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mcufox123 · 3 years

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Fearless

Synopsis: You and Wanda Maximoff are best friends. The story sort of follows the song Fearless by Taylor Swift. This is set after Captain America Civil War.

Warnings: Fluff I guess lol

Authors Note: This is my first fanfic about Wanda. I have never really wrote one before. If there are any suggestions please let me know!

Word Count: 3010

I do not own any of these characters or the songs.

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You had been around the avengers now for almost 2 years. Captain America had found out about your earthly abilities and recruited you as part of his team. You weren’t too sure what you had gotten yourself into, all that you knew is that you just joined the most awesome superhero group the world has ever seen. Except for, of course, the superheroes in Sky High. After moving around undercover it was nice to have a team, a family that cared about you. You had also become best friends with the Scarlett Witch, Wanda. How that name made your head fog up and the butterflies in your stomach go wild. She was perfect, but she was your best friend. You guys had shared many road trips together undercover, as well as late night Netflix marathons that included lots of ice cream. She had been your person to lean on when you found out that your sister was missing as well as your team partner when faced with a new mission. Whenever you moved to a new hotel you and Wanda would always volunteer to share rooms because no offense to the others, but they didn’t flow with you the way Wanda did.

It was about mid-September, and you were on a mission to collect some files from an agent undercover as a Hydra follower. The mission had been a success and you retrieved the files with a few days to spare in your Maine Air bnb which was hidden in the forest. Natasha was attempting to cook a pasta dish for dinner and from the looks of it, it was not turning out well.

“Hey Steve, I’m going to drive into town and get some Chinese food incase plan A doesn’t work, text me everybody’s orders.” You told the man who was reading a book on the lounge chair outside of the kitchen.

You heard him laugh before he asked, “you think she’s going to mess up a simple pasta dish?”

“I don’t think, I know,” you said as you walked towards your room. Wanda was just getting out of the shower. This is a normal thing as you both share a room every mission, but your breath still hitched as your eyes landed on her. You quickly made your way towards the bureau to grab a sweatshirt while talking to her over your shoulder, “Hey I'm going to drive into town to grab some food for dinner, because knowing Nat, she will burn the pasta and I don’t feel like cooking a second dinner tonight.” You told her.

She grabbed her clothes before walking back into the bathroom to get changed, not before calling out “Sure give me 10 minutes!” with a smile on her face.

You left the room feeling flustered in all sorts of places. You walked back into the living room where Steve still sat on the couch. “I'm headed out, don’t forget to text me. I know Nat’s order but get Sam and Bucky’s too. Oh, also tell Wanda I'm in the car.” You said before grabbing the keys and walking towards the door not even waiting for a response. You hopped in the SUV on the driver’s side before putting the keys in the ignition and playing some music. This always helped to calm you down from everything. As you waited you figured you would help clean up the yard. You pointed your hands out the window before beginning a sweeping motion that collected all the leaves and sent them through the air. You’re not really sure where the leaves ever go but it always makes you feel better to see a clear ground. You then closed your eyes and begin strumming your fingers to the new country song that was playing on the radio before you heard a knock on the window. Your eyes shot open as you turned to see Wanda in some jeans, a white t-shirt, and a green jacket with a black cap on her head. Slowly you rolled down the window.

“Hello, miss, what can I help you with?” you asked in an innocent tone. You knew what she was about to say so you had to try your hardest to keep a straight face.

“Move over Y/N, we all know you’re a horrible driver and have done damage to multiple cars, which Steve is not happy with because our budget is tight.” She said while giving you an unamused look in her eyes.

“But I never get to drive! And this place is only 10 minutes away, and I promise both hands will stay on the wheel.” Even though you secretly wanted her to drive. She didn’t even try to fight you anymore, just flicked her hand and you were suddenly in the passenger seat and she was climbing into the driver’s seat. You give her an ‘are you serious look’ as she just smiles and starts backing the car out of the driveway. The two of you drive along the beautiful fall foliage while singing some of your favorite tunes, both being wildly off key. You finally pull into the strip mall and find a parking spot. It’s a crowded strip mall, with what seems to have a food truck night outdoors. There is live music and people walking from truck to truck grabbing large takeout containers. Your eyes instantly light up at the market street lights and the live music.

“How lucky is this? This is totally awesome! Can we please hangout for a little? Please? Pretty please?” you ask like a five-year-old as your eyes continue to scan the scene. Wanda just looks at you as something crosses over her eyes. Something that you haven’t seen before. “I’ll text Steve and tell him we will be a little bit late. Please? We never get to do anything normal anymore!” you beg.

“Fine,” she sighs defeated. “but your telling Steve, I don’t feel like him being upset with me because he had to eat past 7.”

“Totally worth it.” You say before pulling out your phone and sending a quick text to Steve. His only response was an ‘ok, but also hurry up, Nat just threw away the only jar of sauce left.’

You smiled before turning to look at Wanda. She’s running her hand through her hair before putting the baseball cap back on, absentmindedly making you want her but you knew not to cross the line. “You ready?” she asked, and your only response was a nod. You both decide to divide and conquer to reach all of the food trucks in a record-breaking time. You each decided to get a few platters from each Truck as well as the samples for you both to eat while enjoying some live music.

As you find a table you are loving the normal feel of this whole event, and the fact that Wanda is here with you to experience it. She looks over at you smiling as she catches your eyes across the crowd. She walks over towards your table and sits down. “What are you so smiley about?” you ask her.

“This was actually really fun. I’m happy we got to do this. And this band is awesome!” she says looking at the people up on stage. You still can’t take your eyes off of her though. You never have seen her this relaxed outside of the comfort of the hotels. She is always on high alert that disaster can strike at any time. But here, she’s smiling, and her nose is doing that cute scrunchy thing that she does when she’s happy and her beautiful emerald eyes are sparkling as she continues to watch the people dancing. You quickly glance away before she can catch you staring. The last thing you need is to lose this amazing person because of some feelings.

“I wish I learned how to dance, or at least had some rhythm in my body.” You say as you watch somebody twirling around on the dance floor. You sat there for a while having small talk and eating the array of sample food while enjoying the music. Just as Wanda is about to say something your phone starts ringing, its Nat. You show Wanda the caller before giving her the one-minute symbol and pressing the phone to your ear.

“Hey Nat, what’s up?” you ask casually even though you know what she’s about to ask.

“Do you guys think you could pick up some food on your way home? I may have ruined the pasta.” She quietly says in embarrassment.

“Of course!” you say, trying so hard to keep your laughter back.

“And Y/N can you hurry? Bucky just woke up from his nap and we all know what happens after a nap if there is no food.”

“Of course, Nat! We will be home in 20 minutes!” you say as you hang up the phone. You look at Wanda who is just twirling some hair around her finger. Something that you learned she does when she is feeling nervous.

“You all, right?” you ask her. She’s quick to snap out of it though and look at you with a smile.

“Never better! Let’s head out before Bucky blows a gasket,” she says while getting up. You have the oddest feeling however walking back to the car. You ignore it though, not wanting to ruin the fun night you just had. The car ride back was quiet, the only sound being that of the music playing in the background. “Hey, do you think we can go for a drive tonight?” she asks. This wasn’t a new thing, when one of you felt overwhelmed or stressed you would both hop in the car and drive around whatever city you were in taking in the sights around you.

“Yeah, sure everything ok?” you ask for the second time tonight. You were starting to get worried that maybe you stared a little too long or blushed a little too hard at something she said. You worried that she was in her head again about her family, or her powers. You wished to be able to take the worry and stress away from her and make it disappear like you were able to do with the leaves earlier. You knew that she had to figure this out on her own. So you gave her the space she needed to think. The rest of the ride was quiet.

You finally got home and grabbed the food, neither of you saying a word which was odd, but you didn’t push it. Sometimes Wanda just needed to breathe and think. You walked in the door saying, “IT’S DINNER TIME.” Then laughing maniacally as Esma does in Emperor’s New Groove. Everyone knew the reference because you made them watch the movie countless times on movie night, so you got a little chuckle from Bucky, while Nat, Steve, and Sam looked at you with crazy eyes.

“Damn Y/N, are you sure you’re not a bad guy because that laugh was creepy.” Same said eyeing you up.

“Ha ha ha, very funny Sam, but no, otherwise I’d have poisoned the food.” You say with a smirk. You watched him freeze in terror

“Which she did not, I can assure you,” Wanda said setting the food on the table as everyone gathered around. Sam still eyed you suspiciously. You could still smell the burnt smell of the pasta but decided to leave Nat alone about the failed dinner, as I'm sure Bucky or Sam already teased her about it. Dinner went on with the usual catchup on the mission, what everyone did that was well and what everyone did that could have been better. Then it turned to what was coming up and where you would be going next. And then it turned into a casual conversation about which TV show was best. The whole time Wanda was almost silent, only adding to the conversation when someone directly talked to her. This had you very worried. You did not want her to start closing everyone off again.

After dinner was cleaned up you hopped in the shower before your drive with Wanda. Wanda however stayed in the kitchen talking to Nat and Steve.

“I'm going to tell her tonight.” Both Steve and Nat whipped their heads to look at the petite brunette.

“That’s great,” Nat finally said after a few minutes. Her smile grew as did Steve. Wanda was in love with you, and you had no idea. Steve and Nat had been the only people that she confided in and coincidentally so had you. They knew that the confession was only going to have a great outcome, but they were sure to keep their mouth closed about it.

Wanda went on to explain her plan to them until she heard your bedroom door shut and watch you come out with wet hair, wearing your most comfy clothes. You smiled at her as you walked out and gave a quick wave before heading out of the door. You knew just to hop in the passenger side this time because you were a bad driver but also because you knew on drives like this Wanda liked to be in control of something in her life and it was driving. As the drive began you took in the sight again of beautiful Maine. It had rained during dinner and the sight before you was one not even a picture could do justice. The pavement was still wet, and the autumn leaves were slowly falling down all around the car. You guys sat in silence, the only sound being the radio, and you know this is what she needs.

Wanda had always told you that she never felt like she could ever organize her thoughts. There was always the commotion of having powers and saving lives. She never had a time to just sit and organize her thoughts. That was when you both decided to take these drives. You agreed that nobody had to talk, instead just be there for the other person. Let them have control of the music, the car and the direction. In this moment though, you couldn’t stop looking at her. She was beautiful, even when she was freaking out. You were getting so caught up in the moment and her that you hadn’t realized the street had come to a dead end and you ran out of road. She turned off the car and just sat there. You looked out the window and you were on a cliff that was overlooking the small town. It was amazing. You must have sat there for an hour in silence. Wanda was fidgety the whole time but never said a word. You wanted so bad just to reach out and hold her, but you didn’t want to push the limits. Whatever she was going thru, it looked like a war was going on in her head, it was awful. Just when you think she is finally about to talk she turns the car back on and begins the drive home.

As you pulled into the driveway Whitney Houston’s “I wanna dance with somebody comes on the radio.” You instantly smile. This was your jam and right away distracted you from the beautiful girl sitting next to you. Little did you know she was staring at you in awe. You made your way out of the car and you were still singing the tune of the song but now you were also dancing around ridiculously in the driveway. Soon enough Wanda was also dancing, and you were both twirling each other around. After a few moments of the silliness, it began to rain again. You didn’t even care though; you were actually having more fun splashing in the fast-falling rain. You both began dancing closer and closer to each other before your faces were inches apart. You both looked at each other intensely as if asking each other with your eyes ‘are we really doing this?’ Your hands begin to shake as she pulls your foreheads together. Just then you close your eyes and feel a soft pair of lips against yours.

The kiss was everything you ever dreamed it would be. Your mouths moved flawlessly together, and for once in your life you felt fearless. So much held back emotion was put into that kiss from both of you. You finally pulled away breathless. Your foreheads still touching.

“I love you Y/N. I love you so much that it hurts to be away from you. I love you so much that I’d go to the ends of the earth for you. I have for a while now. And I don’t ever want to let you go.” She says, before you interrupt her, she continues. “Tonight, with you, was perfect. I almost told you when we were at the food trucks, but I wasn’t sure. Then I got into my head thinking about if you didn’t feel the same way. So, then we went on the drive and I almost told you on that cliff too, but I chickened out and the…” but before she can continue you kiss her again.

“I love you too, Wanda. I always have and I always will.” You say softly looking into her beautiful emerald eyes. She gives you one of the smiles that scrunches her nose. You could stay in this moment forever, with you in her arms staring at each other. You’re interrupted, however, by the rain coming down much harder now.

“We should get inside.” You say before taking her hand in yours and walking to the door. You give her one more kiss before opening the door to the house. As you walk in Steve and Nat are there smiling, obviously having watched the whole thing from the window.

“Shut it you two.” You and Wanda say at the exact same time. You take Wanda’s hand and guide her to your room not wanting to share her for the rest of the night.

#wanda #wanda maximoff #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #captain america #steve rogers #Natasha Romanoff #Black Widow #bucky barnes #Winter Soldier #Falcon #avengers

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doomedandstoned · 4 years

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Are You A Bible Basher?

~By Billy Goate~

Art by J. Hannan-Briggs

Words from the Bible,

...riffs from Hell.

This is BIBLE BASHER, a lumbering, sludgey beast of a death-doom band, drawing its fellows from Kurokuma, Archelon, Spaztik Munkey, and a band whose name alone intrigues me enough to spirit them out: Temple of Coke. The debut recording before us is 'Loud Wailing' (2020), just released last month on the Sludgelord Records Label and it's good stuff.

Chances are good that if you're unfamiliar with the band, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop: what's the agenda here? It bears mentioning that "Bible Basher" is an almost uniquely UK term. In the States, we tend to use the more politically acceptable (though still insulting) "Bible Thumper." Getting to the point: a Bible Basher is not someone who subjects the big black book and the pages there to beating, maiming, or otherwise spilling syrup on its Holy Writ nor turning its sacred pages into roll paper for a cheap high.

No, a Bible Basher is someone single-mindedly determined to bash you with their beliefs, clean across the head. You gotta get you on board with the whole worldview, the Last Days manifesto, the 3 steps to this place, the 5 steps to somewhere else, and however many more steps to the sanctuary doors. Usually, this evangelism has all the clumsy subtlety of a Jack Chick tract left on the Gas Station john. Sometimes it gets a bit more intrusive, like a manic street preacher with a megaphone or, more annoying still, a brainwashed politician determined to fence you into their highly selective idea of "God's Will."

All culture warring aside, it might surprise you to learn that I hold a great deal of respect for the Bible and believe it has an important role in developing our understanding of what makes human beings so fundamentally religious. The Bible is just one expression of people's religious and spiritual identity, of course. There have been many volumes written, by the gods it was said, attempting to reconcile the real and the ideal, time and eternity, the drab and the divine.

All fancy preambling aside, I wonder why more bands haven't gotten into the Bible and other sacred/profane lit, you know kinda breathing new life into old words? You have to admit, the concept is fascinating and the medium of expression surprisingly fits the unsparing nature of the content.

Perhaps afraid of appearing sacrilegious or being denounced as a Deicide wannabe, bands have just decided to walk away slowly. That or they don't even know how truly bizarre and sometimes brilliant the Bible can be. True, there are bands like Trouble/The Skull who have adapted Scripture into music, even succeeded in crossing over to a non-religious audience. Hell, The Byrds practically immortalized the words of The Preacher in Ecclesiastes back in '65 with that folk rock classic, 'Turn, Turn, Turn." Bible Basher are definitely onto a thing here.

Regardless of where you find a band called Bible Bash on the meter between "disgusting" and "fucking awesome, dude," they really aren't here to mock Scripture or Christians, not even to pronounce a value judgement. This is an artful attempt at retelling the stories of old, allowing us to gaze upon their vision.

☩

So Samson Sang

Loud Wailing by Bible Basher

Out of all books, The Bible is perhaps most prized for its collection of ancient stories, many of which become embedded in our collective consciousness over time (if not the unconscious mind itself). The tale of Samson, for instance, is practically universal (Hercules, anyone?). Bible Basher invoke its powerful imagery for this Rage against the Philistines opener. The bulldog gruff of "So Samson Sang" suits the song unexpectedly well. Perhaps the impact is greater because we feel the punch of each word, measured and metered, calculated to leave the most indelible impact.

Simson verslaat de Filistijnen met een ezelskaak (1562) by Cornelis Massijs

Plagued

Loud Wailing by Bible Basher

You'll never hear the anguish of Job expressed with as much weight as you will in "Burning and Blackened," for example. And the death-mongers among us, you'll enjoy the swirling storm of blast beats that "Plagued" stirs up and whips around Egypt, 10 plagues in all it is said. As this topsy-turvy number swarms along, the song feels like it's burrowing itself deeper and deeper into the ground in a crazed hypnotic dirge, as if seeking some relief from this madness of rivers turned to blood and a head full of lice.

Seventh Plague of Egypt (1823) by Martin John

Burning and Blackened

Loud Wailing by Bible Basher

I'm really digging the Middle Eastern vibe of "Burning and Blackened," on the tape's flip side. I could all but feel the cool of dawn and that first burning lick of the sun's rise. As a die-hard doomer, it won't surprise you that I marked this my favorite song of the experience. The way this grand skeleton of chords suffles about had me thinking of Iowa City's Aseethe (I hereby wish an Aseethe-Bible Basher tour upon the world come 2021).

Job and his Friends (1885) by Gustave Dore

Sodom & Gomorrah

Loud Wailing by Bible Basher

By the time we reach "Sodom & Gomorrah," we're battered, basted, and baked, ready for a fine finish to this four-course nosh. The vocals seem harsher than usual this time, but you have to understand that's the prophet divining judgement upon the most infamous twin cities of history (we find out in the interview to follow that there are multiple vocalists).

The whole song's got a nice, chewy groove to it. Plenty of meat on them bones. The lyrics consist of nothing more than the Bible's words, adding as much expressive liberty as death vocals will allow. The thick, smoky atmosphere of this whole song gave me flashbacks to 71TONMAN's "Phobia" and Old Man Gloom's "Procession of the Wounded."

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by Jules-Joseph-Augustin Laurens

If I've any gripe with Loud Wailing, it's the runtime. Okay, yeah, sure, it's appropriate for an EP, but I can't shake the feeling that this is actually more of a teaser for something even grander in scope. Perhaps this is a toe in the water for the band, to see how people respond? Well, it's enough to reassure us that this sound and subject matter is poised to make some mighty big footprints.

Heck, I'd do the whole Bible book by book, if I was in their shoes. 66 in all, right? No problem. Okay, 73 if you're Catholic, 78 if you're Eastern Orthodox. Whatever, bonus editions. Works either way, 'cause you've got a guaranteed record deal and freaks like me to follow you wherever this piper lures. The band can break up from the repetitive bore of the long-ass genealogies in Leviticus and Numbers, but then reunite again to take on Deuteronomy.

All kidding aside, the dramatic potential of this collaboration is unreal. Bible Basher's debut is a promising record that presents tantalizing artistic possibilities (perhaps even with a roving collective of performers). The EP wears well on its own terms with repeated listens and I never found myself disinterested, even for a moment. Loud Wailing is the brutal dawning of a New Age in dirty grunts and dank riffs.

Give ear...

Loud Wailing by Bible Basher

An Interview with Bible Basher

By Billy Goate

Intrigued by this hulking beast shrieking out in my backyard, I had to move in for a closer look. Following is my conversation with band member Joe E. Allen, who most of us know from Kurokuma and gives us insight as to who Bible Basher is and what the band is up to.

☩

Would you be so kind as to give me some background on the band, how you guys ended up coming together, basically the whole history?

Tich has recorded and helped produce most of the Kurokuma releases up till now, most of which you've heard or written about. Tich mostly makes electronic music and is pretty well known for it, but he was also in a band called Temple of Coke back in the day. Daft music with two guitarists and no bassist. Some big riffs in there.

They stopped doing much after one of the guitarists left Sheffield, but Tich still had a lot of riffs lying around. Obviously, he used to come to a lot of Kurokuma gigs in Sheffield -- and even saw us in Japan -- so he felt like getting back on writing some big guitar stuff and asked me if I'd give him some input. Over the course of a year or so we just reshaped those old riffs and added plenty of new ones and as we progressed it just kept getting bigger and heavier.

What's up with the name? You've got pretty distinct religious themes (love the motto). I come from a strict religious background myself (preacher's kid). What are your own backgrounds relative to the themes you explore?

I've always thought that some of the stories from the Bible, especially the Old Testament would make for perfect concepts in heavy metal. Unrelatedly, one day we were sitting around and Tich said let's call this Bible Basher -- it just came out of nowhere. I agreed, it just seemed to make sense. Here in the UK it's what you get called if you go to church, it's an insult. I had a really Christian upbringing with my dad being a vicar, as well, so was very into all that when I was younger.

Plus I went to a religious school, so I've definitely been called a bible basher quite a bit. It's actually taken me a while to remove that whole paradigm from the way I see reality, but that's another story. Tich wasn't like me in that aspect, but he did go to a religious school, as well. At this point, I think we're both not massive fans of organised religion, but that doesn't mean we're not into philosophy and more celestial concepts. We've both read quite a bit of things like Manly P. Hall and The Kybalion. We didn't wanna make a "statement" on anything with this, though. Just wanted to present it "as is."

I'm sure we'd all love to know how the individual tracks came together. The single on this one was "So Samson Sang," which met with some pretty positive reception.

I know the Bible pretty well and it wasn't too difficult to find concepts for the tracks. "So Samson Sang" was the first one we did. The lyrics are: "With a donkey's jawbone, I made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone, killed a thousand men." And then "I have slain, heaps on heaps." They were from the book of Judges, when Samson slaughtered loads of Philistines, pretty much taken straight off the page. It was that easy. We got George in to do the vocals, for obvious reasons. We sat on the track for a bit and sent it round a few mates and everyone was like, "This is sick," which made us want to finish up the other tracks, which already were mostly done.

The other three tracks all came together in one night. We basically asked three mates from other bands to come over and figured out concepts for each of them. It was good to get their input and it was pretty collaborative. I think they all enjoyed being given a bit of a brief to work within and we were buzzing to end up with four different vocal styles for each track. So on track 1 you have George from Kurokuma, then on track 2 you have Bing who used to be in a thrash band called Psython and can obviously do the really fast/rhythmic thing and his death growls were just spot on. That track ended up sounding like Pig Destroyer or something to me. Obviously, it's about the ten plagues of Egypt and the fast/swirling nature of the riffs just seemed to fit.

On track three, we have Craig from Archelon and Holy Spider, so I know him pretty well. He did more of a Neurosis style on the track about Job. That one starts off with a zurna, which is a pipe from the Middle East area. There's a spoken word section in the middle, a conversation between God and Satan. I actually only realised what this was when we were going through the Bible for the lyrics.

God calls all his angels together, Satan being one of them, and they get into this conversation where God is saying he likes Job and Satan is saying if his life went to shit, I wonder if he'd still worship you. So God is like, "Okay, go for it." It's stuff like this that fascinates me. I think there's a fairly deep message to be heard in that if you read into it, but most Christians won't. As a text of folkloric wisdom the Bible is pretty meaningful to me, but most Christians don't treat it in that way in my experience.

And then we have the demented squeals of Chris from Spaztik Munkey doing the voice of God on track four which is about Sodom and Gomorrah. It worked out well that the ending riff fit perfectly with the syllables in the phrase "Sodom and Gomorrah."

In general, this release was a right laugh to work on. The songs just came together and it was good for us all to collaborate on something outside of our normal bands. And the response has been mega positive so far. Aaron sold out the first 50 tapes in three days so we're already on the second batch now.

Get Their Music

#D&S Reviews #Bible Basher #Doom #Sludge #Metal #Death Doom #Doom Metal #Sludgelord Records #HeavyBest2020 #D&S Interviews #Doomed & Stoned

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sugasmainn · 5 years

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Finally Complete [One Shot]

Masterlist

Word Count: 3117

Summary: Being a wife and a mom, you sit down looking at your life around you, thinking and reliving your life over to see how you became this lucky in life.

It’s a cold Sunday afternoon, and we’re just sitting around in our living room relaxing before the hectic week begins again. Looking around, I see my husband sleeping on the couch next to me with our 3-year-old next to him asleep in his lap. Just 10 year ago, I wouldn’t think this is what my life would be like, I didn’t think I could ever have a life like this. Nice house, amazing husband, wonderful child, and a well-paying job. Just looking at them sleeping so blissfully, I began to reminisce on how I exactly became this blessed.

11 years ago, 19 years old:

It’s so cold out here, but it beats being in that dorm room. All I wanted to do was study for this midterm next week. If I even want a CHANCE at keeping this scholarship, I have to maintain my 3.5 average. Yet, my roommate thinks that Wednesday nights are an appropriate time to have a party with as many people as can fit in that room. The library is closed, where do you expect me to go? The bakery around the block from campus should still be open for another two hours.

I walked and entered in with all my mess in my hands. Set my laptop down, opened my notebooks, and ordered myself a nice brownie to help me focus (and to help motivate me to treat myself in my studying). Almost a half hour into my studying and I’m completely focused on my laptop and the slideshows from the lecture, absorbing all the information I can. ‘The functionality of the cone receptors in our eyes is to help us translate colors for our brain to process…’ “Hey, is this seat taken by any chance?” I heard someone asking from in front of me.

“Um, no. Go right ahead” I said without looking up from my laptop. I was trying to get back in my groove, thinking this man was going to take the chair and move it to another table to sit with his friends or something, but he just sat in front of me in silence. I tried to ignore it, but it was kind of odd. Kind of like when you’re on the bus, and there are all these open seats, but the person coming on decides to take one next to you instead of one by themselves.

After some time passed, the man spoke again, saying, “You seem very focused on whatever is on that screen. I’m assuming it’s exam season?”

“Yeah. Have one of my first midterms next week” I said, still not looking up from my laptop.

“You also seem as though you’ve been overworking yourself.” He said, then sliding me a biscuit. What the hell? I looked up from my laptop to be met with the man who was studying his coffee cup with a poker face.

“Why are you giving this to me?” I asked severely confused.

“You haven’t looked away from that screen in the 15 minutes it took me to place my order and have them make it. I think you need this more than I do” He said still not looking at me.

“You don’t even know me”

“Stranger can’t be nice from time to time? Makes the world go round. Plus, consider it to be a good luck biscuit” He said chuckling a bit, now making eye contact with me. Wow, he was handsome. “But, so that way we aren’t strangers anymore, I’m Min Yoongi. What’s your name?”

“L/N Y/N” I said shyly.

“It’s nice to meet you. Now, what is it that you’re studying for?” He asked looking like he’s genuinely interested in my boring information on the biology of the eye.

8 years ago. 22 years old:

Who would have thought I’d be graduating college today? And, valedictorian of my class! All those long nights, days of crying on Yoongi’s shoulder about how I wanted to quit, yelling at my roommate for hindering my studying and stressing me out more, I made it. I really do thank it all to Yoongi. He’s been my rock these last few years, telling me to never give up and that I was better than quitting. That I was going to make something of myself. Yoongi was standing next to me in the mirror, just looking at us together, saying, “I’m so proud of you. You believed you could, and you did it. I can’t believe I’m about to watch you, L/N Y/N, my girlfriend, graduate on stage and get that diploma.”

“I’m so nervous about the speech” I said shaking slightly in my voice.

“Why? You’ve prepared it three times over. Everything you say is like a work of art. You’re going to do amazing. Just remember I’ll be there. Focus on me. It’ll be fine, just breathe and relax, okay?” He said with reassuring eyes.

I couldn’t help but smile at him, and say, “You’re the best. I love you so much.”

He responded with, “I love you more.”

Throughout the ceremony, I could feel myself sweating through almost everything and everywhere. I tried to remember what Yoongi said. I tried breathing in and out. I looked around to see if I could find him sitting with my roommate, and once we made eye contact, all my worry washed away. He gave me his famous smile, and suddenly, I felt like I was at home. Turning back around, I was waiting for them to call my name to make my speech, “And now, we will have a speech, given to us by our valedictorian, L/N Y/N” The dean of the school called out my name, and I took deep breaths as I walked onto the stage.

Dear Class,

We made it. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We can finally breathe, until we get a job and have that weighing on us. Life just doesn’t seem to light up does it?

My life has been anything but easy. My mom left us when I was 7, and my dad was left to provide for me all on his own. He tried endlessly to show me that we were okay, but I knew the truth. I could see far beyond what his words were telling me. So, at the age of 10, I got my first job as a paper girl for my town. Every morning before school, I’d go on my paper route and deliver nearly 200 newspapers. It was little money, but it helped when we saved it for emergencies.

By the time I was 16, I worked a part time job and was a full-time high school student. I was always determined to do well in school, to provide the life my father deserved, so he could finally rest from all that he did for me. I worked endlessly to make sure I was top of my AP classes, and got into the best colleges. All I thought about was school.

During my time here, I’ve learned that life is so much more than just book knowledge. My father sadly passed away my first year here. It hurts me so much, I almost dropped out of school because I felt there was no point anymore. As I was going through his stuff, I found a letter written to me during my time in high school, where my dad said that he was glad I was working so hard. That I was showing him that all the work he was doing was well worth it and more. He said his dream was to see me graduate from college and have a family of my own. It was then I knew, college was a must, no excuses. I had my purpose, and my father gave that purpose to me.

My boyfriend, Yoongi, also gave me my other purpose, a family. He’s been my number one supporter these last few years. He’s given me the motivation and encouragement I needed on days where I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. He reminded me that he saw me for who I was, and so did my dad. I’m not a quitter. Yoongi, you are my family. You are my love and my life. You are my everything. I’m so thankful to have you, and I truly believe you were a gift sent to me from my father. I love you so much. And class, I’m proud of all of you, because I know the road was not easy ONE. BIT.

When I turned the page, I saw my last paragraph was missing, and instead it was replaced. Though, I didn’t realize it in time, and read it out loud to the crowd,“Will you marry me Y/N? ~Yoongi” I stood there in shock, as did the rest of the crowd with a gasp coming from them. I looked up to where I previously saw Yoongi sitting with my roommate and saw him, now standing, showing me a ring in a box.

Without a second’s hesitation, I said through the microphone, “YESSSSS!” receiving claps and sounds of praise from the audience, but all I could focus on was Yoongi. My love.

6 years ago. 24 years old:

Today’s the day. The day I promise forever to my best friend. My bridesmaids were helping me, and themselves get ready. Making our way to the church, all my friends were telling me that I was so lucky to be marrying the love of my life, and yes, truly was, but I wasn’t feeling as hyped as I probably should. Yoongi and I had gotten into a fight a couple of nights agobecause I had felt he was spending too much time at his studio writing music. Neglecting me and our plans. There were nights we had to cancel our dates or outings because he was stuck working on a song proposal till late. I had finally had enough, and when I mentioned it to him, he became defensive and it turned into a fight.

Though no one has formally tried to reconcile and move passed the issue, we weren’t going to move the wedding. We knew we wanted to spend our lives together, but we are just having a hiccup on the road. Nothing abnormal.

As the music began to play, I saw Yoongi for the first time since our fight a couple of nights ago. He looked at me, emotionless. This is not how I imagine my husband to react when he saw me walking down the aisle. Just as I was half way down, I looked up, and through my veil, I saw Yoongi spilling out tears from his eyes that he tried to hold back. Once his best man, Namjoon, had put his hand on his back, it was all over from there. The water works started to stream out of control. Now this is how I imagined it.

Once I had reached Yoongi at the front of the alter, he looked at me and whispered, “You look so beautiful. I’m so sorry for yelling at you and saying that you never support me. You always do. I love you so much, and I’m going to try harder to make it home with enough time to spend some time with you.”

I just smiled in response, letting him know that it’s fine and I love him. The preacher continued on with the ceremony and came up to our vows. Mine was short, sweet, and simple. Went straight to the point: Ever since I met you, my life has just enhanced. I thank God, and my father, for sending you to me every day. You’re my now and my forever. I love you Min Yoongi. I do now, and forever.

Once I was done, it was his turn to say his vows:From the day I met you at the bakery, I knew there was something about you that I had to know. Ever since then, my life has been nothing but an adventure. Once I knew you as a friend, my heart only continued to grow more interested and invested in you. I’ve never been good with my emotions, so I didn’t know what I was feeling exactly, but once I heard that sweet laugh of yours, I knew it was love. I’ve been in love with you ever since, and I’ll continue to be in love with you forever. I do completely.

With that, the preacher finally declared that we were now, Mr. and Mrs. Min Yoongi.

4 years ago. 26 years old:

Everything was hurting. My back, my legs, my arms from gripping on the rails so hard, I couldn’t even believe I managed to hang on this long. I was currently 7 hours into labor with our first child. Yoongi and I decided to wait until our baby was born before we found out the gender of the baby. I had taken an epidural, but it was beginning to give out. I had asked the nurses, “Can I please get a refill on the epidural medication?”

“Mrs. Min Y/N, you’re 8cm. dilated. You are about to get ready to push your baby out. We can’t give you anymore. Just try to relax until your doctor comes here to help you push” The older nurse said sympathetically.

Once she left the room, I looked over to Yoongi who was sitting next to me in a chair making sure I was being cared for. “This is all your fault” I said angrily though tears.

“How is this my fault?” Yoongi asked confused.

“YOU are the one who planted your seed into my uterus, and YOU are the one who said the romantic weekend getaway to Busan was a ‘great idea’. Now look at me! I’m having a human being tear up my vagina” I said through pain.

“I’m going to let this one slide because you’re about to give birth to our child” He said now taking my hand to hold. “But, I do love you, even if you can be a pain in the ass sometimes.”

“Now’s not the time you, asshole” I said through gritted teeth. My doctor came into the room greeting me and Yoongi, telling us that it was time for me to push because I had finally reached 10cm.

“Are you sure? Because I still feel like the baby is going to tear me up badly.”

“Tearing is normal in vaginal births. We are going to take good care of you, and your precious bundle in here. Just push when I say push, and your baby will be in your arms in no time. Plus, you have a wonderful husband here to help comfort and guide you” The doctor said, flashing a smile at Yoongi.

Yoongi ate that compliment up and said, “See? You have a WONDERFUL husband Y/N.”

“Yoongi, do me a favor and have a cup of shut up.”

For the next 20 minutes, I was pushing, and pushing, with what felt like more strength than I had to give. After what felt like the millionth push, I finally heard the screams of a precious baby. My precious baby, and all the pain and agony I had just went through for the last 8 hours seemed to be worth it and more.

“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Min, it’s a healthy baby girl!” The doctor said.

“A girl?” Yoongi asked shocked. When they had finished cleaning up our little girl, they handed her over to Yoongi. The last time I saw Yoongi cry was at our wedding, but now, holding his little girl in his arms, he was starting to choke up with tears. Sitting next to me, he looked down at her and whispered, “I love you so much baby. Daddy is going to make sure you have everything you need and could want. No one is ever going to hurt you and get away with it, you hear me?”

I looked over at him, as he handed me our baby girl, and I started to cry with joy overflowing. She reminded me so much of my father. I so wish he could have been here to see his granddaughter being born. He would have loved to be a grandfather, especially to a little girl. I looked over at Yoongi and asked him, “What should we name our angel?”

He took a moment, and then said, “I know we aren’t religious people, but what about Esther? Wasn’t she a strong and empowered woman who stood up to a man of authority in the Bible?”

“Yeah, I believe she was”

“So, what do you think about Esther?” He asked waiting for my answer.

“Min Esther…I like it!” I said happily looking down at our new precious bundle of joy.

“Esther. Our little badass like the original badass” Yoongi said about our baby with pride. I could live in this moment forever. My little family and I surrounding each other with adoration and love.

Present Day. 29 years old:

After a half hour had gone by, I had seen Yoongi wake up slightly, still having one hand on our sleeping daughter, and his eyes looking at me with a small smile forming on his lips. “What are you doing just sitting here in the quiet?” He asked. I think now would be the right time to tell him the big news.

I’ve been trying to find time all week to tell him, but now feels more right then ever. “Oh nothing, just thinking about how blessed I am to have all three of you in my life to love.”

Yoongi looked at me confused and said, “It’s only Esther and I, unless you’re referring to yourself” He said chuckling softly at the end.

“No.” I said now getting up to put his hand on my stomach. “The three of you.”

“…You’re…Pregnant?!” He said a bit too loud.

“SH! Yes! I am! But, don’t wake up Esther. I want us to tell her in a fun way that she’s going to be a big sister” I said.

He looked like he was over the moon, looked down to where I was kneeling in front of him on the couch, and said, “You are truly the love of my life and the best thing that’s happened to me. Thank you for giving me these, now two, little gifts. I love you more than you’ll ever know” He said kissing me after.

“I love you, and Esther, more” I replied. My life was blessed beyond measure. Never did I think I was deserving of this kind of love, from a husband, and now two children we made. I’m more than happy and blessed, I’m finally complete.

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thephantomofthe-internet · 6 years

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Homeward Bound: Chapter 8

Steve Harrington x Henderson!Reader, Billy Hargrove x Henderson!Reader

Chapter Summary: Going from Hargrove to Harrington can give a girl whiplash, or at least it should.

Words: 3,213

Warnings: Swearing, slight smut referenced oops, death mention

Permanent Tag: @hotstuffhargrove @denimjacketkisses @hargrovesgoldilocks @casaharrington @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @hipsmcgee

Series Tag: @moonstruckhargrove @kurt-nightcrawler @baebee35 @thoughstofaredhead @supernatural-pants @bby-becca @fear-the-reaper115

You awoke to the sun burning your eyes. Your neck was sore and locked up, your back aching. As you sat up, it took you a minute to remember where you were. This wasn’t your bed, nor was it your room, but your things were everywhere.

You were at Billy’s. And you’d slept with him.

And you hated yourself for it. You shouldn’t have done it, he loved you for Christ’s sake, and you used him.

And the worst part was it wasn’t even good. It was terrible, god awful, embarrassingly bad. You were certain that your memory of him being a god in bed was just the memory of an inexperienced teenager, because this was not good by any means. You’d never felt more ignored by the person on top of your in your life-you were a complete afterthought in the whole event. You swore you’d never been further from an orgasm in your entire life. That would’ve been shitty but if it hadn’t lasted forever; that was the one thing your memory had correct, he lasted long. Too bad that’s all he had going for him.

You crept out of bed; Billy was still snoring next to your place in bed, and slowly gathered your things off the floor. You made sure to not miss a piece of yourself, pulling back on your skirt and blouse, your bra was still around your waist when you awoke. You pulled on your underwear and tiptoed out of his bedroom.

Your shoes and purse were still by the door and you grabbed them, slipping out the front door before he could even stir.

You knew well enough that you looked awful-signs of sex were all over you. You were more than glad that the hickeys weren’t on your neck, only your chest and collarbones. Your body was desperately sore, though it was only because you’d tried and failed to share a twin bed.

As you made your way out of the apartment, you wondered how you were going to spin this into a good lie. Your mother was going to kill you, god that felt so immature to you. You weren’t supposed to be out with boys, unless the boy was Dustin, and you certainly weren’t supposed to be spending the night with them. And you’d been gone all night, how the hell were you supposed to cover for yourself. Steve had to have told your mother where you were going, he always had to have the moral high ground over you.

The honk of a car horn startled you out of your thoughts, though you chose not to turn around to see who it was. You didn’t want nor need to see whoever thought it was a good idea to honk to get a lady’s attention.

“Henderson!” the driver cried and you let out a small sigh and a tired laugh, turning to smile at the driver.

Steve Harrington was behind you and his timing was excellent.

“You need a ride?” he asked, slowing the car as he got closer to you. You nodded, pulling open the door and hopping in quickly. Steve chuckled, watching you straighten out and slump down, defeated.

“Have fun last night?” he asked with a smirk.

You groaned “No…well yeah, and then no. Ugh, it was not a good choice.” You admitted glumly. “And now I’m gonna get grounded, god I feel like I’m sixteen or something…”

“Relax, your mom’s not gonna do shit to you.” Steve replied easily. You scowled at him, rolling your eyes.

“Have you met my mother?” you asked sarcastically.

“Yes, and I know lying to her solves most problems, which I already did. As far as she knows, you were at Jenny Stein’s. And since she lives in the same complex as your Mr. Hargrove, I think it’ll work out fine.” Steve said with a shrug.

“You lied to my mom for me?” you asked, wide eyed.

“Yeah, yeah I did.” He replied.

“Thank you…” you said. You had no idea what else, it shocked you. He wasn’t supposed to be protecting you, that wasn’t his role anymore. But he was, and while it should’ve annoyed you, it warmed your heart.

“Don’t worry about it, you hungry?” he said “Cause I haven’t eaten yet and I’m starving.”

“Yeah, yeah I can eat.” You said, ignore the way your stomach growled at the very mention of food. Steve drove off towards what was once a crime scene, the diner formerly owned by Benny Hammond, the first outside victim anyone had ever heard of.

The place lived in a strange place in your mind; filled with both happiness and second hand grief. It lived there because you didn’t know Benny, you never would, but you spent hours in the place he died. Benny’s had been bought by a third party chain and soon became a fifties themed diner-complete with waitresses on roller skates. It had lost its down-home sheen and became an outside force. People protested the change but nothing could be done and suddenly it was someplace without feeling; a cold, sterile environment wrapped in pastels and kitsch. It felt fake and yet real, you spent nearly every afternoon there, planning schemes but also drinking shakes and relaxing, planning school dances or weekend trips. You went on dates there, saw hearts break and explode with love. You both loved and hated that diner.

And sitting there now, in your old booth from years past, you felt both at home and in a strange land. You’d been on your first date with Steve in that same booth, sharing a shake and wondering how your lives had gotten to this point. Now, you sat as strangers, sipping coffee, unsure of your places in each other’s worlds. Silence was the wall in between you. You intended to remove the first brick; you’d built the wall after all.

“He said he loved me.” You said simply, swallowing a mouthful of warm coffee, slightly too sweet for your liking.

“He did?” Steve asked, clearing his throat. He was obviously holding back a laugh, trying to be polite to you, but it wasn’t working; his face fully gave him away.

“He did.” You replied, chuckling softly.

“How did you respond?” Steve asked, leaning closer to you, elbows on the table, dangerously close to knocking the salt over

“I nearly jumped out the window!” you cried, earning a boisterous laugh from Steve, who fell back against the white vinyl booth. The whole thing was as silly as it felt, which was reassuring. But it was also nice to laugh about it-when it happened, you wanted to die, but now you were okay. You didn’t have to love him, and you sure as hell didn’t, but it was good to know that the whole thing was as stupid sounding as it felt.

“Jesus Christ and you still slept with him?” he asked, dumbfounded, shaking his head with a wide smile.

“Apparently! I guess I pitied him or something…” you sighed, rolling your eyes at your own stupidity.

“Was it…sorry, no I shouldn’t ask that.” He replied, stumbling over the question he gave up on. Your roller-inclined waitress, Katherine, placed your plates in front of you, refilling the coffee cups and skating off before you could even thank her.

“No, it’s cool.” You shrugged “It was awful. Absolutely terrible, it was like sleeping with a virgin except it lasted for like two and a half hours.”

“Wait seriously?” he asked, dropping his fork. This was a new side of Billy Steve never got to see-the side where he wasn’t the king. Even long after high school, he still ruled over their peers. Sure, now he ran Miller’s Bar like he owned the place and made the young parents of Hawkins feel bad for starting their families early. But he was still admired, still wanted and lusted after. Steve hadn’t had a date in months but Billy was out every weekend from what he heard. On major drinking holidays, he’d been called to take down a couple of Billy’s altercations but nothing really ever became of them-nobody pressed charges and every generally forgot, leaving him with the paperwork.

“Really!” you cried, giggling “I swear, the guy I lost my virginity to was better, at least it was shorter.”

“Was I? I mean…never mind.” Steve started, immediately giving up on the sentence again. He was blushing now, his eyes downturned to his eggs, suddenly small in his seat.

“You were better, don’t worry.” You said easily, shrugging softly as you took a bite of the giant pile of pancakes. Steve perked up just a little, a small smile spreading across his face. He looked more confident, at ease with himself again. You were glad to be of a little help to his self-esteem, even if you weren’t necessarily ready to be having these conversations again.

“Well good…not that I asked, but you know…good to know.” He said, his voice smoother. He was trying to play it cool now, finding his groove again, although he seemed to be stumbling just a bit. You found it oddly endearing, like an elementary schooler trying to imitate their cool older brother instead of an adult.

“Oh totally…totally completely, you’d never ask me that…” you replied, shaking your head as a small smile slipped onto your lips. It was hard not to laugh; he looked so serious, you could almost take him seriously if you didn’t know him. As he puffed out his chest, doing a silent imitation of Billy, you lost it. He just looked so silly; a false attempt at masculinity and suaveness, like a marionette instead of a real boy.

“Good and, ya know girl…I still love ya…” he added, trying his best to mock the Californian’s accent, slightly marred by Indiana’s tone.

You snorted loudly, coffee nearly coming out of your nose, making you choke just for a second as you shook your head, holding up your palm in the universal sign of ‘stop, wait I got one’.

“No no it’s like this.” You puffed your chest, widening your stance to make yourself as big as possible. You jutted out your jaw and pulled your best open mouth smirk, eyeing him like a piece of meat, which immediately made Steve cower away, watching you almost mystified. You ran your tongue over your upper teeth and lip, nodding at him. “You know I just…I love you, pretty girl…” you crooned, your voice not quite low enough to reach his tone and not quite skilled enough to imitate his accent, turning the words into a strange mix of choices that broke Steve’s resolve immediately.

“What was that…” he cried, his voice hoarse and breathless. You merely grinning, shrugging easily. “How do you move like him and sound nothing like him at the same time?” he guffawed.

“I’m not good at accents!” you said with a laugh, only making Steve laugh harder. The whole scene felt homey, like a warm blankets on a cold winter’s night. It was one of those moments you wished you could sink into like a warm bath, but time was physical and you had to move on, taking a sip of coffee and watching Steve come down from his giggle fit.

You finished breakfast in relative silence, although it was comfortable one. The kind you had with your father before he got his divorce and ran off with his mistress, back when you were young and naïve of the ways the world can ruin a person. It was strange to find yourself comparing Steve to your father, especially because you hated your father.

You hated him for abandoning you and Dustin. You hated him for not paying child support. You hated him for marrying Marnie and forcing you to play bridesmaid while Dustin was none the wiser. You hated him for moving on with his life while your mother struggled to find her footing again. You hated him for taking away the music in your life and forcing you to find it again on your own.

But Steve…well he wasn’t your father. Not by a long shot. Your mother swore that once he had a sense of humour and a heart, but you never really got to see it. But this breakfast with him, you felt as though you slipped back into your childhood in Chicago.

Your feet dangled off the floor as you sat on the edge of your big wooden kitchen chair, trying to keep your freshly cleaned and absolute favourite pink shirt, the one with the big crocheted butterfly on the front, clear of cereal bites and spilled milk as you took too big bites of sugary breakfast cereal. Across the table, your father sat in his equally clean and pressed black suit, the jacket hanging off the chair like clockwork. He was reading the newspaper, the ink turner the tips of his fingers black, and drinking black coffee from the boring, plain white mug he used every morning like clockwork. You made him a mug for father’s day, covered in bright splotches of colour and squiggly doodles that vaguely mimicked smiley faces, hearts, and stars. He used it once, and then it became a holder for pens and pencils on his desk. You didn’t mind, you were just happy he appreciated it, that he even used it at all.

Your mother was frazzled upstairs. Dustin had just been born, he was hardly alive and yet he insisted on making his presence known by screaming. He’d been in and out of the hospital since he was born. Your father wasn’t pleased about it, you’d heard them fight, but when you looked at your baby brother, he seemed fine to you. He didn’t have collar bones, fair, but you thought it was cool. And besides, his big eyes made up for it. You thought he was beautiful. Your father disagreed.

On mornings like this, you had to make your own breakfast, which meant whatever the sugariest cereal you had in stock was with too much milk because the jug was too heavy for you to lift and your father was never really watching to make sure you could handle it. You ate at the table in as close to silence as a five year old could muster, which meant you hummed to yourself and muttered whatever thoughts you had to yourself, and your father read in silence. It was nice though-your father worked long hours and you hardly saw him because of it. Those brief moments at the table before he left for work gave you simple moments with him, the tangible kind you could taste and smell and hear and feel when you recalled them.

You heard your mother let out a sharp cry, a word you knew you weren’t supposed to use and mommies weren’t supposed to say. “Cliff!” she cried from upstairs “I think he’s sick, I think we have to go back to the hospital!”

Your father looked up from his paper for the first time that morning, calling back “I’m sure he’s fine, Claudia! He’s just acting like a baby!” and then, he looked to you. He hadn’t looked at you all morning. And he smiled, he rolled his eyes. This was an intimate moment, a brief beat where your sentiments were aligned and he treated you like his equal. He believed that you two had the same feelings on the situation happening just above you. And you complied; you shrugged with a giggle, a secret shared between you two. For the first time in your life, you and your father were aligned, comrades in battle instead of trailing daughter to distant, aloof father. That little look you shared was a moment you held onto for the rest of your life, until he sent you back to Hawkins without a second look.

You wondered if that was who Steve could become. You could almost see it-if life led him done the same path it led Hopper, you could see him becoming jaded and cynical and distant. But then there was something in him, an eternal sense of hope, which kept him away from that path. He didn’t believe that the world was inherently good, he knew that there was evil always lurking around the corner, but he still believed in some sense of good and truth in the world, something you couldn’t fully get on board with anymore. You wondered if he had a cynical bone in his body. You guessed not.

“You ready to face the wrath of your mom?” Steve asked, drawing you out of your thoughts, an ease to his whole demeanour that felt unearned. You wished he was still nervous around you instead of so cool and collected.

“Eh, I guess…as long she actually believes I was at Jenny’s I should be fine. If not…well I would really appreciate if you were a poll bearer at my funeral.” You replied.

“Oh yeah? Who else should I ask?” he asked with a grin, pulling out his wallet to pay for breakfast before you could even ask for separate checks.

“Well Dusty, obviously, then get Lucas and Mike, I don’t really think Will can do the heavy lifting, not that Mike really could either…maybe get Marvin Rubio to do it, he’ll cry his way through it but he’s stronger than Mike and should be able to help hold my ass up, as long as he’s got a strong support around him to lift I won’t end up on the floor.” You said decidedly.

“What should we do about lover boy then?” he asked “I’m sure he’d want to carry you down the river.”

“Don’t let him touch me, and don’t let him make a speech! My mother will kill my ghost and I wanna haunt some people.” You replied.

“Duly noted, now let’s get out of here before Callahan puts an APB out on my location.” Steve said and you nodded, getting up from the plastic seat, your thighs sticking to the material slightly. Going home sounded both good and bad to you now; good, because you could finally change and wash the sins off your body, but bad because you have to finally deal with your mother. And the negatively were vastly outweighing the positives. Still, there was nowhere else for you to go, so you gritted your teeth and climbed back into Steve’s car.

The drive was short, much to your chagrin, and you were home before you could find your strength again. Unlike before, Steve wasn’t parking, so you quickly gathered your things.

“Thanks, for picking me up…and for breakfast, it was nice.” You said awkwardly, slinging your purse over your shoulder. He nodded and you climbed out quick, set to begin the dreaded ascent up your driveway.

Steve rolled down his window, calling after you “Hey! Before you try to make other plans, you wanna hang out with me and Dustin tonight? I’m sure the kid would love having you around.” He asked.

You nodded “Sure! Sounds good!” you replied with a grin, waving as he drove up before rushing up the steps. It was still early, maybe she was still asleep.

The door burst open. “Y/N!”

You were so dead.

195 notes · View notes

dustenough · 6 years

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what was your last

1. drink - water

2. phone call - my mother

3. text message - “ok just phone me whenever x”

4. song you listened to - why won’t you love me by 5 seconds of summer

have you ever

6. dated someone twice - no i haven’t even dated anyone once

7. kissed someone and regretted it - no

8. been cheated on - if when your best friend calls someone else their best friend is cheating then yes

9. lost someone special - yes

10. been depressed - i’ve been clinically depressed for five years and counting

11. gotten drunk and thrown up - almost

fave colours

12. fave colour - yellow

13. fave colour - burgundy

14. fave colour - baby blue (and any other light/pastel colour)

in the last year have you

15. made new friends - yes, i met @soundshoodfeelshood last year and it was the best recent friendship that i’ve made i appreciate and love her a lot and it feels like i’ve known her forever

16. fallen out of love - no

17. laughed until you cried - yes, the most recent was when i was watching bottom with my parents

18. found out someone was talking about you - yes

19. met someone who changed you - i don’t think so

20. found out who your friends are - yes, i’m still finding out

21. kissed someone on your facebook friends list - no

general

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know irl - all of them

23. do you have any pets - i have a cat named harry he’s 16 now, i used to have another cat named hermione who passed away last year at 15. i also used to have a hamster named pumpkin, three chickens named jessie, lilo and buttercup and fishes. my family also fostered a dog for few days who we named lola

24. do you want to change your name - no, i really like my surname too and don’t want to change it so if i ever get married i’ll probably still keep it baha.

25. what did you do for your last birthday - i spent the day at home with my family and my friends in the evening

26. what time did you wake up today - 8:30am

27. what were you doing at midnight last night - watching loey lane’s most recent ghost adventure on youtube

28. what is something you can't wait for - a miracle, no mental health issues, to know what i’m doing with my life and what career i want, for my parents to sell our house and finally move into their dream house on the coast and for me to be accepting of myself

30. what are you listening to right now - explore by sundara karma

31. have you ever talked to a person named tom - i don’t think so but i’ve spoken to people i never knew the name of so maybe i have talked to someone named tom

32. something that's getting on your nerves - eveything tbh i get irritated really easily i don’t want to write a list otherwise i won’t stop

33. most visited website - twitter or instagram??

34. hair colour - brown

35. long or short hair - my hair is in the middle; its quite long but not really long and sometimes my hair is super curly so that makes it significantly shorter

36. do you have a crush on someone - no but i’ve been thinking about this one boy for almost four days straight now lol help me

37. what do you like about yourself - literally nothing

38. want any piercings - i’ve wanted a nose ring for a really long time, i also want an orbital ear ring and a rook ear piercing with a heart shaped ring

39. blood type - i have no idea

40. nicknames - lillian and lily-pad. my english teacher used to call me lilith which means the mother of all evil which is lovely

41. relationship status - um i never went to oovoo javer

42. zodiac sign - my birthday is on 20th january which is the end of capricorn but the start of aquarius, every website and book says something different so i don’t know

43. pronouns - she/her

44. fave tv show - i don’t really watch tv shows but i have a list of ones i want to start watching. i grew up watching miranda so i’ll always love that. i also really like stranger things and i’ve watched a lot of episodes of friends and only fools and horses with my family which i enjoy

45. tattoos - i have an idea of a tattoo that i want, i like really small and delicate ones that are meaningful

46. right or left handed - i’m right handed

47. ever had surgery - no but my wisdom teeth are almost fully grown and i’m scared to get them removed

48. piercings - i think some of them are nice but i can’t stand some of them, i don’t like gauges and for some reason studs in the flat ares of the helix in the actual ear make me cringe

49. sport - i used to do a lot of sports including: dance, gymnastics, netball, basketball, and swimming but stopped during secondary school; i also used to go running with my father and sister and do annual charity runs. i want to get back into dance again since i really enjoyed it and loved performing at the theatre and start running again.

50. vacation - i’ve only ever been abroad to paris when i’ve been to disney land with my family since we go to cornwall every year and have been for as long as i can remember. (this is the first year we’re not going because we can’t afford it lol)

51. ?

more general

52. eating - i just ate some grapes

53. drinking - tea

54. about to watch - probably a random youtube video

55. waiting for - a miracle of some sort

56. want - myself and my family to be happy, content and healthy

56. get married - i need to find a significant other first which is already a huge and almost impossible task alone

58. career - anytime someone asks me this i’m on the verge of tears i’m literally begging for someone to choose out of a hat for me at this point

which is better

59. hugs or kisses - hugs are nice. ( never been kissed is a 1999 romantic comedy film and stars drew barrymore a-)

60. lips or eyes - eyes

61. shorter or taller - taller

62. older or younger - older

63. nice arms or stomach - arms

64. hookup or relationships - relationships

65. troublemaker or hesitant - troublemaker

have you ever

66. kissed a stranger - no

67. drank hard liquor - yes

68. turned someone down - yes

69. sex on first date - no wtf

70. broken someone's heart - i don’t think so

71. had your heart broken - no

72. been arrested - no

73. cried when someone died - yes

74. fallen for a friend/ as in crush?- yes

do you believe in

75. yourself - not at all but i wish i did

76. miracles - i dont know?? if it counts i think that everything happens for a reason

77. love at first sight - maybe?? like true love?? i think that exists because of my parents

78. santa claus - i believed him for too long

79. angels - no one is an angel

misc

80. eye colour - dark blue on the outside then light blue then green then like an olive?? i just say blue

81. best friends name - chloe (and my school friends of course)

82. favourite movie - i like a lot of films i don’t think i have a favourite, at least i can’t pick one just now so i’ll just say any disney film

83. favourite actor - i don’t know, any films which tom hanks and robin willims act or voice over are always great, they’re great

84. favourite cartoon - the cartoons that i watched when i was younger from the 80′s/90′s cartoons like bear in the big blue house (the songs are still on my family ipod) to the ones on disney cinemagic before i left for school (i used to watch emperors new groove everyday before and after school.) my little sister watches we bare bears and the amazing world of gumball which is great

85. favourite teacher - my old textiles teacher was really kind and supportive of my and my work which had a huge impact on my quality of work e.c.t. also my photography/art teacher, shes so lovely and wonderful, i’ve cried, threw up, had a mental breakdown and complained in front of her on occasions and she she helped me every step of the way, i always went to her for advice and such so i appreciate her a lot

i was tagged by @everyteardrop and i tag @soundshoodfeelshood @amazingseren @00my-secret-world00 @palettegguk

(i don’t have a lot of mutuals on here so if you want to do this then just do it and pretend i tagged you lmao)

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somesmallfics · 7 years

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OI!

Rating: Teen

Fandom: The Beatles, Nowhere Boy

Finished: ...are you really expecting a yes by now?

Summary: A boy in Niki’s class likes records enough to get thrown out of the lesson so he can see which one Niki has. (another ‘John meets Niki’ origin story)

“Oi…”

My English lesson is not going awfully well. I sit at my desk, doodling in my book, barely hearing anything. The teacher babbles on about some novel or other that I hadn’t read, as he paces up and down between the rows of our seats. Whenever he passes me, I hide my book under one arm, simultaneously pushing the copy of his novel in front of my eyes so it looked like I am reading. He never seems to notice that I am always on the same page as before, but I guess he just never bothers to look my way long enough to notice.

“Oi…”

I can see, in my peripheral vision, that many of the boys in my class are doing the same thing. It’s funny. If they put half of the amount of effort into actually doing their work rather than avoiding it, they’d probably be top of the class. That’s the thing that bothers me about all these bloody teddy boys. All they care about is how their dressed and what their skiffle bands are going to play after school.

Ok, who am I to criticize? Here I am, doing anything to ignore our teacher, while also thinking about what music I’m going to play when I get home. I just got this new record by my sweetheart Buddy Holly. He is my favourite musician at the moment and, somehow, I managed to bag his latest single off some guy on my way to school. I can see it, sitting in the opening of my bag, thin brown paper covering the slick, black grooves running in perfect rings. I bet it sounds amazing.

I think, part of the reason I like to criticize the boys in my class is because they all say they’re into music, then go out and ruin my favourite songs with their inadequate instruments and crappy vocals. Everyone wants to be an Elvis, or a Buddy, or a Chuck Berry. They’ll never be as good as them. Least of all the boy sitting next to me, who has whispered ‘Oi’ so many times towards me, that I’m considering slugging him one when the teacher isn’t looking. There’s only so many times I can take one, inconsiderate, rude call at me and ignore it.

“Oi…” He whispers. This time, I shoot a glaring look at him. I don’t even care what he has to say, I just want him to leave me the hell alone. He’s probably going to get us both into trouble. “What’s that?” He asks, pointing down at my bag.

“What?” I snap back. My eyes flick back and forth from this bloody teddy boy to our teacher. Thankfully, he’s chosen to stand at the front of the class now, occasionally writing things on the board with chalk whose sound grates in my ears.

“The record.” The boy says. I know him, upon taking a longer moment to actually look at him. He’s John Lennon, that boy who takes the same bus as me. He’s also in my art class, though he never does any work. The amount of times he’s wondered up to me, asking what I’m doing when I’m trying to work, he could probably have finished several pieces of art. Instead, he elects to distract me.

“What about it?” I breathe.

“Who is it?”

I really don’t want to get in trouble. Why is it, whenever he talks to me, I never just tell him to piss off. Seriously, I always seem to talk to him, even if I don’t want to. This time, I’m not taking it. I roll my eyes and turn them back to my book. I ignore his calls at me, his hisses and when he leans over the desk to poke me. He’s so annoying, I can’t stand it. So childish. I mean, he’s 17, like me, but he has the attention span of a bored 3-year-old, the maturity of a 10-year-old and a libido of a fucking rabbit.

Finally, he leaves me alone and I get down to finishing a doodle of myself in my book. It’s very important that I finish it, else I’ll have nothing to show for this lesson, nothing at all. I start shading in the last bit, when I hear a load shout from the desk beside me. When I look over, John has stood up and is holding his arm.

“Fucking hell, why did you do that?” He screams. I realise that he’s looking at me.

The teacher turns around, an appalled look on his haggard, old face. He sees John standing up and I watch his hooded eyes roll. Every teacher half expects John to disrupt their lesson by now. He always seems to be heading for the headteacher’s office, if not standing outside a classroom, waiting for his current teacher to come out and talk to him. Either all that or he’s bunking off, hiding in the loos, smoking one of his many cigarettes he has a day.

This teacher loosens his stance, placing all his weight on one leg and leaning on the chalk board, “Mr Lennon,” His dull voice is suddenly backed by a wave of unflinching volume, “How dare you use that kind of language in my class.”

“But Sir, she just threw a ball of paper at me!” John cries. It’s almost believable. He mixes the right amount of anger and hurt in his voice to make it sound like he’s actually pissed off at me, like I’d actually done something to him. You see, he does get angry a lot in classes over the smallest of things, so most of us classmates know what he sounds like when he is genuinely upset at someone. People seem to be believing him, though not the teacher.

“Do you have any proof of the event, Mr Lennon?”

“Yeah, Sir.” John says, pointing at a screwed-up ball of paper on the ground beneath the desk in front of him. He must’ve thrown it, the bloody mixer, “It’s down there. You saw it, didn’t yeh, Pete?” He nudges his best friend, the smiley, dopey, blond kid that sits beside him. The boy doesn’t even know what’s going on, but he blindly insists that John is right. A couple of their friends behind even backs him up. I know there is no point in denying it, but my face stays firmly surprised as I look to the teacher, hoping he doesn’t believe them.

The man sighs. He can do nothing but send us both out, John for swearing, me for doing something I haven’t actually done. But I know that this is what John wanted. Grasping my bag and smoothing out my school skirt, I head to the door with John on my tail. We stand around the corner where there are no windows into the classroom.

John is a lot taller than me, but a lot of people are. I may be 17, but I could easily be 12, if you go by my height or baby face. John, however, could pass off as a young-looking 20. He’s reasonably tall, quite thin, which makes him look even taller. He has light-brown hair that he piles up like Elvis. He wears his uniform as though he’d gotten half-dressed this morning and quickly done the rest on the walk to school, minus his blazer which is still sitting in the classroom.

Once outside, he corners me, his body inches from mine, and I watch as one of his hands hovers down the curve of my hip. I think he might touch me, I’m ready to slap him away, but instead, his fingers dip into my bag. I know what he’s going for. I push him really hard to get him away, but he only steps back, barely fazed by me. He has what he wanted anyway. Between his index and middle finger is my record, clasped. When I go to reach for it, he jerks it away. Fucking arsehole.

“You did all of that just to see what record I have?” I snap. He laughs softly as he turns the single around and brings it towards his eyes to see the tiny writing around the middle.

“Buddy Holly. You like Buddy Holly then?” He asks as though I had not spoken.

I grit my teeth, “Yes.”

“Yes? Is that all I get?” He rolls his hazel-nut eyes, “You obviously don’t really like him. I’ll keep this then.” He starts to tuck the record into the breast of his waistcoat.

I can’t let him take it. Forgetting myself for a second, I reach up again, crying, “No, no please! Alright, alright, I love Buddy, He’s my favourite musician and I’d love…”

He brings it back out of his waistcoat, pressing it between us. I can’t take my eyes off his. He smiles, not with the pair of pink lips he owns, but with his eyes. Even as he looks down at the record, not at me, he’s grinning.

“You’d love what? To have him?” John is such a vulgar person. I huff loudly and turn my head away.

I still don’t manage to look away, though.

“Can I have it back please?” I mutter.

“Have you actually heard it yet?” He counters. It feels like I’m never going to get it back. I helplessly ask, I try to snatch it. Nothing works. I have to yield to his games. The only chance I’ll get it quickly is if our teacher walks out now.

He is nowhere to be seen, so I must play John’s bloody game. “No.” I whisper, “I got it this morning.”

A smile stretched his lips now. He lets one of his hands fall down to grasp mine, then he brings it up and places the thin record between my fingers just how it had been in his. I don’t look, though. I continue to glare at him, frustrated.

“I’d like to hear it. My mum has a record player, d’you want to come over after school?”

Another reason that I’d never liked any of the Teddy boys in school was because they never paid much attention to me. I would be the nerdy one, the uncool chick, the girl who refused to come to any parties or hang out with anyone. I kept myself to myself, and so people didn’t like me. Now, however, I had one asking me to come over and listen to music. Harmless enough. I knew that John liked music. He was in a band after all. He was determined to be the next Elvis.

And anyway, I wouldn’t be doing it for him, I told myself. I’ll be doing it for me.

“Alright.” I say, trying not to smile. I don’t want him thinking that I like him. I snatch the record against my stomach, then stuff it into my bag. When I look back up, John is watching me, smiling.

“Meet me at the gates after school then, Luv.” He walks around, arrogance written into every step he takes, to stand by my side, leaning off the wall. He throws his head back and it knocks softly. I’ve got to admit, he does look damn cool. But I won’t fall for any charms he thinks he has.

“I’m not your love.” I insist.

#fic #fanfic #fan fiction #the beatles #john lennon

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dumpsterfireblog · 7 years

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Jenn’s *Fun* Top 10: Week of 7/31

This week’s list is a bit of a shitshow, featuring three different languages and some pretty old songs. I’ve mainly been listening to music to write and do some work, so the focus was mainly on how easy they were to listen to.

1. Bolbbalgan4 - When You Fall in Love

As I mentioned in my post two days ago, this was a song that I had been trying to find for at least a month. The chorus had already been stuck in my head from Heart Signal before I even knew what the song was. Despite me only finding it the other day, it’s been on repeat for 48 hours so I think it deserves the current first place on this list.

2. Reol - No Title

Reol is one of my all-time favorite utaite and that’s saying a lot, considering there are some real gems that come out of Niconico. Pretty much everything she sings is pure gold. No title was a song that I knew I would love from the first note. It’s a bit less hype than some of her other music (see: YoiYoi Kokon), but it’s uplifting and has such a clean, pleasant sound. The summery beat keeps this a super easy song to just keep replaying, but her voice also conveys a tinge of sadness at times. It’s also just generally catchy, which doesn’t hurt.

3. Allison Weiss - Wait For Me

A song that almost made me cry when I first listened to it, and I’m still not sure why. I honestly have no idea where I stumbled upon Allison Weiss’s music, but I assume it was some Youtube algorithm nonsense. This song was made for you to think about a specific person while listening to it, whether it be a long-distance lover or a faraway friend. Allison’s bare vocals hold a raw emotion that’s hard not to empathize with.

4. Heize - 널 너무 모르고

I just like Heize’s singing voice, so I automatically have a bias toward her songs. This song definitely has the same groove as her previous title tracks, which makes it easy to like. I also think the lyrics are pretty relatable, and apply to a lot of people in modern relationships.

5. Yerin Baek - Bye Bye My Blue

A true coffee shop song, if I ever started going to coffee shops regularly. There’s something calming yet slightly addicting to the piano melody of this song, and Yerin’s natural voice complements it very well. It’s a fairly simple song, and I think the simplicity does work for its vibe.

6. Los Campesinos - Hello Sadness

One of my biggest soft spots is when a song has sad lyrics to uplifting music. This song is one of the classic examples, and I haven’t gotten tired of listening to it in five years. I love how this song (and all the other tracks in this album, actually) explore a type of disturbing romanticism that sets itself apart from nearly everything else I’ve listened to.

7. Lee Jin Ah - 마음대로

Lee Jin Ah, I swear to god. I loved her in Kpop Star when she was on it, more for her songwriting ability than her unique voice (though obviously, her voice is great as well.) Her new song, Random, just came out a week ago and it was alright. Maybe it’s a dick move, but after listening to that song I immediately starting listening to 마음대로 again instead, a song that she sang on Kpop Star back in 2014. I actually did cry when I heard this for the first time on the show. I feel like her voice is so soft and gentle that it fits these kinds of ballads better than the upbeat songs she’s been singing since debut. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

8. The Colourist - Fix This

Another one of those bands that I can automatically put on without thinking and I know I’ll be into whatever song comes up. I did say before how I liked bands with a female and male vocal duo, right? Well, yeah. I always sing along to this song subconsciously when it’s playing, which attests to how well it worms its way into your head. One of the things that I like the most about this upbeat indie pop/rock song is how it tells a really clear story with its lyrics.

9. Nano - Hysteria (acoustic)

Speaking of utaite, Nano is also an amazing singer that emerged from Niconico. This song is completely in English, and I fell in love with the acoustic version before I even heard the original. There’s a very nostalgic feel to this song, and it builds up to a very powerful emotional climax at the chorus. The original version of this song is just as good (albeit much more energetic) but as music to play in the background, this just fits better.

10. Swings - 듣고 있어?

One of Swings’s more chill songs, and the one that I find myself listening to the most often on lonely nights and rainy days. It makes you feel a little empty inside, but it’s definitely a pleasant song to listen to, and the chorus is surprisingly catchy. Swings actually sounds GENTLE in this track, a bit of a departure from what he’s normally known for *cough* Bulldozer *cough*.

#jenn #top ten list #nano #swings #allison weiss #reol #bolbbalgan4 #los campesinos #lee jin ah #heize #yerin baek #the colourist

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raisingsupergirl · 5 years

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The Literal Literary Hermit

I often hear that "the world" says we can't do things. We can't follow our dreams. Or we can't be who we want to be. And on the surface, this sounds pretty profound. But I did something this last week that reminded me that the world is a pretty big freakin' place, and most of the time it's our own mind telling us that we can't do something. And you know what that is? It's an excuse. It's an excuse to avoid hard work, a little bit of planning, and the possibility of failure. But let's rewind. My revelation started in a hole in the ground.

In fact, I'm sitting here, right now, looking out the window of my 200-square-foot hermitage, watching ice chunks flow by in the Mississippi river. I've been here for five days, and other than calls home to my wife and daughters twice each day, I've had two conversations since I've been here. And both of them lasted less than two minutes. So, why am I here? What have I been doing? And what have I learned. Well, to answer those questions, I need to go back just a little bit farther.

First, you need to know that I'm thirty-two years old, I'm a full-time physical therapist, I have a lovely extroverted wife and two "lively" daughters (one and four years old), I'm the owner and editor-in-chief of a fiction magazine (shameless plug alert: GoHavok.com), and I've been writing fiction novels for almost a decade now. I'm also a Christian and a Freemason, and I, unlike my family, am not an extrovert. But the thing to take away from all of this is that I'm a writer. I've written seven novels (four independently and three collaboratively). And yet, I've never published anything over 1,000 words. Why?

Well, the short answer is that I haven't yet written anything that a big publisher has considered "sellable." Sure, I've had some hits from smaller publishers, and I could self-publish like your cousin's friend, but, for me, there's just something in my soul that needs that first book to be read by more than twelve people, and it’s worth the wait... mostly (and to be clear, I know plenty of writers who have done extremely well indie/self-publishing, and I know others who don’t have any desire to sell tens of thousands of copies as long as their family and friends can enjoy what they’ve written. I give both groups due credit and respect. But I’m not them). The problem is, statistically, most authors sell their first book in their early thirties (remember that I'm thirty-two). And I'm starting to realize this is because, by the time someone hits their thirties, they've pretty much settled into who they're going to be. And with each passing year, it gets harder for me to justify "wasting" time on stories that nobody's going to read. So, we finally come to the inciting event of the first act—the point of no return.

I wrote a book in November 2017. I thought it was great. Relatable characters, exciting plot, inspiring message, an out-of-this-world setting. But, apparently, it was a mess. Yes, it received positive feedback on a number of levels, but in the end, it needed a lot of work. And I was heartbroken because this was the novel to make or break me. If it didn't force the stars to align, I just couldn't make myself commit to another 200-hour paperweight. So what did I do? I sat it aside for a year and let it build into a source of anxiety and frustration. Every time I thought about it, it made me mad. Why? Because I knew it had huge potential. I knew I had the talent to make it shine. But I just. Didn’t. Have. The. Time. Until a friend of mine told me about a place called Visions of Peace Hermitages.

$40/night or $200/week. Forty minutes from my house. Seven hermitages (literally dug into the earth) overlooking the Mississippi river. No internet. No TV. No YouFaced TwitterSnapstagram. In short, no distractions. And suddenly, I knew my novel had a chance. Just one more hurdle to overcome—convince my wife to be a single parent for six days while I kicked back and followed my dream. Turns out, she's amazing. Not one single word of protest came out of her mouth. Apparently we'd been together long enough for her to finally understand my passion, even if she didn't understand my stories.

So, for a total of $300 ($200 for the hermitage and $100 for the food) and 40 hours of paid time off from work, I set out on a Sunday and made one last run at the thing that I'd literally dreamed about all of my adult life. I was going to re-tell the novel written on my heart. And here's what happened…

Day 1 (Sunday): Snow-covered highways and single-digit temperatures brought me to my fortress of solitude. I arrived optimistic and more than a little nervous. I spent the first few hours unpacking, organizing, reorganizing, and generally "settling in." I spent some time in prayer and some more time walking the grounds to take pictures and familiarize myself with my surroundings. And then, unable to contain my excitement, I sat down to the first chapter. I wrote and edited for four hours that first day, then made myself a simple dinner, read a little Walden, and turned in at 10:30, determined to get a good night's rest before my first full day. Unfortunately, I tossed and turned all stinking night. For a hole in the ground, that place had more noises than a haunted mansion. I really don't know how it sounded like people were walking around upstairs and playing music next door. There was literally no upstairs or next door. The bed was hard and small, three space heaters on full blast weren't enough to keep me from freezing, and my mind would not stop. And did I mention that there were train tracks 200 yards away from my front door, or that the barges on the Mississippi don't shut down at night? Yeah, not a great start.

Day 2: I awoke at 6:30am, made a cup of coffee, a PB&J sandwich (team crunchy, hoorah), some strawberries, and a glass of OJ, and then watched the sun rise over the river. Well, I watched the sun rise through a veil of clouds over the river. But despite the overcast conditions, a fresh bed of snow had fallen, painting a breathtaking backdrop for me to write my Great American Novel. And I spent the next eleven-ish hours doing just that. Writing. Again, a small lunch and dinner, short calls home at 12:30pm and 7:30pm as scheduled, but no Walden. I was in it to win it. Another hour of writing before bed, and it was lights out again by 10:30. Then, another bad night of sleep. My skin was dry and itchy due to the space heaters.

Day 3: 6:30 wake-up. Yummy breakfast (PB/honey/banana sandwich, OJ, coffee), another cloudy sunrise, calls home at the same scheduled times, simple lunch and dinner, and another successful day of writing. I was getting in a serious groove, and all my romanticized notions of afternoon jogs and evening musings were now just distractions that I didn't have time for. Before bed, I boiled water on the stove, which seemed to help the dry air, and thus my itchiness. I slept a little better, but still not great.

Day 4 (Wednesday): THERE'S A REASON PEOPLE CALL IT HUMP DAY. 7:00 wake-up due to sleeping poorly the past few nights, cloudy sunrise, banana/OJ/coffee. No lunch (pistachios and strawberries at some point in the day) and a simple dinner. Calls home at 12:30 and 7:30 as always. I barely got through half the chapters I'd planned. Overall, very bogged down and feeling like this was a mistake even though the work I'd done so far was better than I'd hoped for. In bed by 10pm, and lo-and-behold, I slept BETTER! My brain shut off, I stayed warm, and I slept through most of the night. Hallelujah!

Day 5: What a day. A bright, clear sunrise over the mighty Mississippi. A quick banana/OJ/coffee breakfast while I started in on the day's writing. Another snack lunch and quick family call at 12:30 because I was on such a roll, and I made up for my lack of productivity the day before and then some. I called home at the scheduled 7:30 time to celebrate my news with the family and… nobody answered. I called literally six more times over the next ten minutes. Nothing. My wife knew the scheduled time and she didn't care. She didn't care about me. She didn't care that I was gone. She didn't care if I ever came back. And when she FINALLY called me back FIFTEEN minutes later, she said she didn't realize that it had gotten that late. And she didn't even feel bad that she'd made me wait FIFTEEN minutes! She didn't care! So, obviously, being confined away from one's family in a 200-square-foot hermitage does weird things to a person's mind, which resulted in a less than encouraging phone call. But hey, other than that, a great day.

Day 6: Did I mention that being secluded for prolonged periods does weird things to a person? Well, I rewarded my previous productivity by again sleeping in to seven, and another crystal clear sunrise pulled me from a deep, restful slumber. And then I saw my first sign of life for several days—a little ladybug crawling across the ceiling over my bed. "Hallooo, lady bug!" I said as I wiped the sleep from my eyes. "Or are ye a MANbug?" And I proceeded to have a five-minute conversation with the little guy in an Irish accent. I mean, the ladybug didn't have an Irish accent. Just me. And I resolved at that moment to watch Braveheart and Brave when I got home because the accent had so inspired me that morning. I could do it! Just a handful of chapters left. Let's go!

And then at 1:58 pm, I finished my novel. I could write another blog post on the supreme sense of victory that finishing a novel evokes, but let me just briefly say, "YAAAAHOOOOOOO!" and be done with it. I then spent the rest of the afternoon walking down by the river and FINALLY appreciating the quiet magic of that place devoted to God's majesty ("Be still and know that I am God."). Though, I will say that after a week of creating an alternate reality in my head, I found it impossible to turn off the narrative. I constantly found myself creating conversations, describing poetic scenes, and outlining plots based on everything I saw during my walk. Kind of annoying, really ("You never want to cross the Muddy in the shallow places. The undertow will pull you right under. No, find the deepest spot and paddle like your life depends on it, because it does.").

So here I am, on the evening of day six, writing this blog because when I go home tomorrow, there's NO WAY I'm going to be on my computer. I'm going to cuddle with my family until I squeeze their eyeballs out. But before I wrap things up, let me just share a few final thoughts that I jotted down during my stay here.

1) My location truly was amazing. I've never been somewhere simultaneously so secluded and connected. With trains and barges gliding by at regular intervals, I was constantly reminded of the outside world without being distracted by it. I was a silent observer. It was an introvert's dream.

2) The body isn't meant to be sedentary. I wrote for eleven to twelve hours per day for five days straight. That's around sixty hours, most of which was spent either sitting or lying down, usually in five-hour intervals without changing position. Even with brief sessions of stretching, pushups, etc. each day, my body was absolutely wrecked (anybody know a good physical therapist?). In case you didn't notice, my appetite dwindled, as did my waistline, but I also lost muscle mass, my digestive system was an absolute disaster, and when I went for a walk on that last day, I almost passed out from the sheer lack of cardiovascular health. There IS a reason professional writers only write four to five hours per day. Trust me.

3) What I did was NOT sustainable. Aside from my physical health, my mental health suffered as well. In case you didn't notice, I started having conversations with bugs and getting mad at my wife for being fifteen minutes late to a phone call. And in the latter half of the week, all I wanted to do was quit. I enjoyed the story I was living in, but nothing about it was "fun." It was a constant struggle to keep engaged, and at times, the only thing that kept me going was the promise of deer chili and a Bulleit old fashioned, with which I plan to reward myself right after I finish this blog.

4) I did a lot of counting. Maybe it had something to do with my mild OCD or my seclusion, or maybe it was a coping mechanism to keep myself on track, but I broke down everything possible into fractions and percentages. Half way through the braunschweiger on day two? I'd better slow down. Averaging 2,000 words/hour for the first two days? That means I should finish on time if I write ten hours per day for the next three days. I did more measuring and math in those five days than I'm comfortable admitting.

5) I had everything I needed in those 200 square feet… I think. Like I said, I was only there for a week, but I totally see how those tiny house minimalists make it work. Less to clean. Less to keep track of. More appreciation for what you do have. Then again, I'm not sure I could have fit on that twin bed with my wife and two daughters.

6) I missed a lot of opportunities, but it's okay. As I said, this place is amazing. I could have spent a week just walking the grounds, enjoying the sunrise, and generally observing the VOP Hermitage's "rule" on the plaque that was hanging in the chapel—"Listen well and produce nothing." The problem was, I had come here to produce. And that's what I did. This place can be used for many things, and I plan to come back again.

7) I may not be an extrovert, but man, I miss my family. I really do. There's not a lot more to say about that. I appreciate them. I appreciate their energy. I appreciate the fact that they love me. I appreciate the fact that my wife allowed this whole life-changing retreat happen. And I can't wait to see them.

8) My book is done. I'll send it off to beta-readers one more time. I'll make some adjustments based on their feedback. And then my agent will send it off to publishers. And I'll wait. I don't know what will happen, and that's okay. I edited 80,000 words and wrote 20,000 more over the last five days, and I also grew a lot through the experience. Even if this book doesn't work out, I'm not sure if I'll give up on the dream. Maybe I will, and maybe I won't. Or maybe that dream will just look different than it did before. I don't know. But as my main character says in the final lines of my novel (and I'm paraphrasing because copyright/first rights laws): "A lot of things make a person. And in some ways, nothing does. We are who we are, yesterday, today, and forever. It's simple, really. Live life and regret nothing."

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whole-dip · 3 years

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Some thoughts on every single disney animated feature film I've currently seen

-Snow White: This movie is nowhere near as boring as I expected it to be, but still pretty boring. Its technical innovations are incredible within context but it truly couldn't capture my attention whatsoever. The only reason I watched it is because I had to write a paper about it.

-Pinocchio: Clunky. There was a logic at the time at disney that the movies would more or less be a series of related cartoons tied together with a through-line and this is very much that. While it is still a cohesive narrative, it's very much a series of events rather than a story.

-Dumbo: More of a narrative here, but still very disjointed. The animation is good and it has much more personality since it's more or less a contemporary setting, but outside of the famous pink elephants sequence, it's not much.

-Bambi: This is what I'd consider to be the first truly cohesive story from disney's feature. This movie is truly phenomenal and well earned its way into the canon of epics. Bambi's journey from young fawn to prince of the forest is beautiful and moving. The jokes about dead moms only stick because this movie is just that good.

-Saludos Amigos: The first of the package films. Doesn't hold a candle to the superior Three Caballeros but still incredible in its own right. It's short enough to do a double feature with Three Caballeros so that's how I recommend viewing it.

-The Three Caballeros: Now THIS is what I'm talking about! The finale gets due recognition for being truly one of the best pieces of animation to come out of disney, but everything up to it is still pretty incredible. Horny donald is the best donald and I love the flying serape sequence.

-Melody Time: This one's very disjointed but Pecos Bill is one of the best and funniest shorts disney's ever made. I highly recommend at least watching just that segment.

-The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: Sleepy Hollow's disney adaptation is the much more famous half of this feature but in reality, it's got practically nothing to do with the headless horseman. Mr Toad however, is truly phenomenal as an epic crime thriller that will keep you in suspense. I know that sounds like a joke but truly it's not. Go watch it.

-Cinderella: Boring

-Alice in Wonderland: Also boring

-Lady and the Tramp: I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this one. It's fun, cute, and even funny at times. It really drops the ball in the finale, but for the most part, this romantic comedy is a real gem and definitely holds up. I recommend to kids and adults alike.

-Sleeping Beauty: It's wild how contemporary this one feels. The first half is a teen romantic comedy about mistaken identity and sneaking away from strict parents to get some time with your secret crush, but the second half falls apart with its focus on action instead of the characters. Special shout out to the incredible colors and moving tapestry art style which is great throughout.

-One Hundred and One Dalmatians: Again, surprisingly contemporary. Disney's first foray into the 1960s gives us a fun romp with memorable characters and gorgeous animation that feels down to earth compared to the more fantasy driven works of before.

-The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Is Pooh disney's greatest character? That's hard to say but I wouldn't disagree with someone that thinks so. Cute, fun, and funny, this movie is truly a warm blanket. For as much as we give shit to sickly sweet disney, this movie doesn't pretend to be anything but a small little story of cute characters. The surprisingly somber ending will leave you more contemplative than you expected, but still content to have spent time in the hundred acre wood.

-The Little Mermaid: I am always saddened to remember that this movie doesn't hold up as much as I wish it did. For every memorable song or character moment, there's a piece of clunky animation or just plain weird dialogue. It's so clear the studio was trying to get back on its feet. This first step pushes forward, but not where it needs to be.

-Beauty and the Beast: A slow first act leads to a truly phenomenal second and third. A triumph in animation, songwriting, and the studio itself. Far more nuance and beauty in this story than detractors like to claim. Well deserving of its nomination.

-Aladdin: It's not a heartfelt movie with some laughs, it's a comedy with some heart. Great action sequences, stellar animation, and just plain fun. After the regal romance of beast a year earlier, Aladdin's vegas style romp is a welcome addition to a studio that often takes itself way too seriously

-The Lion King: Like with bambi, this coming of age story deserves all the praise it gets. Incredible music, awe inspiring animation, and a tight storyline with memorable characters make this movie worth watching over and over again.

-Pocahontas: Maybe the most contrived, try hard, fucking boring movie the studio has ever made. Almost unwatchable.

-The Hunchback of Notre Dame: I am always shocked to find out this movie isn't a beloved classic. Truly incredible art and an amazing score/soundtrack make this one an instant classic to me. If you haven't watched it since childhood, give it another shot.

-Hercules: If it was just funny and had good music this one would be good, but it also has some of disney's best characters and a beautiful story of dueling world views.

-Mulan: Would've been a 10/10 if it weren't for fucking Mushu which makes it a seven to me. Otherwise, a fun, story with great music and truly epic action scenes.

-Tarzan: Often considered the weakest of the renaissance, this adventure about identity and family features a great (if too in your face) phil collins soundtrack with truly amazing animation innovation being displayed.

-The Emperor's New Groove: It's not funny.

-Atlantis: The Lost Empire: I truly can't think of a single bad thing about this movie. Incredible art, one of disney's best scores, and a story that will keep you captivated on its adventure. This movie is near perfect.

-Lilo & Stich: I once heard someone say this is disney's best film and I'm inclined to agree. The gorgeous water color backgrounds and Chris Sanders' beautiful character design play out a beautiful story that reflects a story of two abandoned children, with nuance about colonization to boot. Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride might be the best original disney song too.

-Treasure Planet: Such a hit or miss movie. Amazing action set pieces, but contrived characters. A phenomenal score, but a terrible soundtrack. This might be the most studio noted film disney's done and it's all the worse for it.

-Brother Bear: Not perfect by any means, but the beautiful animation and even more beautiful backgrounds are worth a look. The story is a little too basic and a little too predictable, reeking of white writers.

-Chicken Little: This is the first time I realized movies could be bad.

-Meet the Robinsons: Your nostalgia lied to you.

-The Princess and the Frog: Way too many cooks in the kitchen. Everything is good, but it's all a little muddled. It's a shame to because Tiana deserves better.

-Tangled: Like with mermaid, this return to form isn't perfect but it moves the studio forward. Rapunzel and Flynn are great characters and the subtle tweaking of the "formula" show the studio's willingness to innovate.

-Winnie the Pooh: Cute, but a very pleasant, fine movie. Worth watching.

-Wreck-It Ralph: I applaud this one for being so different. Lots of comedy here and a far better response to dreamworks than chicken little ever was.

-Frozen: Unfortunately, this movie is worth the hype. Is it amazing? No, but it's certainly very good. It's easy to see why this was the phenomenon it became.

-Big Hero 6: One of many in the series of attempt for disney to do an action movie. This superhero coming of age is definitely one of the better superhero stories not explicitly based on a comic, but it still feels like a comic book themed movie rather than a story that truly connects to the media that inspires it.

-Zootopia: Nowhere near as poignant as it wants to be, but plenty of fun with a great score by Michael Giacchino.

-Moana: Easily the best of the new princesses and a damn shame that it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. Moana's stellar animation and blast of a soundtrack create a beautiful film that's perfect for young girls. Seemingly a stealth remake of mermaid by the original directors, this one deserves to be a classic.

-Ralph Breaks the Internet: A surreal comedy from disney with a weak story but certainly some story innovations you wouldn't expect from the company. Watch it if only to see something you'd never expect the studio to do.

-Frozen 2: A surprisingly lore driven film that I really didn't expect. Probably the closest thing the company has done to a lord of the rings style story in recent years and I'm excited to see what this potential leads to next.

-Raya and the Last Dragon: Rips off way too much from Last Airbender in a way that is never bad, but man it gets kinda borings. Can't focus on any one thing unfortunately.

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interiorstarweb · 6 years

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Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees!

This blog mini-series is in partnership with Lowe’s! Thank you for supporting my sponsors!

Fall is, hands down, my favorite time of year to plant. Who wants to dig a big hole when it’s super hot and muggy out? Who wants to watch a shrub struggle all summer because it got too hot too quickly after it was planted? Nobody. Fall is a great, oft-underrated time to plant trees and shrubs especially (before they go dormant for winter), and this year I was determined to do both! AND SPOILER: I DID!

I’ve been REALLY trying to pay serious attention to gardens I like when I see them out in the wild—from the layout to the particular mix and massing of plants that make them up, and this longitudinal study into my own preferences has resulted in one thing I know to be true: I love a boxwood. I love them as individuals and I love them as hedges. I love them when they form parterres and I love them when they form other things I don’t know the terminology for. I love that they stay green all winter and I love that the only real work that goes into them is giving them a haircut once in a while, which is a task I actually enjoy.

So let’s start at this area in front of my recently pressure-washed porch. Back when I bought the house, it looked basically like this. See that mass of hosta? I dug that up and divided it, creating TWENTY-FIVE individual plants.

I moved them to the space in front of the low wrought-iron fence with some purple heart and creeping jenny. Evidently it gets too cold here for purple heart to be a perennial (live and learn!), but the hostas have come back bigger and bigger year after year, as they do! They work really well in this spot because they’re so hardy—they get a little abused with foot traffic in this location but they can handle it. And since they die off for the winter, that space can get mounded with sidewalk snow and come back fine in the spring.

You can kind of see right behind the hostas on the other side of the fence, I did a hideously dumb thing. I planted day lillies. They came from somewhere in the backyard, and at this point I know I was feeling like I’d NEVER accumulate enough plants to deal with this yard and I simply had to use what I had, regardless of whether I actually liked it. Personally, I do not like day lillies. They produce a weak showing of flowers once a year, look crappy the rest of the time, and reproduce and spread like a small annoying plague. More on that in a second.

Anyway. Since I know I love boxwoods, I’ve tried to add new ones every year in the hopes that someday I’ll have all the hedges and fanciness my heart desires. I counted them up and it turns out I’ve actually planted thirty boxwoods since I’ve lived here, which ain’t bad! I tend to buy the smallest ones at Lowe’s, mainly for cost reasons. Prices vary year after year, but they’re usually in the $10-range. I planted these three years ago in front of the porch and on the side of the portico, since neither of these foundations are particularly good-looking but nothing a nice hedge wouldn’t conceal! I’m not really a fan of foundation plantings around the house generally (since I want to maintain access to the siding and foundation for current/future maintenance, and don’t want roots affecting my foundation), but I think around a porch is more OK. Boxwoods don’t root very deeply, which both makes them decent candidates for planting close to a structure and pretty easygoing if they need to be transplanted.

Anyway! This photo is from a few days ago, and despite clearly being on their way out, the hostas have all gotten so big and bushy! The boxwoods have all grown! And those day lillies did exactly what they do, which is propagate and look a mess!

It occurred to me that this area in front of the porch might be a nice place to enact a little parterre action, like in that inspiration image (which is Kingston’s own Senate House, the building where New York ratified its state constitution in 1777!). I already have two of the four sides installed! So I ripped all those day lillies out and took myself to Lowe’s hoping the nursery still had boxwoods in stock.

OHHHHHH YEAHHHHHH. I may have gotten a little excited. Did I mention that another reason I like fall planting is because of clearance sales??! It varies by store, but you can pretty much count on end-of-season promotions as they need to clear out summer/fall stock, so these babies were being offered at 50% off! Yassssss. I bought 22 of them, like any totally normal person whose house is under hella construction would, right?

Whatever, I will take a major discounted boxwood windfall whenever and wherever it comes. These things cannot be controlled.

A couple of quick notes about boxwoods, specifically, after having done some light research. Apparently boxwoods smell unpleasant, kind of like cat pee, to some people. Personally, I don’t have this problem. There are a lot of varieties of boxwoods, which is helpful to know when selecting them—particularly if you’re sensitive to the scent! Evidently English Boxwoods are the stinkiest and on the more difficult end of the spectrum to grow. The ones I bought are called Winter Gem Boxwoods which are a type of Korean boxwood, and they’re one of my favorite varieties. They’re super hardy, grow quickly, and have a nice dense foliage. You might have seen people wrap/tent their boxwoods in the winter, but I’ve never done that (that’s totally one of those aspirational fall tasks that current-me totally envisions future-me doing, but likely I will not) and they’ve been great even with heavy snow loads and record-setting low temperatures.

OK THEN.

Here is where I freely admit that I don’t think I’m a natural-born gardener from a design perspective. I love houses and rooms but I find gardens INCREDIBLY challenging from a conceptual standpoint—this is the part of the house I’d totally hire a designer for if I could. That being said, I enjoy the puttering, and I think I AM really pretty good at growing stuff—very rarely do my plants die, and I certainly can’t credit outstanding maintenance or any other special skills. I do, however, plant pretty much everything exactly the same way, so I like to think that’s what I bring to the table. It is not complicated.

It starts with laying things out. Like a dry fit! Obviously this is so you can get an idea of how it looks and figure out if you have enough plants, adjust your spacing, etc.

Once that’s done, I start planting. If there’s mulch (especially fresh mulch), rake it out away from the hole you’re digging so you don’t mess it up with a bunch of soil. Then dig a hole that’s twice as wide and twice as deep as the pot the plant came in. It’s tempting to not do this, especially if the plant is large, but it’s important to give those roots a good chance at success, and the ability to spread into soil that isn’t so compacted.

Into the hole, I’ll throw a few inches of good, nutrient-rich soil. I try not to freak out about exactly what this is: there are a lot of options but basically a compost, composted manure, topsoil, or a soil mix formulated specifically for whatever you’re planting seem to all be just fine (or at least better than nothing! gardeners, feel free to chime in). In this case I’m using compost from my own composter!

The most important thing is to not panic. That’s a general statement but also applies here.

Then I flood the hole with lots of water, and then mix up the fancy rich soil with the water and other soil in the hole with the shovel or a stick.

Then I remove the plastic pot to expose the roots! Look at those roots! Such vigor! Big up, Monrovia.

Then I use my fingers or a small shovel or whatever I grab first to break up the roots a bit. It’s ok if some of them break. This encourages them to spread out into their new environment and create new growth.

Then I just stick the roots down into the hole, making sure that the base of the plant is even with the surrounding grade. Pack around the roots with some compost and the soil you removed from the hole.

Afterwards, I give everything a good soak from above. Sometimes if I haven’t packed the soil well, this watering settles loose soil around the plant, so check to see if you need to add more soil. Of course, I try to remember to water frequently during the first few weeks or so, but ya know. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, but it’s the intention that counts. Unless the plant dies, in which case the watering is probably what would have counted.

So that’s how I plant stuff.

Then I got to break out my new toy—the Greenworks Pro hedge trimmer (which is currently on sale!)! The hedge trimmers use the same battery as my lawnmower and my leaf blower, which I just love. It’s all so easy to switch between tools. The hedge trimmers are seriously powerful and the quality seems great. I almost wish they didn’t work so well because the job was done so quickly and I was just getting into the groove!

You have to be careful about trimming boxwoods too late into the fall since you want the trimmed parts to harden before the first frost, but I felt pretty confident I still had time left on the calendar. I only trimmed the plants that have been here for a few years already and are well-established, and I tried to be cautious to only give them a light trim—just enough to even things out and make everything look under control.

Finally, MULCH TIME! Normally I just mulch once in the spring, but I didn’t get to it this year! I probably would have just waited until this coming spring since retaining moisture and preventing weeds aren’t such big issues in the winter, but mulch also acts as an insulator to keep roots warmer and protected through the winter—which with freshly planted shrubs is more important than ever.

My old faithful is this inexpensive black mulch from Lowe’s. I think of mulching a lot like painting a room—it’s that thing at the end after all the hard work that instantly makes everything look so goooood. I aim for about a 2-3″ layer, making sure to get all the way around the base of the new plants. Then it’s just a matter of watering everything again to help kind of settle the mulch into place.

Different time of year, but this is as close as I could get to a before-and-after! I’m so happy with how this area has progressed over the past few years. I feel like it’s starting to look like something nice! Feel free to review progress from 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 if you really want to take a deep dive.

The two old rhododendrons are amazingly still going, although I think their remaining years are numbered. I’ll probably rip them out when I make it to restoring the porch itself and need more space to work. It’s possible I’ll have to transplant the boxwoods during that process as well, but that’s OK. This stuff can be tricky to figure out, because there’s so much of the house to get to but I’m not sure exactly when that will come to pass, and I still want it to look good and relatively cared for in the interim! I have a deep fear of making it a decade down the road with this house and realizing I don’t have any mature plants to landscape with.

Oh! I also dug up those hostas in front of this section of the fence, split them, and planted them closer together so they form more of a hedge than they currently do. I think if the boxwood hedge gets to about the height of the porch floor, and the hosta hedges much closer to the ground, this will look nice and layered but still structured and simple. We shall see in the coming years! I hope to get to splitting ALL of the hostas this fall but that might be rapidly becoming a spring project. We’ll all find out together.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Because I bought…so many bushes.

The rest of the boxwoods went to the newly-restored side of the house, which may not FEEL that exciting—but holy cow, getting to the point that I can safely plant stuff without worrying I’m going to accidentally trample them or squish them with the ladder I’ve moved around this area a thousand times over the course of this summer/fall was VERY EXCITING. Finishing up the work on this side of the house has felt like climbing a mountain, at the top of which are a series of many smaller mountains I won’t be able to climb this fall (like restoring every window), but having the bulk of the work done and something nice happening with the landscaping feels like major victory. I’ll show you the whole thing soooooon!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S STILL MORE! I’M NEVER SHUTTING UP! Let’s time-hop again, back to…

3 years ago, I planted 3 Cleveland Flowering Pear Trees from Lowe’s in that strip between the sidewalk and the street. See them? One of the truly striking things when you compare old pictures of the neighborhood to new ones is the current utter lack of trees in a neighborhood that used to have tons of them! My block, for instance, used to be lined with big beautiful trees, and now there are exactly three trees and they’re all babies and they all belong to me. It’s a shame, because nicely placed trees are not only one of the easiest ways to instantly boost curb appeal, but they also help with pollution, storm water management, property value, and more. Research even shows that mature trees make a difference in public safety and crime! A quick google search returned this nice succinct run-down of why trees are so important to urban spaces.

I am the Lorax.

I’m not sure why it took so long, but it finally occurred to me that I could totally plant a fourth tree in the same line, but to the right of my garage. There’s space!

So I went and picked up another Cleveland Flowering Pear. Flowering pear trees also seem to have a certain…olfactory problem for some people when they’re in bloom (which realistically is a couple of weeks in the spring), which…I’ll let you research on your own. But they’re beautiful, they grow quickly, they flower but don’t fruit (helping avoid vermin that might want to snack on fallen fruit!), and they grow in this predictable, very upright columnar shape that makes them great for a narrow spot like this, where you don’t want to interfere with the sidewalk or eventually have it growing too close to the house. They’re also SO hardy—I probably haven’t watered the three original ones basically since they were planted, and they’ve easily quadrupled in size and are really starting to look great. This is even with the teenaged neighbor kid who seems determined to kill them and breaks off branches and messes with them when he thinks nobody’s looking. Facepalm.

I used up all my homemade compost on the boxwoods, so I picked up a big bag of this Sta-Green Tree and Shrub Garden soil. Otherwise my planting method was exactly the same.

Grow, little tree! Grow! This guy was also 50% off, making his total cost a whopping $15. For a whole tree! Can’t beat that. Hopefully at some point it’ll catch up to its siblings that have had a few years head-start. This also reminds me that I have to get out there and add some mulch around it! There’s always something, am I right?

PHEW! Well I’m pooped! My big fall checklist is winding down, though, and I’m starting to get excited to turn my attention back toward the inside of the house. I guess technically we have another month of fall, so I’m going to try to keep working through those remaining items and see how far I get. Hang on just a little longer, mother nature!

Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees! published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

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carygarman980 · 6 years

Text

Fall Checklist: Planting Shrubs & Trees!

This blog mini-series is in partnership with Lowe’s! Thank you for supporting my sponsors!

Whatever, I will take a major discounted boxwood windfall whenever and wherever it comes. These things cannot be controlled.

OK THEN.

It starts with laying things out. Like a dry fit! Obviously this is so you can get an idea of how it looks and figure out if you have enough plants, adjust your spacing, etc.

The most important thing is to not panic. That’s a general statement but also applies here.

Then I flood the hole with lots of water, and then mix up the fancy rich soil with the water and other soil in the hole with the shovel or a stick.

Then I remove the plastic pot to expose the roots! Look at those roots! Such vigor! Big up, Monrovia.

So that’s how I plant stuff.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Because I bought…so many bushes.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S STILL MORE! I’M NEVER SHUTTING UP! Let’s time-hop again, back to…

I am the Lorax.

I’m not sure why it took so long, but it finally occurred to me that I could totally plant a fourth tree in the same line, but to the right of my garage. There’s space!

I used up all my homemade compost on the boxwoods, so I picked up a big bag of this Sta-Green Tree and Shrub Garden soil. Otherwise my planting method was exactly the same.

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defunctblogtobedeleted · 7 years

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11/6/17, 4:00pm - Stories of a Wannabe Playboy Jerky Jerk

BIt’s hard to preface this entry without explaining why I’ve been gone so long.

I like to think that it’s simply because I write less when I’m staying busy and I’m happy with everything that’s going on. So my life must be pretty fantastic right now. But I’ve been kicking myself to get back into the groove of this and idk why I can’t. Maybe I’m too complacent? I know for damn sure it’s because I’ve gotten lazy as fuck. Well not lazy, but as an anime I’m watching called Nichijou puts it “peaceful.” My free days I’m laying around either happily getting an excess amount of sleep or binge watching another anime or visiting with friends.

I could go back through my finances and my tweets and try to cover what happened day by day the past two months but that’s entirely too excessive and I think why I quit writing. It’s not creative enough? Or maybe just too mundane. But the entire reason I do this is to capture as much of my life as possible so I’ll be able to remember it later so I don’t really see how capturing the mundanity of it is a problem. I’d suppose it’s just another excuse to be lazy and just capture the highlights.

I don’t really know where to begin. Go backwards? Go forwards?

I quit buying cigarettes again three weeks ago, been bumming them from people at bars, just bought a new pack today to smoke while I sit on the porch and chalk this out I don’t care if it takes hours or not.

Ok so it’s a monday, I guess the first thing I want to write about is my past three monday+tuesdays. I’ve hung out with manu the past two weeks, drinking and playing the new south park game. Which was delightful and I’m glad me and manu finally beat a game again. On the mondays we’d stay at his place and on the tuesdays he’d come over to my place out here and weilin would hang out with us, we’d drink and play through as long as we could getting sleepy throughout the day hanging out. Tossed a frisbee around and talked a little about how life was going. Binge ate a fuckton of pizza and shit. Beautiful days. As was the monday before that, when weilin and I hung out. I had just gotten destroyed at the Arcadian this year, which was incredibly disappointing, so I wasn’t really feeling good about melee. Instead we went over to downtown greensboro and just walked around the city exploring. It was really fucking nice. Still going to board game nights intermittently, but september I was going to this tournament out in winston-salem instead because I was really trying to prepare hard. Shame that didn’t work out lol. My buddy marklar told me that maybe I put too much pressure on myself but I really feel like I need to hold myself to a higher standard or I’m not going to try to get any better. I’ll just idle in mediocrity. Which is very true I but I also can’t really imagine putting in the commitment to getting better. My laptop is starting to break, the screen gets really fucked up lately and I have to smack it around to get it to work right. I want to get a real laptop instead of a chromebook so I can start playing games again. Maybe getting on a netplay grind would be how I get good. I don’t know. I don’t really like the thought of spending money though, since I’ve been doing really well at putting most of my income towards repairing my debt. As a checkup on that I still owe Weilin 8.25k, but I’m down to just 7.5k on my car now, which is kinda excellent. I’m in a much better spot than I was a year ago, that’s for sure. I had to buy a new phone and got the pixel, but dad gave me money for that and I’ve been procrastinating sending my old phone in until I can get the pictures off of it. But even that is a symbol of improvement because this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to have a really New phone. Like new to everyone, not just to me.

I think I’ve put on a little weight so I’ve been considering dieting again. Slightly considering. I really don’t care all that much. I went as scott pilgrim for halloween this year, and can compare myself now to how I looked four years ago. My hair even kind of looks the same (I finally cut off all the blonde and so now it’s kinda short brown again, but with a little bit of the yellow kinda dazzling the tips lol). I look a hell of a lot better. I’m getting way more action too lmao, but more on that later. I guess I’m pretty satisfied about who I am right now. Instead of feeling buried and crawling to get out I feel like I’m just jogging on a treadmill. I know I’m not really going anywhere but I’m also sort of making progress I suppose? I haven’t really been doing nearly as much melee this past month, my life is mostly work+going out drinking+anime bingeing and resting. Oh and I’ve consistently gone to karaoke on tuesdays, I’m a regular dive bar attendee lmao. It’s delightfully idle. Quit playing hearthstone and watching hearthstone streams and watching twitch almost completely so those are all good things. I’ll take fucktons of anime over that any day.

Speaking of anime let me write out all these shows I’ve watched.

Seen all the new rick and morty and south park, watched my hero academia, up to date on dragonball super, watching this new show Juni Taisen, watching all the new Shokugeki No Soma week to week, finally watched Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and now I’ve started the seasons I accidentally skipped, watching Nichijou, watched all of Haikyu, almost restarted kuroko no basket, and I think that’s everything lmao. Watching new Shokugeki No Somas is particularly enjoyable because it reminds me that I’m being more true to myself than I was when I was just idling smoking a fuckton. Like it still embarrasses me when I met up with Kailey the one time and she asked me if I had seen any of the then new season 2 and I hadn’t even heard it came out. “I thought you’d be more excited” still stings a bit, not gonna lie.

But let me take a second to try to list out the most eventful days the past two months to see if I can get this on track and write about the more interesting shit.

1. Brian wedding, 2. date with Taylor, 3. Ashleigh’s Birthday, 4. Tizzlefest Party, 5. Arcadian+afterparty, 6. Lesbian pool bet, 7. Winston Salem Weird group sex night, 8. Maya prehalloween party, 9. Mary Shenanigans+halloween, 10. General becky update, 11. notes of neighbor girl and angie and katie

Ok wow. So I haven’t updated since September 1st huh?

1. So Brian’s Wedding. Well I didn’t get into the groomsmen so I don’t have a full weekend, just the day of the wedding and that night, but I just had to write how spectacular it was to hang out with Brian Manu Maya Oliver and Christina, as well as Reyad and Alyx and everyone. Getting drunk and stuffing my face with barbecue. Finally burnt through the Jack Daniels bottle I bought for that date with Stephanie like a fucking year ago. Drank more and played some jackbox stuff with people at the groomsman house, played some pool, chatted around a little fire, it was so nice. And even got pangs of nostalgia for Coolidge when I was the last one awake playing Splatoon and manu and christina started having sex so loud I could hear it three rooms away. Fucking classic lmao. Went to Brian’s parents for breakfast the next day. His wife is a sweetie. Then idk I think I went home to watch shitty horror movies with Becky, pretty great.

2. This girl Taylor. The story starts with this smashbros 64 tournament at Boxcar that I went to with my buddy Lex. He’d been talking trash for weeks and I just fucking love that game so we planned on winning the whole thing. Did not go as planned, turns out there’s someone in gboro who Actually plays and he fucking destroyed. But I got third and won a free tshirt! pretty excellent, except that the first time I wore it out I got a grease stain or something on it and it’s sullied already. Fucking rip. But so at this tournament there was another event going on for this deaf group, and so Lex’s gf and her roommate Taylor were there. I’m my normal flirty self when I meet her, and even though I didn’t Think I was hitting on her or anything when she walks away Lex tells me “just to let ya know, she’s actually a lesbian.” and I’m like ah well I wasn’t even really trying but w.e. But I keep chatting with her about movies and such and she’s like overly happy to talk to me and laughs loud at my jokes and shit so I’m kinda picking up on something. I ended up asking for her number before I left for the night, she gave it to me and I commended myself on being the ultimate victor of the evening. Texted lex something like “you Sure she’s not at least bi because I totally just got her number.” Lmfao. Anyway, we were originally talking about having a date going out to bars and doing karaoke or something but instead she just invited me over to her place to chill and drink. Perfect, I think. Not really, lex warns me, it’s probably going to be you and a bunch of dudes and my gf there because their apartment is a chill spot. Oh cool whatever, that’s fine too I think. So that date goes pretty exceptionally well. Her gay friends loved me because I’m bi and I laugh overly loud at their runway shows that they watch, and me and Taylor mostly made fun of them a fuckton for how they sucked at 2k. They all end up going to bed and Taylor’s talking about how everything went so well and how much she wants to go on a second date so I kiss her. And we made out. And I threw her up on the kitchen counter and onto the couch and we’re hardcore making out all over her apartment so I ask to just stay with her but she says no. Second date. I’m just whining like “but you have no idea how much I want to go down on you right now.” But she walks out to my car with me and we’re making out there and I did my stupid ass drunk thing where I start sliding my pants down like I’m a suave piece of shit and she laughs at me and says “you’re probably the type to want to have sex in public” and I’m like “that’s not fair that’s one of my kinks.” hit her with the “i had a vasectomy because I think the onus of birth control shouldn’t be on the woman” and she says something like “how do you know what to say to everything.” She crawls into the front seat of my car and sucks my dick a little, definitely one of the worse ones I’ve had in my life lmfao. I say we should go in the back seat and fool around so we do. It went awkwardly. I think I stuck my finger in her ass while I was going down on her and that probably didn’t help lmfaoooooo. I don’t think either of us got off and I asked her to at least suck me off a little more but she’s just like no. So I giggle and am just like allll righhhht, leaning against my car with my pants off shouting out “so when should I call you for that second date?” she says “like two days” or something. Here’s the catch. When we were making out on the side of my car she tells me that she doesn’t want to do anything because she’d actually never been with a guy before. I was like WOAH that makes so much sense. I don’t really want to push her into doing anything, but then I still went ahead and did all that like a fucking dummy. I’m on top of the fucking world though, thinking that I have a new special notch in my belt for the lesbian girl who’s into me. I play one of the best tournaments I’ve ever played because I feel like I can’t fucking lose. I said something stupid as fuck in discord like “I think I just turned this 90-10 lesbian girl straight tonight.” But alas, it was not meant to be. She didn’t return my texts a few days later. Wouldn’t answer my calls. I left a voicemail apologizing because I realized she might’ve heard from lex about how I said that (She made me promise to “not do any of that gross guy talk about tonight, please”). But I think now what happened was that she just wasn’t really attracted to me as much as she thought she was because it’s exactly like how when I made out with that guy josh and wasn’t really feeling it like even a little bit the next day. Or maybe I fucked up sticking a finger in her ass. Who knows, really. She won’t tell me lmfao. So that beat me up a little bit. Quick trip back down to earth lol. So it goes. Really I think it’s for the best because I don’t want to be her first because I’ve technically sworn off virgins lmao plus I feel like it would just totally have fucked up her whole perspective of guys if she found out I was also seeing someone else. But I might have dropped becky for her and been committed. She was really fucking cool, I would’ve loved drinking and playing 2k with her a ton. But maybe that’s all silly to even think about too. Relationships are dumb, people are dumb, and I’m the dumbest of them all hahahaha. Anyway she knew I was kind of a hoe, she said something like “you’re probably just used to easy girls.” and instead of confessing that I don’t really get that many girls and being more sensitive about it I said something like “well yknow I don’t really see people as ‘easy,’ because all anybody wants is to have a good time.” and she liked that too. But I just made myself out to be a total playboy jerky jerk lmfao. Def wasn’t the strat but maybe that’s actually who I am a little bit. Just a funny cute hoebag lol.

(5:05pm) 3. On that note, I had a great time at Ashleigh’s birthday party, hosted by the bar she works at, free beer for the night for all her guests. It was fucking sweeet. Just sippin on cheap beer hanging with my bud chris and aaron and ash and playing some beer pong. It was basically just another night out drinking, but I happened to run into my first greensboro hookup Brianna there. I introduced her to my friend chris, he asked how we knew each other and she playfully said oh he’s just a big hoe. So it kinda falls in the theme. Plus I decided that running into past hookups at your regular bar makes you an official townie, so I think I’m super at home in Greensboro now. Kinda wanna hit her up again sometime, but meh. She’s a strangeun. I guess all the girls I hook up with are, really. Strange people are the most interesting? Or maybe I think all people are just strange lol.

4. Tizzlefest Party Ok so there was this big smash tournament house party, tizzle’s privileged tour 2 and I actually got off work so I could go drink with everyone. Second in dubz, smoked way too much weed and drank too many shots and got bopped in singles but it was hella fun. First time I got sicky drunk in a longgg time, I was like laying out on their brick porch for a long time lmao. (5:45, had to take a break lol) Played some beer pong and flip cup and mostly just hung out and talked to people, idk I got a little rekt and missed out on a lot. Tizzle’s got two 18yo twin sisters and even though me and my buddy rob were joking about having a threesome with them, I felt like more of a big brother status that night and didn’t even hit on them! Lmao you guys I’m not a total hoe bag i promise. It was a great night though, hung out with the one sister and her friend and my buddy flare most of the night. Stayed up til like 6 in the morning smoking and we had some tea and I finally crashed. After I woke up from being like comatose I didn’t really wanna hang and smash I mostly chilled joking around with these girls in their parents bed with like 6 people. Talking about fetishes and how the one can’t have an orgasm even though her bf’s dick is like 10 inches it was a funny night. Missed seeing some tits but like I said I don’t really care. Which is weird. Maybe it’s just because so many other guys were barking up their tree that I didn’t really feel like it? Or maybe 18 just really is too young for me now. Idk idk idk. Oh wait maybe it’s because they both knew me as “the shirtless guy” from my and tizzle’s mm last year llmfaooooooooo. Kinda would’ve shot any attempts to get with them in the foot for sure. Got super out drunk by my buddy rob though. we were supposed to try to go shot for shot and I had 5 before I finished playing in bracket, but when I got off the sticks he already had 21 i was like what in the fuckkkk. he ended up puking a few times and passing out and coming back and ended up with like 32 or some nonsense. Excited for the next one for sure though.

5. Arcadian I don’t really have too much to say about. It was hard to fall asleep after work because I was too excited. showed up pseudo rested and got fucking wobbled by this ICs first round and then lost to this samus I haven’t beaten going 1-2 felt really bad. Drank a whole lot and was shouting about traps and shit while I watched clem body everyone and take the win. Pretty proud of him tbh, it’s nice to see people who I started playing with do well but also really frustrating. Anyway what was great about that night was my raleigh crew actually stayed at my place in gboro for once. We got fucking lit and made tacos, it was wonderful. Then we went to smith street diner in the morning and had a dank ass breakfast, I had this deliccccious pork. God I love pork belly so much that taste is the fucking best.

6. Ok so there’s this one night I went drinking with Aaron on a wednesday to this bar next to geeksboro. We drink a little and he’s like showing me how to play pool since he’s way better than me but there are these two girls playing next to us. I think I ended up saying hey and we all start talking smack about who would win. They wanna bet money but we don’t wanna take their money so we bet shots. The one is like 40 and she’s all about it, but the other is my age and she says that won’t work for her bc she’s trying to stay sober. On a whim she says alright well if we win we get to peg you in the ass. Instantly I’m like SOLD. First of all because I had confidence in Aaron and myself, but also because getting taken home by two lesbians sounds fucking hilarious. Pegging is gonna be the new eating ass for 2018 i swear. We ended up beating them, Aaron made me hit the 8ball so I saved my own ass, and we made a whole bunch of jokes about how he saved my ass and how I’m pretty clutch when my ass is on the line, good times. The 40 year old chick was fucking crazy though lmao humping me on the pool table and she ended up taking her shirt off, i think she wanted me to go home with them still but passed to go with aaron home to do somethingorother. Ended up giving my number to the other girl, we had had a nice talk on the porch about how I had fucked up with Taylor and about how she was kind of in a semiabusive relationship with that chick and she ended up texting me the next day but I haven’t heard from her since. She lives in Winston maybe I’ll hit her up one day. I just remember her long black hair and tight leather pants lol. Pretty fyne. But just a passing acquaintance.

7. Ok so like 3 weeks ago I don’t have work on a friday night so I’m chilling at home bingeing Haikyu. I decide I don’t really want to go out and if becky hits me up that’s cool because she’s out drinking with her friends. Becky asks me if I’m up to anything at like 1:30 in the morning and I’m like nah you wanna come over, and she passes out lol. So I’m still just hanging out watching anime when I get a message at 3:30 in the fucking morning from this guy I met at one of the winston monday tournaments. He says he’s over at his gf’s place at this all girls college and says her roommate’s looking for some male company. I’m like huwhaaaaaa. He gets her on fb video with me and she basically says “yeah I haven’t really been drinking in a bit, i’m just bored and horny now. So if you make it over here asap you have my explicit permission to fuck the shit out of me.” I’m like holy fucking shit wow. I knew she was gonna be a little chubby but I couldn’t bring myself to pass it up because i’m a fucking hoe and I thought it was hilarious that I was solicited for sex by a stranger at 3:30 in the morning. So I showered off real quick and sped the fuck over there. Weird ass night. They were locked out so his gf has to jump down this pit to get into the building and fucks up her foot, I attend to that medically, drink the last bit of my south carolinian everclear to make this all less weird, and have group sex with them basically. Got my cock stroked by two girls at the same time, we both had sex on this couch, fucked around with her for like a half hour, but I’m not gonna lie I was really struggling to stay hard. Fatties only make me think of work and diseases and stuff now hahahaha. Doesn’t matter, had sex. Now I have her as a booty call if I’m really desperate but not really lookin to do that again tbh.

8. Maya invited me to a halloween party at her place the weekend before halloween, and I tried to ask off work but couldn’t get the day off because my boss had patients scheduled three weeks in advance. I was like damn, but when I asked for my schedule that week it turned out that patient cancelled! So I got to go out to visit Maya and had a sweet night drinking and playing beer pong with manu christina pacos and rianne her roommate. Didn’t get too sloppy but was doing shots all night having a good time, maya showed me her apartment and her room and stuff she’s living in a pretty sweet spot. oh and remet a bunch of maya’s friends who I fucking forgot the names of againnnn dammit. Had a nice little moment chilling with pacos and christina on the couch catching up about stuff, talking about anal and all sorts of sexy weirdness lmao. Poor pacos’s dad though, such a shame about his condition. Lmao Christina and Manu disappeared at one point and pacos was like worried they left him there, so we walk around the house, check their car, check my car, couldn’t find them anywhere. Go back into the party and I’m like “oh my god I have an idea hold on stay here.” did what I would do and walked out the front door and immediately a few steps to the right and sure enough there they were fucking on top of an AC unit hahahaha. Manu was saying her back was scratched to fuck from that thing. Also I can’t remember what it was called but we were drinking this mix of bourbon and like spices that was really delicious. Most of the girls there were kinda busted so I didn’t really flirt around and didn’t think anything would happen with her roommate, but as the night was winding down and I was helping them clean up a bit she started saying things like “damn I just wanted to fuck tonight.” and asked maya like four times “doesn’t he kinda look like that last guy I was hooking up with?” Made some moves and ended up having sex with her. It was phenomenal sex, too. Yknow that drunk sex where you just power through until you’re like on the brink of collapse because you’ve been fucking for like an hour straight? Holy shit, spent my whole refraction period (which wasn’t too too long) with her on my face. That second nut where you really have to give it your all is my shitttt. Lol trying to get my stuff in the morning was such a problem i couldn’t find shit like had to keep waking her up to find my wallet I hope she isn’t frustrated about that. Took Maya to the airport and jammed out to some My Chemical Romance, was great.

9. So this girl Mary. She’s another regular at my karaoke dive bar, and sept 20 (thanks, twitter) we start chatting a bunch and decide to sing some songs together. It was like the week after I had been jokingly hitting on her married stepsister, maybe I got a good word from her or something. But so I put my arm around her casually at the bar and my buddy zach says something like “if you touch her like that again I’ll fucking kill you.” So I tweeted out fucking challenge accepted hahahaha. So later that night she says like “hey I know this is a little forward or weird but do you want to go out sometime?” and I’m like “of course!” we plan out some picnic with sandwiches and make out a bunch at the bar. Then we’ve been snapchatting a whole lot since but never got around to the date because we’re both busy with whatever, she has a new normie job so our schedules don’t match up much. But on halloween we’re both at the bar, I’m hanging with aaron and ash and chris and the gang, and end up taking her home. She’s making me like a turkey sandwich and I notice her dad dressed like Jerry Garcia on the fridge. The Craziest shit is it turns out that she had the same kind of childhood I did where she went around the country going to dead and phish shows too, she even knew what fucking rainbow gathering was. I was talking about selling crystals in the parking lot and she was like same but grilled cheeses. So fucking weird I like her a lot now lol, even more than when we just talked about cartoons we were watching. And she’s pretty voracious too lol we had sex twice that night and twice in the morning. ANND she’s a squirter. Which is fucking neato. Always nice to know when you’re getting them off hahahaha. Dunno when we’re gonna hang out again but maybe soon? idk I’m not really trying hard at anything these days.

10. So that brings us to Becky. The past two months have been really cool. We hang out like every sunday, watch a bunch of shitty horror movies, binge watched stranger things 2 together, we usually have a bunch of sex. But things have been slightly falling off on the passion side I guess? idk she’s always been a little too passive for me. And I’m not as up for fucking up my sleep schedule to go to j club and learn japanese so idk. Lazy. We went to a cat cafe with her friend this weekend and didn’t hook up for the first time so maybe I’ll let things die off with her. But she also had to talk to her parents about how she’s taking another semester so maybe she was just stressed. I remember like the third time we hung out after we fucked she just says “god, I’ve been looking forward to that all week.” Made my day hahahaha. She’s really cool but we’ve been seeing each other so long it kinda makes me worry about the status of our relationship, but I think hopefully we’re on the same page that we’re still just friends with benefits. Hopefully. Kinda on a don’t ask don’t tell kinda deal with that though I’d rather not talk about feelings since I’m in a unique position of not having them for once. Very strange considering how until now I’ve still been the ‘serially monogamous’ type. But Becky’s cool I like her a lot too. Just definitely wouldn’t be able to commit to her I don’t think.

11. last, my neighbor finally hit me up to hang out. But she did it on a friday night when I had work so that sucks. Glad to know she didn’t just ghost me though. And Angie hit me up in september. I told her that I was kindasorta seeing becky to be courteous and we talk about life a little bit and she said that I’m “one of the good ones.” I like to hold onto compliments like that. I texted her a bit when I was at maya’s party too, she’s kindasorta seeing some guy too, so I’m not gonna try to rekindle anything with her I don’t think. And Katie I don’t really have anything to say about I just figured I’d mention her because she’s liked a fuckton of my tweets and every instagram pic I’ve posted lately even though she has that cute baby boyfriend of hers now. Just interesting.

So those are my playboy wanna be jerky jerk stories. Embraced becoming a regular Scott Pilgrim. Super satisfied about everything in my life, and happy about just about everything. Still lazy as fuck and not doing too much of anything but life is so good right now. Hope I didn’t forget any cool stories and probably could have gone into more detail but this is long as fucking enough.

It’s 6:30 now I’ve spent long enough writing. Til next time lol.

0 notes

ineedthislikeaholeinthehead · 7 years

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2016 Year in Fic

I did this last here (here it is) and it was fun, so I did it again. I’m not gonna tag anyone, but you should do it, too!

Fic List

(For me, I’m only counting finished works, but if you end up doing it, decide for yourself what counts.)

1. “...why would I care?” (Jon/Lin) This was a test the waters fic- at the time there were less than 30 fics on AO3 for this obviously wonderful pairing, so the community was still pretty tiny. I got butt hurt about the way they demanded my compliance on an intentional publishing choice, so even though I really like this pairing, I’m never gonna publish in it again. (I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse for the fandom- probably doesn’t make much of a difference at all) Cute fic though. I stand by the fact that it’s adorable. (2,167 words)

2. A Captain meets a Pilot (Chris Pine/Oscar Isaac) Pictures of Chris Pine and Oscar Isaac at D23 together surfaced. I will (and do) ship Chris Pine with anything, so this just seemed like a no brainer. (1,461 words)

3. A Study in Backlit Light (Pinto) Zach lives in New York and instagrammed a picture of him looking lonely at the same time that Chris was in NYC. Why not? (448 words)

4. I have a type (Richlee and Rich/Lee/Raul Esparza) Raul Esparza looks a little like Richard Armitage. And Lee and he were on Pushing Daisies together. Then he and Richard were on Hannibal together. It really makes perfect sense to me, Bryan Fuller was obviously creating a situation for Lee (and my) dreams to come true (6,221 words)

5. Legendary Weapons (RichLee) What the fuck did Richard name his penis? (197 words)

6. To Try for the Sun (Stucky) My first (and currently only) Stucky! Based on the song of the same title. (1,946 words)

7. Five times Zach said “Goddamnit, Pine!” (And one time Chris did) (Pinto) I just re read this. Zach’s such a dick to my poor Princess Whitelaw. From the kink meme. (1,230 words)

8. Knights of Desire (Merthur- but really Merlin/Everyone) I actually haven’t finished this one yet. But I will get that Merlin/Arthur ending scene done eventually. (9391 words)

9. Very Man-Crushy (Michael Fassbender/Chris Pine) My beloved Pie said he had a man crush (terrible phrase) on Fassy, so of course someone needed to write them fucking (of course!) (2,358 words)

10. Supporting Actor (Richlee) This was a prompt! Richard and Lee make a bet that if they win an Emmy they have to come out. I love coming out stories! (6,390 words)

11. I don’t know if I see it ~or~ 5 times Chris broke his glasses (and the one time Zach did) (Pinto) Another kink meme prompt. Are the 5:1 stories supposed to be snippets or are they supposed to be like mini chapters? I can only make the mini chapters kind. (3,433 words)

12. Just a little more (RichLee) Awesome tumblr fanart is awesome. So I wrote something to go with it. (385 words)

13. Exactly the Right Mistake (RichLee) This was supposed to be a short little thing for “take your fandom to work” day. It kinda morphed. (21,121 words)

14. Cracked Love (Crack) My wife gave me a crack ship prompt (VCR/VHS) and I thought up some (Marble/Vacuum, Fork/Toaster) to see if I could do it. She says I did. (711 words)

15. Princess, Prisoner, Priceless (Greek Mythology) There was a writing contest- a really weird one that said “No fan fic need apply- just write about your favorite fairytales reimagined with smut.” and like… isn’t that exactly what fan fiction is? I think they were looking for like, The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast (But they also said not beastiality, so wtf?) but I went with the tale of Danae, Mother of Perseus (slayer of Medusa) because I’m a fucking dork. (4,924 words)

16. You’re Never Really Alone (Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr) I started to get into Cherik when Apocalypse came out. That is all. (2,113 words)

17. Teacher’s Pet (Peter Maximoff/Mystique) I started getting into Quicksilver when Apocalypse came out, too. (768 Words)

18. Prosciutto and Cheese (Hank McCoy/Peter Maximoff) There is not nearly enough fic in this pairing. (991 words)

19. How Peter Got His Groove Back (Hank McCoy/Mystique, Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr, Peter is all alone) That Father/Son dynamic between Erik and Peter is just too much. I had to explore it somehow. (3,979 words)

20. Traveling Soldier (RichLee) *Le Sigh* I try to rein myself in, I try to keep my stuff interesting, but just like Sex, Love and Rock’n’Roll the year before, I can’t seem to keep it interesting enough for an audience. Oh well. I’m still really proud of this Vietnam Era AU- and if everything I’m proud of isn’t popular, who cares, as long as I enjoy it- that’s what fic is really about, right? (10,621 words)

21. Daphne (Richlee) There really isn’t enough Richard and Lee kid fic, IMHO. (1,641 words)

22. Blueberry Yum Yum (Peter Maximoff/Kurt Wagner, Jean Grey/Scott Summers/Jubilation Lee) Have you ever heard that song? I’m kinda in love with Nightsilver, I can’t believe I haven’t written more of it. (751 words)

Total Word Count: 85,387 words

Overall Thoughts: Well, I’ve drastically reduced my word count for this year. But I also seem to have stopped writing at the same time that I’d gone prolific in 2015. And we all know what a terrible year this was. I’m going to try not to beat myself up for the word count. If I’m counting this right, I wrote for 11 different fandoms and a lot more pairings, compared to 7 fandoms last year. And I did do a little original fic- though definitely not enough finished! I even managed to write a little poetry (which is always a yay-but-ugh sort of feeling) So I’m maybe not doing as much, but I’m stretching myself in some new ways, and that’s always nice.

Personal Best Story: Princess, Prisoner, Priceless. It’s almost an original fic. I’m getting there. Plus, it was a lot of fun to research. I’m sad that it’s not going to go anywhere, and there’s not much of a fandom to find it, but I still think it was pretty well done- and there was straight (ish- I’m not gonna claim Zeus is straight because that fucker is the most pansexual deity in existence) sex, which I’m always worried about getting wrong.

Personal Favorite Story: Traveling Soldier I just really, really loved this whole idea. I don’t know why I wanted to write it- We were doing a challenge for Richard’s birthday and it was a lot of fun in that respect, but I have no idea what drove me to write about Army doctors and their teen-aged boyfriends.

Most Underappreciated Story: Cracked Love This is a story about a VCR and a VHS Tape. I can’t actually expect anyone to find that, can I? Do people even know what those are anymore? I’m not as tore up this year about not getting any attention. Hopefully, that means I’m growing up a little, lol.

Most Popular Story: So, Apparently it’s Knights of Desire (?) Which I guess makes sense, most of my pairings are so much more random and rare, where as Merthur is much more popular ship. Yay for that- though I’m sure my story gets lost in the mix of everyone else’s, comparatively. There’s a lot of good stuff out there for them.

Story with the Sexiest Moment: I feel like I wrote a lot of smut this year, but apparently none of it published (yet) There’s some car stuff that happens in Exactly the Right Mistake that really worked on me.

Most “Holy Crap That’s Wrong Even for Me” Moment: I wrote about a fork and a toaster falling in love. I don’t know how I’m ever gonna beat that.

Story That Shifted My Perceptions of a Character: How Peter Got his Groove Back is really just a character study between Peter and Erik, and I really enjoyed allowing myself to do that with those two.

Most Fun to Write: Cracked Love. Definitely. I mean, once you just throw your inhibitions and your sanity to the winds and just start writing to see if you can, you’d be amazed at what can happen. It’s fucking fantastic.

Hardest Story to Write: “...why would I care?” It’s not that the story was so hard to write- Jon and Lin fic basically write itself. It was the reaction I got to the fact that I had left it unlocked. This year not as much, but my primary interest is and always has been writing RPF. And I almost always keep it unlocked for a very specific reason- people are nervous about RPF, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to read it. So I want to make sure that anyone who doesn’t have an account and still wants to read about anyone I happen to write can still get to it. It’s never been a problem in the other two fandoms that I’ve been in- Pinto and RichLee. Some people might lock their work, but no one has ever come onto one of my stories and demanded that I change mine, and here I was within days of posting in this very tiny community, getting told by numerous people that I HAD to lock it, and that I was being over dramatic- not by making a big fuss over it (which I hadn’t even gotten a chance to do) but by not automatically locking the work. The irony, of course, of a fandom getting nervous about RPF about LIN MANUEL MIRANDA, whose current success is 100% DUE to his SONG FIC RPF, and who has literally posted VIDEO of him doing the exact same thing as the “naughtiest” thing I wrote them doing (kissing, I wrote Jon and Lin kissing and apparently that needed to be hidden, lest either of them find it) is not lost on me. I know it’s been almost a year, and I should totally be over this, but I’m not. Because it reminds me how hypocritical people can be about RPF, which is just plain stupid.

Favorite OC: Elpis from Princess, Prisoner, Priceless. I’m not really much for original characters in fic (I say that, but I honestly have no clue if my stats back that up) but Elpis is super cute and I love her.

Biggest Surprise: Honestly? Finding out that Knights of Desire was my most popular story right now just surprised me. I didn’t expect that at all!

Most Unintentionally Personal Story: Well, this doesn’t count as “unintentional” because it was for the “Take Your Fandom to Work” Challenge, but Exactly the Right Mistake put Lee in a very similar situation to mine- alcoholic non-profit office drone with not a lot of prospects. And while HE gets to go off with amazing billionaire Richard, I’m still stuck here for the rest of my life. Kinda a downer, really. Still, a lot of fun to write.

Favorite Lines/Scenes:

Just a little more The fan art this was based on was ~amazing~

Sir Mordred in Knights of Desire I really love Alexander Vlahos, but I also really, really love hate-fucking.

This is so cheesy, but I really love it: “A M67 hand grenade has a fatality radius of 16 feet. Richard could throw one 100 feet. The feeling of hearing a M67 go off, hoping it’s far enough, secretly hoping it hits nothing at all. Kissing Joe was exactly the opposite of that feeling.” (From Traveling Soldier )

Lines/Scenes I’d Like to Change: I dunno. I tend not to go back with fic. Just forward and hopefully upwards in terms of writing. But who really knows? I’d like to go further with some stories. There’s a whole second half to Exactly the Right Mistake that I’ll never write. And I’d love to do a whole series of sexy myths a la Princess, Prisoner, Priceless but time wise, I just don’t know that I’ll ever have it in me.

Top Five Scenes I Wish Could Be Illustrated:

Everyone laying around getting high in Blueberry Yum Yum

Richard and Lee holding their baby in Daphne

Depressed Chris in Five times Zach said “Goddamnit, Pine!” (And one time Chris did)

Bucky and Steve hiding from trouble Steve caused in To Try for the Sun

Peter and Erik playing basketball in How Peter Got His Groove Back

2016 Writing Ambitions:

O-Fic would be nice Did some (but need to do more!)

Finishing those Pintos I worked on them, but I didn’t finish any of them.

Finishing that RichLee threesome that’s staring at me angrily Done!

RichLee Divers AU I opened this up a few times, the ideas are still solid, but I don’t know if I’ll ever sit down and do anything other than fiddle with my outline.

RichLee 60′s NYC AU As god as my witness, this WILL happen… some day. I just don’t know when.

Jon/Lin Fics (They practically fic themselves) Did one. Never again.

Hamilton Fic I still kinda want to, but I’m not sure now if I feel comfortable.

Star Wars TFA Fic (Poe/Finn/Rey) UGHHHH! I am so mad I missed this. I didn’t know I was going to get obsessed with X-men, that’s what really fucked me over!!!

I dunno, tie up all the rest of the shit I’ve been working on God, I got barely anywhere with this.

2017 Writing Ambitions:

More O-fic

Finishing those Pintos (a girl can dream, huh?)

RichLee 60′s NYC AU

The sequel to According to Plan is still sitting halfway done in my drafts…

Star Wars TFA Fic (Poe/Finn/Rey)

I’d really like to work on the Cary Grant/Randy Scott story in my head

Or that story about Mary Shelley’s half sister, Fanny Imlay.

And maybe one or two of the screenplays stuck in my notes folders? It would be amazing to complete a screenplay this year.

I’m still really into Peter Maximoff, too. I’d love to write a real full story about him- though I’d have to stop shipping him with literally everyone first. (Or maybe not. Hmmmm….)

#2016 #fic roundup #my writing #jassiestamp #Fic

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