising twists.

When permitted by her boss, she takes a few souvenirs from her cases. To ensure its safety, she took a coin from the book of the investigations she's been in and built a secret room that houses various paraphernalia that attests to her long career as a fairytale detective. Of course, the room is locked behind a puzzle. Haha!

The detective has an affinity for red and earthly colors. That said, she’s a huge fan of fall. The rustic colors of the falling leaves, the constantly overcast skies that give enough ample light without the heat, and the chilly breeze all relax her.

Despite making several connections to fairies, guardians, and goddesses alike, the chances of meeting them outside of her cases are slim to none. The magical world usually keeps to itself, and she sees that as a good sign that the balance of the world is still in place.

Being blessed by the Moon Goddess, the detective developed a sense for magical properties besides being immune to it. She can usually withstand powerful amounts of magic, but if it’s highly concentrated dark magic, she can get dizzy or nauseous. The effects of the Goddess’ blessings also manifest outside of her work life. She can feel the presence of fairies and other sorts of magical creatures when, say, she’s near a fairy circle, or when she’s out camping in a forest whose leaves seem to whisper breathy songs instead of rustle. She can also feel them acknowledge her as a favored person of the Moon Goddess. Sometimes, she’ll feel a cool breeze blow past her hair amidst a hot summer afternoon. There are times when she’d lose something important, like her keys for instance, and a crow would perch at her window the next day, the plastic shine of her keychain clutched in its beak. It would drop the keys on the sill and train its beady eyes at the detective, as if confirming that she witnessed its deed, before flying off. The detective expresses her gratitude by mumbling a quiet thank you, or by deciding to attach a bird feeder outside her window.

To add to the idea of being blessed by the Moon Goddess, it’s only natural that the phases of the moon also affect the potency of the blessing. On full moons, the detective has boundless energy that makes her wit sharper, her eyes clearer, and her intuition point blank. On new moons, the blessing is at its weakest.

BONUS HEADCANON!

Okay, so this one is a bit silly, but I think that she deserves some… creative outlet after almost dying multiple times. You can either accept this or not lmao

She keeps two journals—one is for professional purposes that she keeps with her when she’s on the job, and another one that is kept under lock and key at home that has every thought and impression she had of the cases she solved and the people she encountered along the way. There are wacky scribbles of the unsavory people she encountered (She drew Julian with X’s as eyes once), and a handful of expletives because, frankly, having more than a dozen near-death experiences deserves a curse or two.

“If they dock my pay because of another godforsaken horse that got away, I’m going to commit arson in my next case, damn be all those bejeweled keys and emblems.”

“I have complex feelings about James. One one hand, he should have kept it in his pants. On the other hand, I owe my career as a fairytale detective to his sad hoe phase.”

“As much as I love my job, I do think that half of these cases would not have happened if a Court Therapist was a profession back then.”

“I have half a mind to invoice the Moon Goddess for cleaning up after he subjects— “I am in awe of the Moon Goddess’ power and endless compassion. It is an honor to be in your service. Please grant me mercy and indefinite peace yet by leaving my windows intact in the next full moon. Amen. Or something of the sort.”

“April 20, 20XX FUCK. Sincerely, FD”

Romantic HCs → SOON!

#dark parables #blue tea games #dark parables fairytale detective #my writing #headcanons #not proofread AKJSDHFLA #le-ootaku

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richardcynthia · 2 months

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tenuuchlegch · 1 year

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Finally discovered the story of Maiday and it made me think about my own experiences and how this wonderful game that is ffxiv has effected me, personally.

You see throughout my life, while I have never felt pressured to go out and help people in other countries like a majority of my close family members did, I did face a sort of stagnation of sorts, when it came towards simply pushing myself to prepare for international travel. I thought about going on multiple trips out of U.S before this, but this year is the first time I have successfully done so. Before that I would often find myself giving up on such ideas for a plethora of rather tiny reasons that stood in my way. I would misplace papers, have zero clue on how to proceed with a certain form or simply procrastinate. Perhaps it was due to my personality, or maybe my aspergers was standing in the way but preparation was a struggle for me.

I won’t go claiming that FFXIV was the sole reason my life has changed. In fact I would say I mainly started making progress/changing in [ironically] late 2020, when I got my job at a doggy daycare. I will say however that playing through Shadowbringers/Endwalker; experiencing this beautiful intimately-crafted story of a dauntless traveler really inspired me. I believe my thought was “if I can make such an impact in a mere game, I wonder what kind of impact I can have, in real life?” I became enamored with adventure and although I still definitely struggled to prep myself for going into the country i went to at first, I told myself not to give up this time and keep going. I only got one shot in life, so I might as well do something like this at least once.

Conclusion: I do not regret it.

I met so many new people, experienced many things, tasted numerous food, witnessed amazing sites and began understanding a different way of life. I developed a newfound appreciation for where I live and what I have and most importantly I actually helped girls who went through very traumatic experiences and personally assisted the poor. Granted I doubt I will ever have an impact on life as much as the warrior of light or darkness does in game, but the thing is I’m so glad I went.

Thank you to Yoshi P and all the developers who crafted such a amazing game and I hope you may live long and happy lives. <3

#STRANGE LOPORRIT (ooc)#Death mention//#((just in case))#((but yeah this is mainly me just... rambling out my love for this game))

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vanserraseris · 2 years

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And sorry the first epilogue is just more angst, I promise the second one is happier lmao

i have no excuse for you. ash you are amazing and do not deserve my procrastination. without further ado

Prince of Ashes. Epilogue I.

Ashes fell from the sky. - Tiny flakes of grey and black were being carried lazily in the wind, raining down around Eris as he stared up at what had been endless blue, not bothering to hide his horror. Eris clenched his jaw, tightened the grip on his sword, prepared to fight an enemy he couldn’t even imagine to defeat.

“Mother help us,” Micah muttered at his side, head tilted back, wide green eyes looking to the sky as well. There were ashes dusted in his brown hair, clinging to his lashes.

Eris had only just returned from speaking with Rhysand, had only just relayed Rhysand’s plan to Jurian and Micah. Eris’s mind was already reeling, trying to see if there was a better option, any way to save more of his soldiers — more of his people — now that he knew Hybern was capable of such destruction.

“The next time you wish to ask the Cauldron to boil you,” Lagos said, his voice filled with shock, “Perhaps you should reconsider.”

Eris didn’t have a chance to respond as Widge’s much smaller frame crashed against his chest, he only barely reached out in time to keep his friend balanced. The foot soldiers had begun to fight once more, the temporary shock of witnessing so many Illyrian and Peregryn warriors reduced to nothing but ash in mere moments wearing off.

Widge turned around, looking up at Eris with an embarrassed half-smile on his face, a smattering of blood mixed with the freckles on his cheeks. He might have said something to Eris, but his brown eyes went wide as he shoved past Eris and Micah and threw himself at one of Hybern’s soldiers, his silver sword arcing through the air. Eris saw Micah push Lagos from the corner of his eye, both of them nearly being hit by half a dozen arrows.

Soldiers were shouting, yelling orders, others groaned in pain, gasped their last breath.

Eris lifted a hand, numerous spears of near-solid flames shooting towards Hybern’s soldiers as he raised his sword and swung at the one closest to him. Eris needed to constantly remind himself to conserve his energy, to save his magic just in case. He’d already used so much of his flames, and while Eris felt as though he’d never been better at controlling his fire, he didn’t want to over exert himself.

Eris watched as Micah ran past him, following Widge as he lunged at soldier after soldier. Micah threw himself at the biggest male he could find, blood splattering against the silver of his armour as he whirled onto the next male. Fighting was all Micah had ever known and there was a grace to the way he engaged with his opponents, each of his movements precise. The golden blade Lagos always fought with flashed to Eris’s right as he beheaded a soldier Eris hadn’t seen coming towards him.

“Thank you for that,” Eris ran a hand through his hair, adjusting his grip on his own sword. Eris and Lagos had spent decades fighting alongside each other, sometimes fighting amongst themselves as well. If anyone knew all of Eris’s weaknesses in battle, it was Lagos. Eris was forever grateful that if being stuck under a mountain for forty-nine years was good for nothing else, at least it had brought Lagos and him closer together when he returned to Autumn.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Lagos had told him. Eris just thought being imprisoned for so long had put a lot of things into perspective. Lagos tilted his head a fraction as he shook it, opening his mouth to say something, but pure terror twisted his features when the ground around them began to shake.

Eris used some of his magic to try and shield them both, but it was a waste of his energy since they weren’t in Hybern’s direct line of fire.

White light flared to their left and even Eris could feel the blistering heat of the Cauldron’s power.

It was chaos.

Chaos as the soldiers tried to hold the lines, as more fell one by one. Eris remembered the first war clearly — he still had nightmares about some of the more horrible battles he’d fought in — but this seemed infinitely worse. Eris had never seen so much raw power, had never been around magic so strong it made his very bones ache.

Eris couldn’t see Micah and Widge anywhere, but they would be fine, Eris concluded. He released some of his fire so that it found its way down the throats of Hybern’s soldiers nearest to him, flaming eyes searching the blood-soaked battle field. Eris wasn’t worried about his friends, they had fought in many battles before.

“Where’s Rufus?” He called to Lagos, his ears still ringing from the blast.

Eris closed his one hand into a fist, five soldiers to his left falling to the ground as he burned them through their armour.

Lagos looked shaken, raising a hand to wipe some blood from his chin. “I don’t know,” he replied, voice raised.

Eris was gripped with panic as he spun around, searching for any sign of his younger brother. Eris had grown colder over the years — harsher — but he had not stopped caring for Rufus, not for a moment.

Eris had nearly asked Rufus not to fight, he’d never seen a war before, and Eris would have preferred to keep it that way. Despite Rufus having spent the majority of his time in war camps after Lucien’s exile, Eris hadn’t wanted to put his brother in such danger, but he’d trusted that Rufus would have been able to hold his own. Even Rufus, though clever as he was, would not have been able to survive the Cauldron’s power.

He was very much regretting his decision to let Rufus fight as he ran past Hybern’s soldiers, ignoring Lagos when he called out to him. Eris didn’t know where Rufus had been when that blast of power had incinerated all those people, didn’t know where he might have gone after burning the faebane supplies. Eris quickly disarmed any soldiers in his path, killing them swiftly as he searched for any of his brothers, but he couldn't find them.

With a snarl, Eris released some of his fire, burning anyone who had come too close. He couldn’t see them; No red capes, no red hair, no red flames in a sea of countless faeries.

A weakness.

Eris could practically hear his father’s voice, how he’d hiss about the weakness of caring for anyone other than yourself. If Eris had been paying attention to his father as he’d tried to beat that lesson into him, he might have been paying more attention to his surroundings now.

Eris stumbled forward, nearly falling to the ground as something large hit his side. Eris heard the crunch of his armour as it bent, as it folded in on itself after the impact. Eris also heard the cracking of all the ribs on the left side of his body, felt the bone splintering beneath the solid silver of his chest plate. He had to stop himself from crying out at the almost unbearable pain.

Eris whirled around, sword raised in the air above his head just in time to stop a double-headed battle axe from hitting him once more. Eris took a gasping breath as he raised his other hand and placed it along the blade of his sword, pushing with all of his strength. He felt the sharp edge bite into his palm and winced.

“Are all of Beron’s sons so small?” The male holding the axe was huge, the biggest faerie Eris had ever seen. His armour was fancy enough that Eris knew he must have been someone important, a general or one of the king's many nephews. He grinned at Eris with straight white teeth, dark hair falling in messy waves around his scarred face.

“I’m the tallest,” Eris looked up at him, impassive as he answered in a dull voice, trying to heal his ribs so he could move more easily.

The male’s grin widened as his eyes looked to the blood dripping from Eris’s hand. It had always been difficult for Eris to heal anything other than burns, but he didn’t think he’d be able to fight this male through the pain of so many broken bones.

The male raised his axe, looking to strike the heir of the Autumn Court. Eris lunged forward, no longer trapped under the weight of the other male’s weapon, and winnowed in a burst of flames behind him.

Eris couldn’t use his magic for much longer, he had already used too much and he wished to end this fight before he grew any more tired. Eris swung with his sword, expecting to land a killing blow, only for the male to turn around quicker than anyone Eris had ever seen move. What looked like shadows swirled in the male’s wake as he winnowed.

Eris barely had enough time to swing his sword to the side, the heavy axe slamming against his weapon, sparks soaring into the air around them as Eris struggled to keep his balance. Eris tried to create spears out of his flames, but it seemed as if he’d already used up too much of his magic. His fire was still hot as it flared in the male’s direction, but Eris didn’t think he could make any more deadly, near-solid weapons to tip the fight in his favour.

Using his sword to block all of the axe’s swings, Eris decided he would try and tire the male. Surely his movements would slow, Eris had thought, but it became clear to Eris very quickly that the male was relentless.

With a loud battle cry, the male lifted his axe in the air, bringing it down towards Eris. Eris knew his eyes were wide, his careless mask slipping as he raised his sword to meet the axe’s blade before the male landed a fatal blow.

Eris didn’t like the idea of luck, he liked it when things were guaranteed to be in his favour. He liked careful planning and calculated decisions that would bring about his ultimate success. As his sword snapped in half, though, the golden hilt and a short, jagged portion of the blade the only thing left to protect himself from a male wielding a double-headed battle axe, even Eris couldn’t deny that it was quite unlucky. It was a real shame, Eris briefly thought, he’d always liked that sword.

“Fuck,” Eris snarled, jumping out of the male’s way. Eris raised a hand, throwing ever-weakening flames at the male in a feeble attempt to momentarily distract him. Eris didn’t have enough time to move back as the male swung the axe upwards, the thick blade coming in a flash of silver to hit Eris in the face, the sharp edge of it slicing into his neck, his cheek. In a desperate attempt to try and gain the upper hand, Eris threw what remained of his sword at the male.

The male yelled his frustration when the jagged edge of Eris’s broken sword hit him in the face. Before Eris could move out of the way, the male slammed his fist against Eris’s head. Eris raised his arm to block any other blows, but he was much too slow, the male’s knuckles cracking against Eris’s nose. Eris crashed to the ground rather embarrassingly, reaching for the sword of a fallen soldier near him, practically crawling. He was feeling dizzy, seeing doubles, losing his senses.

Eris couldn’t help but cry out in pain as the male stomped on his ankle with all his strength. Winnowing in a burst of dark shadows, the male kicked the weapon away from Eris’s grasp, kicked Eris’s still-healing ribs. Involuntarily, Eris reached for his side, bending over as he curled in on himself.

Eris groaned as the male moved to stand in front of him, as the male lifted his axe just slightly and put it under Eris’s chin, the blade pressed against the skin of his throat.

Applying just a little pressure, the male used the axe to tilt Eris’s head up. Eris could feel the blood dripping down the side of his face, could taste the blood falling from his nose over his lips, could feel the blood as it poured from the wound in his neck and leaked into his armour. Eris was almost certain Beron would have laughed at seeing his eldest son, his heir, on his knees in front of the enemy.

With a wide grin, the male asked, “Is this the very best the Autumn Court has to offer?”

Eris flashed the male a wicked smile, blood staining his teeth a gruesome red. “Some would say the very worst.” There were black spots darting along the sides of his vision as Eris tried to steady his rapidly beating heart — blood loss, Eris vaguely realized.

The male laughed, “I’m going to enjoy killing you, prince.”

Eris kept his chin up, embers sparking on the ground around him as the male swung the axe into the air.

Eris decided he didn’t really mind meeting his death like this. Falling in battle was worthy enough, Eris figured, better than being killed by Maddox or Priam. He regretted he wouldn’t see his father die, regretted that his mother would have to grieve another son, regretted he and Lucien would never reconcile, but Eris was strangely at peace. Perhaps Lagos would write some shit ballad about his death and Micah, Widge, and Rufus could sing it around campfires for the rest of their lives.

Eris took a deep breath, the all-too familiar scents of blood and ash burning through his nose, only to gasp in shock when the axe never swung down towards him. The male howled in rage — or in pain — as both his hand and the axe fell to the ground, the swift flash of a silver sword disappearing as fast as it appeared. How very lucky, Eris thought, rushing to raise his own hand. Wild flames flared from his palm, unbelievably hot as they burned the male who would have been his killer.

If Eris hadn’t been drained, the male would have been dead, instead, the silver sword quickly beheaded him to finish what Eris was too weakened to do.

The male’s head fell with an ugly thud away from Eris, and as the rest of the body crumpled to the ground like a puppet without strings, Eris might have mirrored his brother’s expression as they looked at each other.

Panic was clear in Maddox’s wide eyes, red curls wet with sweat and blood clinging to his forehead as he stumbled a step back, jaw going slack. He looked very young for a moment, reminding Eris of the child he remembered from so long ago. Maddox shook his head, scowling like he usually did, as he raised his sword slowly and took a step forward, this one more sure.

“Make it quick, Maddox,” Eris said, voice low but he was certain Maddox could hear him. And Eris understood. There were soldiers fighting around them, the roaring sounds of the battle loud, everyone too busy fighting for themselves to look at Beron’s eldest sons. No one would know, and Maddox would have what he wanted. And Eris was not angry.

Maddox fell to his knees in front of Eris, bloody hand moving so fast Eris nearly flinched away. Eris made a pained sound as Maddox roughly grabbed his neck, knowing very well that being strangled wasn’t exactly a quick death. Eris had decided that Maddox must have truly hated him until he remembered the bleeding wound the other male had bestowed him.

“Why isn’t it healing?” Maddox growled, his other hand letting go of his sword so that it fell to the blood-stained earth. He reached up and pushed Eris’s hair away from his face in a gesture that was surprisingly gentle.

“I can’t,” Eris mumbled, tasting the blood on his lips every time he spoke. “I’m absolutely drained.”

Some of Maddox’s fire blasted around them, Hybern’s soldiers falling away as he asked, “Can you stand?”

Eris nodded, trying to get to his feet. Eris had forgotten about his broken ankle and he awkwardly fell against his brother, his face connecting painfully with Maddox’s silver armour.

“Liar,” Maddox muttered, hauling Eris up so that they were both standing. Eris leaned on his younger brother, more black spots flickering across his vision. One hand still pressed tightly against Eris’s neck, the other holding him up, Maddox practically dragged Eris past Hybern’s soldiers.

Eris was definitely seeing things as a large creature with gold feathers and giant wings flew over top of the raging battle. He would have asked Maddox if he could see it as well, but light flared to their right. Something similar to the Cauldron's power crossing into Hybern’s ranks, killing hundreds. All the while, Eris stumbled rather gracelessly as Maddox dragged him along, still dizzy and not even entirely sure if he wasn’t just having some strange nightmare.

“If we both die because you’re useless,” Maddox snarled, “I’m going to ensure you don’t find peace in the afterlife.” He was breathing heavily, using whatever remained of his fire to kill anyone who got too close. Eris hoped his other brothers and his friends were doing much better than he and Maddox were.

As Maddox led Eris past the Autumn Court ranks, further away from any more of Hybern’s soldiers, Eris felt the ground shuddering beneath him.

“Maddox—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Maddox snarled, clearly very angry. Eris wondered whether Maddox was truly angry at him, or whether Maddox was just angry at himself. Angry at himself for not killing Eris when he’d had the chance.

Eris would have stayed quiet, he wouldn’t have put it past Maddox to let go of him and abandon him entirely. But the ground was shaking much more now, and Eris was positive it was another one of the Cauldron’s blasts. “Maddox, wait.”

“You need a healer,” Maddox snapped, hand tightening around Eris’s neck. Eris might have tried to warn Maddox again, but he looked up at the sky when his brother paused and breathed a low, “What the fuck is that?”

Eris had seen a great many things. He’d lived a long life, he’d witnessed seven High Lords be rendered powerless, he’d watched a human woman be turned into a faerie. Each of those things had seemed impossible to Eris at some point.

Eris knew he had seen quite a lot in the centuries he’d been alive, and yet he’d never seen anything like that. A creature forged in fire, glowing with an otherworldly light, flew above them. Flaming wings carried it across Prythian’s soldiers and towards Hybern’s armies. Faeries died painlessly as it soared above them, embers falling from those beautiful wings as the creature slowly faded away into nothing.

The silence was glaring — almost shocking — now that the sounds of the raging battle had fallen quiet. Even Maddox, still at Eris’s side, didn't say a word.

Eris looked up at the sky where the creature had vanished, sunlight streaming through white clouds. Eris had spent nearly half a century under a once-sacred mountain and he’d dreamed about the sun, had wished to feel its warmth.

Night after night, day after day, Eris had practically lost all hope stuck in Amarantha’s horrible court. He hadn’t thought he’d ever see the outside world again, and he’d missed it, spent every chance he got away from The Forest House only because he could.

Eris allowed himself a moment to close his eyes, to feel the heat of the sun, to take in Hybern’s defeat, and to drown in the silence of Prythian’s victory.

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shadowsinger11 · 4 years

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John Wayne

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Summary: Christmas lights and stunning dresses are enough to spark a desire for a winter romance. But could you have possibly gotten the wrong idea?

Word Count: 2.5k

Genre: fluff, angst

A/N: I might've listened too much to Cigarettes After Sex while writing and this is totally not a song inspired fic, born purely as a result of my procrastination with other projects

Tag list: @susceptible-but-siriusexual @hufflexpuff @neovannii @jenniweasley @theweasleysredhair @harrysweasleys @loony-loopy-lupinn @whiz-bangs78 @slytherinsunrise @starlightweasley @ickle-ronniekins @gcdric @vivianweasley @aprilsrant @idont-knowrn @thisismynerdyself @wonderful-writer @feetoffthetablee @minty-malfoy @vogueweasley @elf-punk @oh-for-merlins-sake @heart-of-tempered-steel @spilled-prose @itseatyourdamnapples @aaannabbanana @l0ttadreamz @potter-redheads @pastanest | message me to be added/removed! (if you're in bold, I couldn't tag you)

You were staring at the crowded dance floor.

Beautiful ladies were being spun around by their partners, gorgeous gowns twirling and swooshing with their every elegant move. Everything was perfect about them; from their smile which lit up the Great hall more than the sparkling white Christmas trees, to the way their wrist gracefully twisted around their lover's neck, eyes piercing into theirs. The music was playing, slow and melancholic, exactly as it had been playing for the last few hours, luring lovers and encouraging them to bare their souls in front of each other.

And so they danced, connected by fearful desire, united by hope and bonded by love.

It was a kind of magic no one could truly understand, mysterious and private as though you weren't meant to witness it that night. So when among the sea of couples lips met in a silent oath, your heart began to ache, pleading you to leave.

It should have been you. It should have been you the receiver of those loving glances, of those kisses which made your head dizzy and caused your knees to buckle, but it would've been no problem as you would've had the arms of your lover to keep you secure. Then, as you'd dare to look up through your lashes, gorgeous eyes would be already on you, their obscure flame consoling you and pulling you in. And you'd simply fall, letting the warm, velvety darkness envelope you.

You flinched from the slight chill, rethinking your choice of a sleeveless dress. The enthusiasm with which you had picked it months ago now seemed utterly ridiculous and foolish as you were sitting a good distance away from where you believed you'd have been dancing your heart out. But, as you took one last look at your surroundings, only to spot your lovestruck friends indulging in the presence of their partners, the comfort of your pajamas seemed far more tempting than the unreasonably expensive piece of fabric which didn't even matter to you anymore.

It was pitifully funny how things could change in the blink of an eye, in a single breath; how fast you had gone from blooming with excitement to wondering how you were foolish enough to contribute to your own heartbreak.

"How come I'm just finding out about this?" Fred exclaimed, chasing after you down the stairs of the Astronomy tower. "I bet I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for those Ravenclaws chatting back in class."

"You were gonna know eventually, what's the deal?"

"My point is, why didn't you tell me and I had to hear from someone else?"

A group Hufflepuffs gave you questioning looks as you practically ran past them, nearly tripping over your own feet in the process, "You're making a fuss about nothing, stop acting entitled to every piece of information in my life!"

"McLaggen? That git?" Fred yelled in frustration and disbelief; he didn't at all acknowledge the small crowd which had gathered to observe the scene, nor did he care in the first place. He stopped in his tracks, gripping the wooden railing tight, knuckles turning white and jaw tense. "You cannot be serious."

Shocked faces now turned to you, and you desperately wished you could use reducio on yourself. Instead, opposite to what your consciousness was screaming at you, you dug your feet into the floor and shot Fred a stern look over your shoulder, "We're not discussing this right now. Besides, what's in it for you anyway? You're going with Angelina."

Had you kept walking, you would have missed the way Fred's chest was heaving with shallow, rapid breaths, and his face was more maroon than you had ever seen. And you? You couldn't quite breathe yourself.

A week ago your untamed happiness brightened every room and hallway; classes seemed to fly by, exams were over and the Yule ball was right around the corner. Your heart was ringing with joy as you were so looking forward to forgetting your troubles for just one night.

In the midst of shining Christmas decorations and beautiful dresses a dreamy, yet pretty bold idea had begun to form in your head, an idea which Ginny and Hermione encouraged with their support and affirmations. Deep down you had started to believe Fred Weasley took an interest in you, harboured feelings for you even, and your ever-present goofy banter which contained far more flirting than what would be acceptable between two best friends, only fed your imagination and raised your hopes up.

You were aware you were the only one on the receiving end of Fred's teasing jokes, cheesy pickup lines and lingering stares which had you staying up an extra hour in your bed at night. Even his siblings shared the same opinion - there was no way on Godric's sword that a person who clearly wanted to be around you as often as possible and got his hands on you every chance he could, wouldn't be at least a little bit interested in you.

That's why you nearly broke down when exactly a week ago in the hallway Ron casually mentioned his older brother had just asked out Angelina.

The ground was pulled beneath your feet, vanishing along with your oblivious hopes. The news stung sharply, leaving a sour taste in your mouth; never had you believed you’d spend the few days before the ball stitching up your heart, and you were willing to do just about anything to forget about your humiliation. So when McLaggen invited you with an obnoxiously flirty note in Charms class, you didn’t hesitate much.

You could feel a wave of tears burning your eyes as you looked up to where Fred was standing. His face and ears were still as red as they could get, and his chest was vibrating with every shaky breath he took. Fury had disappeared from his eyes long ago, replaced with concern, regret and hurt which you couldn't quite place.

He climbed down the few remaining stairs.

"He's obnoxious! And beyond what's good for you!" Fred stated, though his voice now lacked power and slightly trembled, loud enough just for you to hear. "You're setting yourself up for a pretty bad night."

You swallowed down the dry lump in your throat and finally turned around to fully face him, looking him up and down.

"Seems like I have a terrible taste in men then."

A second glass of firewhiskey did nothing to burn down the growing turmoil in your stomach. You tapped the edge of the empty glass with your fingers and smiled at your friends who were visibly exhausted from dancing to upbeat songs for quite awhile now, but enjoying their time far too much to take a break. You admired their spirit - just because you weren't feeling your best, it didn't mean your friends didn't have the right to have fun.

However, the inevitable sense of regret lingered in your bones, and you found it hard to not focus on how the ball had gone wrong for you, in more ways than you had originally thought.

Even without Fred as your date, there was still a chance you'd have a good time. McLaggen could undoubtedly make it awkward to be around, and with the fact that your heart had recently been sliced open, you weren't sure how much of his ridiculous antics you could take. But at least he was trying; if you put aside his overbearing ego, you could see genuine effort into creating something romantic for both of you. It was going to be okay. Not necessarily what you desired, but somehow okay.

And that last bit of hope vanished the second you caught your former date snogging your crush's date in an empty classroom merely an hour ago.

You didn't know whether to cry or laugh at the universe's bitter joke, but the tears on your face as you ran down the hallway in your beautiful dress were eloquent.

A bitter, bitter joke.

You couldn't take it anymore. The charming smiles, sultry glances and stolen kisses you had been observing for the past hour were too much. And when another slow song made an appearance, you rose to your feet and headed towards the tall doors of the exit. Perhaps sleep would be a decent ending to your horrendous night.

You had barely made it out of the Great hall when loud footsteps echoed on your right.

"Bloody hell, I've been looking for you!" Fred said through heavy breaths, having run all the way to you as it seemed. His ginger hair had escaped its slicked look long ago, now too messy to fix despite his numerous attempts to smooth it back. His suit was no better, slightly wrinkled and shirt open to the third button.

"Why have you?" you asked and folded your arms, feeling a bit chilly in the hallway.

"McLaggen. About him," Fred sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry for having to say it, but I just saw him-"

"I know."

Fred frowned in confusion.

"You do?"

It was your turn to let out an exasperated sigh as you looked down at your feet, "Yes. A while ago."

Fred's features softened.

"I'm sorry."

You barely found it in you to respond with a weak smile, "It's alright. I guess I was right. I do have a terrible taste in men." Then you gave Fred a sympathetic look, "I'm sorry for Angelina too, it's horrible she did this to you."

Your friend allowed the ghost of a smirk to appear on his lips and he shoved hands into his pockets, "I'm not really affected by it in all honesty," he shrugged. "I'm rather angry about the fact that the prat thought he could pull off something like this and get away with it."

Fred's heart ached at the sight of your slumped figure and glossy eyes; he hated himself for having contributed to the failure of the event you were expecting with so much hope. He tilted his head to the side, attempting to meet your gaze.

"I'd gladly prank the crap outta the git until he doesn't even dare to show up to classes… But for now is there a way for me to make your night any less terrible, love?"

You couldn't help but giggle at the thought of McLaggen skipping classes out of sheer fear of Fred. But then your thoughts wandered to the way Angelina was practically straddling his lap, and you wondered if Fred had been doing the same all this time unbeknownst to you; if right after a flirty joke sent your way he'd go to an empty classroom and kiss Angelina with the passion you had just witnessed.

The image of Angelina's lips on Fred's caused you to become nauseous and you attempted to swallow down that lump again.

"No," you replied. "But please, tell me one thing. What was that entire tantrum for?"

Fred didn't really seem taken aback by your question, realizing you'd eventually bring it up. He furrowed a brow, carefully thinking of an answer, and wettened his lips.

“Perhaps it would be inappropriate of me to say it- selfish even, but the mere thought of you being in the embrace of someone, especially with that someone being a foul git, caused me to get unreasonably angry.” Guilt was seeping into his every word and he bitterly chuckled to himself. “Ironic, isn’t it? Attempting to spare you heartbreak by being the reason for it.”

He gently took your hand and looked into your eyes, remorse swimming in his own, "I had no right to treat you the way I did. I'm terribly sorry for being controlling and you absolutely do not have to forgive me. Just know that I truly regret my actions; I never intended to hurt you."

His words were a feather-light caress to your wounded heart and you shuddered. You couldn't stay mad at him. Reciprocated feelings or not, he was still your best friend and you wouldn't let that go.

"Apology accepted," you gave his hand a light squeeze and Fred beamed, the entire hallway lighting up with him. Dread released your chest of its merciless grasp and you could finally breathe. However, one question never ceased to haunt you. "But I just need to know…” you began, absentmindedly playing with his fingers, “...why were you so upset to begin with?"

Fred's shoulders immediately stiffened and he averted his gaze from you in an attempt to come up with a reasonable reply. His jaw was clenched, and his adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. "I didn't want you to go with him." He stated simply. "Not when you could've easily gone with me instead."

You froze.

"What do you mean?” you asked timidly, shifting your weight from foot to foot. “What about Angelina?"

Fred only shook his head, fighting back a grin.

"Darling, Angelina was never the catch."

The air was knocked out of your lungs.

You could only stare at Fred wide-eyed, and though his expression was unreadable, maroon had begun to crawl its way up to his ears and cheeks again.

"I'm sorry for putting you through all this," Fred spoke softly as he pressed a kiss to your knuckles, a kiss that awakened the butterflies within you. "I was really too much of a wuss to confess to you and settled for this instead."

"I guess that makes us two," you smiled sincerely, perhaps for the first time that night. Fred returned your smile with a grin, and asked.

"How can I make up to you for this oh-so-awful mess?"

"Dance with me," you said without skipping a beat. "That's what you owe me at least. Let's finally do what we both wanted."

Fred's expression became serious as he intertwined his fingers with yours, and led you into the direction of the Great hall, from which music could still faintly be heard.

"With the greatest of pleasure, my love."

Most people had already gone to bed, leaving just a few couples and you to drench in enchanted serenity. Fred's arms around you felt like home as you both swayed to the soft rhythm of the song, one of the many to follow, but his racing heartbeat under your palm caused your own pulse to speed up as well.

You looked up at your lover through your lashes, gorgeous eyes already on you, their obscure flame consoling you and pulling you in. There was an odd, enigmatic allure that Fred possessed, and even after years of knowing this man, it only caused you to fall further into the velvety hell you didn't wish to escape from.

And when his lips collided with yours, they tasted sweeter than the forbidden fruit.

Reblogs and feedback are greatly appreciated!

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x reader fluff #fred weasley x reader angst #fred weasley fic #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley imagines #fred weasley x y/n #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter imagines #james phelps #fred and george weasley

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womenhoodlooniness · 3 years

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Mean Girls: Private School Edition

During the infamous quarantined lockdown of March 2020, not only did my procrastination habits worsened due to me having to lose all sense of time but it made me reflect amidst all the silence.

This might sound selfishly cliche but if it was not for the whole world shut down, I would have not been able to come to terms relating to my self-worth.

Let's time travel back to my high school days: 2015-2019.

Yes, I'm getting old.

So I went to an all-girls, private high school in Burbank, IL. At first, I thought I was going to hate it. All of my other friends were going to public schools within the Chicagoland area and here I am, the only person going to a school that nobody has ever even heard of.

As if looking like the most big-headed whitest chick at my school didn't make me feel like an outcast enough.

To be blunt, it did make me feel uncool. But I understood my parents wanted me to have a good education that was not at a sleazy neighborhood school.

Even if it did mean taking my voice out of it completely.

Long story short, I ended up liking the school. It felt like a crackhouse made for girls. Meaning, it really was a place for us girls to wind down, get comfortable, and not having to worry about any boys. It was a place of femme empowerment but also endearing chaos.

However, there is always a price to everything beloved.

Last year, when the peaks of quarantined lockdown were at an all-time high, I allowed myself to do a lot of retrospect thinking.

A lot of this thinking was rooted in how my experiences at the private high school were actually fueled by naiveness and all things non-endearing. This retrospect made me question a current friendship I was undergoing at the time in quarantine, questioning if it was really meant to be.

I was friends with two girls at the time. Let's call them X and Z. Mostly because it sounds cool.

I was friends with X for the longest. We remained friends even after the private high school shut down and had to part ways during our sophomore-junior year. I thought she was cool. We had similar music tastes, taught me things I did not know and just overall looked at her as a big sister. Mind you, I was too naive to even think of the other side of our friendship.

Z was a mutual friend that was also close friends with X. I found her cool as she did with me, but she and X were more considered as each other's best friend than all of three of us combined.

But there's a twist to it all: Z actually used to be my bully in freshman year of high school. To put it short, she bullied me because she thought I was "weird" even though I never even tried to talk to her. She would always have a way to tease and make fun of me.

At first, I would try and laugh along but after a while, it started to feel forced because it would barely hit me at times that she could not stand me. Like all bullies, she had the tendency to feel above me since apparently I was seen as a target: The weird, quiet girl.

Who would have thought?

On top of that, X would actually laugh at the "jokes" Z would use against me! Yeah, the same girl I was friends with the longest...go ahead, call me stupid now.

I even brought it up to X at a later time and her response?

"That was just my humor at the time."

Ah yes, creepily looking at my old Facebook profile pictures and laughing at them is DEFINITELY the humor to have. Even after that sketchy comment I still was friends with her for about another year or so. I would rant about her behavior more but I'll just save that for another post...

Anyways, sometimes it would feel weird to even be offended by Z's "jokes" because not only I had one but two mean girls entrapping me. I feel like I had no other choice BUT to feel okay with it. There would be times where confrontation was needed, but the attention was very intimidating to me.

The private school was such a small school so anything that goes would flow smoothly from one period to the next. The drama did spread like wildfire at that forsaken palace of gossip.

Overall with there not being a confronting witness, it really felt hard to get the motivation to stand up for myself. If anything, it helped fasten the depreciation of my self-worth. All because there was nobody to give me a smack of reality to tell me that I should not let that slide.

Also because of the naiveness that came with not realizing the meanness of those comments and the reason why they hurt.

It's even frustrating to also think back about how it would have been best for myself to be the doormat I was, no matter how weird and uncomfortable it got. I say this because Z was SO liked back in that high school. Every girl thought she was funny and cool; she was definitely on the popular scale.

So if I had brought the issue up to the school, then perhaps most definitely they would have looked into it as it did intrigue some feelings of "unsafeness" in me. Now that I think about it, I mean this with seriousness.

I say this because one time, Z called me a bitch because I would not let her copy my homework for the 5th time. And that's just one of many examples.

But as for the students? That would of most likely been the messiest. Especially since Z literally had the popular benefit of being listened to and influencing others.

From that, I should ask, who would have the most sympathy:

the preyed underdog or the praised show dog?

Fast forward to March 2020 where I was questioning the genuinity of everything to the point where I felt like it was best to not associate myself with those two girls again. For the sake of saving myself some pressure and self-depreciation.

I must admit, I mostly wanted to back up because of X's current behavior at the time instead. So this post is most likely going to be considered as a first-half as it does display a "blast from the past" theme. While the second post would be presenting more so recent events. Nevertheless, both posts are still relevantly intertwined as they are important in strengthening my points.

Also, I can not keep typing forever.

Overall, I wanted to bring some of my traumatic past up because not only it presents an aspect of internalized misogyny (again) but also portrays something bigger.

You see, I started to feel at ease at the private school because I felt like I had all the supportive relations I could have with my femme peers. In retrospect, that was lacking to a very large degree.

I did not realize it until I was in college as I gained more maturity and knowledge when dealing with other (girl) friends that were so much different than the ones I numbed myself to.

I had been exposed to a kind of respect that I never thought I would have experienced. It felt so fucking surreal. And because of that, it leads me to compare for the better and for the worse.

It helped paved the way for me to grow.

But the fact I even thought that I would have not had the same respect as Z, no matter how much I cried out of injustice, is what concerns me. How could I think that private school was so beloved with femme love when there was a huge possibility of numerous girls going against me, all because I was not on the popular spectrum?

Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe there is an alternative timeline out there involving myself getting justice served and respect granted. Despite the judgment that is forced upon me.

But this is why concepts such as internalized misogyny and girl-girl bullying need to be brought up more. All because it can plague ourselves in which can rapidly plague entire environments within spaces that are meant to bring support from one girl to another.

Also, yes, we can forgive them because most likely these bullies are going through something too in which can cause them to act aggressively to us - based off of jealousy or attention, whatever can be interpreted the best.

I actually forgive Z because I had learned that she was going through a rough time during freshman year which at times does make me speculate if her actions were based on jealousy..but let's not be bitchy narcs here.

Even with that, it still does not allow for me to succumb to being seen as some fucking fool to her. It does not favor her to make me feel like a doormat. And it definitely should not be permitted for me to feel like shit because I had no choice but to do so.

Where is the self-worth in all this? Because I need it just as much as she does.

We need to prevent further harm so we won't hurt others and most importantly, ourselves.

#mean girl #mean girls #bullying #womenhood #looninees #femme #private school #all girls #internalized misogny #doormat #undergod #underdog #popularity #private high school #high school #burbank IL #IL

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j-rock101 · 4 years

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歌手：　　　水曜日のカンパネラアルバム：　SUPERMAN 曲：　　　　一休さん …………………………………注釈

一休さん -- Ikkyu-san, a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet of the Muromachi Period, esteemed for his poetry in the Classical Chinese style. He believed in the importance of zazen meditation above anything else, and also a major critic of the politics of temple life, which often made him quite unpopular with the higher-ups of the temples. At the same time, he was also seen as a vagabond-figure, who drank excessively and frequented brothels, which he argued deepened his enlightenment. He was also a major figure in various traditional Japanese arts, including tea ceremony, sumi-e ink painting, and calligraphy. His flute-playing was also seen as one of the major influences on the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism, a movement known for its monks who often play the shakuhachi flute and wear a woven basket on their heads while begging. (*)

Seen as both a heretic and a saint, Ikkyu is more popular as a folk hero. For most Japanese, he is most widely known from the animated TV series Ikkyū-san, a fictionalized account of Ikkyu’s childhood. He solves a variety of problems and riddles, helping poor farmers and outsmarting greedy merchants, often in a rather tongue-in-cheek way. One of his quirks is the pose he assumes while solving a riddle, cross-legged and rubbing his fingers in circles around his head. The most famous of his トンチなぞなぞ riddles are “The Bridge” and “The Tiger in the Folding Screen.” (*)

一休 means “one pause,” and so throughout the song SuiKan plays on that dual meaning, creating an image of a procrastinating genius who claims, perhaps rightfully, that taking a quick break would improve his thinking. The phrase 「下手な考えは休むに似たり」 (“It’s hard to tell a poor thinker from a lazy one”) is an actual idiom in Japanese, used to tell someone to take a break instead of wasting their time on a futile endeavor, or even to taunt an opponent for taking too long to decide their next move in a game. Here, however, it seems to be used almost as an excuse for Ikkyu-san to slack off. In Ikkyu-san’s world, you have your wits or you don’t; there is no try.

The chorus especially deals with a lot of word play. The syllables of Ikkyu’s name are flipped from “一休さん Ikkyusan” to “サンキュー Sankyu,” the Japanese pronunciation of “Thank you.” おつかれ is a common greeting in Japanese, often used to thank someone for their hard work, but it comes from the word 疲れる, literally meaning “to be tired.” The real question is Ikkyu-san working hard, or hardly working?

Kowloon Walled City -- The setting of the music video is an anachronistically retro club atmosphere completely at odds with the zen aesthetic of a temple but probably not unlike a rowdy evening at the red light districts the original Ikkyu frequented. Filmed in an entertainment facility modeled after Kowloon Walled City, the music video captures the romantic dystopianism the now demolished city is nostalgically remembered for. A haven for drugs, gambling, and prostitution, the actual walled city in Hong Kong was a site for both triads and squatters, but has been used as the setting of numerous martial arts movies from Jackie Chan to Van Damme. (*) From the punchy KOMU-ZOU to the use of Chinese in the subtitles, the movie blends the lantern-lit vibe of Hong Kong culture with the folk story of Ikkyu, creating a lone bomber, a hero for the partying masses taking on the corruption of organized crime the way the real Ikkyu stood up for the common man in the folk stories.

「ハッとして!Good」and KitKat -- 「ハッとして!Good」is a popular single by Tahara Toshihiko from the Showa era, a softer and more romantic contemporary to the Hong Kong martial arts movies the video references. The song tells the story of meeting a woman in a telephone box on a hill with whom the singer immediately falls in love:

ハッとして　グッときてパッと目覚める　恋だからフッとした瞬間の　君は天使さ Because of this love that took my breath away, Touched my heart and fluttered open my eyes, Suddenly in that moment, you were an angel

The song was also used in a Glico Almond Chocolate commercial where the singer Tahara meets another Showa idol, Matsuda Seiko, at a telephone booth. They fall in love and enjoy Glico chocolate together. (*)

Here though, SuiKan changes the chocolate to a Kit Kat, perhaps playing on the long-lived tagline for the chocolate popular in the 80s when it was being marketed as a break time snack to get you through a long day of work, “Have a break. Have a Kit Kat.” (*) To reflect that, I veered away from a translation that mirrored the romanticism of 「ハッとして!Good」to a more playful and awkward “gulp.” Knowing Ikkyu, however, there’s no guarantee he’s retiring to his temple bed alone.

湾岸署 -- Wangan Police Department is the department portrayed in the Japanese blockbuster Bayside Shakedown (踊る大捜査線) TV and movie series. The second movie in the series, Bayside Shakedown 2 (踊る大捜査線 THE MOVIE 2 レインボーブリッジを封鎖せよ! 2003), is the highest-grossing Japanese live action movie, and in the climactic scene, the police block off the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo to catch a suspect. In the movie, the blockade is a rather difficult task (although one that is successfully overcome), that requires all sorts of paperwork and permissions. In reality, however, it seems police can and have blockaded the bridge quite simply, both for natural disasters and accidents. At those times, radio commentators and newspaper headlines have joked “Rainbow Bridge really has closed!” (*) However heroic the police of the Bayside series are, however, they would likely prove no match for Ikkyu.

Sutras and Pandemonium, Wooden Fish and Disco -- In contrast to the original story in the folding screen, the tiger here seems to be successfully summoned, perhaps as some kind of divine punishment for some misbehaving lords? Sutras are typically recited by Buddhist monks as a preparation for meditation or for rituals, but often in pop culture they are attributed magical powers, as seen in anime characters like Hino Rei (Sailor Moon) and Miroku (Inuyasha). Whatever the result, the lords have fallen into Pandemonium--either a literal screaming and shouting uproar over or a loose tiger, or perhaps a more sinister fate. Much like the English word Pandemonium, “阿鼻叫喚 abikyokan” has connatations with Avici, the lowest level of Buddhist hell to which those who commit the gravest sins are cursed. (*) The real-life Ikkyu-san caused quite a lot of problems for the higher-ups, and here it’s unclear whether the real source of the lords’ ire is the tiger or the degenerate priest. But ultimately, now that the tiger has been released, the only one who can tame it is the priest they so despise.

A wooden fish bell is a percussive instrument unique to Buddhism, often played to count out the rhythm for sutra recitation. Some stories say that the shape originated from one monk who, while on a journey, broke a promise to fish who helped him. As punishment, the fish splashed the priest, soaking the valuable sutras he carried with him. In his irritation, the priest carved out a bell in the shape of a fish to beat out his frustration… but with every beat of the bell, out popped another syllable of the sutra, until the priest had regained everything that was lost. While fish bells did exist in the Muromachi period when Ikkyu-san actually lived, they really began to be used in earnest during the Edo period, when Ikkyu-san Banashi grew in popularity with the Japanese masses. It is also the sound that accompanies the animated Ikkyu-san’s thinking time. (*,*)

Here, however, the fish bell is not being used for its original purpose of reciting sutras, but to beat out the rhythm to “Y.M.C.A.” As one of the most popular songs all around the world, I imagine “Y.M.C.A.” hardly needs an introduction. But I do think its selection, as one of the ultimate disco party songs that balances both unironic praise of an upstanding religious organization with the subtext of a popular cruising spot for gay men in the 1970s, was very intentional. To many, especially Westerners with a Christian background in particular, this might seem to be a contradictory, even hypocritical image, as they might be inclined to think of religious figures and organizations as symbols of chastity and restraint. (And indeed, the actual Y.M.C.A. has not always had such an accepting view of the song or LGBTQA+ identities.) But Buddhism does not actually forbid sexual relationships for priests, and many temples in Japan have a long history of musical performances as traveling musicians often used them as cheap accommodations while on the road. It would not be so unusual then, to see a group of priests singing and dancing along to “Y.M.C.A.”, and it is perhaps in thanks to figures like Ikkyu-san, who merged the austerity of Buddhist Zen and worldly revels into one harmonious world.

（音楽→）（歌詞→）（英訳→）

#一休さん #水曜日のカンパネラ #Ikkyu-san #Ikkyusan #Wednesday Campanella #Suiyoubi no Campanella #注釈 #Annotations

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unklarity · 4 years

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Critical Role: Beau

“Click “keep reading” for more photos and a description of my Beau magic box! :)

Over the course of CR2, I was totally blindsided by how much I grew to love Beau, so I was both excited and nervous to make a box for her. I actually made the whole box on paper first (which I have never done before). I think that on some level, I was procrastinating because if I never started, I couldn’t screw it up. After having numerous Beau conversations with some amazing people (special thank you to @alemongrenade, who helped me to turn my Beau feelings into real words), I was able to pin down some themes for her, but it took a while to flesh them out and really get to a point where I was comfortable with them. I ended up focusing on the difference between Beau’s perception of herself and how others perceive her, the way that perception influences her actions, and how that perception was developed.

I have a bad habit where I always feel the need to one-up myself, especially since I’m always learning new techniques and ways to do things, so I tend to want to incorporate all the things I learn into everything. With Beau, though, I wanted to keep it simple. “I’m a simple girl, simple needs,” to quote her introduction. I think Beau is very simple, on the outside, and I wanted the physical box to reflect that veneer of simplicity. Everyone always underestimates her, thinks there isn’t much more to her than a girl who has a problem with authority. So the box is plain, only decorated on the outside with the Cobalt Soul symbol, and yet the contents are varied and complex. (I love a good extended metaphor haha)

One of the reasons I struggled with Beau was her lack of concrete imagery at the beginning of the campaign. While I appreciated her simplicity from a fan standpoint, it was tough to come up with motifs to fit the box. I really wanted to reference her frustration with not being able to see in the dark and how much of a game-changer her Goggles of Night were. My first thought was a glow-in-the-dark message since I was having a hard time finding something more concrete, and even though I eventually did find a perfect pair of miniature silver goggles, I still wanted to include a glow-in-the-dark element, which ended up meshing perfectly with her jade All-Seeing Eye tattoo.

I painted the tattoo in the inside lid and added a clear, matte glow-in-the-dark paint over the top. You can see in the photo below how it looks in the light and in the dark! It’s one of my favorite parts of the box :)

Stones:

I wanted to stick to the Cobalt Soul color scheme of blues and greys as much as possible, so I wanted to use as many blue stones as I could. For a focus stone, I picked a gorgeous electric blue apatite tower. Apatite clears away guilt, confusion, apathy or negativity and helps expand one’s intellect and desire for knowledge and truth. It also represents positive use of personal power to achieve goals, encouraging you to accept yourself as you really are, and to gain greater self confidence. What I thought was interesting about this stone is that the meaning of the word Apatite relates to the Greek word 'apatao', which means 'to deceive'. Now, that’s probably due to the stone being mistaken for other minerals, but I thought it fit well with Beau not being easy to read, people thinking she’s shifty or lying even when she’s being honest, and her troubles with outwardly showing genuine emotions.

I also included a tiny Jade owl to represent wisdom, balance, perspective, and learning to be comfortable with showing your true self (and because I, too, wish Professor Thaddeus could have been Beau’s awesome owl sidekick).

The rest of the stones in the box are:

Fluorite- focus, intelligence, aids in meditation and helps with finding peace with oneself

Labradorite- transformation, becoming, being more true to who you are, help banishing fears/insecurities while enhancing faith and reliance in oneself;

Aquamarine - courage, freedom, and communication

Honey Calcite- clarity of insight/action, confidence, intellectual power

Rose quartz - forgiving oneself, learning to accept love, alleviating fear and sorrow/resentment

Blue aventurine - moving past trauma/letting go of emotional baggage, endurance, help saying what you mean, inner strength, passion/determination, gaining control of anger and emotion, using it to help you

Hematite- grounding, cooperation (fighting in cooperation with spellcasters), fighting up close and personal (associated with martial artists), help talking your way out of situations

Tourmalated Quartz- hardness/tough exterior, help when feeling trapped/cornered. provides security when there is fear of failure, courage and self-acceptance in the learning process. Help with self sabotaging. Good for discipline and meditation. Help dealing with anger/self loathing/bitterness

Sodalite-help being less critical of oneself and help calming internal conflict

Celestite- clarity, intuition, and openness to things out of your comfort zone (also divine energy as a reference to Caduceus’ Holy Weapon spell)

And that’s it for stones!

Potions:

There are 6 potions, each labeled with a number on the bottom. The first three are in the photo below, in order from left to right:

The first potion is centered around Beau’s perception of herself, and how that’s been influenced by her interactions with others. Inside the bottle are lemon balm and basil for self hatred, peony for shame and anger, yellow carnation for disdain, heather for solitude and only being able to rely on herself/carry burdens herself, marigold for feeling like she has to constantly fight to prove herself worthy of love (“love you have to fight for”), nettle for insecurity and perceived insincerity, pine for low self worth, lotus for rebelling against authority, purple hyacinth for guilt/feeling like she has to apologize for being herself, and yellow hyacinth for comparing yourself to others/not thinking you’re special. Sealed with silver wax and a lotus flower stamp with blue pigment.

The second potion is a direct contrast to the first, dealing with other people’s perception of Beau and how she really is. There’s acorn for wisdom despite youth, sunflower for wisdom/loyalty, nutmeg for intelligence/wit, cedar for resilience and strength, pansy for thoughtfulness, thyme for loyalty, affection, attracting the good opinion of others, and courage in the face of adversity, gladiolus for strength of character, faithfulness, and honor, and dogwood for deep devotion and keeping confidence. Sealed with silver wax and a sunflower stamp with blue pigment.

The third potion represents the Cobalt Soul and what it means to Beau at different points in the campaign. At the beginning, the Soul is just another cage, someone else trying to impose their will on Beau, but as the story goes on, her goals and theirs start to line up. Dairon is the first authority figure we see give Beau a real chance while also managing to earn her respect, making the Cobalt Soul something that Beau can be a part of instead of something she’s trying to run from. In this potion we have tarragon for struggling to regain independence, chamomile for shedding outside influence, anise for using knowledge as power/to protect yourself/to get what you want, gum arabic for meditation, lilac for wisdom/memory/unlocking potential, rosemary for mental alertness/perception, violet for guarding against deception, lily for freedom and no longer feeling trapped, green tourmaline for calming the mind and increasing abilities/confidence, chrysocolla chips for empowerment and adaptability, and jasmine for appreciation, calming, and developing confidence. Sealed with silver wax and a Cobalt Soul stamp with blue pigment.

The next photo shows potions four through six, in order from left to right.:

Potion number four represents Beau’s past and how it affects her life currently. Before meeting the Mighty Nein, Beau grew up with parents who constantly tried to make her into something she wasn’t; her criminal background was a direct result of Beau rebelling against that control, and we see throughout the campaign that her intense distrust of authority figures still follows her wherever she goes. As time goes on, she does do a lot of growing up and letting go, and yet the way she was treated in the past still informs many of her present decisions and actions. In this potion, there’s lavender for ingrained distrust and problems between parent & child, dandelion for overcoming hardship, sage & cypress for grief and loss, amaranth for help recovering from trauma, black salt for being controlled/told what to be, yellow rose for betrayal, yarrow for regaining agency, mint for trying to atone for the past (Specifically, her guilt and criminal background vs. adopting Molly’s philosophy of leaving places better than you find them after his death), and barberry for freeing oneself from the power/control of another. Sealed with silver wax and a rosemary with blue pigment.

The fifth potion centers around Beau’s fears and struggles (fear of people leaving her, of not being good enough, struggle with being friendly/charismatic, being soft, struggle with presentation). There’s rue for regrets and obsessing over past mistakes, poppy for carrying a traumatic period in your life with you and letting it affect your actions, hydrangea for apparent aggression and being “bad at people,” cinquefoil for desire to be eloquent/wise/self confident, snapdragon for feeling like she has to lie because that would be better than being herself, gardenia for difficulty trusting others/letting people in, violet for importance of outward appearance (being in control of your own presentation and aesthetic and how important that is for Beau), amethyst for fear of being abandoned, garnet for help shedding guilt/sharing burdens, redeeming oneself, and struggling with responsibility (taking so many of the M9’s failures as her own personal responsibility). Sealed with silver wax and a fists stamp with blue pigment.

The sixth and final potion deals with the people around Beau and how she grows by learning lessons from others, both members of the Mighty Nein and the people they cross paths with. Just as in all the rest of the M9 boxes I’ve done so far, there are cloves for camaraderie and being improved by friends, one for each member of the group. There’s also red carnation and basil for brother-sister bonds with Caleb and Fjord, skullcap for willful commitment (found family), zinnia for remembering absent friends (Molly), sweet pea for chaos and adventure (in particular the Jester-Nott-Beau “chaos crew”), magnolia for loyalty, rose quartz for learning to accept love, and bluebell for friendship and slowly growing to be comfortable with being more truthful/open with people. Sealed with silver wax and a rosemary stamp with blue pigment.

That’s it for the potions! Next are the rest of the box’s miscellaneous contents:

So before I even got a box for Beau, I knew there had to be ball bearings in it. There are about a hundred, minus any that managed to escape while I took this picture :)

In the tiny blue pouch, there are gold coins for Beau’s role initial role as group treasurer, along with aforementioned ball bearings, a worn out old Circus flyer, and a set of 21 miniature Major Arcana tarot cards - the 22nd card, the Moon, is in my Jester box. Attached to the tie of the pouch are a silver pair of goggles with purple lenses to represent her Goggles of Night.

Also in the box are Beau’s staff, and her super secret book of important monk notes. Tucked into the book’s closure is a tiny hand-stamped coin with one of my favorite serious Beau quotes, “I don’t want us to drive each other away.”

Below are some close ups of the wax seals so you can see them better:

Thanks so much for reading! That’s it for Beau. Below are some close ups of the whole box at different angles, plus the quote I engraved on the bottom: “You are a good friend to have and a terrible enemy to make.”

I really had a great time working on Beau and I hope you love her as much as I do!

You can check my “magic boxes” tag to see the rest of my M9 boxes, or you can see them on my website at unklarity (dot) com!

#magic boxes #critical role #beauregard lionett #mighty nein #critical role art #magic box

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spaceandtimeuniverse · 4 years

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Election Anxiety

Today is Wednesday, six days left until the election.

This morning, I woke up to countless news in related with the election. My anxiety started the moment I got into the news. There are cases that the court took up in related with the voting such as the court uphold Texas governor’s order of having one drop in ballot in each county. It is unfair because in several of counties, there are thousands of people and they all need to send in their ballot in one box? There are several that were rejected in Texas that some officials are trying to stop a suppression of vote such as age eligibility requirement to be lived, allowing curbside voting and waive the witness requirements for mail in ballots in Alabama, or suspend the witness requirement in South Carolina. The Court has rejected those arguments. Although the Court has sided for Pennsylvania to have ballots to be counted if they arrive up to three days after election day, I am still concerned on more cases as this in several states in regarding to the election.

It does not help that a Justice was confirmed early on Monday that has never supervised or argued a case and had little experiences with the court proceedings as Amy Barrett could use her conservative’ beliefs to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 2008 LGTBA same-sex marriage, DACA and numerous of cases that the majority of Americans does not believe or would agree with if those court cases were overturned. The anxiety increased.

While there are news all over the media that showed Joe Biden is leading in polls where Clinton four years ago would have been declined or gave Trump an advantage in the polls, I am still reminded by the memories of four years ago where all the national polls would claim Clinton to won the election but the world was shocked when the electoral college counted has gotten Trump to arrive to victory. No matter how many positive news about that, the flashback and anxiety would keep increasing. Memories of those past four years would keep coming back.

Do you remember when our president mocked a disabled person? Do you remember when the leaked tapes revealed of Trump’s “locker talk”?

Do you remember where there were protests in Charlottesville and Trump backtracked his condemnation on white supremacists and claimed there were “good people on both side”?

Do you remember the countless, outrageous tweets that Trump tweeted sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes four in the morning? That many of those tweets that if someone else would say those in public, those people would have been fired?

Do you remember the handling of his first hurricane and procrastinated or never gave the aid to Puerto Rico? (Even if the news found later that it was stolen by local officials, why didn’t his administration double checked)

Do you remember the family separation policy and Trump claiming it was his predecessors’s policy and refused to change the policy? How many families that were separtated? How many children that were locked in cages with “minimal” resources that they could provide to help those children? Remember when ICE was destructive and went to various states including sancturacy cities to take undocumented immigrants from their homes that they were supposed to be safe in?

Do you remember how many people in his administration have ties or working with Russia? Or that they took advantage of their position for personal gain such as Scott Pruitt, Steven Mnuchin, Ben Carson, Betsy Devos, and so many numerous people who shouldn’t be on the job? Why did the Trump’s administration has so many people such as Flynn, Kelly, Sanders, etc. working and left. He has the highest vacancies or people who left his administration than any administration?

Do you remember Trump’s ban on transgender in the military? Do you remember Trump mocking the late John McCain claiming that he wasn’t a war hero because he was captured? Do you remember when he called those type of people ‘losers’ that many veterans took offense because they served their country as well as they did? Do you remember when Trump question the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and sacrificed and turned to John Kelly and said, “I just don’t get it” when John Kelly’s son died in the war?

I could list so much more. So many more. What was even worse was that under Trump, our country never has been this polarized. This country has never been so divisible. Both parties are blaming each other. While we know that the facts remain about Trump and his administration, there are people who supported him all around the world, claiming “fake news” and refusing to double check those facts themselves. Why is it that lies are more believable than the truth? Is it because people are afraid of admitting they are wrong? Is it because people finally find like-minded people and are stubborn to admit they were wrong because they didn’t want to leave a group where they felt their opinions matter? Is it because people are indifferent to other people’s pain? Their opportunities taken away? Is it much easier for people to shrug off their shoulders and say “it is what it is”? Just as what Trump said during this covid pandemic and how he would respond differently to more than 200,000 lives gone? I am not even surprised that the president had covid, but it doesn’t change his views or his stance on covid.

I am scared. I am scared for the soul of our country. I know our country have its dark history with breaking treaties with Native Americans, with slavery, with Jim Crows laws, segregations, wars, becoming a face of democracy and secretly rigging elections in third world countries because the outcome would benefits our country and so much more. I believe in the positivity of the country’s progress. We have grown up so far so that we could be in a place where we could finally have laws that matched the constitution that “all man are created equal”. All people are created equal and deserve the same rights and the same privileges as each other. So while we have made so much progress, there is this president that America voted four years ago that shred up all of those progress! Look what happened with gun violence, police brutality, voters’ suppressions, etc. Look what happened when the courts or other police stand by or supported the words of the officers over the victims because they were biased toward the police, laws that needed to be changed or there need to be more resources such as dash-cams needed to be installed, or even . Look what happened with the Keystone Pipeline that threatened our native lands!

We even have a president who refused to do something about the climate change! Trees are dying, the ocean is in pollution of numerous of plastics, waste that we contributed to kill off other animals’ lives or that affected their habitat negatively. Trump was against alternative energy, claiming about wind power that is killing birds or that he claimed people are just fine in putting more waste in the environment. Because of his reluctance to helping our Earth, winter are getting more colder and dangerous with snow storms and hurricanes. Our summers are getting more hotter with the fires that devastated the west coast and that thousand of people are dying from heat exhaustion, heat wave, etc. The midwest are dealing with more tornados than before. 2020 has topped all previous weather or environmental records in several states or countries. It is just disastrous! All of those regulations that the president strapped off years ago have given more companies or corporations to gain profit, gain more equipments to do more damage to the environment every day. There was an article that it is not the matter of if anymore. Because the consequences that the world would face has already happened and that it was the matter of now to prevent those consequences from being worse.

Even in the election, we shouldn’t have the fear of what would happen if our president does not concede if he loses. That is something that should scare so many people. What would happen if the president does not concede? Would the Supreme Court sided with Trump about the election? Would there be an illegible recount in hopes for Trump’s officials to try to rig the election with more ballots? What if the recount cause Trump to win? What does that means? Would there be a revolution? A civil war? What if Trump does concede but his supporters would be outraged to cause a civil war?

Whatever that means, all of this shouldn’t happen. A presidential election should just be boring and whoever the next president, the transition should be smooth. Our constitution is in crisis. Our democracy is in perils. If there are something afoul with our government, our democracy, and our votes in this election, then come what may, we should do something. We should get our voices heard or our hands seen. We should go out and protest, revolt if we have to. If it leads to a constitutional crisis or to start off a new government in the process, so be it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We should go out there and vote! Vote by mail or vote in person safely. Make sure you check if your vote is valid. The power is in our hands. What would you do with that power? Would you keep it for yourself like our president did? Or would you share it for others in need?

#election #anxitey #election anxiety #vote #change #scared #fear #power #hate #love #democracy #2020 election #go biden #fuck trump

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lacroixsucks · 4 years

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this most likely will never escape my drafts but if it did, hEr3.

here is the descriptions of all of my ocs and everything you need to know about my paracosm/books !

i have goldfish memory so most likely i will take this down numerous times to edit it or add info.

quite a few clear-ups before i start—

•my oc vampire’s kryptonite is silver. ex; silver bullets, particles of silver, smell of silver (damages lungs and makes being cough or wheeze depending on the time exposed) vampires are not affected by the touch of silver but if the internal system comes within contact of the metal, the vampire will react by death. silver is the only thing that can poison or potentially kill them.

•one of the ways a sovran can be killed is through heir pregnancy. sovranty is through the sovran and the sovran’s heir. there can only ever be one sovran and one sovran heir at a time so if the sovran’s heir gets pregnant or impregnates (bond or not), the original sovran dies, the sovran’s heir becomes the sovran and the original sovran’s heir’s son/daughter is the heir. [ex; ivan was the vampurity sovran when revrenn got ruby pregnant. revrenn was the heir but didn’t know it as well. so, to stop himself (ivan) from dying and revrenn taking over as the new sovran, ibex killed ruby’s unborn baby. if ruby would have given birth, ibex would’ve died, revrenn would’ve been the new sovran, and their baby would have became revrenn’s (sovran’s) heir].

•vampire woman can bear children but it’s very risky. the woman is vulnerable for disease and is very fragile during later weeks/trimesters.

•scrolls define vampurity. the scrolls were written and enchanted to create the laws of vampurity. these laws cannot be broken nor defied unless you’re a sovran..or someone willing to die. destroying a scroll results in instant death to the holder. therefore, if one decides to destroy a scroll, they will die with it.

•three types of supernatural-to-supernatural bonds exist. these bonds create a link from soul to soul that cannot be broken without the use of forbidden magic. these bonds consist of the romantic bond, parental bond, and the oppo bond. the romantic bond is as it sounds; a romantic soul-connected relation between man and women, women and women, or man and man. the parental bond is a soul-connection between an elder being and a younger being. no romance is involved in the parental bond. the purpose of the parental bond is for the elder to be connected to the youth for protectional purposes only (ex; revrenn had a parental bond with ruby because of her mother and father but the 8-9 year gap between them left for the bond to abolish and reform into romantic). it is not ped0philia unless the elder party is sexually/romantically involved with the younger being while still parentally bonded. although it is real, there have been no official or court related records of any elder ever being attracted sexually to a minor or their parental bond. the parental bond is also the only bond that can fade or break. the connection can fade through fulfillment or the loss of need for protection. every bond that forms always has a connection, despite being broken or not. the last bond is the oppo bond. the oppo bond is the soul-connection between two beings that share an unworldly friendship. this bond is not compared to clutch mates, the oppo bond is the strongest bond and most rare to achieve. clutch mates are bound and don’t always get along, greatly differing from the relation between two beings in an oppo bond. the only bond of the three that can be sealed and permanently unable to abolish, no matter how much magic, is romantic. the romantic bond can be “sealed” or set forever through sex. but, for the romantic bond to be even stronger than it already is, both parties have to remain with virginity through supernatural (ex; if a human had lost their virginity while mortal but bonded to another being, they would be able to seal. it’s only when the supernatural has sex with another being that they are not bonded to that they lose their ability to withhold a better future romantic bond).

•you’d be wondering how vampurity started if it was passed through vampire-to-human venom injection by now, i assume. the race was started through a rose. an egyptian (egypt became the jerusalem of supernatural at that time) merchant created a spell that fractured a human soul from physical form. the merchant, eviolé, split an innocent human named roane, and casted the man’s soul into a red rose. the rose turned blue from the switch and began to slowly absorb the soul’s nutrients. the soul’s needs bonded to the rose’s and over time, the soul within had fully became self-reliant. the rose with the soul still intact inside came to live forever, even after roane’s soul was unsplit and casted onto a human body. but he was poisoned by the rose’s glucose and had became in need of inner fluid, blood. while roane was trapped, he created his own food using photosynthesis. the rose had replaced all of its inner fluid with a human blood-like substance. so, when he was separated, he feasted on other humans as it was the only thing he knew to do from feeding off his own blood for centuries. thus, creating the first full being of vampurity.

•all coven boys were turned from near death experiences and allowed into the coven because of their backgrounds,, ex; they were all lacking something in their life that the coven fulfilled.

*members that have died are in italics*

main ocs:

-coven founders

kris (kris zhang) - second official alpha, no bond/lover, killed by severus in surprise attack while hunting in 2015, turned in china from near death in the battle of Beijing in 1644, 397yo (as of 2015), character visual inspo: kris wu // loyal, powerful, influential, warming, friendly, book and street smart,, cocky at times, overthinks, can easily be outsmarted but still highly intelligent (overthinks outcome), jealousy

dante (tidus dante quartz) - first ever official alpha and creator of the quartz coven, no bond/lover, turned by a vampire immigrant in the New World 1630, “disappeared” in 1994 when kris became alpha (also ruby’s birth year), sacrificed himself for revrenn in the final battle, about 415yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: booboo stewart // determined, skilled, accurate, hopeless romantic, admirably charming, thoughtful,, very impatient yet slow paced, bad at controlling urges, frequently over charms hopeless women/men...........rumored to be bisexual

-first clutch (group) in coven

revrenn ( revrenn halene ,, also known as rev for short) - sovran of vampurity, husband/bond of ruby, father of vyron, turned from suicide attempt, first coven boy turned in america, exactly 100yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: mikey way (thank bullets and revenge for that) and sehun oh // humble, leader, reserved, caring, overprotective at times, thoughtful,, gives up fast, major procrastinator, gets jealous really easy, hopeless romantic, over thinker, self doubter (low self esteem)

ruby (ruby monterro/halene) - wife/bond of revrenn, mother of vyron (ibex forced her miscarriage. she would have two kids but instead only has vyron), turned by revrenn on request of immortality and future sovranty, turned 2016, only 22yo (as of 2016), no character visual inspo // very shy and courteous but also highly defensive towards enemies,, tends to over-bluff around enemies

vyron (vyron halene) - son of revrenn and ruby, future father, sovran heir, mixed species (human to vampire) bond with melanie, born into vampurity, only 17yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: jisung park, hendery // acquires mixed personality but mostly ruby then rev,, procrastinator to the max, over-bluffs, can be cocky, can be selfish

mark1 (mark lake,, also known as uno) - third coven alpha, husband/bond of lisa, turned from suicide attempt, third turned in coven, exactly 100yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: mark tuan // big goofball but in the bad way, feeling lucky kinda dude, deceiving, impulsive, gentle,, extreme over-bluffs, cowardly, feminine (not a bad thing but he gets bullied by the other coven members), he’s mostly feminine because he had been babied during his alpha years

henry (henry iverson) - no bond, died by silver bullet wound, second in-law/apprentice (served under kris), turned by starvation/desertion, exactly 100yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: jung jaehyun // smart, quick, smartass,, easily down, bipolar, self-doubts a lot

-second clutch in coven

lucas (lucas dean bell) - no bond (but if human-to-human bonding was a thing he definitely would be), died in the final battle destroying the restricting scroll (scroll restricting the bonds between cross-species and humans), fell in love in 1956 with a girl named penny roe (she was kidnapped and murdered a year later), turned 1957 by murder/stab wounds, also had a crush on ruby at first, 78yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: wong yukhei, matt dillon (the outsiders matt dillon) // witted, politically comedic, tough but actually a softie, strong, he knows his place and worth,, defensive, 60’s mindset, violent when irritated

michael (michael haven) - no bond, turned from impact at river party/beer blast, exactly 78yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: vernon (svt) // closeted gay, funny, hilarious, actually comedic, can make people piss their pants laughing, stupid, but intelligent,, low self-esteem from rejected parents and dates, “too” soft (acts tough but isn’t), lies about mental health (especially after lucas’ death)

victor (victor moon) - wife/bonded to noelle of the outlawed spell guardians (osg for short), father of navy (same age as vyron and named after bristol boy, navy hectorin), turned by drowning, 78yo (as of 2016), he ran away from the coven a couple years after being turned in 1957 and found a bond-he sealed (sealing is finishing the bond with s3x) and soon ran away in fear of childbearing despite his bond being infertil. this effects his relation with noelle and their struggle with having a baby,, character visual inspo: lee taeyong // determined, rough but also gentle, phat feminist, kind but also malevolent when he needs,, he usually has great control of his emotions but sometimes he slips, he can be too rough, heartless on occasion, overprotective, overly attaching

-third clutch in coven

finn (finn lowell) - acted as coven’s spy to common enemy ivan but left axis and became the coven’s allie again (after being punished with a whip for it by ivan), bond of michelle of the outlawed spell guardians, turned by suicide after parents death in 1965, 69yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: hwang hyunjin, lucas till // kind, respectful, territorial, strong,, easily manipulated, usually used, tends to feel worthless/low self-concept

jade (jade thomas) - worked alongside finn as a spy but more loyal to ivan, split his own soul to protect ruby as a favor for his betrayal to revrenn in the final battle, soon was casted into a dog (a golden retriever) instead of being recasted into a human (the coven decided this because of his reluctancy to defend ruby when ivan killed her and revrenn’s unborn child), turned by father’s neglect in 1965, 69yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: bang chan // loner, friendly, level 9000 persuader,, untrustworthy, vague, amoral

adrian (adrian gray) - one of the best bo1s, honestly one of the biggest coven babies even though he’s not the youngest, he worked as one of the potion sorcerers (created potions for other coven members), he had a crush and a lil girlfriend when he was in school but it didn’t last past his graduation, he was turned from bullet wounds and escape attempt and taken out from school by coven, 68yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: na jaemin // innocent, tame, compassionate, loving,, decisive, second-guesses himself frequently, extreme levels of guilt (adrian had given ruby a vampire characteristic potion to enhance her strength but it wore off and broke two of her ribs while she was jumping)

-forth clutch in coven

mark (mark wells) - third baby boy in coven (more liked babied. him and zayne had became shut out of the cove and from discussions after kris’ death), died in the final battle destroying the sun and thirst scrolls. bonded (oppo bond) to navy hectorin of the allied bristol boys, turned by abduction/rape/murder in 1974, 62yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: mark lee // shy, reserved, defensive of close friends within coven, well-rounded,, lowest self-esteem, feminine (characterized by the boys), sensitive

zayne (zayne post) - second baby boy in coven (yet same scenario with zayne as mark), one of ruby’s go to buddies after mark and lucas passed, turned by suffocation from older brother after feud, 61yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: zhong chenle // traits similar if not the same to mark (both became outcasts in the coven resulting in the similar personalities)

not main ocs but also really important:

ivan - main mastermind/enemy, murdered first vampurity sovran over contact to outside human world in 1864 and becomes second sovran, never bonded or fell in love, turned in italy by thirst vampire, 216yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: cody fern // well rounded physically, admirable to humans, intelligent, witted,, manipulative, sweatless liar, overbearing, cocky, extremely high self-esteem/self-concept

kellian - ibex’s secondhand man, numerously involved with ruby at the beginning of the series through kidnaps and murder attempts, no bond or particular love interest(s), turned by vampurity-siren hybrids in the atlantic ocean at the sinking of the titanic, 125yo (as of 2016), character visual inspo: troye sivan, machine gun kelly // mysterious, swift, engaging, captivating, charming,, bipolar, violent based, trouble controlling urges..........also rumored to be bisexual

…

feel free to spam my asks with any questions you have abt the boysand their story’s !!

also, if this post is unavailable through my bio, im most likely editing it

#@revrenn #@ruby #@vyron #@uno #@henry #@lucas #@vernon #@victor #@finn #@jade #@adrian #@mark #@zayne #vampire #vampire hookers #maladaptive daydreaming #madd #/madd #paracosm #madd parame

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angelicspaceprince · 6 years

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Saving Lucifer

Author: Anna

Title: Saving Lucifer

Pairing: Gabriel/Reader, brother!Lucifer/Gabriel

Character/s: Gabriel, Castiel, unnamed demons, Lucifer

Word Count: 2, 485 words

Warnings/Tags: PTSD, Lulu not being very sneaky, angry Lulu, brotherly Lulu, this caused me tears, I use Maccas references because I was tired when I wrote this....

Summary: Set during 'Saving Loki', Lucifer could not imagine the sort of pain Gabriel was forced to experience, but during his time sneaking around your home and observing the two of you, he had formed some kind of idea. If he wasn't so impressed with the way you were handling it, he was sure there would be a massacre. Afterall, anyone who dares to harm his brother deserves the worst kind of death.

Notes: So....because I'm a dork, I anonymously messaged thewhiterabbit42 about writing a fic where Lucifer gets pissed and destroys everything in a rage because #brotherlylove but it came out NOTHING LIKE I WANTED IT TO. Anyway, hope you enjoy it in any case because I'm just procrastinating writing the official Part 3 of this series hereby dubbed 'Saving Grace' but I'm hoping it'll be out soon.

Also, someone requested a fic about Gabe and the reader's life prior to McFuckFace's and was wondering if anyone else was interested? If I get enough interest in it, then I'll write it either before or after Saving Grace...I have thought about adding a french maid outfit into it because elyshakate is a bitch who gives me so many ideas. Love you but God I hate you babe.

Tags: oddone92, thewhiterabbit42 elyshakate, authoressskr micas-dont-like-rain, vitosfangirl, lilacprincessofrecovery, angelus320, fanfictionandjunk, 69percentgay, rls905, thepallaspalace, duckgirl16, thoughtfullyoptimisticgalaxy, spearqueenbean, stardustinherhair, saltvattenshar, iamrebeccasblog, ever-faithful-sidekick, govaliantblizzardprincess, pinkypie9211, djpaige13paige, spookysculderfiles - if you want to be tagged (or I've accidentally put you on the wrong tag list) message me to let me know!

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Saving Lucifer

To say Lucifer was pissed would be an understatement. Looking over his sleeping brother as he twitches and twists in silent terror, clearly his dreams haunting him.

He shouldn’t be dreaming at all. He’s an archangel, sleeping was a human custom that Lucifer never saw the benefit of. But for the past three nights that he has silently observed his terrified brother, it was evident that he was exhausted by the smallest of tasks to the point where he required multiple nights plus a good six to eight hours of sleep overnight. Not that it helped with anything, every moment of every day he was terrified.

His girlfriend was patient, possibly more patient than he would have been. If he had been the one to take care of him, he would have ripped out those blasted stitches from his mouth the moment he saw him. But you? You appeared to be calm, although the rants to muttered to yourself when you thought no one was around suggested otherwise. You approached him with certainty and never stopped speaking, words soft and reassuring. The one time you properly freaked him out, you adjusted quickly. You hid all the sharps that were freaking him out and didn’t even talk about removing his stitches, even though he knew you were dying to. He didn’t need to listen in to the conversations you held with yourself to know that.

The thing that shocked him was the amount of space you gave him. You allowed him to dictate the space he needed when he needed to alone, pretty much everything. You got him to shower without touching him, encouraging him to do things like stand by the window in the sun or watch the TV. He had taken a liking to ‘Scooby Do, Where Are You?’ Lucifer had found, which amused him greatly.

You never touched him, which was shocking. Humans were such tactile creatures, with very few exceptions. He figured that you would have treated him with more….hands on measures than what you currently were undertaking. Don’t get him wrong, he knew that you were desperate to be able to at the very least touch his hand. The few rare moments you snuck into Gabriel’s room during particularly bad nightmares during his naps and overnight to stroke his hair and kiss his forehead as you leave to calm him down enough to sleep left him feeling….comfortable with him in your care.

Not that anyone, no matter how long they tortured him for, would be able to make him confess that.

The thing that got him about you, however, was that no matter how much you wanted to, you didn’t contact those damned Winchester brothers and their pet angel. You were tempted, by his Father you were tempted. But you never went through with it, never getting past typing the first word or first three numbers of their cells before you quickly deleted it and the idea from your mind.

He had come to respect you for that.

He supposed he could leave. The past three days have been…eventful, but he knew he could trust you with the care of his broken but slowly repairing brother.

But he couldn’t.

Not if there was a slim chance that his brother needed him.

So those three days turned into three weeks, three months. He found that you quickly found ways to help Gabriel cope, knocking softly on all the doors until you heard a faint grunt instead of shouting out that you were home, humming and quietly singing to yourself whenever he was in the room in an effort to keep him calm, setting up silent alarms to inform you if he was having an ‘attack’, as you called it, so you could go and talk to him.

Sometimes it would be about your day, others comforting and encouraging him, and others it was the memories of your relationship before this all happened. Funny stories that made him laugh, sad ones that made him close to tears (no, not a single one fell and if anyone saw that, they were lying and were going to be tortured for the rest of eternity). If Lucifer felt guilt over the ‘death’ of his brother back in that stupid hotel filled with the Pagans, after hearing Y/N’s account of the event? For the first time in his life, Lucifer felt guilty and horror over his actions.

He began to respect you, even though you were human. Out of all the apes he had encountered, you were definitely fast becoming his favourite. Clearly, you loved his brother and were good for – and to – him.

When your first major breakthrough occurred, he nearly jumped for joy. Gabriel had broken some unimportant item and when you released that perhaps a garden would be a good idea for him, you struck a deal. Very cunningly too, he thought, even if it wasn’t your intention.

The stitches were out and Gabriel got to go outside. He laughed lightly when you lost him only to find him plastered all over the cake display unit like a three-year-old.

Only Gabriel.

He still didn’t speak, but the garden looked amazing and Lucifer was impressed how much it helped his brother. He had always loved nature, and this was a fantastic way to bring him back to the present when the past caught up to him.

Lucifer didn’t, however, truly lose it until he saw his brother’s wings.

Decaying, broken, revolting, pus-filled wings that were not even a tenth of what they once were. Lucifer’s wings had been dying since the day he fell, and slowly becoming more and more hellish, but Gabriel’s? After a few months Earth time in Hell? Were way worse.

He didn’t stay to see the grooming process, he very quickly found the demons responsible for that particular part of Gabriel’s torture and proceeded to very slowly, very painfully, kill all six of them. Not one let him know the ringleader of this entire event, but as long as the six of them paid for nearly killing his brother with their antics, he truly didn’t care.

When the boys came to visit, he nearly lost his mind with how far back Gabriel retreated. Y/N handled the situation with grace and care, keeping calm as she instructed the boys on what to do. The look on Castiel’s face confirmed what Lucifer already knew, he had no idea Gabriel was back.

You managed to calm Gabriel with ease, something that Lucifer was always incredibly amazed at. Even when Gabriel was small, once he was worked up in any way, shape or form, he was incredibly difficult to calm down.

When you found him in your room, the both of you were slightly surprised, but you did well to hide it and went in to talk to him about random things about your childhood, several things you had spoken to him about before but Lucifer gathered that you had only had a tiny existence on this earth in comparison to the two archangels in the room so you probably ran out of stories quick.

What surprised Lucifer most of all was how, eventually, Gabriel had moved to be next to you, carefully avoiding all the shattered glass and ceramics so his legs are millimeters from touching yours. Your voice falters before stopping as he grabs your hand, squeezing it gently, and Lucifer’s eyes widened slightly in disbelief at the first contact he had witnessed where Gabriel initiated it himself without prompting. When he got up to clean the mess he had created, Lucifer’s attention drew to you.

Your exterior looked calm as always, but your eyes showed your mind running and racing, planning ahead, trying to figure out a way to introduce Gabriel to Cassie and the boys without a freakout.

So, when you woke up from a nightmare that night, he wasn’t surprised. Lucifer still didn’t see the benefit of sleeping, especially when the two people he has observed sleeping were seemingly being tortured as they did so.

He knew your routine by now. He would be a liar if he said he didn’t find it curious the way you automatically went through your checklist. Breathe deep, meditate, wash your face, have a drink, sleep. He did it alongside with you numerous times to see the benefit but never figured it out. When you looked around your bathroom’s bench confused, trying to find your glass, he wasn’t amused. Not in the slightest.

After all, a sleep-deprived you is not a funny you.

When it clicked and you decided to go down to the kitchen to get a new cup, Lucifer decided to go see how his brother was faring.

He wasn’t in his room.

Panic rises in him as he quickly looks around the second floor of the house. Gabriel had ‘ran away’ early after his stitches were removed, but you found him with ease (in fact, you didn’t even panic. Just stood up, walked out to the car and returned twenty minutes later with a shivering Gabriel), and since then if Lucifer couldn’t find him immediately, his stomach would drop.

He rushes downstairs with such speed that when he grinds to a halt, he slides across the wooden floor right past the living room and into the kitchen where you are standing, staring at the faint glow emitting from the garden room.

The both of you walk in slowly and the grin on your face when you saw the messy and unidentifiable structure constructed of pillows, blankets and fairy lights caused Lucifer to calm down.

When you got down on your knees and crawled into the opening, Lucifer followed in suit. There is where he found his brother, sleeping softly for the first time since Lucifer had seen him sleep, in a nest of cushions and blankets from around the house, breathing evenly and softly. You kneel by him, hands moving to play with his hair, almost with minds of their own, before thinking better of it and resting in your lap. Lucifer wasn’t even sure you were aware of this, you did it often. He figured it was your body remembering the way you used to be able to act around him, prior to McChicken Fried Fuck as you so lovingly call his creation. Humans weren’t awfully creative, but they are amusing.

When Gabriel’s eyes suddenly opened and locked onto yours, you muttered an apology and quickly made way to exit when Gabriel opened his mouth to protest.

‘Stay. Please.’

If Lucifer had a heart, it would be broken.

He knew that Gabriel had been talking for a few days now, hearing you get excited whenever you marked his progress out loud when you were beginning to think that he was never going to get better. But he never expected his voice to be so…. broken.

Gone was confident, sarcastic, joking Gabriel and in his stead was someone Lucifer didn’t know. Even his begging tone that was hinted in his voice as he asks you to stay was foreign. Lucifer truly didn’t know how to feel.

When Gabriel told you he loved you, Lucifer decided it was enough feelings for him for one day and left the two of you in the glowing blanket heap. After all, the two of you probably deserved some alone time. And McChicken Fried Fuck wasn’t going to torture himself.

~~~

Gabriel was having another nightmare.

This was a regular occurrence, and he wasn’t quite ready to move into the same bed as you even though the two of you often slept in the mass of blankets and pillows in the garden room. Perhaps it was too personal to Gabriel or reminded him too much of what life was before all of….this.

You were forced to leave the house for a hunt, rogue angels had found out that Gabriel was, in fact, alive and wanted to use the remainder of his grace to create more angels. Lucifer was too weak to fight, and if his brother had faith in you then he did too. Besides. If the angels got hold of two weakened archangels, who knows the havoc they’d create? Lucifer loved his brothers and sisters, but he’d be the first to admit that the majority of them were dumb as rocks.

So, with you on protection detail, that left him in the reassurance aisle, something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.

Lucifer sets forward, cooing in Enochian, pulling forward a long-forgotten lullaby he used to sing to his brother. He could see it slowly calming Gabriel down until his breathing evened. Lucifer felt a rare smile grace his lips. He was going to be alright.

‘I know you’re there.’ Gabriel’s once-confident voice rings through his head.

‘I’m not surprised. How long?’ He responds quietly, projecting his voice softly into Gabriel’s mind. He doesn’t even wince.

‘Since I showed Y/N my wings. You weren’t so quiet when you left. You’re not as sneaky as you once were, Lulu.’ The teasing ton is there faintly, but there. Lucifer smiles.

‘I blame old age.’ He could hear his brother’s laughter as his shoulders shake in amusement. ‘Why didn’t you tell Y/N?’

‘I didn’t want to lose you or her.’ He admits. ‘I thought if I told her that I would have had to have given one of you up.’ Lucifer hums as he moves to stand. ‘Stay?’ His voice is desperate as it calls out to him. ‘Please?’

For the first time since they were fledglings, Lucifer pulls Gabriel into his lap, wings forming to cover the two of them in a safe, enclosed space, away from the world. Gabriel sniffles as he gets comfortable in his brother’s lap. ‘Missed you, Luce.’

‘Missed you too.’

Since the Fall, Lucifer refused to let his guard down. But, he felt comfortable doing so now, body calm and relaxed. He was safe. He felt….he didn’t know what he felt it was a new sensation, as if his body was being pulled down into the mattress but in a comforting way?

‘Drowsiness, Lulu, you’re falling asleep.’ Gabriel gently informs him. Lucifer hums as he slowly begins to fall. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For saving me too.’

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For letting me be your brother again.’

~~~

When you walk in the room the next morning to find two sleeping archangels, you didn’t even blink. You knew Lucifer was near, or at least some form of angel. Weird little things like food when you hadn’t been shopping or the TV suddenly turning onto a show Gabriel would like whenever he was in too much of a state to work the remote clued you in. So, when this scene greets your eyes, you simply smile and shut the door.

Best to leave your archangel and his guardian alone to sleep for a while longer.

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empmoniitor · 3 years

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TIME WASTERS : HOW TO TACKLE AND MANAGE TIME WASTERS IN THE WORKPLACE

Currently, we are living in the middle of a pandemic and trying to acclimate to work from home. However, we all endure struggles to keep our productive momentum going and keep the distractions of our comfort zones at bay.

The worst part of the time is it keeps ticking whether you notice it or not. And time is money that’s why time wasters has been a constant matter of concern for the organization. It does not matter if employees are working from home or operating in offices.

We are not here to offer you the productivity experts to analyze the time-wasting activities or persons. In this article, you will witness the discussion for time-wasting distractions, tips to stay productive, and tactics to overcome them.

So, without any further delay, let us dive into the topic;

Do you know office workers, according to research, get interrupted every 11 minutes, then it takes 25 more minutes to get back on track? Is it a burden-boosting practice? Therefore eradicating distractions can assist the employees for better productivity, decreasing their stress, and helps them to stay focused and efficient.

To apprehend, below is the list of some habits which every employee must keep at bay while working. If not possible, then some tips to keep them at balance.

TIME WASTING HABITS TO AVOID WHILE WORKING

Knowing how employees mistreat their time can be proved helpful for an individual and management. So, both parties understand where they can take the necessary steps to avoid them.

Here are 04-time wasters habits for the employee while working from home;

SOCIAL MEDIA

This term is an effective time wasters for the workplace and work-from-home employees because no matter where we go, social media platforms and smartphones are constantly with us.

Social media is a tremendous time-eater; the average user wastes their time in social media at least two hours a day on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It can distract you while working on superior tasks. However, once distracted, it takes much more effort to regain the focus momentum.

The best way to overcome social media distraction for individuals is to set a particular time during the day. Decide and slot the specific time to log in to your social media account and spend decided time to refresh your mind.

While for management, using productivity tracking software can assist in tracking down the time taken to complete a specific task by an employee. It will make employees stay focused on their tasks and further meet deadlines without getting distracted.

PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS

Personal calls, the water coolers talk, chit chats, chatty workers, app notifications are dangerous day eaters for your professional time. No matter how hard we try, these factors are undeniable.

But in certain circumstances, it is not ideal for the conversation between the team workers to get blocked. It is essential to building a trust bond between them. Although personal conversation can be a disturbance while working remotely, once you get involved in the chats, an hour will slide by in a few minutes.

The best way to keep the disturbance away is to set up your working space in a separate room for an isolated environment for a better working mind. Also, we agree it is difficult but try to ban cell phone usage if not possible, keep track of the amount of time you are spending on it.

THE CHAOS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Personal responsibilities are the biggest obstacle to productivity for remote working employees. Although, it is beneficial to manage some of the individual liabilities while maintaining your working rounds like dropping off the children, buying groceries, and many more. But these responsibilities came across in your professional duties.

Keep a to-do schedule ready for all your tasks and try to figure out the works managed at different times of the day.

LAZY SCHEDULES

During a 9-5 work cycle, you work, and when done, you sign off. It sounds boring and old but, at least it keeps you in perfect momentum of productivity.

But at home, you can perform the work whenever you desire, hop multiple breaks in between, the privilege of waking up late and end up working till midnight. Evade disordered timing by setting a flexible or strict (whichever you are comfortable with ) schedule to follow up and plan your leverages accordingly.

Above mentioned features are drafted for remote workers here some time-wasting habits while in office working routines.

LACK OF PRIORITIZATION

You can save your precious time by managing the task which needs your attention and is severe. Employees misuse their time due to a deficiency of prioritization, especially for multi-tasking employees and teams.

Make a habit of listing the task required to perform first and plan accordingly for the whole week. This way, you focus your mind on the priority task and can complete them before the deadlines.

Are you finding it challenging to meet your deadlines? Want a few tactics to make deadlines your positive points? Click here.

The upcoming section is proven to be demotivated, causing a bundle of unproductivity and disengagement.

PROCRASTINATION

Sometimes we have some task that makes us postpone unless it becomes urgent or the deadline comes nearby. Either remote working or office working employees procrastinating tasks are the cause of piling up the assignments.

Postponing the current task does not mean that you do not need to finish it. Instead of procrastinating, try to finish it in the most productive hours, try to focus and train the mind, set up the timer, and finish it instead of waiting for the deadlines to come.

REGULAR WATCHING AT YOUR MAILS

Checking your email box is a waste of time, and we tend to do it several times a day. Apart from some emails, the majority of emails are unnecessary and just promotional stuff. While checking your inbox, you are diverting your mind from the task. As said earlier, once distracted, it would take 25 min to get your mind back on track.

Most of the emails come because you have subscribed to numerous sites. Try to deregister the sites, not obliged to diminish the clutter in the inbox.

EMPMONITOR

Keeping track of individual productivity can be a daunting task, but necessary too. Identifying time-wasters can be a great way to gain productivity and efficiency. Fortunately, with time and productivity management tools, this task is done easily. Employee monitoring software can unburden tracking and monitoring tasks to a great extent.

EmpMonitor is a cloud storage software efficient in managing time and monitoring employees from a single dashboard. EmpMonitor account is accessible to any internet-enabled device giving you access from anywhere at any time. Easy to go with user management, get real-time insights, manage attendance, and automating screenshots capturing.

Instead of executing various critical policies, being supportive can get your team on productive pathways. Let’s see how to tackle time wasters in an organization.

HOW TO OVERCOME TIME WASTERS IN AN ORGANIZATION

Here are a 02 tactics to overcome time wasters for your employees.;

FOCUS ON MEETING AGENDAS

The main tactic to have a productive meeting is to inform the team earlier regarding the meeting agendas. So that they would be clear about the matter of discussion for the meeting and cutting the cords of unnecessary presence.

When you trace down the subject and matter of the meeting, the chances are high that you will conduct a to-the-put conversation resulting in less time wastage.

TIME TRACKING

When you know and trace how you are spending your time, you become more efficient. That’s the reason why relying on employee monitoring or productivity managing software like EmpMonitor is recommended.

Equipped with URL tracking, browser history, and idle time calculator, you can track your employee’s and individual’s own time and maintain it accordingly.

Don’t worry about getting hateful for monitoring your employees. According to research, 80& of employees say it’s ok for an organization to monitor their profession-related tasks and find it beneficial for themselves also.

PLAN OUT

Lack of planning is the emphasized reason why time wasters takes over our lives. Framing the day can create a blueprint in your mind, so you will be clear about what tasks need to be completed on that particular day. This leads you to cut off the feeling of constrained and pressured.

Try to plan out the priority tasks on short breaks and how to complete them on time. This way you are saving your time and chances of less temptation to revolve around time-wasting activities.

CHECK OUT OUR LATEST BLOG;

A Complete Guide To Facebook Banner Size For Marketers Top 8 Ways To Boost Your Instagram Reach 5 Productivity Metrics With Examples To Measure Employee Performance

SAY NO TIME WASTAGE !

It’s kind of discouraging and disheartening , when the simple task takes much more time. However , when you adopt a more effective process for managing the time ,you can train yourself and employees to fix the time issue they are getting with it.

Remote work is beneficial for both workers and management. But that doesn’t imply that working from home is an excellent combination. As we’ve seen, there are several productivity tricks that remote workers can come into, spending their time and disturbing the course on both sides of the comparison. Dodge these, however, and you’ll establish a more constant, more active, more fruitful employed position.

Did I skip something or any suggestion, please let me know in the comment section below. I Would love to hear about it.

GOOD LUCK !!

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

#Employee Monitoring #Employee Management #Employee Productivity #Employee Monitoring Software #Time Wasters

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drmyler · 3 years

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The - I & ME - Psychoanalysis

The “I” & the “ME” - a Psycho-therapeutic Perspective

Abstract:

The concept of the model – I & ME – came from therapeutic practice over many years, as a demonstration model, to explain past trauma and how it effects or informs thinking, emotion and behaviour in the “here and now” moment when facing new choices and decisions from the perspective of the persons survival and well-being – whether this be negative or a positive reaction to circumstances. (1. Myler 2002)

This paper explains to way the model works practically in therapy and its usefulness to help clients / patients understand the unconscious processes that can influence their every day lives. The outcome being enabling the client / patient to make better informed choices with an open mind to the influences from the past that may be steering them towards negative decision making based on faulty thinking and inappropriate behaviours.

Introduction:

The “ME”

In order to understand the model of the “I & ME” we must first decide the meaning of each element and how it affects the other. The “ME” can be seen as your social self - that part of your personality that is made up of trait behaviours such as being – good or bad – kind or unkind etc. Traits are ways of describing someone to another in order to communicate a shared understanding of that person. If I was to ask your five best friends – who are you? They would most likely describe you as a series of trait words, he / she is kind, thoughtful, active and generous. This then gives a shared view of the persons social self (ME). The “ME” then becomes the shared view of the persons character and what behaviour to expect from them if you should interact with them. It also bears witness from friends how they see that person behaving in numerous situations – therefore has a predictive value to knowing what to expect (expectations) in situations confronting that person. Attribution is the idea that we assign values to others based on very little information or insight – therefore the accuracy of the social self (ME) is subject to attribution-error in the sense of how well do people really know us?

However the concept of mirroring can occur in the client / patient in the sense that if enough friends describe you a certain way then you start to believe this is in fact who you are. In this case many people try to live up to and imitate the social self as others have seen them – in other words the “ME” become who you think you are and who you would want to be. A reflection (mirroring) of others opinion of you is also how they react and treat you on a daily basis. This can also have the effect of imprisoning the clients personality within defined ranges of how others see us such as family, close friends and colleagues, who can hem us into a person type, that they expect of us and we come to expect of ourselves. It is no accident that people who travel often and meet many strangers have a better idea of their inner self as they are free to express repressed parts of their personality without it effecting the opinion of those who know them on a daily basis. It is here that we can discuss the concept of the “I” over the “ME” in the model.

The “I”

The “I” is best described as our secret self - that part of us that only we know about – that keeps our secrets from the past – whether traumatic, shameful or biographical – the “I” is the unconscious influencer that informs the “ME” silently but often effectively in its decision making. How then is the “I” created from the past? In order to understand this some examples are the best illustration.

Case 1:

The boy was eight years old – at that moment he stands with his younger sister being surrounded by five older boys who are intent on bullying him – in order to survive this eight year olds mind makes a decision to cry. The strategy being that if he cries the boys will leave them alone. However at the moment of tears his sister, looking assertive towards the bullies, turns to him and asks him why he is crying like a baby? The boy immediately feels shame, embarrassment and fear. Shame that his sister thinks he is a coward, embarrassment in that the boys are laughing at his show of fear and further he fears that his strategy has backfired and more bullying is going to happen. As the boy grows up to be a teenager the one moment of trauma stays with him although the actual incident is long forgotten to memory. However his “I” has retained the idea of being a coward – he cannot shake the feeling when his “ME” is confronted with situations that require him to be brave he has an unspeakable fear response, he becomes aware he may be judged (just as his sister had done) and so with great pain he tries to as an adult to do what is expected of him from the social self (“ME”) and react accordingly even though he feels just as he did at eight years old. In later life he constantly now challenges himself to do brave things such as mountain climbing, army service, potholing, martial arts training and more. All these things to constantly challenge his “I” - his true self – the boy who was seen as a coward by his sister. It can be said that bravery often comes from cowardliness for without fear how can you face a world of tough choices? Bravery without fear is just idiotic foolishness of the types who think they are indestructible we give them medals when they are dead!

Case 2:

The girl was young and innocent of the world. Coveted by nurturing parents, she lived a peaceful quiet life at home. Her mother's brother, a teenager comes to stay and he is given the bed alongside hers every Friday to Sunday while he attends weekend community service for theft. At first she is excited by the company and talks with her young uncle about her school and friends and listens to his adventures of getting into trouble and going to court where he was sentenced to community service – cleaning pubic toilets over the weekends for several months as an alternative to jail. She is shocked by his wickedness and excited by his stories. His habit soon came to sit on her bed and gradually holding her in a hug with his arm around her shoulder – she did not feel this to be a bad thing – merely her uncle being super nice and kind. He then began lying next to her holding her close – she felt his hands touching her while he was seemingly sleeping! She felt some stirring of excitement and fear at what he was doing but she still felt it was alright. Over time however his touching and now kissing her became more forceful – she did not like these feelings and complained to him but he quietly explained that it was ok and he was teaching her to feel love. One evening and for many others to come he entered her and raped her. At her very young age she only felt pain and fear. For months until the end of the community service he regularly raped and abused her – all the time her confusion and feeling trapped in a confusion of emotions. One day he left and never came back again. After several months she decided to tell he mother what had happened but feared she would be in trouble or that her uncle might be punished too. Her mother's reaction was to not talk such nonsense and that she had made it all up or just dreamed it – how could it have gone on so long without her finding out? The little girls was told to keep it to herself and never ever mention it to her father. The trauma the girl suffered was assigned to her “I” for a secret self that only she would ever know about. As she grew she avoided boys and later men – she became pretty and dressed well, being proud of her demeanor - but even at 30 years old she was technically still a virgin and had no relationships with men. She was attracted to men but could never allow any of them more than a date with mixed company. To her friends and family she was merely the shy girl who could not find a suitable man to marry her. Her “ME” was of the kind, sweet, shy and pretty girl that everyone liked. However her “I” was extremely damaged by her history of abuse. She had long forgotten (repressed) what had happened to her (as per her mothers instructions). When she was approached by nice men who liked her looks and wished to get to know her – she rejected them quickly - she feared being close – being vulnerable – and believed strongly in that she was the Good Girl and did not give in to men's desires – even though she could not articulate exactly why she felt that way. She was often confused by her girl friends way of talking about men and their desires to have sexually relationships or romantic associations.

In each case the trauma to the “I” was either a single moment that defined a life or long term abuse that created a long term injunction of being close to men whom she felt were both attractive and threatening at the same time. In the first case it is easy to see that the biographical memory started a chain reaction of behaviours that led the boy to have to reprove his manhood (bravely) over and over again. In the second case the fear of men is easy to understand from the point of view of the long term abuse and the eventually covering up of the crime by the mother's concern for kinship and family harmony. (Very common is Asiatic countries where face is more important than the damage to one individual). The “I” therefore is the constant unconscious informer of the social self (ME) – when procrastination is present or choices are being made that are contrary to our greater good then there is the hidden “I” waiting to inform our decision sometimes so negatively that it can impact our feeling of well-being such as mood disorders for depression or anxiety leading to eventually being labeled by our friends as weird, not normal – and our social self our “ME” becomes changed by that negativity around us – convincing us eventually that there is something wrong with us – and so we seek the insight of the counsellor, psychologist or in the worse case scenario the psychiatrist.

The “I” & “ME” in therapeutic practice

When the client / patient arrives in the therapists office the first session maybe merely the exchange of stories – the venting of feelings and emotions that have brought the person so seek help or to be rescued from the life that has turned them into that depressed person or that anxious neurotic. Diagnosis is often just a labeling process for insurance purposes but the real work begins with the past. Most “here and now” therapists miss so much of the why's of mood disorders because they believe you cannot change the past so why bother dealing with it – it is the version of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (or the Freud out with the ideas).

Often a one page biography of the family, developing years and the current situation can give the therapist a good over-view of the persons history with the proviso that if they have a particular story they wish to share that could be done as a separate paper. After a review of the biographical information the therapist can dig deeper during analysis for any indication of trauma as a child – whether a single moment or a continued situation that may have occurred. In order to help the client think about and consider their personal experience the “I” & “ME” model can be demonstrated on a whiteboard and explained in terms of the secret self over the social self that is formed by the expectations of others and our purpose for mirroring those traits described. In most cases the clients listening to the explanation are already assessing their biographical memories for instances of what could constitute their secret self (“I”). It is easier to start out with a question after the model is explained, such as if I asked five of your friends who you are – what would the say or describe you as? This then is then is the personal perception of the social self as mirrored by others. (The ME).

Once you establish that they feel this is who they are and their expectations to achieve the “ME” on a daily basis – the therapist can go back to the whiteboard and ask the more difficult question – then who is your “I” - what secrets do you have about yourself that only you know about – that only you feel – that inform who you really are as opposed to what others imagine you to be through the activity of your social self (“ME”)?

Many clients initially decline to answer directly the question of the secret self (“I”) as they have kept that information closeted in their inner most mind for many years – after all that is what a secret is. It may refer to their sexuality, the idea of their values, morality and many other sensitive areas of their lives. Here the therapist must reinforce the idea of a safe place in therapy where clients can reveal their true thoughts, to be authentic and open about their inner most compulsions without fear of judgment and criticism. There are many subtexts to the “I” such as abuse, paraphelia, repressed desires, shameful acts, self doubt and a wide spectrum of feelings attached to each area of concern. However with time and trust clients can reveal that inner trauma within the secret self and so start to deal with and heal that psychological damage that was done to them so long ago.

Outcomes:

Using this model of the “I” & “ME” for several hundred patients (2. Myler 2002 - 2018) in real practice has shown time and time again of its effectiveness in creating the right environment for change – tackling such issues as social comparison, empathy, trauma and many other social examples of mood disorders over time. Patients and clients find it simple to grasp and understands in a short period of time and so go onto explore their own barriers to contentment in life often barred from the unconscious secret self and the mirrored social self trying to meet the expectations of others confining them to a categorization of personality that goes on to define their actions when new situations of problems meet them. Sometimes keeping it simple can help a client / patient achieve a deep understanding of themselves and the effect of others on their choices in life and personality development. The best outcome would be the client who knows themselves better, understands their internal motivation and even though they cannot change the past they can at least make better informed decisions about why they behave and think in the way that they do.

References:

1. Myler S F (2002) The Development of the “I” & “ME” model (unpublished).

2. Myler S F (2002 - 2018) Private practice notes

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babcockdylan95 · 4 years

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