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moemoemammon · 3 years

Note

im so sorry i dont know how to format this but could i request hcs of mc walking into one of the brothers rooms in the middle of the night and being like “um i had a nightmare.. can i stay with you”🧍if not its okay though!! :]

I Had a Nightmare...

(Feat. GN!MC and the Demon Bros)

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Lucifer

Lucifer always keeps his door locked when he's asleep, so you took a gamble in choosing to come to him for your post-nightmare comfort. Luckily, the eldest is a night owl so he's awake.

He looks up when you enter his bedroom, currently sitting on his bed and reading a book. He's about to scold you when he sees the face you're making.

You don't even have to tell him something's wrong, because he can tell. He sets his book aside and gestures to the empty side of his bed.

Once you climb in, Lucifer shifts slightly, just so your arm is pressed against his own. It's like an invitation for you to lean in if you want, and should you choose to, he'll wrap you in his arms and carefully rub your back.

"A nightmare, hm? It's interesting to think that there are things that can scare you, considering where you are right now. But there's nothing for you to be afraid of. After all, I have no intention of letting anything bad happen to you, so long as I live."

Mammon

Mammon startles awake the moment you enter his room, nearly toppling out of his bed in the process. Grrr, he could've seriously gotten hurt! What're you trying to pull, suddenly barging into his room like th-

Oh. Oh.... He takes one look at your face and all that anger of his fizzles out into nothing. He's a little self conscious being shirtless and all, so he awkwardly tugs on a tshirt that's been tossed to the floor, and makes his way over to you

What happened? Did someone do something?? Ah.. a nightmare, huh? Mammon's big brother instincts are taking over, and he's pulling you into a tight hug, squeezing out all your worries.

And when he's finished, he ruffles your hair and gestures to his bed. A human like you still needs to get their rest, so you should try to sleep some more. But if you really can't, he's not against the idea of the two of you bundling up and watching a movie or something.

"You're like a little kid, ya know? But don't worry, the Great Mammon's gonna chase away those bad dreams o' yours, no problem! ...Hah? Whatdya mean 'that's cheesy'?? I'm being serious here!"

Levi

Levi's definitely awake when you enter his room, but he doesn't notice you. His computer monitor has his undivided attention, and his headphone are drowning out the sound of your entry.

So it takes you tapping his shoulder for him to react, and boy does he react. Levi nearly has a heart attack and only calms down when he realizes it's only you. Did you come to play games? You should've texted him and he’d set everything up! But wait... that's not it?

You had a nightmare and of all the places you could go, you came to HIM?? Levi's having a hard time pushing down the grin on his face, but he collects himself for your sake. Now's no time to be feeling giddy when his best friend is in need!

He might not be great at comforting people, but he knows what helps him when he has nightmares. So he wraps you up in a blanket and pulls up a chair for you to use so you can watch him game. This is better than thinking about that other stuff, right?

"I'll turn down the screen brightness, and- UWAH! W-wait! Um... no, it's fine. I don't mind if you lean against me like that. You're tired, so it's probably more comfortable like that. I'll keep still, okay..?"

Satan

Nightmares aren't something Satan experiences often, being born of rage and the only pure demon in the house. He reads enough horror novels that he's practically become immune to anything scary.

But that doesn't mean he never has bad dreams, so when you come into his room to tell him about yours, his expression softens up. You caught him in the middle of reading, but you're more important than any silly book.

Satan gives you that warm look he reserves only for you (and cats), and gestures for you to come closer. He's got the second comfiest bed in the house, the first being Belphie's. Topped with warm quilts and plenty of pillows to support him as he reads, you're wrapped up in warm comfort once you join him.

Especially when he wraps an arm around you, giving you a curious look. He can be a little too curious at times, so he immediately asks what your nightmare was about.

"If you're interested, I have a guidebook for dream interpretations. I could try to find out the root of your worries, or... you could spend the night here instead? I wouldn't mind having you by my side until morning."

Asmo

Asmo is VERY invested in his beauty sleep. Even a slight deviation in his schedule could be disastrous for his complexion! His brothers know better than to disturb him lest they feel like dying, but you? You're the only exception... Lucky, huh? ❤️

When you touch him, he barely stirs. It takes a couple of shakes to get him to wake up, and then he's whining and grumbling until he realizes who's there. How could he be upset when he gets to wake up to your gorgeous face?

But right now.. your expression isn't bright and sunny at all. You look distressed, and he soon learns it because a pesky nightmare has been harassing you all night. He couldn't be happier that you chose HIM of all people for your comfort!

While there are many things he could do to help you forget about your bad dream, he opts for carefully guiding you into his bed, cooing sweet nothings until he's got you in his arms. You're enveloped in the smell of his sweet body lotion while he presses kiss after gentle kiss across your temple and down the bridge of your nose.

"There there, love. To think a nightmare has put you in such a state.. It's unforgivable! I'll get rid of all those worries so you can spend the rest of the night dreaming about my beauty! Or... about you and I. Wouldn't that be the perfect dream?"

Beel

Beel sleeps almost as soundly as Belphie does, and his monstrously loud snoring drowns out most sound, including your quiet knocking on his bedroom door.

But when you come in and tug on his sleeve, Beel's eyes blink open and he lets out a confused grunt, letting his eyes focus on the darkness around him. Where did that mountain of rainbow pizza go?? He wasn't even halfway done, and- Oh. MC.

You had a nightmare?? Beel stands up immediately and wears a look of worry, pulling you into a gentle hug. You look like you need one.

He's not the best when it comes to comforting words, but he can just show you how he feels. That's good too, isn't it? Maybe if he hugs you for long enough, you won't remember your nightmare.

"Do you want to take my bed? I'll sleep on the sofa, so- ah. Together? ...That's fine, too. I'll hold you close, so you don't have to be afraid anymore."

Belphie

The heaviest sleeper in the entire Devildom, it's a literal miracle that you managed to wake him up. Still, he's only half awake, and staring blankly at you while you explain why you're there.

A nightmare, huh? He's had plenty of those. If that's all it is, then just climb into bed with him. Belphie lazily pulls back his blankets and opens his arms for you, gesturing expectantly.

And once you're nice and cozy, he pulls you even closer until the gap between you is closed, and all you can feel is his warmth. He buries his face into your neck, tickling your skin with his breath.

His slow, heavy breathing makes you wonder if he's fallen back to sleep just like that, but he gives your side a reassuring squeeze and lets his eyes open slightly to look into yours.

"Must've been pretty scary if you came all the way here. No matter how many bad dreams you have, I'll be right here when you wake up. It feels better to wake up in my arms, doesn't it?"

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randomdreamywriter · 4 years

Text

A New Friend

A/n- Hey! So this is my first ever Shigeo Kageyama x Fem!Reader fanfiction. It could be interpreted as platonic, since I just wanted make this soft. Since I'm 14, I decided to self-indulge and make something for myself, and I absolutely love Mob. Hopefully you like it! I will be making my rules soon, and I hope you understand if I refuse to do your request, given that I'm still a minor. Thanks! More shall come in the future. Maybe even a sequel :))

Y/n- Your name

F/n- Friend's name

H/c- Hair color

Math is seriously going to kill me. Y/N felt her head throb as she stared at the myriad of numbers on her notebook. The combination of symbols and letters made her head spin, and the equations weren't making sense like they used to. I'm usually able to figure this out after a few tries, what's so different now? A sigh escaped her lips, and she felt as if her brain was TV static, her thoughts foggy. Great. Now I'm at that phase.

"That's enough for today. You may go home now. Number 3-5 will be your assignment for tomorrow to be checked." Her teacher's stern voice was enough to pull her out of her thoughts, and she silently stood up, making a mental note of solving the math questions later, her eyes scanning over the equations again. He chose the hardest ones for us to answer. Guess I'll have to ask F/N for help later.

Her hand reached for her backpack strap, which was slung over her chair. The weight of her backpack made her shoulders ache, but otherwise, it was fine. She was used to it anyway. The sound of the chairs screeching against the floor and the murmurs of the students as they got out of their seats echoed in her ears. Y/N instinctively reached for her phone, practically a routine now whenever she was about to leave the classroom, before something unexpectedly caught her eye.

A classmate with a clean bowl cut seemed to be in a daze at the back of the classroom, staring at his notebook in utter concentration. Huh. Good to know I'm not the only one struggling. Usually, Y/N was not one to approach other people. She was too scared of being an nuisance, or ruining their impression of her with her habit of rambling and stuttering whenever she's nervous, but this kid; he felt different.

His silent awkwardness, his gentle voice, the way his eyes would burn with determination whenever she caught him jogging with the Body Improvement Club. It interested her. Her eyes have been on him for a while now. The H/C haired girl didn't know what it was. It could be a crush for all she knew, but it was too early to tell. Either way, this was an opportunity to talk to him. Kageyama Shigeo.

"Hey. You alright there?" Y/N placed her hand on his desk, which made him flinch, startled by the sudden voice. The girl waited patiently for him to answer as he slowly looked up at her. She noticed that his cheeks would no longer turn pink whenever someone of the opposite gender approached him, and she didn't really know how to feel about that. I guess he just grew out of it. Good for him. "Yeah. The questions were just a bit confusing." It was like the mere sound of his voice was enough to help her relax, the dull ache in her head slowly fading. "Isn't it? It's probably going to take a lot of help from my friends to be able to get these right. You think you can pass those by tomorrow?"

Kageyama stiffened at the question, his lips trembling in realization. Y/N observed his behaviour, and was quick to figure out what it meant. That looks like a no. If I recall correctly, he had an outstanding younger brother, but I don't think even he can help him with this, since he's in a lower grade, and I'm pretty sure his friends at the Body Improvement Club aren't exactly the studying type, not that that's a bad thing. They all seem like good guys. Before she could think about it, the girl jumped at the opportunity presented to her. "Do you want me to help you with it? My friends are really smart, and they help me a lot with homework. I could let you join us so we can work together." Her lips curled into a smile, her expression perfectly calm. Her thoughts, however, could not say the same. WHAT AM I DOING OH MY GOD THEY'RE TOTALLY GONNA SCARE HIM OFF I'M GONNA LOOK LIKE A TOTAL CREEP WE'VE BARELY EVEN TALKED TO EACH OTHER WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF I'M SUCH AN IDIOT I SHOUL-

"Sure. Sounds good." Y/N blinked, her eyes staring at him in utter surprise, taking her a second to realize what he had just said before slowly pulling herself together. "Great! I'm going to meet up with them in front of the school as soon as I leave the classroom, do you want to come with me? It'll be easier that way." Kageyama smiled softly, nodding his head as he stepped out of his seat and put his notebook in his brown backpack. That turned out better than I thought it would. He's really as nice as I thought he would be. It's pretty comforting.

The two walked out of the classroom in comfortable silence, the sound of student chatter and footsteps echoing inside the school hallways. They passed by a certain classroom, and Y/N watched as Kageyama's eyes sparkled, stopping abruptly as if in a daze, staring at a pretty black-haired girl giggling at what her friend was showing her, his lips curling into a bigger smile. "Ah, Tsubomi-chan..." The words were spoken with such sweetness and admiration, it took Y/N by surprise, her eyebrows raised. Must be his crush. Can't say I blame him though. She's gorgeous. An almost unnoticeable pang of insecurity shot at her heart, but she didn't pay any attention to it. She's barely even talked to Kageyama, there's no way something like this would hurt her, even if she thought he was a little cute. Either way, she tapped his shoulder, making him yelp, his cheeks turning red with embarrassment. He opened his mouth to apologize, before she cut him off, an amused grin sitting on her face. "Heh. I get it. No need to apologize, Kageyama-kun." The jet black-haired boy blinked, his eyes a bit wide, unsure of what to think of her statement, before closing his mouth and nodding profusely, his face still slightly pink. Y/N couldn't help but giggle at his reaction, finding it adorable. He's just so innocent. Who knew someone like him still exists in this world.

Y/N's phone suddenly made a sound indicating a notification, making her pat her skirt pocket, where her phone resided in. "That must be my friend. Seems we've made them wait long enough, let's go!" A cheeky grin grew on the girl's face as she reached for Kageyama's wrist, making him blink in surprise, and before he could say anything, she took off running, forcing him to keep up the pace to avoid stumbling, although it wasn't with as much difficulty as he imagined. Can't force him to run faster than he's comfortable with. That would be mean. Y/n looked back at him, the smile consistent on her face as she pulled him along the school hallways, and Kageyama couldn't help but reciprocate. It seemed he's made a new friend once again.

A/n- I'm sorry if this flooded your dash. I'm formatting this on mobile and I dont think the read more option is actually available on this, and honestly, I think that's total bs. Still, I hope you enjoyed it :))

#mob psycho 100 #mob shigeo #shigeo kageyama #character x you #character x reader #mob x reader #fanfiction

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supportivespaceforsurvivors · 3 years

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is this Devyn's blog?

hey anon, i'm sorry it took me so long to respond to this; between insomnia, work, my birthday, and other personal issues (along with accidentally deleting my initial response in a sleep-deprived lapse of judgement..), i've been pretty low on energy - but hopefully i'll be feeling better soon?

as for your question, it isn't a complete yes or no answer. yes, Devyn is a mod on this blog, and yes, he posts a lot; but nobody 'owns' this blog. all mods are equals; both in the literal sense that we all have to have administrator privileges in order to answer asks, and also that we rely on each other to help with anything we post. we're all human, and as such, we know that we have weaknesses and blindspots; as a team, we talk to each other to help smooth over some of those wrinkles to help y'all the best ways that we can - so even when one specific person's name is put on a post, more often than not, we have all contributed in some way. the reason that Devyn answers things more often than the rest of us is because he simply has a lot more time and energy than the rest of us do, and trying to write a whole response ourselves can be exhausting when you are already low on energy; but conveying our thoughts or opinions to each other for someone else to weave into a post takes a lot less energy. as such, the rest of us on the mod team really appreciate that Devyn is able to answer more often! its not that Devyn is more committed or holds more power than the rest of the mods, just that he's been more available to answer things recently.

and as a side note: we got another ask somewhat along this line of thought, but it mentioned the name of someone who made personal posts on their personal blog - and since i don't want to risk 'calling them out' (for lack of a better term), i don't feel comfortable posting that ask, so i'm adding my response to it here.

i want to start off by saying, we do appreciate when people bring up concerns that they have! giving us feedback on things that might make you uncomfortable or bother you helps us learn how to better help y'all. without feedback, we kinda just assume that we're doing alright - so encourage anyone to give us constructive feedback (i.e., dont just say something like "i dont like [thing] about mod x, fix it" - give us suggestions on how to best fix it!) if something we do bothers you! we wont be upset; you mentioning how we can better help you means that you do care about us, and we would never get upset at y'all for that. and, as such, we do really appreciate that you brought up your issues with us! genuinely our only issue was the fact a specific person was named (which really isnt even an issue - telling us who made the posts helped us find the posts, since we hadnt previously known about them) and we just don't want to inadvertently cause problems for them. we really dont think you had meant to purposefully cause strife, so please dont think we're upset with you!

as for your ask, i get why you would feel that way. Devyn tends to answer a lot and doesn't cushion his answers as much as some of us do, but it isn't due to him not caring or simply wanting the inbox empty - Devyn does care a lot about answering things well, he just prefers to get to the point rather than writing out giant walls of text. rather than try to explain things for Devyn, i'm gonna let him finish up the post by explaining his method for answering asks - i dont want to accidentally say anything that isnt true, but i can guarentee that Devyn does care. if he didn't care, he wouldn't still be here - he does care for all of you, and he does want to help! if he didn't, he wouldn't be putting in the effort that he has been to change how he responds to things in a way that won't upset or trigger people, and he wouldn't put in the effort to try and get input from the rest of us mods. please, do let us know if there's anything else we can do moving forward to help things feel less bad for you. we don't want anyone to feel like they cant be helped or that we dont care for them.

mod berry 💗

---

Hey anon.

I wanted to make sure I also answered this in case you were looking for an answer from me directly.

Originally I had a few paragraphs here essentially echoing what Berry said, but it felt too repetitive and I ended up cutting it out.

We had another ask that we mentioned we're tacking the response to on here. I'm going to copy-paste some of the text from it for context since y'all obviously haven't (and won't) see it, so that my response makes sense:

[...] we wrote in and got a quick response from Devyn whereas previously we got really detailed responses from other mods. It felt like Devyn just sees it as a rush to clear the inbox and not work with other mods. And now this blog feels like his exclusively.

I want to start by saying I understand how how I was pretty much the only one who answered anything during September made you feel like this blog is mine exclusively, but I assure you that's not the case - it just happened to be a particularly shitty month for all the mods here. While those issues haven't disappeared, we should have more availability to answer asks currently.

Secondly, something I think will be helpful is if I walk you through the process of how I answer an ask. I was going to use this one to do that and then proceeded to get distracted and forgot and answered it, so here's a fake example ask. Let's say this ask comes in:

Let's say the question is something any of us can answer easily, like, "How many followers do you have?" That's an easy question and we can all look at our follower count and give you a number. So I click answer.

I always start answering genuine asks with some sort of greeting. Usually "Hey anon," is my go-to. Then the answer. "Oh, we have this many." Then I'll end with a well-wish and my name. Easy enough.

I think part of the issue is that if people ask yes or no questions (like "is my trauma valid?") I'd rather say something short in response, like, "Yes, your trauma is valid regardless of what it is," and sign my name than waste our readers' time and my breath answering with extra words. I just don't see the point in using more words than I need to. I try very hard to make it clear, especially in shorter responses, that I'm not trying to be hostile and am actively aware of my tone. Some answers have more words in them because I always try to make sure to explain what I feel could be misunderstood and that's not always easily done in one or two sentences.

Another thing that might be part of the issue is that Berry, for example, tends to answer asks by grouping paragraphs after which they hit enter only once, and I hit enter twice to start a new paragraph. That doesn't mean Berry's answer has any more actual content in it than mine does, it just might look like that because the format ends up looking more dense in Berry's answer.

Anyway, if someone feels like they want to answer a certain ask but doesn't have the spoons, they can save it with their name to the drafts, which is where a lot of our unpublished asks live. It's like the purgatory of the ask box, because sometimes I put an ask there and sometimes I only think about it. 😬

Asks that go to our drafts aren't ignored, that's just sort of a transition period. If the ask is slightly more complicated, we usually discuss it first in the mod Discord - which you guys obviously can't see. Sometimes if we collaborate on an ask, whoever sees it in the ask box first is the one who ends up answering it, but not always. But we usually just sign those with a single name for sake of ease. If we put all the names of all the mods who contributed any thought to an ask, most of them would have all of our names on them. Also, it's not necessarily accurate to sign my name to an ask if all I'm commenting on is the tone of an ask. Sure, I technically contributed, but I didn't say anything helpful.

If multiple people have thoughts on an ask, usually what we do is one person answers it and the others reblog with their thoughts. This ask is an exception because last time we answered an ask specifically about me that way, it escalated the situation, and we're trying to avoid that.

If none of us know how to answer an ask, we'll usually publish it for our followers' input after a week. I try to follow up about asks that are in drafts pretty often, so usually they don't sit there for a month, but like we've said multiple times, this month has been a bit of an outlier for all of us.

So essentially what I'm saying is that just because you don't see active ask collaboration happening doesn't mean it's not. It all happens in the Discord and, unless you're also a mod in our server, you're not going to see that discussion happening.

Hopefully this helps with the misunderstandings.

Mod Devyn

#ask #answered #mod devyn #anonymous

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dontshouta · 5 years

Text

elegant obscenities

summery: Your tattoo session which you’ve had scheduled for months has finally arrived and you finally get to meet the man everyone’s speaking so highly of. pairing: tattoo artist!bakugou katsuki x fem!reader word count: 3,799 note: modern au! also,, this is ns*fw so please… if ur not into that... just look away alsoalso, my tattoo knowledge is very limited.. im goin based on what ive seen on t.v or what ive read.. soo sorry if anythings wrong lol i dont have the heart to do extensive research on it atm but i hope you enjoy nonetheless

To say you were excited was a massive understatement. You felt like your heart was gonna burst from how quickly it was beating, your stomach felt like the den of a thousand butterflies, and yet you couldn’t wipe the huge smile plastered on your face. Today, you were going to see what all the fuss was about. Today, you were getting your first tattoo from the King of Tattoos himself-- Bakugou Katsuki. Just the mere thought of it shot a rush of adrenaline through your veins. You’ve heard so many reviews on this guy, you’ve seen his beautiful works on yelp, you’ve seen the clean and cut format of the parlor’s website- he was no joke. Though, his reputation seemed flawless, people did seem to not like his attitude. But of course, that would be ultimately overlooked, his work was just that good.

As excited you were, you were equally nervous. You didn’t know if you could sit through an hour session of what could possibly be him yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. Or at least, that’s what some people have claimed to have happened. You wanted to remain optimistic though, and decided not showing up would be a waste of everyone’s time.

So, with determination and excitement fueling your resolve, you entered the tattoo parlor. You were greeted by an eager redhead, who smiled when you told him of your appointment.

“Oh yeah! Well, Y/N, if you could read over these papers and sign ‘em, Bakugou’ll be ready for you when your done!”

You took the clipboard with a smile and sat down. For a moment, you just stared at the words, not really reading them and letting the paper blur. You only hesitated for a moment, before grabbing the pen and firmly filling out the forms. You couldn’t possibly back out now, you’ve waited months for this opportunity! Just because some reviews said he could be a scary guy, psh, from what you’ve seen from the redhead, he couldn’t possibly be that bad, right? Just as you signed your last signature, someone cursed at the end of the hall.

“Shitty-hair! Is that client here yet?! I’m not gonna fuckin’ wait all damn day!”

You froze in your seat, your eyes watching the redhead as he rolled his eyes.

“She’s here, dude, chill.”

You gulped, pen shaking in your hand as you stared at the papers again. Was this guy serious? He sounds like he could up and kill me with his tattoo gun! The redhead laughed, taking in your pale figure and offering a calming smile. You relaxed the slightest bit.

“Ah, don’t mind him. He’s all bark and no bite, you’ll be fine. It’s just a tattoo after all!” He laughed again, trying to get you to ease out of your frightened position. “Are you done filling those out? If you could hand me your I.D you’ll be all set!”

You nodded mutely, handing him your I.D and clipboard. His reassurances should’ve placated you but why were you so damn tense? Was the reality of getting a tattoo settling into your bones and immobilizing you? You let out a deep sigh, deciding it’s now or never, hostile artist or not, he still was the best of the best.

The redhead, Kirishima he said was his name, handed you back your I.D and beckoned you to follow him down the hall. The closer you got to the room, the quicker your heart beat. You were so nervous, so excited, you didn’t know what to do with the plethora of emotions surrounding you. With a deep breath, you entered the room behind Kirishima.

The room was covered in art and designs of the past on the walls, fat binders lining bookshelves and a desk spilling over with sketches and unfinished line work. You could tell just from the room alone the experience Bakugou’s had. The tattoo table sat in the corner, laughing at your hesitance, which almost had you running for the hills at the mere sight of it. The air smelt sterile, and you took a deep breath again to try and calm your jolting nerves. Just as you did, the air caught in your throat when you finally laid eyes on your tattoo artist. His eyes were an angry red, brows set in a frown as he appraised your form. You were frozen at the door, not quite able to tear your eyes away. No one mentioned anything about how hot he was! Feeling very deceived by the reviews online, you shimmied yourself fully into the room, all the while staring at the famed Bakugou Katsuki.

“Took you long enough.” He grumbled with a click of his tongue, strong, impossibly tattooed arms crossed over a built torso. He wore a black tank top, not leaving much to the imagination and wore watching black jeans, which hung delectably low on his hips. Now you weren’t sure if you could sit in the same room as him for a completely different reason.

Kirishima rolled his eyes. “Dude, she’s early. Impatience is so not manly.” He huffed, walking out of the room, giving you a thumbs up and smile on the way out.

Now you were left alone. With an insanely attractive man whose hands and eyes were going to be all over you for the next hour. Your earlier hesitance in the matter all but withered away and was replaced with a newfound excitement.

You waved awkwardly, smiling slightly. “Um, hi, I’m Y/N! I’ve heard so many great things about you!” You greeted, hoping you didn’t seem overly eager. Now with your resolve restored tenfold, you wanted to get off on the right foot. His temper still looming over your head dangerously.

He clicked his tongue again, eyes roaming over your figure. “You better have, I don’t run this fuckin’ business for nothin’.” He mumbled, motioning for you to sit at that tattoo table while he prepared.

You watched him eagerly, eyes following where he slapped on his latex gloves. You drank in the way his nimble fingers worked with his equipment, sending you head reeling from thoughts of what else they could do. Goodness, this is embarrassing. Get yourself together, Y/N! You can’t be getting yourself all hot and bothered, this is a professional environment! And with that, you averted your eyes and focused them on your twiddling thumbs.

“So’re you gonna take your pants off or what?” He finally asked, eyes slanting in passive anger at you.

“Wh- huh?!” You exclaimed, almost falling off the table in pure shock. Take off my pants?? Has he noticed my staring? Wait- can he read my thoughts?!

“I can’t tattoo your thigh over you pants, you know. Idiot, you should’ve worn shorts or somethin’.” His voice was laced with superiority as he chastised you, making your thighs clench unconsciously. You were not going to survive this session.

With flaming cheeks, you stood from the table, hands poised over the button of your jeans.

“R-Right.. Well um, would.. Would you mind turning around or something?” You asked quietly, the blush on your cheeks traveling to the rest of your face as you stared into his red eyes. Which he rolled.

“I’m gonna see you half naked anyway, just take your pants off so we can get this shit over with.” He commanded, a brow raised haughtily as he sat on the stool next to the table.

Now, you really didn’t think this through. You’d hoped he’d find you half naked in different circumstances, but here you were, jeans pooling around your ankles in contempt while the flush seemed to travel throughout the rest of your body. How could you forget that you wanted this stupid tattoo on your thigh? At first, you didn’t think anything of it, believing you wouldn’t be attracted to your artist. Fate had other plans though, and made your artist the most attractive man you’ve ever laid eyes on.

You stepped out of your jeans, mumbling begrudgingly as you scooped the mass of fabric from the ground. Once you straightened up, you made eye contact with Bakugou. For a split second, it looked like he was staring at you ass. If you were bolder you might’ve said something like “Like what you see?” but instead, you shook your head, finding the notion preposterous as you sat back onto the table with curses being muttered under your breath.

“It ain’t my fault you wanted the damn tattoo on your thigh, no need to get all bitchy with me.” That comment might’ve brought down his attractiveness to you by about one percent, so any response that you had died in your throat once he started cleaning the exposed area on your thigh. Your lips were zipped tight, trying your absolute best and then some to keep any peep from coming out of your mouth.

The breath that had been stuck in your chest finally escaped from your body once Bakugou pulled away, reaching for the readied transfer paper. You eyes softened at the sight of the design of your tattoo, heart fluttering at the way Bakugou had rendered it.

“It looks beautiful.” You whispered, smile blossoming on your face as he applied the transfer to your thigh, momentarily forgetting your qualms about the damn artist’s proximity.

He hummed in response, clearly denoting an I know in his wake as he removed the transfer paper. “Look in the mirror and tell me it looks good.” He commanded, his tone clearly indicating he already knows it looks good. Probably just wants me to stroke his ego some more.

You got up anyway, not wanting to disobey him, and checked out the art that was going to be permanently etched into you skin in an hour’s time. “It’s perfect.” You breathed, checking yourself out in the mirror with renewed excitement. When you turned back, Bakugou’s eyes flickered up from your thigh to your eyes. He cleared his throat, motioning you to sit back on the table with a flick of his wrist.

“Duh, I strive for nothin’ but perfection.” He said, gloved hands patting the table impatiently.

Was that… a blush on his cheeks? Your heart rate accelerated, smile growing as you skipped back onto the table. “I don’t doubt it, Bakugou! Alright, now tat me up!” You were giggling happily, legs spread onto the table before the young artist, which, unbeknownst to you, had his heart rate going a mile a minute.

“Yeah, yeah.”

With that, he leaned into you inner thigh, one hand gripping onto the soft flesh while the other poised the tattoo gun over it.

“Brace yourself, it ain’t the most comfortable feeling in the world.” He warned, barely giving you any time to actually do so before getting to work.

A gasp escaped from your lips once you felt the tattoo gun connect with your skin, not necessarily in pain but to your horror, in pleasure. You bit your lip, trying to seem nonchalant but in all reality, heat was rushing to your core and you started to feel your body temperature rise considerably. You couldn’t really blame yourself, an attractive man’s face was inches from your barely concealed vagina while he gripped your thigh. How could you not get turned on? What was really going through your head though, was how you were going to distract yourself. You couldn’t possibly think about him and only him this entire time, right? He’d probably catch on and kick you out or something. You wouldn’t be able to stand the embarrassment that would come with that.

While you did try to keep your mind occupied, you couldn’t help but watch the artist at work. His tongue slightly poked out his lips every now and then. Sometimes he’d blow out a breath which would hit your thigh deliciously and send you head spinning. He’d squeeze your thigh and maneuver it this way and that to get a better angle. Every little thing had your heart racing, your thighs needing to clench, your core needing some damn friction. You were, to put it lightly, going fucking insane.

Bakugou suddenly pulled back, his face screwed up in an expression you couldn’t place. An agitated groan escaped his lips while he made aggressive eye contact with you.

“Wh- ar-are you done-?!” Your eyes flickered to the unfinished tattoo, your expression turning confused when you met his eyes again. “What-?”

He shoved himself onto you, pupils blown wide with arousal. “You know what you’re doin’, huh? Don’t play dumb with me you’ve been acting like this since you walked in here.. You know how hard it is to fucking concentrate when I can just smell how wet you are? Huh?” He all but growled, eyes glued to yours while his large hands gripped your waist possessively.

You took in a shaky breath, breaking eye contact to watch his body hover impossibly close to yours. A sweat had built around Bakugou’s temples, body slightly shaking with restraint as he gathered your next reaction.

“Fuck.. you can’t blame me, can you?!” You yelled, hands gripping onto his strong biceps. “You’re over here gripping on my thigh and breathing on my coochie, how the fuck am I supposed to react?”

Your response shocked him, but was enough to confirm any suspicions he had and he immediately clashed his lips with yours. You melted instantly, hands roaming up to grip at his sandy hair roughly. Teeth clashed, tongues melded and fought for dominance, breath coming in hot and heavy as your bodies melted into each other. Bakugou was already hard against your thigh, member pulsing through his jeans and prodding closer and closer to your dripping core.

You moved to wrap your exposed legs around his waist but was shoved roughly back onto the table, Bakugou breaking the heated kiss and roaming down. His hands left a trail of fire on your exposed skin, causing small, broken mewls to slip to your lips while he pushed your top over your breasts, his eyes drinking in your heated form greedily.

“Fuck baby you look so good like this. I’ve barely even touched you and you already look fucked out, all for me huh?” He purred obscenities into your ear, a shiver wracking through your body at his words. His hands barely skimmed over your bra, your breath held in anticipation as he slowed his rough mannerisms to admire your breathless body. A low growl emitted from the back of his throat, his hands pushing your bra down to expose your chest, your nipples hardening immediately in the crisp air. Deft, tattooed fingers toyed with your breasts, red eyes burning into your own as he watched you writhe underneath him, your legs rubbing together incessantly to try and gauge at least the tiniest amount of friction you could get.

You whined needily, fingers fisting into his hair as you tried to connect your barely concealed pelvis with his.

“Nuh, uh, baby girl I’m gonna need you to be patient, yeah? Can you be patient for me?” His tone was laced with such dominance you were rendered speechless, a nod of your head indicating you understood what he was implying.

“No, that ain’t gonna cut it sweetheart, use your fucking words or else I’m stoppin’ right here, when we’ve barely even gotten started.” His fingers gripped your chin, forcing your gaze onto his.

“Y-Yes, sir..?” You were hesitant with the addition of the title but a hum of approval resonated from the tattooed man that had you relaxing back into the table again. Your eyes watched his every move while he lowered himself closer to you, a feeling of desperation slowly gnawing at you. His hands roamed every inch of exposed skin, from the apples of your cheeks down to your pelvis, his fingers toying dangerously with the waistband of your delicate panties.

Just as you thought he was gonna grant you at least some relief, his fingers skimmed past the waistband completely, ignoring the removal of the tiny article of clothing and instead moving to push a tattooed finger against your core teasingly. A gasp escaped your lips, one of your hands gripping his bicep for dear life, the tiny amount of contact overwhelming you.

He chuckled dangerously, his face moving to hover over your clothed heat, his hot breath tickling your thighs.

“Oh, please, just fucking touch me, Bakugou.” You seethed, your patience growing incredibly thin. You wanted to reach for his wrist and just make him touch you yourself but you didn’t want to push your luck, having already yelled at the man already.

He laughed at your command, his hands moving to grip your hips while his tongue poked out of his mouth to gently prod at your panties. An eloquent oh fuck rolled out of your mouth, his hands gripping harder as his tongue lightly grazed over your clothed cunt.

“Is this what you wanted, princess?” He murmured against your wet panties, his eyes lazily gazing up at you. The sight of his face buried in between your legs had you shaking, the hands in his hair impossibly tightening while you tugged him closer to you.

“Bakugou, please, please, please, eat me out I can’t take it anymore, I want you to fuck me so-!” You cut yourself off with a hearty moan, his fingers snatching your underwear to the side and delving his tongue into dripping core. One of his hands massaged your hip, while the other snaked to toy with your entrance. You were already gasping for breath, legs spasming against his head while he dug himself deeper into you. His tongue laved other your clit, alternating between drawing lazy circles and sucking it hard. The juxtaposition of movements drove you mad, your head falling back against the table with your back arching, you hips bucking into his mouth greedily. His finger finally pushed into you, the combination of his thrusting finger and suckling lips pushing you further and further towards the edge.

All too soon, the friction was gone just as you felt your climax rush over you, causing a shriek of disapproval to sound from you. Your head was up in a flash to shoot a look of desperation to the teasing man. His gaze shook you to your very core, almost undoing you just then, with eyes completely clouded over with unadulterated lust. He smirked, bringing his soiled fingers to his lips and sucking them clean. A whine emitted from your throat, the display downright lewd and having you begging for more.

“Baku-”

“Call me Katsuki, darling.”

“Katsuki, please.”

And with that statement, his tank top was off. His pretty fingers worked to smoothly take off his belt and pants, the mere sounds of the rustling clothes bringing more excitement in between your legs. You crawled toward him, moving to help but he quickly pinned you back down onto the table.

“Now, now, let’s not get too hasty. I plan on fuckin’ that pretty pussy of yours real good, yeah? Don’t you worry that pretty little fuckin’ head of yours.”

Bakugou picked you up with ease, flipping you around and bending you over so your ass was up in the air for him to lay a resounding smack onto it. He hummed while you whined desperately, his abusing hand rubbing the skin immediately to soothe the reddening cheek. You legs felt wobbly, barely able to keep yourself up for him. He was rubbed languid strokes against his angry cock, angling it towards your entrance and prodding at it coyly. He tapped the appendage against your folds, chuckling as your hips bucked up against him. A smirk played on his lips, his eyes dark and dangerous as he started to shift his hips forwards to meet yours. You watched the muscles in his beautifully inked stomach flex as he moved, the feeling of slowly being filled just too good.

Once he was fully inside you, you gasped hotly, trying to accustom yourself to the sensation of being so thoroughly stretched out. His eyes watched attentively, flickering from your stretched hole and to your face. He moved his hips back tortuously slow, setting a pace so agonizingly good that you could barely open you mouth without moaning desperately.

“Oh, f-fuck!” You half-sobbed, clinging to the table for dear life as he rocked into you. He moved to hide his face against the back of your neck, latching onto the juncture of her shoulder and throat in a way that made you sure he would leave a mark. The feeling was almost too much– the slow drag of his cock inside you, the ministrations of his lips, teeth and tongue on your shoulder, the quiet and low growls leaving his perfect lips– you were done for.

His large hands gripped your ass, alternating from hard gropes to rough slaps that resounded about the room and arousing you tenfold. Broken moans fled your lips, your fingernails scratching at the table hopelessly. His cock pulsed within you as he quickened his pace abruptly, his hand fisting into your hair and forcing your back to arch up into him. You cried out in pure glee, your breasts bouncing while he pounded mercilessly into you.

His hands held your hips in a bruising grip, the pain mixing deliciously with the absolute pleasure that was Bakugou’s pace. His lips were muttering obscenities into your ear, alternating from suckling your earlobe in between his teeth and littering your neck with pretty purple bruises. You have ascended, your mind gone due to this tattoo artist’s godly dick.

You were sputtering, moans never ceasing to escape from your lips as you tried your best to keep up with his pace, your body becoming hotter and hotter with every deep thrust. You felt your climax building, your walls clenching around his thick cock, causing him to curse into your ear.

His unoccupied hand snaking around your waist to rub quick circles into your clit, sending your body into overdrive and making you see stars.

“I’m go-gonna- oh my goodness- I’m gonna f-fucking come-!” Your body was on fire, your mind short-circuiting with the amount of pleasure wracking your body as you finally came. Your moans came louder with it, your body spasming against his still pistoning cock.

He came soon after, his thrusts becoming sloppy as he rode out his high within your overstimulated walls. Bakugou released your hair, your body falling limply onto the tattoo table. You were gasping for breath, his seed pooling out of your pussy and onto the table. His fingers circled your folds and gathered the come from it, holding them out in front of your lips.

“Now, be a good girl and swallow my cum, huh, princess?”

#i hope this is like... GOOD #i spent like two days on this #mainly bc im a pro procrastinator #ANYWAY #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou smut #bnha #bnha x reader #bnha smut #mha x reader #mha smut #ns*fw

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iwilleatratfood · 3 years

Text

happy holidays fellers heres my review of the newest madhouse post

long ass post that deals with abuse and a very thinly veiled death threat, read at your own caution

TW Abuse

im not gonna go too grammar insane as a writer especially since a lot of pokemon grammar is hotly contested. however like in the second paragraph lily makes a pretty obvious tense error lmfao. theres tons of little ones scattered around. obviously not proofread lol

“She didn’t know, Bonnie. This lady…” G racked her brain, looking for a way to communicate the problem in a way Bonnie would understand. “…She was kinda like the Sun.”

Bonnie prickled, her face contorting into pure, unadulterated horror. “BUT THE SUN IS PURE EVIL!” She made it very clear to the entire household how little favor she had of the sun, the bright thing in the sky that always made her head hurt.

was this necessary? this may surprise you lily but the people reading madhouse have basic reading skills. you dont have to explain this to us like we’re three.

“Your Mom wouldn’t let her split us up, though. It was the one thing she refused to cave on,” she continued. “And the lady got more and more angry over not controlling her completely. So one Christmas, she broke your Mom’s heart more than it had ever been broken.” G’s mind flooded with memories of that day. The aftermath of what was supposed to be a cheerful getaway christmas vacation for Lily and her then fiance. G awoke one night to find that Lily had come home earlier than expected bawling her eyes out on the couch. The look of absolute despair on the face of her lifelong friend. The things she spoke of. It still made G’s blood boil over ‘the last one’.

first off this shouldn’t be one paragraph if you want your readers to not immediately skip over it. the reason why authors like david foster wallace use it in books like infinite jest is to create prose that is painful and hard to look at. i dont think that was your intent.

second, i made a post on this shit and deleted it before lizzy told her side of the story because i wanted to not come off as a complete asshole. but i really dont care anymore.

putting your real life relationship problems, about a person whos accused you of sexual coercion (bc lets not mince words here, that’s what it is) is literally one of the lowest things you could do. this isn’t for “healing”, this is trying to weaponize your fanbase to harass your ex.

“You were going to have to tell her eventually,” G argued as she took a step back and glanced at Mikaila and Ginger, who had both clued in to the conversation and were looking at her disapprovingly. “What?”

“Yeah, but not when she’s still so small and baby,” Lily pouted before going back to comforting Bonnie. “It’s okay, sweetie. The last one is gone and she’s never coming back. Mommy is much happier now that she’s gone. It’s okay.”

“Then Momma will eat her,” Lily said with a warm smile.

“Oh don’t call me Momma!” G groaned.

Lily snickered. “Your Godmom will eat her.”

“That’s better,” G huffed. “And yes, I will. I’ll bury every fang in her sternum. I’ll purge her evil from the world with the unstoppable power of my digestive tract.”

hm wonder why this couldn’t make it into a comic. wonder why it couldnt be put to a visual medium right after lizzy’s twitlonger. hmmmm

“Was G like this when you guys were little?” Ginger asked.

“Sort of? When we were little, G’s psychic powers were still developing so she couldn’t really read people as effectively,” Lily explained. “And since we were both little, we had little kid things to worry about. Telling Bonnie about Kirsten only made her understand the feelings she picks up better. That’s why we have to be careful what we tell her.”

ok again with the past tense shit. i noticed this before and im starting to get annoyed. if this is happening now and its not a memory, use the present tense speaking verbs ffs.

my real point here is why is this a pokemon work. like whats the point of having G be a pokemon or this taking place within the canon universe. this is a ultimate flaw with a lot of sentient pokemon works, so lily you’re not exactly special here, but i feel like recently its become more glaring.

if all the pokemon act like humans and are sentient like humans, why are they owned by them? if i made G a sentient alien and removed all the pokemon shit, not a whole lot would change, and thats a fucking problem if ur making a work within that universe.

“I look forward to it every year,” G smiled as she hugged Bonnie tightly.

Ginger turned a smirk back to Lily. “So it’s like an anniversary?”

“It’s not an anniversary!” Lily exclaimed, wheeling around with pursed lips. “Why do the two of you always go there?”

if pokemon/human is morally wrong stop teasing it in your work.

“Why not?” Bonnie pouted.

“Because… dear lord, how do I explain this to a baby?” Lily let her head fall back against the couch.

“Because it would make both of us unhappy,” G explained as she ran her fingers through Bonnie’s hair.

Bonnie blinked, looking up at her Godmother in complete and utter bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

G bit the inside of her cheek slightly as she took a moment to consider her next words. “Well… a lot of reasons really,” she started. “A big reason is If she and I were together, I would only want to have her all to myself. Your mom isn’t like that. She needs to share her love with everyone she feels it for. She’d have to give that up just to appease my insecurities. Mikaila and Ginger wouldn’t be here to spend time with you or tell you fun stories.”

so why is G still here if she would be so abusive and controlling?

rest of the post is boring and not worth my time to review but seriously. why is this a pokemon story still, why is this G even with lily still after how controlling and obsessive she’s been in the past... typical questions that come up whenever new madhouse is posted.

and like. holy shit for a “damn good writer” lily cannot fucking seem to follow basic writing rules and/or basic grammar. even i know this shit, and i consider myself a writer that needs to improve. tons of basic tense shit that grammarly will hit you for, a fundemental lack of understanding on how fucking dialogue is formatted, and just massive paragraphs that need to be broken up so the reader can actually read the shit your posting.

merry christmas, i will be reviewing the next post as well.

#lily orchard #poke madhouse

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like-rain-or-confetti · 5 years

Text

Family (Alec Volturi x Reader x Jane Volturi)

Facing those who would kill you was terrifying. Death was just as frightening, if not more since yours would always be prolonged. If you were lucky, it would never come. Looking back on all of you centuries, you still weren’t ready. However it was fitting. Carlisle Cullen saved your life once. Dying for him seemed to be a good repayment.

The Volturi dispersed, spreading into a long line, making all of their assets known. You felt the slight breeze through your hair, eyeing every last one of them. Two of them, the witch twins- they seemed shocked, eyes wide and stiff...eyes on you. The two took a few steps forward, breaking the formation. Aro, Caius and eventually Marcus turning to look at the two of them. “Jane? Alec?” “It can’t be.” Jane said under her breath, the only way she can muster out words. Alec swallowed. You shifted slightly, looking to Carlisle for a moment, uncertain of what to do. ‘What are they thinking?’ You thought to yourself. You exchanged a look with Edward and the other covens around you before back at the twins. ‘What are they thinking?’ “(Y/N)?” Jane finally called out. You were surprised she knew your name. “Yes?” “(Y/N), did you have any family?” Edward asked quickly. “I don’t remember.” You shook your head. “I don’t remember anything about my human life.” The twins looked at one another. "What?" You asked yet we're scared to know the answer. "They forgot us." Jane turned to her twin who's jaw was stiff. "What do you mean?" You looked around questioningly. "(Y/N)...they're your blood relatives. Your brother and sister." Edward said carefully, as though it would cushion the blow. "Come." Jane demanded. "No!" You said just as quickly. Jane repeated her request stepping forward and you stepped back, no amount of distance being enough. "(Y/N), i ask that you do not stand against the Volturi. Trust me when I say we don't want to fight you." Alec said suddenly much closer, taking a huge risk by being out of Volturi bounds. "How could I ever trust you?" You asked shakily, aware of every move Alec made and for that matter the lack of movement that screamed inhuman. "Because i’m your brother." He stared into your eyes as he said so. "(Y/N), leave." Carlisle said quietly. You turned to him in protest which he spoke over immediately, not caring to hear it. "Go. Trust me." You hated the prospect of leaving but you did as Carlisle asked, heading back to the Cullen house and waited for something to happen.

You waited for what felt like an eternity before you were relieved to see the Cullen's and the covens return. No amount of mental preparation could help you with this. The two most deadliest vampires in existence claimed to be your blood relatives. Them remembering you, even Edward confirming it but you not remembering a thing. "Carlisle, what do I do?" You said immediately. "Nothing for now. Not until you're ready."

A few days passed and the Cullen's went hunting after their friends left. Benjamin was the one to take your hand and give you words of reassurance before bidding his fair well. It made you wish he'd come back. You however, weren't hungry and so you stayed behind. You didn't stay inside though, you went out into the trees outside the house, needing the fresh air. That was when a scent hit you, an unfamiliar one. You opened your eyes and nearly gasped. Jane stood alone, hands by her sides with a stoic look, eyes boring into you. "Jane..." "Hello, (Y/N)." "I thought you left." She shook her head. "Not until we speak with you." "About what?" You felt fear, relentless waves of fear though not wanting to show it. Jane, however, seemed to notice. "You're afraid of us." She said simply. "As I should be." You responded. "No. You shouldn't be." "You've given me no reason not to." "Nor have i given you a reason to fear me. I haven't hurt you." She had you there but you couldn't pretend you'd be an exception. That's like putting your leg in a bear trap whilst hoping it wouldn't bite down. “Is this some sort of trick?” You suddenly asked. “Are you really related to me?” “Of course, it’s not. My brother and I remember you very well. It’s sad that you cannot say the same.” “Tell me, tell me everything.” “Let’s talk inside.” Jane suggested. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know there.”

You sat at opposite sides of the table. You waited for Jane to talk. She stared back at you for a moment before speaking. She looked slightly uncomfortable, clearly she didn’t talk about this. “You were younger than us by a few years. None of the children back then even laid a finger on you. My brother and I made sure of that. We kept our distance publicly, trying to save you from some of the trouble but we always made sure to make it up to you at home.” Jane could remember one particular memory well.

The same group of children who tormented the twins, were now bothering you for being related to them. You were much smaller, too young to understand fully just why these children were being so cruel. Before they could rough you around, a stone collided with one of the children’s heads, the ring leader of the group. He yelped, rubbing the side of his head and looking to see where it came from. Alec stood on the hill, armed with another stone, ready to throw it. “Leave them alone!” Jane stormed up to the group, leaving her brothers side. The group took off running, leaving you in a heap on the forest floor. Jane took both of your hands, pulling you up and dusting you off. “Are you okay?” “mmhmm.” You nodded, holding back tears. Jane looked you over before looking up at Alec in the distance and you followed suit.

Alec was clearly bothered by the scene. He was your older brother after all, he had to protect you more than anyone else did. He felt like he had failed you in that moment.

She even remembered how you’d walk in between them, each of your smaller hands in theirs. Seeing you had grown since the last time she’s seen you. You weren’t the younger sibling she remembered but that was better than losing you all together as she thought she had before. “You never let what the village said about us sway your judgement of us. It really was unconditional love at its finest. Losing that after our change...that was difficult.” You had never seen Jane so emotional. “I don’t know where you were that night..the night of the...” Jane trailed off. She must have meant the stake. “We thought you were dead.” Jane’s expression suddenly hardened. “Though when we saw you, Aro had no other choice than to tell the truth.” “The truth?” You repeated. “You survived, that night. Our father came for you, mother died and he believed we did so too. That was it for a year or two, but Aro returned for you.” “For me? Why?” Jane continued. “He wanted to know if you’d have a gift like we did. So he changed you when our father left. He came home to find his remaining child gone. You didn’t so he left you behind.” You looked horrified. “And you’re okay with that?” Jane thought for a moment. “I know Aro and he isn’t known for his generosity. I feel no need to challenge him for it. You ended up fine in the end.” You were about to snap at her when you suddenly remembered Chelsea. She had the ability to manipulate relationships, she clearly had her hooks on the twins just as much as everybody else. “So what made you come here then? If it really doesn’t change much of your stance, why bother coming to speak to me?” “Because my brother and I dont want you to be afraid of us, anyone but you.” She paused, almost hesitant to finish. “Also because I missed you.” You looked up at her sharply. “My brother and I, we missed you.” You couldn’t respond, and you couldn’t help but believe her.

You were both torn out of the moment to hear footsteps approaching. Surely they hadn’t come back so early?Then it hit you. Edward. Sure enough, Edwards scent hit. You looked to Jane alarmed before gesturing for her to follow you. Edward was going to go through the front, Jane would be going out the back. Seeing this Jane looked at you in surprise. “If you’re really my sister then why would i let you be caught?” You caught the glimmer in her eyes. An honest glimmer of hope.

Once she had gone, you returned into the room just as Edward entered. Jane’s scent hit his nostrils and he growled. “Who was here?” “No one.” “Dont lie! You’re actively not thinking about it so that I don’t find out. Who was here!?” “No one, Edward.” You said through a stiff jaw. “drop it.” “I can’t. I have a family now-” “enough!” You interrupted loudly. “If you insist, take it up with Carlisle.” You walked away not thinking about what transpired until Edward was well and truly gone and back at his cottage. You and Edward never really saw eye to eye. Whilst you both liked one another, you had different opinions on a lot of things. Ever since Bella had come into the picture and more recently, Renesmee, you barely seemed to agree on anything anymore. You didn’t want to talk to him about this. He’d have nothing really of value to say. Of course Edward did exactly that. Not only did he take it up with Carlisle, he let him not he was not happy. You leaned against the door frame to Carlisle’s office with the whole right side of your body, including your head. “You know what im about to talk to you about don’t you?” You slowly nodded. “Was Jane here?” “Yup.” You nodded. Edward wasn’t here so he didn’t hear it. You’d never admit it to him. “Why wouldn’t you tell Edward?” “Because he doesn’t get to know.” You said flatly. “Its none of his business. It’s yours.” “He’s family.” Carlisle said with ease. “You’re the leader of the coven. It’s your house. He knew the situation wasn’t about him. He was just whining for the sake of whining.” “He’s family.” Carlisle repeated. “Not mine.” You shot back. “Yes, you both like to play that card but he’s my son, just as much as you’re my family. Whether you’re in my coven or not.”

You couldn’t help but smile. You had a lot of respect for Carlisle and for him to consider you family was uplifting. “She doesn’t want me to be afraid of her.” You said finally after a moment of silence. “Jane?” Carlisle asked and you nodded. “And Alec. She came to tell me that they don’t want me to fear them. She told me bits and pieces of my childhood.” “That’s good. It’s nice to hear they remember some of their human life.” “Haven’t they always?” Carlisle leaned back in his chair. “Yes, but they were very private. Aro told me most of their memories were foggy or just non-existent. Though there were ones they could focus enough on and remember like they had just happened. It takes them some time but some of their human life stays with them.” “Aro changed his mind about me. He saw that I didn’t have a gift like them and left me behind.” You mumbled. “It could be possible Eleazar was around at that time? I can’t say for sure I’m afraid. Though I wouldn’t let it upset you too much.” “It’s not that.” You shook your head. “Its that my own brother and sister, if that’s what they are, are still loyal to him knowing that I might have been alive. Even after all this time. They never even seemed to check if I survived the change.” “They can’t change that and neither can you. Now it’s all about what you want to do.” You shrunk into yourself slightly at the question. “I…I don’t know what I should do.” Carlisle tilted his head slightly. “That’s a very particular sentence.” “Well, what I want to do may be very different as to what I should do. The only problem is I don’t know what I should do.” “But you know what you want to do.” Carlisle nodded to you. You leaned off the frame to sit on the opposite seat from his desk. “This time last week, I was the only one in my biological family. Now I have a brother and a sister who want to know me but are the deadliest beings to ever walk the earth. "Would you like to see them again? I can contact the Volturi for you (Y/N). You can meet them.” “You… you’d do that?” “Of course. I’m sure we can all put our issues aside.” They did. It took a while but they gave you a date and time.

It was month later and now that the time had come, you felt nerves bubble inside you. What were you going to say? Only the orange-pink haze in the distance was left of the sunset. The meeting place was an old campsite area that was used back in the fifties. You’d have to pass it to get to the cliff at La Push, though that was wolf territory and you all stayed well clear of that. Somehow it didn’t seem real until you saw the twins with their backs turned to you, listening to Aro. Aro looked over them and nodded at you.

The twins turned and shock hit you again. This was really happening. Jane was the first to step forward, seeming surprised to see you too. “You wanted to see us?” Alec asked lightly. You had never heard Alec be so kind in his tone. Though he wasn’t speaking to anyone. He was speaking to his younger sibling. The one he thought he had lost. You remembered Jane’s story, which had seemingly been one of many. You acted before you thought. You walked up to Alec and immediately pulled him into a hug. He seemed surprised by the action. Both twins did. You didn’t know what to say to them. Instead you only held him tighter.

You barely felt it first but you grew to notice Alec’s hand press against your back, moving slightly to return your hug. All of the memories gone, more years than you could count had passed. You wanted to make up for it. Even if it took eternity. You reached out in Jane’s direction. “Jane, I swear if you don’t get into this hug-” Jane smirked slightly as you grabbed her, wrapping your arms around both Alec and Jane as much as you could. “This feels terrible.” You mumbled. “You’re fault. You dragged me into this side.” Jane forced you to break her hold on you to walk over to your back and hug you from behind. “Don’t tell anyone we ever gave you a hug, or we’ll kill you.” Jane mumbled into your back, squeezing you slightly. “Don’t get used to it either.” Alec added. “Yeah, yeah, you’re still scary.” You rolled your eyes.

#oneshot #one shot #twilight #volturi #the volturi #reader #alec volturi #jane volturi #jane and alec volturi

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saxonspud · 4 years

Text

The Outlaw and the Treasure Hunter - Chapter 32 - Murphrees

Izzy had never been as far north as the Roanoke Valley. Hell she’d never even been as far north as Annesburg. She was amazed at the sheer beauty of the scenery. Dutch just smiled. He loved watching her face when she saw something that she hadn’t seen before. He was, however, fully aware of how dangerous this part of the country could be. Izzy hadn't noticed how his hand never strayed too far from his guns.

As they reached their destination, the Brandywine Drop, Izzy gasped.

“Oh Dutch, its beautiful, look at the way the water cascades over the rocks, and the rocks, are almost flat.”

Dutch chuckled, “it is pretty country.”

Izzy suddenly pointed, “look, a stag over the other side!”

Then she pointed again, “is that a salmon?”

Dutch glanced over the river, and watch what was indeed a salmon, jumping out of the water. It looked like a pretty big one too.

“Hosea would love it up here, for the fishing,” he sighed.

He smiled at Izzy, and rode The Count next to her horse, so they were in touching distance. He cupped her cheek, and gently kissed her lips.

“I love the way you look at everything, it makes me feel like I’m seeing it for the first time, all over again. Through innocent eyes,” he purred.

Izzy smiled, “thank you...I mean for bringing me.”

Dutch rolled his eyes, “c’mon we better look for what we actually came for!”

They left the horses by the edge of the river, drinking. Just like the stag, Izzy thought, but she never said anything. She thought Dutch would probably laugh at her.

Izzy grabbed Dutch’s hand and she led him along the edge of the river, along a flat rock formation which led to the base of the falls.

It was a lot easier that the waterfall at Cumberland falls Izzy thought. Not deep crevasse to fall down.

They kept to the edge of a rock wall, avoiding the waterfall itself. Soon to Dutch’s amazement they were actually standing behind the water fall. It was dry except for a few splashes on the stone floor.

“Amazing isn’t it?” Izzy enthused.

Dutch chuckled, “yes, actually it is!”

Izzy reached into a gap in the wall of the rock, and pulled out a pouch.

“There, its not that dangerous, treasure hunting,” she smirked.

Izzy put the pouch in her satchel.

“Arent you gonna show me what we found?” Dutch asked, sulkily.

Izzy grinned, “wait till we’re back out side, we can take a look then.”

Dutch nodded, and they both walked out from behind the waterfall.

As they did, they came face to face with a rough looking man, dressed in dungarees. He wasn’t alone and four other men stood slightly behind him.

“Well what have we here,” he snarled, “you ain't welcome round here. Best you handover your valuables, and we might let you go!”

He glanced at izzy, “not her though, we’ll keep her!” he chuckled.

Dutch quickly grabbed Izzy's arm and pulled her behind a jagged rock.

“Keep down, while I deal with these scum!” he hissed.

You ain't gonna leave here!” the stranger growled, “leastways not on your own two feet!” he laughed, menacingly.

Dutch drew his guns, and quickly fired at the stranger, and one of the other four men. They dropped to the floor, before they could even fire off a shot.

The remaining men started to fire at the rock, that Dutch and Izzy took cover behind.

Dutch waited until they had to reload, and he fired again. In the meantime, Izzy had taken her fathers old gun, which was still in her satchel, and she fired three shots. Two of them completely missed, but the third hit home in an explosion of blood and bone, as the bullet shattered the strangers skull. Dutch had already dispatched the other two, when he heard a clunk.

He was about to praise Izzy for her good shooting, but stopped when he saw her face.

The clunk he heard was her dropping her gun onto the ground.

All the colour had drained from her face.

Dutch holstered his guns.

“It’s Ok Izzy, they’re dead,” he soothed as he wrapped an arm around her.

“I...I k...killed him,” Izzy stuttered, “I shouldn't have killed him,” she gasped, her eyes glazed over.

Dutch grasped Izzy by the shoulders, and turned her to face him.

“Look at me Izzy, it was either them or us. You had no choice.” he soothed.

Dutch looked at Izzy, her eyes were looking at him, but they didn't seem to be focussing, just staring.

He gently held Izzy’s face in his hands, “Izzy, sweetheart, it’s Ok.

Izzy snapped out of her daydream.

“I never wanted to kill anyone,” she gasped.

Dutch gently kissed her on the forehead. “I know, Izzy. No one wants to, but sometimes we don’t have a choice. These people, they take pleasure in hurting people. They’re worse than animals.”

Izzy glanced over the top of the rock at the five dead bodies.

“Who are...were they?” she asked, numbly.

Dutch sighed, “Murphree’s. They’re worse than O’Driscolls, and that's saying something. Its why Arthur said it was dangerous. C’mon, lets get out of here, in case anymore turn up!”

Dutch put his arm around Izzy’s waist and they quickly ran back to where they had left the horses.

Dutch helped Izzy onto her horse, and he quickly mounted his.

Izzy was only too happy when Dutch suggested a fast pace. As beautiful as this place was, she wanted to leave it and the memory of the people that inhabited it behind her.

After about an hour’s riding, Dutch slowed the pace down. He reached over and put a hand on Izzy’s leg.

“Are you OK? He asked, concern in his voice.

Izzy nodded. “Do you ever… ever get used to it, killing I mean?”

Dutch sighed, “we only kill folks if we’re in danger of being killed ourselves. It’s not something we enjoy, Izzy. It’s sometimes just necessary. Sad thing is, there are people out there who do get pleasure from it. Not all of ‘em on the wrong side of the law!”

Izzy sighed, “like bounty hunters and Pinkertons, you mean.”

Dutch nodded, then smiled, “guess Arthur taught you to shoot OK then?”

Izzy half smiled, and shook her head, “No I tried but I couldn’t hit anything, not even a bottle!”

Dutch hummed, “you did OK today, guess you aren’t as bad as you think!”

Izzy shook her head, “I hit that poor man in the head, I was aiming for his belly.”

Dutch chuckled, “I dont think there’s a lot wrong with your shooting sweetheart, I think you just might need a better gun!”

Izzy sighed, “I just wanna go home, maybe Hosea is back!”

Dutch smiled to himself. The last time Izzy had said she wanted to go home, she was referring to her home in Valentine. Now she looked on her home as the camp, and the rest of the gang. He knew now that Izzy finally felt that was where she belonged.

Izzy and Dutch arrived back at camp just as the sun was beginning to set.

She hitched Duke, and Dutch hitched The Count.

He thought she looked a little pale. He wasn't sure whether it was the shock of the encounter or the long ride.

“Why dont you head in, and we can take a look at what we found in a minute,” he suggested, pressing a kiss to her temple.

Izzy stopped, “Dutch? Can we...Will you?” Izzy blushed.

“Are you sure you’re not too tired, sweetheart.” Dutch asked.

Izzy smiled, “No...never too tired for you.”

Dutch smirked, “go on, I’ll be there in a minute, I just need to check in with Arthur.”

Izzy nodded and headed towards the tent they shared.

Dutch watched her, and smiled to himself. He glanced across and saw Arthur rushing over.

“Where have you two been, we were worried,” Arthur huffed.

Dutch sighed, “thought it was time I took her out to hunt some treasure...we ran into a spot of bother!”

Arthur frowned, “what sort of bother? Pinkertons?”

Dutch shook his head, “Murphree’s. She shot one.”

Arthur looked towards Dutch’s tent, seeing Izzy disappear inside.

“Is she OK?” he asked.

Dutch smiled, “I know you worry about her son, Hosea told me what you said,” he tapped his forehead, “about if things had been different!”

Arthur felt his face flush, “doubt whether things would have turned out much different. As soon as the girls clap eyes on you, they fall at your feet!” He smirked.

Dutch put his hand on Arthurs shoulder. “Not all of ‘em son,” he looked over towards where Mary-Beth was sitting.

“You’ve been given a second chance, son. Make the most of it. Forget about Mary Linton and Eliza. They’re in the past. There’s a certain young lady who only has eyes for you. Take your opportunites Arthur, seize ‘em with both hands, they dont come around too often!”

Arthur felt his face flush again, as he looked over where Mary-Beth was sitting.

Dutch patted him on the back, and watched as Arthur headed over. He smiled as he watched them link arms and head along the shoreline of the lake.

Dutch headed towards the tent, now more than ever he was determined for them to find somewhere. Not just for himself and Izzy, but for Arthur and Mary-Beth, and everyone else in his extended family who deserved a chance of happiness.

#rdr2 fanfic #original female character #dutch van der linde #arthur morgan #wattpad #a03

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shidiand · 5 years

Note

How do you imagine Tenco's Story ending in your head?

that is a GREAT but UNEXPECTED QUESTION freshlybaked "spider" bread and i'm really happy to have the opportunity to try and answer this ageless question that has burned within all of us in the tenco's story iv waiting room community since 2013. it is an incredible coincidence (or is it? 👀) that i was just talking to Risa about tenco's this (edit: yesterday) morning so i am extra double super in the mood to talk about Tenco's Story today. so excellent of a coincidence is this that i am tempted to refer you to them in case you wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter that would probably turn out super cool, but that is neither here nor there; let us talk Tenco's Story.

i of course must mention my unadvertised and modestly detailed commentary on tenco's i-iii at https://shidiand.tumblr.com/tencos, presenting slightly interesting facts in an unwieldy and difficult-to-use format, but as it dates back to june 2017, i want to take some time to understand my feelings about the series once more.

tenco's story is a series that has a lot of meaning to me.

i took on my current name of shidiand in november of 2013. i was still in 11th grade at the time, 4th year of high school, and a very socially isolated person. i should say i was introduced to touhou in 7th grade, 2010, so i was still working through a 3 years-strong phase of trying to simultaneously both find an outlet for and bottle up an endless wellspring of awkward weeaboo-gamer nerd energy at the time.

i had my first real foray onto the internet in 2010, tried out twitter, followed some RPers and other people who had Cool Touhou Usernames. didn't really go anywhere. i had maybe 50 followers, i dont really know the count but it was definitely a) double digits and b) pretty low. didn't know what to tweet about. didn't know how to hit it off with others. i think there was basically maybe only 3 other people i ever properly interacted with. oh shit i was playing league of legends at the time. oh my god. i really did play league of .. oh my god. let's move on.

aw shit im super digressing amn't i. well.

this is just how it goes when i write essays on tumblr.com.

i'm afraid you're just along for the ride at this point so please do your best to enjoy it.

i got kind of tired of twitter at the time because i didnt know what to do with it. didnt know how to interact with people and didnt find the people i was following interesting, so i ghosted on out of there by the end of 2012. didnt deactivate it until like 2015 but at that point that was just burning away my dark history. anyways. november 2013.

--im taking a lot of time here trawling through old files on my computer, my tumblr blog, notification emails still lying around in my gmail inbox from twitter, the dropbox i didn't actually use but it had several tenco's story pictures on it but i deleted them so this was useless, ... to trace the timeline of this story and im really seeing a lot of remnants of dark history here you know? did you know i wrote a letter to a girl i had a crush on valentine's day 2014, slipped it into her locker, and anxiously hung around nearby at lunchtime to see how she reacted at lunchtime? i certainly didn't, or at least i made darn ass sure to forget about this incredible virgin incident and not remember it, ever, until i came across the records of it that i thoughtfully preserved for the me of 5 years later today. ok well now i have to read the letter to see if it was as bad as it just sounded there brb

ok so the good news is that it was actually very focused on being positive and full of admiration for the cool things she did instead of being a confession letter so i am very glad i was able to be a respectful chad 5 years ago, but the bad news is that the jokes, the actual sentences i put together. oh my god. but i mean. well. at least i got the spirit. its certainly a step up from this other person in my grade, WEEABOO ANDREW, YOU MAY RECALL THIS STORY AND HIS NAME FROM PREVIOUS STORYTIMES, THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND who came to school on halloween once cosplaying kirito from sword art online and got very possessive about people asking if they could hold his black replica plastic sword, and probably worse, dropped a "will you be my girlfriend" letter into the locker of my homie and fellow trombonist samantha, who was a little bit nerdy, hung out with the anime-likers who were actually sociable and fun to be around so you can imagine why weeaboo andrew was into her, which had i) a direct quotation from SAO chapter 16.5 (origin of the famous "glopping noise" line), and ii) a condom. jesus christ. i dont want to talk about this any more. next topic.

i also put this drawing of iku nagae and her skarmory (actually an albinoss from 18 DRAGONS) on the other side of the letter because it was the coolest thing i could think of drawing at the time. and i completely agree with 2014 me because it IS super fucking cool. hell fuckin yeah

https://shidiand.tumblr.com/post/76301993387/iku-nagae-ft-that-thing-that-supposedly-is-a

alright that was a fun little trip down memory lane but lets get back on track. november 2013. i started anew as shidiand. still awkward, still learning how to express myself and looking for my place among others. i followed some touhou bloggers, hung around r/touhou a lot as well. in december i got my first tablet for christmas, a wacom bamboo splash. i still use this thing! the usb cable disconnects if you bump it so i have to find just the perfect position to sit in whenever i want to draw, but its served me well. anyways. i was just starting to play around with digital art but i remember, probably just before new years, for some reason i wanted to find out more about tenshi hinanawi (i don't remember why. tenshi wasn't even one of my favourite characters at the time) so i went googling and right there on zerochan i found this:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=23525572

this was during my dark souls phase so i just went BANANAS at the sight of this. this was literally the coolest image i had ever seen in my internet life. That image alone made me want to draw in hopes that I could make something as cool as that someday.

it wasn't immediately after but i soon discovered tenco's story, and it was love. kannnu was my very first artistic inspiration, and for a long time, my only one. i absolutely idolized them at the time. since then, ive found other artists to look up to, in a more healthy manner, but to this day i still look up to kannnu, still admire their work a lot.

i played around with drawing, followed the lives of people on tumblr, started reading touhou fanfiction, made a new twitter. i met a lot of new people along the way. some people i havent stuck with, some i cut ties with, and some people i still keep in contact with today. over those long 5 years of being shidiand, i found a name (i used to use shidian and then shid, but someone called me shidi once and i realized that was a lot better), how to reach out to others, how to express myself, places that i could feel included in. this is why i owe a blood debt to evelyn, who permitted me to kneel at her throne and was like "yea ok you can join my discord server u seem cool". evelyn, if you were confused by me ominously mentioning this blood debt/blood oath in a tumblr reply 1-2 years ago, this is the context. those 5 years were like a coming of age of sorts, that i never had when i was in high school.

and my love for tenco's story, that inspired me to draw that day, has been with me since almost the very beginning of my time as shidiand. from the beginning, i have always encouraged people to READ TENCO'S STORY, like the kin of those who cry PLAY MELTY or WATCH SYMPHOGEAR. i think my very first sidebar description was something akin to a prayer, written in very choral language, hoping for the day tenco's story iv was completed, ..., "meanwhile, furious shitposting". kannnu's work, finding delight in whatever they chose to draw, has been at my side, all along. my true mentor, my guiding moonlight...

so that's why i still to this day love tenco's story so much.

let's talk about tenco's story.

tenco's story is a story told through single pictures. the plot is vague, and details are sparse. dialogue is rare. we only know what has happened; we seldom know why. furthermore, there are many gaps between scenes that the reader is left to fill in for themselves; we see only snapshots that form an hazy outline of the events that occurred, and must imagine the rest. motivations and explanations fail me. but even with a barebones plot, tenco's story has themes, and if nothing else, those have to be carried through.

the main theme, of course, is journey and travel, but there are also other ideas, too. i actually think they start to change as the series goes on:

book i, where tenshi runs away from home, is about striking out on your own. it's a very fun and unpredictable journey, together with a friend.

book ii, where tenshi and iku are separated, forces tenshi to find and rely on companions of her own even more. but they do so, and they are able overcome hardships, and there is food and festival.

book iii marks a climax, reasserting tenshi's goal of finding the sword of hisou. i feel like the journey shifts from a travel (visiting) to a path forwards (making your way through). perhaps this is just something i get from knowing the locations from dark souls (Anor Londo, New Londo Ruins, the Great Hollow), but the locations start to give more of a sense of verticality, like they're emphasizing tenshi's climb to the summit. the hardships and enemies are the greatest they've been yet, and right when they near the top, tenshi and iku start to bleed. the book ends on an uncertain note.

if i had to describe the type of journey and travel that tenshi and iku undertake, there's this sense of wonder at discovering new places, wandering from vista to vista in delight, but also a sense of conquering, making it through a difficult patch. the sequence from pages 2-44 to 2-51, taken together, convey this sense of overcoming the best. it's one of my favourite parts. again, although the tone definitely starts to lean towards struggle in book iii, i think tenco's sense of wonder really is the heart of the series. there's no map of the world, no predicting where tenshi and iku will end up next. and through their travels, though they come across many enemies, they also find friends -- places of refuge, places full of life, people who will look after them for a few days, companions who will stay with them for the rest of the journey. at the end of book iii, we see a long haired tenshi with purple hair being impaled by the sword of hisou (3-33, see also this extra illustration that risa pointed out to me http://sinnnkai.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-195.html), and regular short haired tenshi continuing on her journey (3-42). if we ignore the out-of-story images where tenshi has the sword of hisou, tenshi has actually only ever used her sunlight blade (2-24, 3-26, etc), so i think that the long haired tenshi on 3-33 is a different person altogether. (if i had to guess, she might be the purple haired woman in the top left of https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=35443328 as we have never seen that woman appear anywhere.) she probably has something to do with the flashbacks at the end of book ii and she might somehow be short-haired tenshi at the same time, but this is just speculation.

however, in 3-43, tenshi's hair is rather blue, so i don't know if this is the purple haired woman or not. if it is, tenshi is probably still fine and closing in on the summit, but if it isn't, then it's very worrying to see a picture of tenshi without any of her companions. it's very ominous.

meanwhile, iku, while climbing the red carpeted corridor, is stabbed, and disappears for a few pages. there's a black page, a shot of a shrine that strongly resembles the hakurei shrine, and a picture of iku standing behind someone in a tux, with the line "In the past, I was saved by the lady I was serving, you see?". and then iku wakes up in a field of flowers.

i think what this scene makes clear is a theme that has continued to appear and reappear throughout every book of "being saved, being aided by someone's kindness".

i think another theme that is implied and has to be addressed by this story of running away from home is "return". something im imagining is that the reason tenshi makes finding the sword of hisou her goal is because she wants to have something to prove herself with, to vindicate her when she comes home. but i don't think she needs to prove anything, and i ultimately think that she would be happier spending the rest of her life exploring.

so i think this should be what happens in the ending.

open on iku's journey, and give her a long sequence of travel without seeing tenshi. underline her newfound resolve. she climbs to the summit with albinoss, and finds the rest of tenshi's companions fallen. and in the last room is sword of hisou tenshi, who has lost herself, and it comes down to iku to bring her back. after a difficult battle, when both of them are on their last legs, iku is unable to stand any longer. but at this moment tenshi sees her companions struggling to get back up and reach her, and that's what brings her to her senses. and iku gets to see how many friends tenshi's been able to make on her own, and they finally and properly reunite. together, tenshi and iku carry each other out of the last room.

i don't think it's necessary to return to heaven. as a conclusion, dedicate some time to tenshi and iku travelling together. they're on their way back, revisiting old friends who helped them along the way, enjoying the journey. their last stop is the house of the elderly nawis (1-42). tenshi shows off the sword of hisou; she decided to keep it not as a trophy to show her family but as proof of the bonds of her companions. surrounded by friends, tenshi and iku decide to part ways with each other, knowing that the other will be alright. iku drifts among the clouds once more, and tenshi sets off for the horizon.

that's the plot that i'd write/just wrote. i don't really expect tenco's story iv to ever come out, though. i mentioned my first sidebar description earlier in this essay, but of course, you can see that it's been changed. 2 years ago, i read my hopeful prayer once more and was struck with a terrible melancholy, so now it reads this: "having come to terms with the fact that tenco's story iv will never be released, i can still live, knowing that the spirit of the journey will live on through kannnu's original works [...] meanwhile, furious shitposting".

on one level, tenco's story is a story, but in the process of following it, i came to think of the work itself as a journey too. you can constantly see kannnu's improvement between and even within each book. they have always drawn whatever they liked; what plot matters in the face of "I wanted to draw a beautiful sky." "I wanted to draw a fantastic battle." "I wanted to draw Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and Pokemon and Brave Fencer Musashi and Bokura no Taiyou and Touhou."

its not really kannnu's style to go back and tie up old ends. they just draw whatever makes them happy. so as i watch them continue to draw beautiful places and fantastic creatures, new characters heading out on journeys of their own or just enjoying their everyday lives, it's as if tenco's story never ended. the limits and consistency of that world ignored, and a new one springs up; in a way, the world of tenco's, which had such thin boundaries, just gets bigger.

but even so, having said all that, i still see them draw that short-haired tenshi from time to time. it makes me happy to see them remember tenco's story with such fondness. often crossing over with orion or roar or elweiss, you can see tenshi on another journey.

#tenco's story #freshlybakedspiderbread

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elizadoolittlethings · 6 years

Photo

An Interview with Mark Gatiss

October 12, 2015

Mark Gatiss is a man who has made a career of developing his childhood passions: Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, comedy, classic literature, Gatiss has done them all. With work as a screenwriter, actor, novelist and showrunner under his belt, Gatiss's illustrious career has been varied, but one thing has remained steadfast throughout his working life; his love of the dark and unsettling.

At a fundraiser for Darlington Police Memorial Fund on Ocotober 3rd 2015, Gatiss told of how Sherlock has changed his life, how he'd warmly welcome a female Doctor, his lifelong goal to play Jacob Marley and the mysterious gifts he has received from fans. After the event, Gatiss was kind enough to sit down with Shadows at the Door to discuss M.R. James and all things horror. SATD: You did a lot to raise the profile of M.R. James with new audiences with your adaptation of The Tractate Middoth and the accompanying documentary. Do you feel James is as recognised as much as other contemporaries such as Lovecraft? MG: He's the master(!), he's absolutely preeminent and rightly regarded as so. And well, you know the only problem I found with that is when I did Crooked House. They (the BBC) asked me to do an M.R. James and I said that I'd just like to do some new ones, because in a way, he becomes the default. It's a bit like whenever they list the greatest films ever made, it's so often Citizen Kane and people get a bit bored it it. James is clearly the best that's ever been, and people sometimes think 'Oh is he? Yes he is actually!'. But in fact what you want to do is kind of mix it up a bit, and that's all I wanted to do. Tractate came about because they asked me to do the documentary, and I said I'd love to but I'm too busy. But they kept asking and I just thought I'd chance my arm and said I'd do it one condition: let me write and direct a new adaptation and they said yes! Only trouble is that I'd love to do it every year and they haven't asked! And yes, James is incredible but i'd love there to be a broader field for others, such as Sheridan Le Fanu and all those that came after him. He was the best but it would be nice to mix it up a bit and if there were more of them it would be easier-- we could do with an anthology series, really. SATD: Yeah, the Ghost Story for Christmas series is quite sporadic at best, each year we look for it in the listings and it's never there. Is it quite a fight to get the BBC to do another one? MG: Yes it is. I would do one very year until I dropped dead. In fact, I want to do Count Magnus.I'd love to do some more, it's a tough sell because it's a short format and in the 70s it was so easy. The documentary was made via BBC Arts and it was like making one in the 70s, I was left on my own. But essentially, what I'd have to do to make that work is replicate it: do a documentary on someone along with an adaptation, and I can't do James again. But Funnily enough-- no wait, I won't say that because I'll jinx it(!) but it could work again. But it's difficult, it's all about money and ratings and it's a difficult slot whereas if you could make four or five of them together you could make a little series of them but that's expensive. SATD: Do you think that's something that could realistically happen? MG: Maybe. It's just increasingly difficult.

SATD: You're a fan of H.G. Wells too, is that someone whose work you'd try to push with the BBC?

MG: Yeah but I tell you what, rejoice! Because the great Graham Duff has just done a serise of four Wells adaptations for Sky, I've seen them and they're fantastic! He's done The Purple Pileus-- the one about mushrooms-- and The Moth. But the particularly brilliant one stars Micheal Gambon, the name escapes me (Mark cries in frustration), but its just brilliant! It's about a dying old man who's looking an heir because he has n children, it's very sinister and it's fantastic. THey're all directed by Adrian Shergold and they so much capture the spirit of mid-70s horror, they're just really well done so look forward to that. SATD: Sounds fantastic! So moving onto Doctor Who, a lot of your episodes in particular have elements of horror to them. Is this something to comes to you naturally or is it just owed more to Doctor Who's gothic origins?

MG: Well horror is my bent, and to me Doctor Who has always been frightening. My principle memories of a child are being scared by it, it's in the DNA of Doctor Who. But obviously it depends on the story, The Crimson Horror for example is a northern gothic love letter and others are more traditional scares. A Martian in a Russian submarine for example, you just can't do that in any other show, I've yet to see it in Midsummer...

SATD: Speaking of The Crimson Horror, I've got to ask: were there elements of Hillary Briss (Gatiss's demented butcher character from The League of Gentlemen), in the character of the the undertaker?

MG: Oh yeah! He licked his lips a lot, didn't he? I tell who I really wanted for that part, Graham Fellows who plays John Shuttleworth. I really tried to get him but it didn't work out, I think we would have been perfect for that. What does he say? (Mark adopts a thick Yorkshire accent) 'White as the top of Buckton Pike!" (laughs). SATD: In other interviews you've said that you're fatigued by the sheer quantity of modern horror films.

MG: That's true! I was just thinking about this the other day: the absolute constant for me is ghosts, but other things can wax and wane. Personally, I think its now all a bit over saturated. Its a bit like super hero movies, theres too many and you start to get weary. Weirdly, its sort of like the old Chinese curse, be careful what you wish for. There are so many shows now, that are just hyper-gothic, steampunk-y, and Im just a bit saturated.

Therefore, like food or wine your tastes change and your palette changes so now I've gone in a slightly different direction. I used to think nothing could exist without waistcoats and bubbling test tubes and now Im actually more interested in modern horror; the gothic but in a modern context. I dont think it has to be about the old and obviously I still love it but it doesnt have to be about candelabra and castles. You can get the same feeling from modern methods, and in a way that is more frightening. The story which by consensus is the most successful in Crooked House, is the one which is in Barratt home because its like; 'Oh this is horrible because it might actually happen!'.

SATD: So have there been any recent films that have pleasantly surprised you?

MG: Well the problem is, and I was just talking to Simon Pegg about this, its like an addict always searching for their first hit. And whenever someone says; 'Oh my god have you seen x?' like The Babadook, which I really enjoyed, but I found it was much more interesting when it was a very harrowing story about that women going mad. The gothic touches left me cold, and I wondered why they were suddenly doing Poltergeist? Thats not what this story is about, the idea of a woman losing her mind because her child is unstable was really scary but in a different kind of way. (sigh) I suppose Im always just waiting for The Thing, really.

SATD: You have a part in the new Victor Frankenstein movie; does that feel surreal now that you're in a horror movie?

MG: All I can think of is; whats taken so long? But yeah, it was a delight. I only have a small part, and it only took a few days. Paul McGuigan, the chief Sherlock director asked me to do it and it was, you know, a really fucking huge Frankenstein laboratory! And I get to pull the lever and everything! There was a bit when I was going up an iron lift with Freddie Fox and it was all outdoors and raining I mean absolutely lashing with freezing cold rain and I said to Freddie; 'This isnt like being in Frankenstein, this is Frankenstein!' (laughs). And it doesnt get any better than that!

SATD: Do you get to ham it up then?

MG: Well, wait and see! (laughs)

SATD: Well, Mark thank you very much!

MG: Not at all, its been an absolute pleasure.

wanted to know about his Frankenstein role :) though didn’t get to see him much - think they edited a lot

also, for me too “..the absolute constant for me is ghosts, but other things can wax and wane.”

#Mark Gatiss

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incorrectkingkillerquotes · 7 years

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Q and A. . . Finally!!!

@druggeddraccus said: Favorite kkc character? Favorite kkc storyline? Favorite book/series that isn't kkc? What made you all decide to do this blog?

@halfthealphabet speaking!

Favorite character: Toss up between Denna and Auri. I will protect them at all cost.

Favorite kkc story line: I have a soft spot for the plum bob storyline.

Other favorite book/series: My list of favorite books is here. Happy reading!!

So I started this blog at like one in the morning because I kept comparing Hamilton to Kvothe and created a list of lines in Hamilton that are applicable to KKC. And then I thought, maybe I should make an incorrect quotes blog. Checked to make sure there wasn’t one, threw together a quick format, and posted the quote. I woke up with followers and notes and that’s the beginning!!

@frei-rancken: well she ^^^ just invited me and i jumped in cause it’s fun. tho i’m rarely active as a mod on this blog which is shitty of me.

@logarithmicpanda: Elodin is my fave, followed closely by Auri (I was delighted when the slow regard of silent things was announced)

In terms of storyline, I love when Kvothe gets back to the university, after adem. But also the begining of the university arc :D and so many other parts lol.

I definitely recommend Uprooted by Naomi Novik and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, there are probably the best books I’ve read this year.

@halfthealphabet asked if I wanted to do it and I said hell yes. Then I proceeded not to be very active at all as a mod which makes me really sorry.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : My fav is probably... Kote or Devi. Yeah sounds about right! Um, as for joining I was just asked one day, and said sure! While I don’t post too much, I’m glad I was considered and asked <3

Story line wise, I really enjoyed too many of the arcs. Oh man one after another; all of them just so captivating and wonderful! But, I will admit, some were better than others. I really did enjoy Kvothe’s time with the Adem, and the arc where he screwed over Ambrose!

@kvothe-kingkiller : My favorite is Elodin. I love him so much. My favorite storyline is probably anything to do with sympathy or the magic in the books I love how pat actually describes how the *science* behind it works, unlike so many other fantasy series. Other than kkc I dont really know what my favorite series is... I really like anything by tamora pierce and I love game of thrones. Most other things I read are single books. I decided to do this since I loved what was being posted already and had a wealth of cabin pressure quotes that would fit perfectly.

@shineecandy said: wow congrats on your milestone! here’s a question for you: how do you deal with the wait???? it has been years. pat, please, i’m dying

@halfthealphabet I read a lot and watch a lot of Netflix and check Pat’s blog obsessively. And write meta about it. And read more theories about it.

@frei-rancken: I just wait, and entertain myself with other things. Uni is stressing so i can’t focus on many other things.

@logarithmicpanda We don’t. We are slowly going mad.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : I answered this in a much more long winded manner, so TL;DR I just want it to be wonderful and perfect so I will wait the best I can.

@kvothe-kingkiller : I watch waaaay too many shows and procrastinate on schoolwork so much that I dont often think about it. I’ve been waiting almost since WMF came out, gotten used to it a bit.

@dirty-n-evil said: Hi, huge fan of the KKC as well (obviously), but for the question I would ask the mods of this blog... what were each of your favorite moments through the books? Not simply 'Name of the Wind' and 'Wise Man's Fear', but also 'Lightning Tree' and 'Slow Regard of Silent Things'?

Hey, @halfthealphabet here

So I don’t think I can give just one favorite scene, but I will tell you that I thought The Lightning Tree was not a good addition to the Kingkiller Chronicle and that The Slow Regard of Silent Things is possibly the only flawless piece of writing I have ever read.

@kvothbloodless: Every moment is my favorite, but that being said, the scene in which Kvothe’s parents die never fails to make me cry.

@frei-rancken: It gets kind of difficult but maybe the Eolian’s pipes audition, or mostly when Kvothe tells stories about the Edema Ruh.

@logarithmicpanda: all the scenes with Elodin crack me up! In the lightning tree, my favorite part was the ending, when you understand what happened. I love every single bit of the slow regard of silent things, but especially when Auri notices the child watching her and makes a cartwheel. For Notw and Wmf, it’s a bit more complicated. Generally, I love worldbuilding scenes, and whenever a relationship progress in an interesting direction.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : I’m really swept away by all of it. From the characterization and the world building; mostly the building of languages. While there isn’t very MUCH, it’s still there. But, in NOTW I think my fav part was the boys trying to explain Bisexuality without quite having the proper words for it (assuming int he universe sexuality doesn’t quite fit into clear categories for words to be made). In WMF I think my fav part…. oh man this one is hard… but I think my favorite portion of this book was either his interaction with The Maer’s manservant or his time with the Adem and getting his ass handed to him by a small child. Both were very wonderful to me and well written. I can’t say anything about LT, since I have yet to have time to read it, nor more than the first page of SRST due to a lot of life issues and conflicts coming up. But, in retribution for such, I will do a ‘live’ read through of both like I did with NOTW and WMF where I took notes and shared them with you guys.

@kvothe-kingkiller: Honestly, anything to do with elodin. (tiny bit obsessed.) And in slow regard I really love when Auri find the gear and get’s it back to where she lives, (it’s been a while since I read it so I forget some of the names) and I haven’t read lightning tree in ages so while I remember the basic plot I dont really remember any favorite moment.

@freudcallsmedaddy said: What sort of theories do you have about the Cthaeh?

@halfthealphabet speaking. I think that the Ctaeth is more of Bast’s villain than Kvothe’s. So it might come back in other books, but not in Kvothe’s story. He didn’t know what power the Ctaeth even had. It could come into play in Kote's story . . .

@frei-rancken: While i read tons of theories i’m mostly a factual kind of person, so i go with it’s a fae it does not care about shackshit but it’self and its rules, it has a grudge against cinder so it sent kvothe to collide with him, but i’m totally lost on how is it going to happen.

@kvothe-kingkiller: My personal theory is that it’s a bit hyped as far as how much power it actually has. This may be just me being a science geek but the amount of decisions a person can make in the future are infinite. So infinite that even if you could see all of them, you could not possibly choose the course of a person’s life based on one conversation. You might be able to choose a basic-ish path but I honestly dont think its at all as powerful and scary as it’s made out to be.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : cRACKS KNUCKLES MMMMM BOY HOWDY AM I GONNA TRY AND KEEP THIS SHORT! Okay, so there are so many theories out there and I’ve read a few just to collect my own thoughts and ideas from.

Now, the Cthaeh is a fae and a fae being. We know this because of Bast. It is a prominent and guarded fae due to its ability to tell the future and see the past; making it something VERY valuable and very tempting to try and encounter[NOTE: I am saying it only because we do not know (??) if the Cthaeh has an actual form and or even has a preferred gender really, or is a sentient being instead of a collision of other shit]. As, I believe, Bast said to Kote, it is actually guarded by the fae in the realm so that people don’t go to seek what it has to offer.

This leads to the automatic assumption that people had been seeking it and had been very upset and or disturbed by it’s tales of what was to come. The fae are taught to keep away, knowing that such information is already bad enough to know, let alone ask about. But that probably didn’t stop a few humans...[kVOTHE] or perhaps a few higher beings. Such as the Chandrian? I’m not saying that the Chandrian were able to go to the Cthaeh, but it is a possibility. It would explain some on how they knew where specific people would be and possibly what they would become.

The Cthaeh also MIGHT not have started off as selfish and enjoyment seeking as we saw with Kvothe, but that also may be just a bit of a stretch. But, say it wasn’t. Say it was just trying to tell people like ‘Oh, hey, yeah in like 5 years your wife is gonna leave you for some hot headed dude who looks like this, so be careful!’ and that spiraled quickly out of control for obvious reasons. One would turn rather sadistic with the power, knowing it would just do more harm than good no matter how it was worded. But, that is just a very small half baked theory on the creature itself! But, going with such a creature or being was always in such a manner sadistic and rude, it would make sense of the fae to HEAVILY guard it. Bast did say people who got too close were killed, right? If I’m remembering that right at all. I remember something like that being said though.

To bring this sadistic being into play with the story for later and Kvothe, I’m going to nod to what was said above slightly; the Cthaeh wanted Cinder and Kvothe to butt heads and probably do SOMETHING to the course of the future. Also bringing back part of my theory of the Cthaeh not always being properly guarded, it may have accidentally sent Cinder on his strange mission and pillage at a more high hostility rate, depending on what was said, so the Cthaeh is sending Kvothe in to stop as much as he can before it’s too late.

TL;DR: Cthaeh fucked up when not guarded by the fae and sent the Chandrian on a brutal rampage to hide themselves and then told Kvothe his specific future to try and get him to steer towards stopping them.

So yeah, that’s what I got in a shorter version... I haven’t read LT, so if there was anything about the creature and Bast in it, I am not aware of it and hopefully will be soon when I get a chance to read

Anonymous said: how do you pronounce "Auri"

@halfthealphabet here I pronounce it like “aura” but with an “ee” sound at the end. Like, “or-ie” (Pat pronounces it like the others, I pronounce it incorrectly).

@kvothbloodless: I always pronounced it are-ee. Pretty much “sorry” without the ‘s’.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : “Ah-ri” OR “Auh-ree” OR “Are-ee”. Well, I guess theya re all the same now that I’m looking at them. Looking up now, I def say it like mod kvothebloodless.

@kvothe-kingkiller: same as kote-the-inn-keeper and kvothbloodless

@displeasign said: What are you most looking forward to in book 3?

@halfthealphabet: Closure

@kvothbloodless: Finding out how many of our half-baked theories were right.

@frei-rancken: answers. I really need to know how much of what it is said about kvothe is true and how much is just stories tell by people.

@logarithmicpanda disaster. I want to know how Kote came to be

@kote-the-inn-keeper : Closure, answers, and an explanation as to why he chose to be an innkeeper to lay low instead of something else... i want my boy to be happy,,,,, le t kOTE BE HAPPY HHHHHHHHHHH

@kvothe-kingkiller: As others said, closure. on so many things I couldnt possibly list them all here. Also more Elodin. He’s really not a big character but he’s honestly my favorite, out of every book ive read and every show/movie ive seen.

@octarine-ash said: For the q and a: What's your favourite actual kingkiller quote?

@halfthealphabet It’s such a quotable book but I use the quote, “You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way” very often. And I plan to get “Beautiful, seen” on the back of my neck. Also, I love the passage where Fela starts to fall in love with Sim.

@frei-rancken i cannot quote the entire book sadly. but... the kvothe quit grabbing at my boobs passage, the secrets as seen by Teccam, and like a shit ton of other ones.

@logarithmicpanda the quote about loving something despite its flaws and because of them. It sums up my feelings towards the series actually.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : This one is super hard. There are WAY to many good ones and ones that i find really deep meaning in. And of course, some funny ones. The only one that comes ti mind this very second is a funny one: “You are the horseshit frosting on this horseshit cake.”

@kvothe-kingkiller: I cant find the actual quote through google and I dont really want to re-read both books on the spot to find it but I love when he’s being salty about math and poetry. Saying words for the sake of words and numbers for the sake of numbers are stupid. That quote got me through pre-calculus lol

Anonymous said: How did y'all create this blog? Is it like a side-blog or its own account?

@halfthealphabet It’s a side blog. And it’s origin story is explained in the first answer :)

@princessmarysea said: This has probably already been asked but...what are your ships in kkc?? I love your blog btw it's really funny :D

@halfthealphabet speaking: I have to say the only romantic ship I really care about being endgame is Sim and Fela (guys, their ship name should be Selas!!). They really are so sweet and wonderful. I want confirmation that Devi is into girls and guys (which is kind of a ship thing?). And I suppose this is a good time to mention that (although I love Denna), she and Kvothe would only have a disaster of a relationship at the point in their lives. Also, I ship everyone platonically. Especially with Denna because she needs more friends. And Mola and Auri could have such an awesome friendship as well.

@frei-rancken: Yeah mainly Sim and Fela. but if i have to come up with other ships Devi, Mola and Fela being in a happy poly relationship would be like... way too perfect.

@logarithmicpanda Sim and Fela forever. I’m not a huge shipper though... Like if you throw any cute headcanon at me I’ll start low key shipping it.

@kvothe-kingkiller: Might be because I literally never ship anything, but... none. I mean I like sim and fela but as far as one that don’t already exist, none.

@kote-the-inn-keeper: so maaaaaaaaaany.... So many....

So: Kote and Bast, Kvothe and Devi, Kvothe and HAPPINESS, Sim and Fela, Wil and Mola, Wil and Sim (fite me..........), Fela and Mola (more soft/platonic), Devi and Fela, Hespea and Dedan, Tempi and Kvothe, Kote and JOY IN LIFE, Mola and Auri (PLATONIC ONLY!!!!!!!), Auri and PEACE IN LIFE (sobbing my bby let her be happy and safe pat i s2g), Kvothe and Auri (PLATONIC 100%), Kvothe and Denna, Denna and Fela (lOOK IT’D BE SO NICE JUST L I STEN), Denna and Devi (more friends than romance tho), Devi and Mola and Fela, and I think that’s all for now.

@jordantresser What do you think about Cameron Monaghan from Shameless as a young adult Kvothe?

So @halfthealphabet speaking. I think he looks great and would act great, but also I hope they cast a man of color from Kvothe/Kote.

Hey @frei-rancken here. Well... yes and no. Like i love how he acts in general he is awesome but he looks a tad too devilish for me. Tho i would not be distressed if he were to be cast, it’d be awesome. And yes i concur with halfthealphabet it’d be great if the actor was a person of colour.

@kote-the-inn-keeper : I didn’t even know who that was, so I looked them up. I’m going to say no, tbh. I just don’t think they fit with my headcanon face for Kvothe OR Kote.... I’d prefer someone who is of rromani origin to play Kvothe tbh; or of color. [EsPECIALLY BAST HAMILTON GUY DONT LET ME DOWN ]

@kvothe-kingkiller Again, it would be great for an actor of color to play him but I kind of think he was written to be at least very pale so that is probably not going to happen. And I think he has the right look, I’d say he would do a good job. (also yes, bast is not white, and neither are the cealdish. whoever casts this show, pls.)

#q and a #about us #kkc #kingkiller chronicle #mod: halfthealphabet #mod: kvothblodless #mod: frei-rancken #mod: logarithmicpanda #mod: kvothe-kingkiller #mod: kote-the-inn-keeper #not a quote

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years

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Exploring the U.S. by RV: The price of adventure

Shares 352 Two years ago today, Kim and I returned to Portland after fifteen months traveling the United States in an RV. Believe it or not, Ive never published an article about the trip and how much it cost. Although we kept a travel blog for most of the adventure (including a page that documented our expenses), Ive never gathered everything into one place. Until now. Today, I want to share just how much we spent on the journey and some of our favorite stops along the way. It seems like the perfect post to celebrate the start of summer, dont you think? The Lure of Adventure All my life, Ive wanted to take a roadtrip across the United States. When I was young, I was lured by the adventure. I wanted to climb mountains, swim rivers, and explore canyons. The older I got, the more fascinated I became by the countrys regional differences. The U.S. is huge, a fact that most foreign visitors forget. Most American citizens dont even realize how big the country is. I wanted to see and experience it all. Although Ive dreamed of a cross-country roadtrip, its never been practical. As a boy, my family was poor. My parents didnt have money for something like this. As a young adult, I couldnt afford it either. For a long time, I was deep in debt. Besides, where would I find the time? I had to work! To top things off, my wife had zero interest in driving cross country. But in my forties, a curious set of circumstances came together to move my epic roadtrip from dream to reality. One day in early 2014, my girlfriend Kim asked me out of the blue, What do you think about taking a cross-country roadtrip? What did I think? Hell yeah! is what I thought Making a Plan As Kim and I began to discuss this adventure, our biggest concern was money. As a financial writer, Im acutely aware that every dollar I spend today is roughly equivalent to seven dollars I could have in retirement. Every day, I preach the power of saving. I wanted to keep our trip as cost-effective as possible. (Besides, Kim would have to quit her job as a dental hygienist in order to travel a huge financial sacrifice.) My goal was to keep our costs under $50 per person per day. In fact, I had high hopes we could do the trip for $33 per person per day (for a total of $24,000). But the U.S. is expensive. How could Kim and I make this happen? From the start, we knew hotels were out. Even cheap lodging would be far too expensive for us to stay within budget. Personally, I liked the idea of bicycling across the country like my friends Dakota and Chelsea have done. Kim wasnt keen on the idea. (Nor was she willing to make the trip by motorcycle despite being a die-hard Harley girl.) After a lot of research, and after talking with Chris and Cherie from Technomadia, I came to a conclusion: The best balance of cost and comfort would come from crossing the country in an RV. With this bare outline of a plan, the true trip prep began. Searching for Bigfoot After deciding to travel by RV, there were more questions to answer. Neither of us had experience with recreational vehicles. Among other things, we needed to figure out: Should we buy a truck and a trailer?Would it be better to buy a motorhome and tow my 2004 Mini Cooper?What about new or used? With used, you never know what youre getting. But a new RV costs $80,000 or more and loses value quickly.How much space did we need? What kinds of amenities? After crunching the numbers, there was an obvious best choice for us. If we bought a used motorhome, we could tow a car we already owned while (we hoped) avoiding a big hit from depreciation. In fact, if we were diligent every step of the way, it might even be possible to resell our RV after the trip and recoup most of what wed paid for it! We spent the autumn of 2014 patiently sifting through Craigslist ads for used motorhomes. We visited dealerships. We attended the local RV Expo. We walked through dozens of models searching for the right fit. Some were too long. Some were too short. Some were too fancy. Many were run-down and in a state of disrepair. Finally, in early January 2015, we found the perfect rig: a 2005 Bigfoot 30MH29RQ. (Translation: A 29-foot motorhome with a queen bed in the rear.) The owner wanted $38,000 for it a fair price. He wouldnt budge when I tried to negotiate, but I was okay with that. My research revealed he was actually selling a slightly better model, one worth a few thousand dollars more than he was asking. We bought it. [embedded content] Over the next two months, Kim and I prepped Bigfoot for departure. We spent $2000 making minor repairs and installing a towbar on the Mini Cooper. We cleaned the motorhome from top to bottom. We took weekend test trips to RV parks around Oregon and Washington. When all was said and done, wed invested $40,000 to get our caravan ready for the road. Into the West Kim and I left Portland on the morning of 25 March 2015, my forty-sixth birthday. We sped through Oregon we love the state, but were both familiar with it and entered northern California. We spent our first week on the road exploring the Redwoods and weaving through wine country. Along the way, we got a crash course in driving a motorhome. Near Cloverdale, California we took a wrong turn onto a cliff-side gravel road. We stopped immediately. Good thing, too. Turns out a week earlier some other poor soul had driven his RV over the side of the cliff. East of Sacramento, we took another wrong turn and found ourselves driving down a narrow dike road during rush hour while high winds buffeted the RV. Very scary. At times we felt like Lucy and Desi in The Long, Long Trailer, but after a couple of weeks Kim and I had learned how to handle our motorhome, both on the road and off. [embedded content] Early in the trip, our expenses were out of sight. We ate out too often. We bought too much wine. We did too many touristy things without searching for discounts. We rationalized that since we were visiting all of these new places (and might never return), we might as well pay to experience them to the fullest. This was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, after all. The problem, of course, was that lots of fun costs lots of money. Ten days into the trip, our average spending was over $120 per day (or over $60 per person per day) almost twice what wed hoped to spend. Yikes! We tightened the purse strings. We stopped eating out so much and cooked in the motorhome. (We cook a lot at home normally, so this wasnt a tough transition.) We bought a National Parks pass, perhaps the best purchase of our entire trip. (For an $80 one-time fee, you get one year of unlimited access to all sorts of government-owned sites.) We learned to entertain ourselves at night with books and boardgames and a hard drive filled with old movies and an iPad filled with comic books. During our 33 days in California, we marveled at the states vast variety of terrain. We drove through forests and deserts, skirted ocean cliffsides and walked across mountain streams. We hated L.A. traffic not recommended when youre in a motorhome towing a car but enjoyed almost everything else. We loved Arizona even more. Maybe we had low expectations, but we were blown away by the magnificent scenery of the Grand Canyon state. For nineteen days, we basked in the warm spring sun and admired the colorful rock formations. It was in Arizona that we discovered the joys of drycamping (or boondocking). For the first seven weeks of our trip, we mostly stayed in RV parks and campgrounds. At $20 to $50 per night (with the average park costs around $35), lodging was our biggest expense by far. Drycamping costs nothing. All you do is find a spot where you can legally park for the night National Forest land, a friends driveway, certain businesses and casinos and set up camp. You dont have access to electricity or fresh water, but thats okay. The beauty of an RV is that its self-contained. (Our Bigfoot had a generator for electricity and a 63-gallon freshwater tank.) After boondocking only once during our first 50 days on the road, we managed to live off the grid for 33 of the next 80 nights. Once we began pinching pennies, our travel costs plummeted. We werent spending $120 per day anymore. Our average daily spending fell to $50, which lowered the trip average to about $80 per day. A Costly Repair With all this frugality, did we feel like we were depriving ourselves? Not at all! As we made our way from Arizona to Utah to Colorado, we found we could still afford wine and an occasional restaurant meal. Plus, we were paying to do a lot of touristy things, such as soak in the hot springs in Ouray and ride the narrow-gauge train from Durango to Silverton. At the end of May, we stopped for a week to visit family and friends near Denver. During this break, our RV costs dropped to zero no fuel or lodging expenses while we stayed with Kims mother and hung out with Mr. Money Mustache which allowed us to spend a little more on fun. Good thing too because Fort Collins has a great beer scene. We hit the road again in early June, making our way into Wyoming to visit Yellowstone and the Tetons. We zipped over to Idaho to spend time with Kims father in Sun Valley. From there, we drove north into Montana to lounge around Flathead Lake and explore Glacier National Park. Costs stayed low as we crossed Montana to enter the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. After celebrating Independence Day in Deadwood, our average daily spending for the trip was about $84. We felt good about that number. Itd be nice if it were lower, but $42 per day per person seemed reasonable. At that rate, the trip would cost us $30,000 for the entire year. On July 8th, the tenor of our trip changed. So did our costs. We were cruising across the vast emptiness of central South Dakota when the motorhomes engine overheated. We pulled off to give it a rest. The oil level looked fine, but I added more just in case. It didnt help. An hour down the highway, the engine seized up completely. Turns out Bigfoot had spun a bearing and the engine was toast. (Also turns out that spun bearings are not uncommon with this particular engine.) Unfortunately, we were in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town was Plankinton, South Dakota (population 707). Fortunately, the folks in Plankinton were friendly. The owners of the local garage diagnosed the problem and ordered parts. Meanwhile, we got to know the owners of the only RV park in town. We spent ten days drinking beer with Plankintonians while exploring nearby attractions such as the Corn Palace and the real-life homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the end, the engine repair cost $7751.39. Ouch! We did not count this against our daily trip budget but instead factored it into our overhead, much like we had with the purchase price of the RV. (You might choose to account for it differently.) The Expensive East When the new engine was ready, we waved good-bye to our new friends in Plankinton. We drove through Minnesota to Wisconsin, where we spent a week in the Great North Woods. (At the recommendation of world traveler Gary Arndt, whom we had lunch with near Milwaukee, we took a boat ride out to view the amazing Apostle Islands.) After eating our fill of Wisconsin cheese, we crossed into Michigans upper peninsula and then drove south to Indianas Amish country, where we rested for a week. (We also took the time to dart into Chicago for an overnight trip.) From there, we moved to Indianapolis and Cincinnati. As we made our way east, we noticed some interesting changes. First, there were fewer opportunities for boondocking. Theres less government-owned land in the East than there is in the West. (The western U.S. is largely government land, which means lots of places to camp for free.)Second, while gasoline prices were lower in the east, everything else was more expensive. RV parks were more expensive. Groceries were more expensive. Beer and wine were more expensive. Restaurants, especially, were more expensive. Our average daily spending started to creep upward. By the time we reached Ohio in mid-August, we were shelling out $120 per day again. After 150 days on the road, the average for the entire trip was $93.48 per day (or $46.74 per person). By this point it was clear that we couldnt spend a year on the road for our initial $24,000 budget. (You might, but we couldnt. Not while enjoying the lifestyle we wanted.) Even $30,000 for the year seemed unlikely. We revised our budget upward to $36,000 (or about $50 per person per day) not counting the expensive engine repair. We had plenty in savings, so we could afford to stretch some, but we still wanted to spend as little as possible. From Cincinnati, we traveled to beautiful West Virginia, then north to Cleveland. After that, we hopped over to Niagara Falls, where we camped for a few days at a winery. (We helped bottle brandy and bought a few bottles of wine in exchange for firewood and a place to park.) Stopping in Savannah During September, we sort of lost our steam. The enthusiasm wed had at the start of the trip petered out. Instead of exploring Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina, we holed up in the RV and worked. It might sound crazy, but we missed being productive and making money! Being hermits saved us money, of course, but we felt like we were wasting an opportunity. After much discussion, we decided to take a break. We spent a week driving around the eastern seaboard, looking for a place to park for the winter. We fell in love with Savannah, Georgia, so we rented a condo and put the RV in storage. For six months, we lived a relatively normal life. Kim found full-time work as a dental hygienist, and I launched Money Boss (which Ive been folding into Get Rich Slowly since re-purchasing this site). Our six months in Savannah were interesting. I had never lived outside of Oregon, so I suffered some culture shock. I always say that Im relatively conservative for the Portland area but that still makes me pretty liberal for anywhere in the southeastern U.S.! While in Savannah, we didnt just work. We made sure to have some fun too. Over Christmas, we flew to New York City for a long weekend, where we got to hang out with some of our favorite money bloggers. In February, we took a couple of weeks to tour the state of Florida, from Jacksonville to Tampa to Miami to Key West to the Kennedy Space Center. Important note: By this time nearly one year into our trip Kim and I had both started packing on the pounds. Sad but true. We were eating great food and drinking great beer everywhere we went, and we were out of our exercise routine. Not good. After returning from Florida, we began planning for our return trip to Potland. It had taken us six months to make it from the Pacific to Atlanta. It seamed reasonable to budget the same amount of time for heading home. Old Pros If this were a travel blog, Id cover the return trip in depth. A lot of fun stuff happened during our final three months on the road. But this is a money blog, and Im trying to focus this article on the financial side of our journey. As a result, Im going to gloss over a lot. Financially, not much exciting happened. From the start, the return leg felt different. For one thing, we were old pros at the whole RVing thing by this point. At the start of the trip, everything had been new and exciting and even a little scary. A year later, however, Kim and I had things down to a science. We were no longer freaked out by little problems. On our first day back on the road, one of our headlights went out. No problem! Kim promptly repaired it. The return trip felt different too because we spent less time with friends and family. While we did stop to see people along the way, we didnt have nearly as many contacts in southern states as we had in the north. Also, we spent much more time in state parks during the drive home. Traveling east, our camping spots had been varied. Sometimes, we parked in driveways of friends or family. Other times, we did drycamping on Forest Service land. Many of our campsites were located in Thousand Trails parks, which means they were essentially free. (Kim had access to an annual pass through her father.) But these options were few and far between in the Southeast, so we learned to love state parks, which are cheap and plentiful all over the United States. (State parks can get busy on holiday weekends, but otherwise are nearly empty especially midweek.) Finally, we changed the pace of our travel. On the outbound leg, we moved camp every two or three days. (We moved every 2.84 days, to be precise.) But going home, we intentionally slowed down. We tried to say four or five days in each location. (Until we picked up our puppy in Oklahoma about which, more in a moment we moved every 4.25 days.) In short, we stayed in each location nearly twice as long on our way west as we had on our way east. The Journey Home We had intended to spend six months driving home, just as wed spent six months getting to Savannah. That was the plan. We knew that our first two months would be spent carving an S through the southeastern United States. And, surprisingly enough, those two months went as we thought they would. We left Savannah at the end of March and drove to Asheville, North Carolina. (This town is like a training ground for hipster who arent ready for the West Coast, I observed.) We visited Dollywood and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. We dallied a few days in Nashville home to the worst drivers we encountered on the entire trip (no joke!) where we had a lot of fun immersing ourselves in country music culture. I was pleased to see the Taylor Swift exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame! One of our favorite stops on the entire trip came in Lexington, Kentucky. For one, we got to hang out with friends for the first time in months. More than that, northern Kentucky is beautiful, filled with rolling green hills and horse pastures. Kim and I spent our fourth anniversary as a couple watching the races at Keeneland. And, of course, we sampled the Bourbon trail. [embedded content] From Kentucky, we drove west to St. Louis, then to central Missouri. My grandmother was born near Lake of the Ozarks, so I spent my time there trying to imagine what it must have been like for her as a girl 100 years ago. (By the way, did you know that the Ozark Mountains are the opposite of most mountains? Most mountains are formed when land thrusts up from the Earths crust. The Ozarks were formed by erosion when the vast inland sea that once occupied the space between the Rockies and the Appalachians drained away.) Our next stop was special. In late April 2016, we drove into northeast Oklahoma to visit my cousin Gwen and her family. She and her husband Henry moved from Oregon many years ago, and they now own a 100-acre creek hollow outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma. (Tahlequah has two claims to fame. First, its the endpoint of the Trail of Tears. Second, its the setting for Where the Red Fern Grows. In fact, one scene in the book takes place on my cousins property!) From Tahlequah, we doubled back on ourselves, turning east. This part of our trip was educational, to say the least. We got to see some of the poorer parts of the country. We spent a couple of nights in beautiful Hot Springs, Arkansas, for instance. Hot Springs was once a booming resort town, popular with tourists from the East Coast. Today, the downtown area is a hollow core of what it once was (although there are a lot of people doing their best to save it). Memphis was even worse. Kim and I spent several days in the Memphis area, driving down into Mississippi to travel the Blues Highway. This part of the U.S. is poor. Its infrastructure roads and services and so on is falling apart. It was shocking. (About a month after we drove the Blues Highway, we stayed a few days in Natchez, Mississippi, a few hundred miles south. Conditions in that region were even worse.) Our eastward extent ended in Huntsville, Alabama, where we enjoyed spending time with my college roommate and his boyfriend. From there, we headed south to the Gulf of Mexico, which we followed from Gulf Shores, Alabama to New Orleans. Kim and I loved southern Louisiana. The culture is distinct. The people are friendly. The food is amazing. It was here that we realized our favorite parts of the United States are those that retain a distinct character. You see, much of the U.S. has become homogenized. Indianpolis could be Orlando could be Sacramento could be Cleveland. No knock on any of these cities, but theres a sameness about them despite the unique aspects of each of them. Cities like Miami and New York and New Orleans, however, feel very different. Theyre unique. They have a unique culture, and they cling to it in the face of pressure to conform. As a result, theyre the most fun places to visit. (In each case, we believe this is because the population of these places is so diverse.) Our leg across the Mississippi to Houston was interesting. And frustrating. It was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend 2016, and the heavens opened up. It rained and rained and rained. Texas isnt equipped to handle so much rain. There was flooding everywhere, and roads became impassable. What ought to have been a five-hour drive to our campground turned into eight or nine hours of struggling to get where we wanted to go. We had to change plans and camp at the first place we could find with open space. As you know, Texas is h-u-g-e. I mentioned earlier that the United States is larger than most folks realize. Well, Texas is too. During our nearly two weeks there, we visited Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas. Even with all of that driving, we barely scratched the surface of the state. The Home Stretch At this point, we were just over two months into our planned six-month return trip. We had planned to head toward west Texas, then revisit some of our favorite western spots from the previous year. That plan changed when: The couple who had been watching our condo in Portland found a home of their own. The extended housesitting gig worked out well for them because they were between places. It gave them time to be patient and purchase the perfect house. But once they found it, they were eager to leave. (And understandably so.) As a result, we needed to return to Portland sooner than anticipated.We got a dog. When wed stopped in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in late April, Kim fell in love with a litter of puppies. Can we take one home? she asked. At the time, I argued against it. But over the next few weeks, she whittled down my defenses. By the time we reached Dallas just a few hours from Tahlequah I agreed we could get a dog. So, after our time in Dallas, we returned to the 100-acre creek hollow where my cousin lives. We picked out our puppy (which we named Tahlequah, naturally) and spent a few days getting her used to the RV. When we felt like she was ready, we hit the road making a bee-line directly for home. But even when youre trying to make tracks in an RV, things still take time. Despite the fact that we were rushing the last part of the trip, it took us three weeks to get from northeastern Oklahoma to northwestern Oregon. We spent our first two nights with the puppy in tiny Kingman, Kansas. There, we enjoyed one of our favorite campsites: An entire country fairground where we were the only guests. We had the run of the place, which was awesome because we could get the puppy used to us and we could get used to her. Plus, the fairground was cheap cheap cheap. Note: By the way, we found this location with our copy of the book Free and Low-Cost Campgrounds, which was a godsend on the trip. Although were all accustomed to great cell service in cities, the reality is that most of the U.S. has shitty coverage. Theres just no need for it in sparsely populated areas, and most of the U.S. is sparsely populated. (This fact surprised me, by the way. For some reason, I thought the reality was population density but the opposite is true.) As a result, when youre doing an extended road trip, you need important info in print format. From Kansas, we drove through the most barren stretch of our entire trip eastern Colorado to visit Kims mother in Fort Collins (and to see our pal Mr. Money Mustache once more). Then we burned rubber (literallytwo of the RV tires started to fall apart!) to make it to her father outside Boise. We spent the last two days of the trip visiting my brother in central Oregon, then on 29 June 2016, we pulled into Portland. At long last, we were home. Culture Shock at Home Once Kim and I returned home, we experienced unexpected culture shock. After fifteen months of what was essentially an extended holiday (despite the fact we both worked in Savannah), normal life feltwell, normal life felt crazy. We were overwhelmed by the busy-ness of it all: the pace, the scheduling, all of the requests for time and attention. Why is this so tough for us? I asked after a couple of weeks at home. I dont know, Kim said. But it sucks. She was right. It did suck. About that time, I read Guardians of Being, a short book that mixes the philosophy of Eckhart Tolle with the animal art of Patrick McDonnell (from Mutts). Tolle, of course, is best known for his massive bestseller, The Power of Now, which encourages readers to get out of their heads and be more present in the moment. I was struck by this quote from Guardians: Most of us live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptualization, and image making a world of thought. We are immersed in a continuous stream of mental noiseWe get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. While we were on the road, Kim and I lived in the Now. We were always present in the moment. We might have vague plans for where we wanted to be in a few days or a few weeks, but mostly we made things up as we went along. Where do you want to go next? Kim might ask, and then wed pick a spot. Where should we camp tonight? I might ask as we drove to the new town, and Kim would find a campground. What should we do for dinner? Should we visit that park? This site is awesome lets stay a few more nights. Nearly everything we did was spontaneous. We had no plans or commitments and it was wonderful. But back home, even without jobs to go to and few plans, the pace of modern life was staggering. We were always doing something with somebody. We scheduled appointments and anticipated commitments. We had to-do lists. We went to the gym three mornings a week, took the puppy to puppy classes, agreed to help colleagues, and so on. There was so much going on that there was never a chance to simply be present in the Here and Now. We had no margin in our lives. And the stuff! There was so much stuff! We had few possessions in the motorhome; we didnt miss what we did not have. At home, even though we had less than many folks, we were surrounded by tons of stuff. Tons of stuff! So many books! So many clothes! So many dishes! So much in every closet and cupboard. Kim and I were overwhelmed because we made a sudden transition from doing and having very little to doing and having a lot. All of the stuff and commitments comes with mental baggage. It takes brainwidth. Even after we had settled down, we found it tough to resume normal life. Kim went back to work four days a week as a dental hygienist. I resumed writing and giving speaking gigs. We did our best to return to our old lifebut it all felt wrong, like old clothes that no longer fit. So, we bought a place in the country. We have access to the city when we want it. Mostly, though, we stay at home and enjoy the relaxed pace with our ever-growing zoo. It feels good to not be racing around so much. It feels nice to just be, you know? Getting Rid of Bigfoot Aside from the culture shock, Kim and I faced another problem upon our return. We no longer needed a motorhome. It was time to sell our loyal companion. For some reason, we thought selling the RV would be simple. It wasnt. From the time we started the process which was eight or nine months after returning home it took a year to actually get rid of Bigfoot. We started by listing the rig on both Craigslist and RV Trader. Plus, I created a sales page that contained more information than we could fit in a normal advertisement. We waited. And waited. And waited. Nobody seemed interested. Maybe were asking too much, Kim suggested after a few months with zero responses. We had purchased the RV for $38,000, remember, and then spent nearly $8000 to replace the engine. By our reckoning, we had a $46,000 vehicle on our hands (and wed made other upgrades too!) so we wanted $40,000 in return. Nobody wanted to pay $40,000. We lowered the price to $38,000. As a result, we received a few email inquiries, but nobody came out to see the RV in person. We lowered the price to $35,000. We got more email inquiries, but still nobody wanted to view it. When we lowered the price to $32,000, we finally got a reasonable number of responses and had a few people come out to take a look at the motorhome. We also learned that the price wasnt the only thing holding people back. To us, the fact that Bigfoot had a new engine was a selling point. Turns out, thats a red flag to a lot of people. Their reasoning is that if the engine went out once, itll go out again. This baffles me, but thats what people were telling us. Weve got to get rid of that thing, Kim said last Christmas. I know, I said. Its an albatross. Lets lower the price to $30,000. After we lowered the price to $30,000, we immediately had buyers interested. We were flooded with email. One guy drove out right away to look at the RV. I cant have money for you until Monday, he told us. Will you hold it for me? Given our inability to sell the thing, you might think wed take him up on his offer. But we didnt. The next day, a couple drove seven hours from Sandpoint, Idaho to look at the motorhome. Weve been looking all over for a Bigfoot! they told us. After several hours of inspecting the rig, they made us an offer: $28,000. We accepted. After three years of ownership, we were rid of the RV. The Great Reckoning So, this is a money blog. The most important question to answer is: How much did this trip cost us? Great question. We dont have a precise answer, but Ill share as many numbers as I can so that you can decide whether a trip like this would be worth it for your family. Because Im a money nerd, I keep detailed stats on most of my life. The RV trip is no different. I have a spreadsheet with detailed trip info, and I published trip stats at my travel blog. Here are some highlights: During 283 days on the road, we spent 371.3 hours (15.5 days total!) driving the RV across the U.S. We put 17,250 miles on the motorhome and 17,718 miles on the Mini Cooper. Thats a total of 34,968 miles driven about 1.5 times the circumference of the Earth! Between the two vehicles, we drove an average of 120 miles per day.Everyone wonders about fuel efficiency in an RV. Well, it sucks. We had hoped to average 10 miles per gallon; we got 7.7. (No, replacing the engine didnt make things better.) The motorhome consumed 2202.6 gallons of fuel at an average price of $2.48 per gallon. It cost us 32 cents per mile to drive that beast and thats only counting gasoline.On the first leg of the trip, we spent a total of $17,137.07 for budgeted daily items. Fuel and routine maintenance for the motorhome and car ate up a third of that budget. Food (both groceries and restaurants) consumed another third. We spent $3086 on lodging, which works out to $16.24 per night. The remaining $2000 was spent on alcohol, fun, and miscellaneous expenses. (Our stats for the return leg werent as detailed.)About two-thirds of our nights were spent in campgrounds or RV parks. We drycamped 19% of the time on the way east (but not once on the way home). We spent 18% of our nights in somebodys home or driveway. We visited 38 states. We spent the most time in California (33 nights) and Colorado (25 nights). We loved them all.Arizona and West Virginia were the two most beautiful states we saw on our trip, although the area around Jackson, Wyoming was probably the single prettiest place. Charleston, South Carolina and Lafayette, Louisiana had the best food (the Midwest had the worst) and Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York had the best beer. The worst drivers? Orlando, Savannah, and especially Nashville. To me, the most important numbers is what Id call our base costs. These are the combination of gas and lodging, the costs for keeping the RV in action. During the first leg of our trip, our base costs were $35.09 per day (with an overall cost of $90.20 per day). During the second leg, our base costs were $41.25 per day (and I didnt keep track of total costs). How much you would spend beyond these base costs is, well, up to you. Obviously, we were spending an extra $50 to $60 per day, or about $25 to $30 per person. This includes food and fun but it does not include the cost of the RV and/or maintenance. (Our net cost for the RV was $10,000 $38,000 purchase price, $28,000 sale price plus the $7751.39 for engine replacement.) And dont forget that we spent about $2000 to furnish the RV before setting out, plus had to make miscellaneous repairs. My guess (and this is only a guess) is that our total cost for for the RV trip outside daily expenses was $23,500. This equates to about $80 per day. If you add this to our ongoing daily expenses, you get a total of $170 per day. Lets round that to $175 per day. [Note that these are corrected numbers. My original calculation of daily cost forgot the engine repair. Oops.] All told, to live like we did on the road which was living well it cost about $180 per day (or about $5400 per month) for two people. Im sure it can be done for less. And we met tons of people who spend much more. I realize that not everyone can afford this sort of adventure. Nor do many people have the ability to pick up and leave their lives for six or twelve or eighteen months. In other words, this isnt the sort of trip that everyone has the time and money to make happen. But for those who do have the resources, exploring the United States by motorhome can be relatively affordable especially if your engine doesnt need to be replaced! On the Road Again? Heres the thing: Our story is not unique. Theres this idea that RVing is only for old people with more time and money than sense. Sure, there are plenty of retired couples out there in brand-new $200,000 luxury motorhomes, but there are also a surprising number of younger couples on the road full time including couples with kids! Everyone we talked to reported the same thing: If youre careful, its perfectly possible to live large in a motorhome on a modest budget. There are plenty of awesome side-effects too. The trip strengthened my relationship with Kim. (If you can make things work in 245 square feet, you can certainly do it in a larger space!) It taught us that we need far less Stuff to live than we thought. The best side effect of all? Realizing just how awesome everybody is. Im not joking. The media has whipped us into a state of hysteria in this country. The Left hates the Right. The Right hates the Left. Nobody talks or takes time to understand the other side. Thats bullshit, to be honest. During our fifteen months away from Portland, we had two bad experiences and they werent even that bad. (Maybe the people were just having off days?) Universally, everybody was friendly and polite and fun. This morning, as I was finishing this article, Kim and I got to talking. Wouldnt it be fun to do a trip like that again? she asked. Maybe we should buy another RV. Haha. Maybe. I told her we should put it off until next year. Our adventure across the U.S. truly was the trip of a lifetime. What are you waiting for? If you too have always dreamed of an epic cross-country roadtrip, get cracking. Draw up a plan. Save your money. Make it happen. Shares 352 https://www.getrichslowly.org/us-by-rv/

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in-paradox-space · 7 years

Text

very long rambly text post, you know the drill

you’ll get nothing out of reading it, you may as well scroll.

It’s fucking painful.

I barely even know her

but I can’t stop thinking about her

I’ve met her once, I shouldn’t feel this way about her.

I can’t concentrate on anything.

I just really really want to be around her.

I miss her.

and its really fucking painful to think she probably just wanted to get away from me

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I need to work on improving my skills before college starts. I need to be able to pick myself up, eat the right foods, shower and sleep at the right times

I can’t. I can only think about her

and its weird. I have had crushes before, painful ones, for girls and guys.

and I’ve spent nights awake because of it

but this is making me really sad

to feel like I’ll never be with her and she’ll probably never approve of me

she probably thinks I’m really weird

and that I just want a hookup

because our mutual friends made it out like that before they invited her

and

she’s a regular girl

I met her one night

and I don’t understand.

It would make sense for me to enjoy being around her and wanting to chill with her again

but it does not make sense that I feel like this

that she comes into my mind every single minute

and she makes it hard to focus on anything

I want to look at all the units on my course, and visualize how I can get the best grades in each one

I want to research some shit to buy

I need to choose a good cheap bag to order from china or somewhere cheap

I can not concentrate on any of it.

My mind is only interested in thinking of her

I’ve been waiting for a camera for weeks, it arrived today

I unboxed it.

the tag and the plastic was still there

I need to format an SD Card and change the date/time settings

the box had the big bubble wrap

why am I not excited?

I don’t give a shit

I don’t.

I only seem to care about her right now

and it feels like a drug craving

like im low

I need her to pick my serotonin up

and I think, relationships, crushes, love, affection, sex, all that shit

it kind of is like a drug

not in a poetic way

but its basically the same release of chemicals in the brain

and you think about it every day

you look forward to it

and you feel highs and lows

pick me ups and comedowns

the rushes, the emotions

you change and shape your life to suit it, you make compromises

and its all for a release of the chemicals your brain creates

i know im not the first one to point this out

but im growing aware of it

and I’ve always been aware its just chemicals

an illusion, a distraction from what is important

and I know in reality it doesnt mean shit. I should move on and get on with whats important

but heres the thing

its making me low, because somewhere along the lines my serotonin or dopamine or one of those kind of things has been thrown off balance

and thats basically what happens when you want more cocaine, but it would be more extreme with cocaine of course

I want to see her again.

I dont want to ask my friends to invite her out again, its embarrassing that im interested

and i feel sort of uncomfortable knowing my friend fucked her that one time

i dont even care what we do

i just want to be around her

and i am well aware of how creepy this is

considering i dont know her

and I spent one night with her

and if anyone spouted this shit to me, I’d think they were just being really dramatic

and they just wished they lived inside a movie

theres not really a pattern to when I think of her

and i find it so strange, because I really really dont know her

but I feel so strongly about her, like I would with a crush from high school

it just does not make sense, logically, to me.

but I will be thinking of anything and I’m suddenly overcome with this unique feeling

a reminder through my whole body

that I really really fucking like being around her

and I just want to be around her again

a feeling exactly like seriously craving a certain drug which you haven’t done for a day or so, but its less physical pain and more feeling emotion through a sense of weakness in your body

i wont tonight because i might not be thinking straight

but im considering just talking to my friend about it

and trying to see her again

and i want her to like me, but authenticity is important

but i wouldnt want them to set me up

and honestly i dont think she wants any of this

even if she did date me it’d probably be for 3 days and she’d move on

and she is the kind of girl I’d be friends with

but I really don’t consider people like her as anything more

she liked blink 182 and generic pop rock

i didnt even care about that

you can like whatever you like, but a part of my interest is usually dictated by that

i just liked her more

simply because I was learning more about her

and my god

I would fucking hate anybody who was talking like me right now

I will get over her.

but for now I’m enjoying hearing her voice as I sleep

I think it happens to most people, it almost always happens to me after doing ecstasy

the next few nights have mild hallucinations

kind of abstract and psychedelic

rarely scary but I have had very very fearful nights of paranoia a few days after in the past

they’re mainly voices

its like certain phrases keep being replayed in your ears over and over

not thought out but heard

like theyre really there

and you know theyre not there

but you feel as if these people are really around you

and youre in the same place

and you dont question it at all

you believe they are there

and its not imposing, it doesnt raise any questions. you’re physically in your bedroom but you look around, you hear them, youre really in the place you were the other night

and eventually when youre really drifting off

it becomes lucid visual

and you see them but you also dont

and its just certain things being replayed

and it has the potential to turn into a bad trip but its mostly pleasant and soothing

and I can still hear her voice

I still hear my friends and his girlfriends

but I hear hers too

I love it

I don’t want it to go away

I cant think of what she says

well theres one phrase

and again it makes absolutely no fucking sense

shes just a completely regular fucking girl, with her own interests and experiences

some we share. some we dont

and i met her fucking once, spent one night high with her. we didnt even kiss. hugged once

she didnt express any interest

didnt show any signs of it

and my heart feels fucking weak

and my body is released with, is it endorphins?

it feels like when something release endorphins

an opiate effect.

im going to see her again

i wish my brain could take that in

so it will stop distracting me with thoughts of her at this crucial part of the year

the version of me from a year ago would feel disgusted by these posts

and I’m sorry, old me

I’ll always be me

probably

ill feel that same way about love again

i dont know what this is

i think im physically dependent on codeine again

and that might have influenced me being sick before

i took some when i got off the bus but it didnt change much

im going to go cold turkey anyway

i was planning on taking some at a gig but i begged kek, bargained to not be sick until im off the bus

and i made a sort of deal that i will sacrifice taking codeine at the gig

then bargained some more and said id stop

idk if it was them who helped me

but a deal is a deal

and it will still be a fucking good show

would probably love it more if I was high though

im gonna have to forget that

and I feel sick again

im going to wash my hair and sleep

I started college today

I got up at 6am, and I would’ve made it on time but I was almost sick on the bus ride.

I didn’t want that to be my first impression so I went home.

I think it’s because of the weekend. I don’t take alcohol very well, even a little. Or cigarettes. I just get migraines from anything slightly unhealthy.

I think its more of a delayed hangover/comedown though.

If the pills are 200mg each, I did roughly 700-900mg of MDMA on over two different days.

I started one day, rested the next and continued the day after that.

to some thats a lot.

To others it’s a milestone they’re way past.

It’s the most I think I’ve done in that timeframe though though.

I’m still very tired after sleeping through the afternoon and very weak.

I want to make it tomorrow but I don’t think I will.

It’s a shame. I want to ace the first project and make a good first impression.

I told them I get ill a lot, they should understand but I think they’ll be suspicious that I just happen to be seriously ill on the first day

especially after talking about how much better I am compared to the start of the year in the interview

Now im going to think of a personal tag for her,

one memorable that isnt her name

#personal #relationships #feelings #i did some heavy drugs last night and im kind of fucked #her

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oldroleplaysidontwanttogetridof · 7 years

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Menu 1 2 system messagesuser numbersbbcode format SUNDAY 30 OCTOBER 2016 * This is a script style chat. Extreme NSFW content is allowed. 2 Bro [BRO] joined chat. 1 Cronus [CRONUS] joined chat. 2 BRO: Well, if it ain't my favorite Ampora. 2 BRO: What brings you by, Cro? 2 BRO: Finally crawling back to me? 1 CRONUS: thanks chief, im honored. vwhat, i cant just stop by to see my favworite strider? 2 BRO: You only stop by if you want something. 1 CRONUS: good point. i just missed ya i suppose, its been avwhile since i last came ovwer. 2 BRO: I know. 2 BRO: Figured you jus' forgot about ol' Bro. 1 CRONUS: i vwould nevwer 1 CRONUS: youvwe made quiet the impression if i do say so myself 2 BRO: 'm flattered. 1 CRONUS: as you should be, may i come in? or are you just gonna let me stand outside your door for the next hour 2 BRO: Haven't decided yet. 2 BRO: Might let you come back in if you beg. 1 CRONUS: avwwv. come on babe 1 CRONUS: you knowv that i dont beg for just anybody 2 BRO: And you know that I'm not just anybody. 2 BRO: So, get to it. 1 CRONUS: fine. vwill you let me in...please? 2 BRO: You can do better than that. 1 CRONUS: come on stider, ill do anything ya vwant me to 2 BRO: I know. 1 CRONUS: please? 2 BRO: What happened to my good boy whoactually knew how to beg? 1 CRONUS: ivwe forgotten 1 CRONUS: vwhich is vwhy i need you to remind me 2 BRO: Hm. 2 BRO: ((hey, are you alright with breathplay/choking? 1 CRONUS: ((yeees 2 BRO: ((perfect 2 BRO: -Bro smirked, wrapping a calloused hand around Cronus' throat and squeezing hard enough to make it hard for the troll to breathe.- You can beg for your life, then. 1 CRONUS: - cronus tilted his head up instinctivwely, his face going a light purple as his fins flare-p-please bro, you k-knowv im not the only one wv-vwho missed it -he mumbles out breathlessly- n-need you 2 BRO: Keep going, Ampora. 2 BRO: Convince me. 1 CRONUS: i-i need you, please. t-touch me, fuck m-me , used me. i-i dont care, p-please - he vwhines and closes his eyes, grinding his hips against bros as he s tarts to get dizzy- need y-you 2 BRO: -Sensing Cronus was going to pass out soon, Bro lightened up on his grip.- Come on, you can do better. 1 CRONUS: -cronus takes a deep breath and sets his hands on bros shoulders for balance - p-please. ivwe only been here for fivwe minutes and im already about cum just from your fucking magic hands. n-n one makes me feel like you do, i-i need you bro, please~ 2 BRO: Good boy. -He purred, dropping Cronus on his ass.- Pull yourself together, then come inside. 1 CRONUS: -cronus nods and scrambles to stand up, shutting the door behind him closely- t-thank you 2 BRO: My pleasure. 1 CRONUS: -he smiles and vwalks forvward- can i touch you chief? 2 BRO: No. 2 BRO: Strip. 1 CRONUS: - he hufffs and slowvly strips off his shirt, deciding to test his luck- come on babe, i vwanna touch you, vwanna make you feel goog 2 BRO: Did I ask, Cronus? 2 BRO: I told you to strip. 1 CRONUS: -he slowvly shucks ff his pants, not bothering to vwear undervwear since it alvways got dirty anyvways- nowv can i touch you? 2 BRO: No. 2 BRO: You can touch when I tell you to touch. 1 CRONUS: but babe 1 CRONUS: -he sighs and runs a hand through his hair- fine, vwhat do you vwant me to do chief? 2 BRO: You remember where we kept your collar? 1 CRONUS: yea, of course 2 BRO: Good. 2 BRO: Go get it. 1 CRONUS: -he nods and trots off for a second, coming back a moment later , collar in hand and holds it out for bro- here 2 BRO: -Bro took it with a smile, buckling the thick leather around Cronus' neck.- 1 CRONUS: -cronus givwes a small sigh at the familiar vweight and runs his finger ovwer it- is that all bro? 2 BRO: Maybe. 2 BRO: ((okay two more questions, are you alright with daddy kinks and watersports? it's alright with me if you're not into them 1 CRONUS: ((im good with daddy kinks, watersports is okay as well but im not as good with describing it if that makes sense 2 BRO: ((no worries! 1 CRONUS: ((okay cool 2 BRO: Do I need to remind you what to call me? 1 CRONUS: hmm, it has been an avwful long time, i nevwer did havwe the best memory 2 BRO: Starts with a D. 1 CRONUS: there are a lot of things that start vwith d like dog, doctor, dick to name a fewv, that last one sounds really good right about nowv, just throvwing that out there 2 BRO: Very funny, Cronus. 1 CRONUS: i try 2 BRO: Get all snotty like that again, andDaddy's gonna have to punish you. 1 CRONUS: hmm, that does sound familiar nowv that i think about it- he hums and sits dowvn on the back of the couch- vwhos to say i dont vwant to be punished? 2 BRO: Oh? 2 BRO: I'd be happy to say that you're not allowed to cum. 2 BRO: If that's what you'd really like. 1 CRONUS: maybe 2 BRO: Maybe you'll piss yourself, too. 1 CRONUS: -he narrowvs his eyes vwith a light blush- you vwouldnt 2 BRO: I would. 2 BRO: -Sitting down on the couch, Bro snapped and gestured to his lap.- Straddle me. 1 CRONUS: -cronus nods and quickly vwalks ovwer to him, grabbing on to bros shoulders as he straddles his hips- 2 BRO: Good boy. -He purred, resting a gloved hand on Cronus' thigh.- 1 CRONUS: -he hums at the praise and rocks his hips against bros slowvly- thank you daddy 2 BRO: Keep your hips still. 2 BRO: Nobody said you were allowed to move. 1 CRONUS: but bro 2 BRO: Who's Bro? 1 CRONUS: -he huffs and reluctantly stops his hips- sorry daddy 2 BRO: There you go. 2 BRO: Now, why don't you beg me to fuck that cute little nook of yours? 1 CRONUS: -his blush growvs a little more and he shifts his hips a little, purple material staining bros jeans- please, i need you in me, its been so long it hurts, i need your 2 BRO: Keep going. 1 CRONUS: i couldnt evwen touch myself, it didnt feel the same as you, nothing compares to feeling you deep inside me, i fucking lovwe your dick, feels so good 2 BRO: -Chuckling softly, Bro rubbed at the smaller male's inner thigh.- That so? 1 CRONUS: -he nods and shudders slightly, trying to spread his legs a little more- please daddy, i vwant you to fuck me 2 BRO: I know. 2 BRO: How badly do you have to pee right now? 1 CRONUS: i havwent gone in the past fewv hours, i vwas plannin on using your restroom vwhen i got here 2 BRO: Hm. 2 BRO: How far are you on a scale of ten. 2 BRO: ?* 1 CRONUS: about a six or a sevwen 2 BRO: Go grab yourself a few bottles of water. 1 CRONUS: -he nods and gets off of bros lap, running to the kitchen to grab tvwo bottles of vwater, setting them on the couch- is that good? 2 BRO: One more. 1 CRONUS: -he huffs and pads off, bringing another bottle back in his vwake- done 2 BRO: Good boy. 2 BRO: Come back to your seat. 1 CRONUS: -he grins and happily movwed back on bros lap, straddling his hips vwith a small hum- 2 BRO: Drink up, Cro. 1 CRONUS: -cronus furrowvs his eyebrowvs and grabs a bottle- i dont think ill be able to drink all of those 2 BRO: Do your best, then. 1 CRONUS: -he sighs and drinks the first bottle quickly, slovwing dowvn a bit vwith the second before looking back at bro- is that good? 2 BRO: Depends. 2 BRO: Think it was enough to make you piss yourself? 1 CRONUS: -he hides his face in bros shoulder to hide his blush - i think so 2 BRO: Drink half of the third one, just in case. 1 CRONUS: -he nods and sits back up, grabbing the other bottle and stakes a breath before just dowvning it, vwiping his mouth off after he had emptied it- 2 BRO: There's my good boy. 2 BRO: So obedient. 1 CRONUS: i try - he chuckles and beams under the praise- 2 BRO: Now, how far are you? 2 BRO: Tell me when it starts to hurt. 1 CRONUS: okay, and im about an eight 2 BRO: Good. 1 CRONUS: - he nods and tugs on bros shirt- can you take there bothersome clothes off nowv? 2 BRO: Nope. 1 CRONUS: vwhy not? its not fair if im the only one naked 2 BRO: Because I said so, Cronus. 2 BRO: If you don't like it, you can leave. 1 CRONUS: -he huffs and sets his chin on bros shoulder-you knowv damn vwell i aint leavwin 2 BRO: Exactly. 1 CRONUS: -he sighs and turns his head to lightly lick ovwer bros neck, kissing it lightly- 2 BRO: Stop that. 2 BRO: Good pets don't lick. 1 CRONUS: -he huffs and goes to just kissing ovwer the skin lightly- 2 BRO: Why don't we do something while we wait for the water to sink in? 2 BRO: Finger yourself for me. 1 CRONUS: like vwh- cronus starts to ask but cuts off- vwould you like me to lay dowvn so you can havwe a better vwiewv? 2 BRO: Nah. 1 CRONUS: -he nods and lifts his hips a little, running his finger around his nook before vwiggling tvwo fingers in vwith a soft sigh, movwing them around slowvly as he nuzzles into bros neck- 2 BRO: Faster. 1 CRONUS: -he complies and movwes them faster, automatically movwing to his prostate and rubs against it firmly. he moans breathily and nuzzles closer, sucking on bros skin lightly- 2 BRO: -Gently pushing Cronus away just enough to get him to stop sucking, Bro smirked.- There you go, that's a good boy. 2 BRO: Tell me when you're close. 1 CRONUS: -cronus vwhines at being pushed avway and hangs his head, pushing in another finger vwith a soft groan- mm c-close 2 BRO: Pull your fingers out. 1 CRONUS: -he looks up at bro and shakes his head frantically , movwing his fingers faster as he trys to push himself ovwer the edge quickly- 2 BRO: I said pull out, Cronus. 2 BRO: You're not allowed to cum. 1 CRONUS: b-bro, please, im so close 2 BRO: I don't care. 2 BRO: Don't make me force you to stop. 1 CRONUS: i need to, please daddy, i-ill do vwhatevwer youd like once im done, i j-just need to -cronus rambles off quickly, closing his eyes vwith a choked off moan- p-please 2 BRO: No. 2 BRO: -Bro snarled, wrapping a hand around Cronus' wrist and pulling his hand away.- 1 CRONUS: -cronus vwhines at the loss and rocks his hips against bros- f-fuck - he closes his eyes tightly and squirms, movwing his other hand dowvn- 2 BRO: Do I have to get the cuffs, Cro? 2 BRO: Or are you going to be a good boy? 1 CRONUS: daddy, please, i-ill be quick i promise 2 BRO: -Rolling his eyes, Bro leaned over to a side table, grabbing a pair of handcuffs and swiftly cuffing Cronus' hands behind his back.- 1 CRONUS: -cronus looks at bro dazed for a second and tugs on his arm, looking at bro pleadingly- 2 BRO: I told you to stop. 2 BRO: How badly do you need to pee? 1 CRONUS: nine -he mumbles and leans his head on bros chest- 2 BRO: Good. 1 CRONUS: p-please, t-touch me or something, vwant you 2 BRO: I'll touch you after you piss yourself, how about that? 1 CRONUS: b-but vwere not i-in a bathroom -cronus says looking at bro vwith a dark blush, shifting his hips as he holds himself back for the moment- and i-its degrading 2 BRO: That's the point, baby. 1 CRONUS: wv-vwhat? 1 CRONUS: -cronus exclaims, his vwoice a higher pitch- i-ill havwe you knowv t-that i am the decedent o-of royalty and fuck bro i need to pee 2 BRO: Language. 1 CRONUS: r-really? you h-havwe a dirtier mouth then a-any one ivwe met -he huffs and nuzzles back into bros neck, havwing to mentally try to hold off on letting go- 2 BRO: That doesn't mean you're allowed to have a dirty mouth. 1 CRONUS: and wv-vwhat vwould stop me from yelling fuck from the r-roof tops? 2 BRO: If you ever want to cum again, I wouldn't. 1 CRONUS: -cronus opens his mouth to say something but cuts off vwith a groan and closes his eyes tightly- t-ten,for fucks sake t-ten 2 BRO: What did I say about language, Cronus? 1 CRONUS: and wv-vwhat vwould stop me from yelling fuck from the r-roof tops? 1 CRONUS: d-daddy, i c-cant please,f-fuck 2 BRO: Let go, then. 2 BRO: Piss yourself for me. 1 CRONUS: - cronus tenes and bites dowvn on the first thing he could, vwhich at the moment vwas the crook of bros neck and tugs roughly on his restraints as he lets go, vwhimpering as he covwers bros pants at the couch vwith pee- 2 BRO: -Bro couldn't help grinning, letting out a soft groan at the hot wetness and the pain of the bite.- 2 BRO: There's my good boy, feels good, right? 1 CRONUS: -he shudders and closes his eyes, his cheeks burning vwith shame -f-felt fucking g-great - he mumbles against bros skin- 2 BRO: I know, babe. 2 BRO: Look at me. 1 CRONUS: -he slowvly sits up and looks up at bro quietly- 2 BRO: That was really fuckin' hot. -He purred, pressing his chapped lips to Cronus'.- 1 CRONUS: - he blushes deeper and needily kisses back, slowvly running his tongue ovwer bros lips- 2 BRO: -Bro's hands moved over to the Ampora's thighs, rubbing gently.- 1 CRONUS: -cronus pushes himself flush against bros chest, shifting his hips awvkvwardly in the vwetness- 2 BRO: You still wanna get fucked, don't you?10:49:22 2 BRO: Think you can control yourself enough to have your hands free? 1 CRONUS: f-fuck yes i do. i-i can try 2 BRO: Trying isn't good enough, babe. 1 2 Menu 1 2 system messagesuser numbersbbcode format SUNDAY 30 OCTOBER 2016 1 CRONUS: ..y-yea, ill control myself 2 BRO: Good boy. -Reaching around to undo the cuffs, Bro hummed.- You wanna help me outta my jeans, Cro? 1 CRONUS: i vwould be honored chief -he stretches his arms out and movwed off bros lap and on to the floor, reaching up and unbuttons bros pants, tugging them off quickly - 2 BRO: There you go, sugar. 2 BRO: You wanna come back up to Daddy's lap, or stay down there and show me what that pretty mouth can do?10:54:14 1 CRONUS: vwanna make you feel good daddy-cronus mumbles and tugs off bros boxers, not hesitating to run his tongue ovwer his member-vwanna showv you howv good you make me feel 2 BRO: Go ahead, then. 1 CRONUS: - cronus nods and settles himself on his knees, licking ovwer the tip of bros cock before slowvly taking the head in his mouth happily- 2 BRO: -Bro let out a soft groan, running his hand through Cronus' hair.- 1 CRONUS: -he leans up into the touch and closes his eyes as he takes more of bro dowvn, massaging his balls vwith a small him and uses his other hand to rub his thighs- 2 BRO: There you go, such a good boy. 1 CRONUS: -cronus looks up at bro and smiles vwith his eyes before closing his eyes again, slowvly bobbing his head- 2 BRO: Think you can deepthroat me, Cro? 1 CRONUS: -he pulls off for a second to take a breath and grins- yes daddy 2 BRO: Good. 2 BRO: Go right ahead. 1 CRONUS: -nodding, cronus takes another breath before movwing back to bros member, slowvly taking him dowvn as he could before closing his eyes and takes him dowvn to the hilt, just staying there for a second- 2 BRO: -Tugging gently at Cronus' hair to tell him he was doing a good job, Bro groaned happily.- 1 CRONUS: - cronus hums and pulls all the vway off and takes all f bro back dowvn again in a teasingly slowv rhythm, movwing his hand dowvn to his nook- 2 BRO: Keep your hands away from your nook, Cronus. 2 BRO: Unless you want me to get the cuffs again. 1 CRONUS: -he vwhines and reluctantly pulls his hand avway, his nook dripping steadily on to the ground as he bobs his head faster- 2 BRO: There's my good boy. 2 BRO: Come back up here. 1 CRONUS: -cronus slowvly pulls off and nods, movwing back up on bros lap and tugs on his shirt- off 2 BRO: Use your words, baby. 1 CRONUS: c-can you take your s-shirt of daddy? 2 BRO: What's the magic word? 1 CRONUS: p-please 2 BRO: There you go. 2 BRO: -Bro chuckled, taking his shirt off and tossing it to some unknown corner of the room.- 2 BRO: Want me to take my shades off? 1 CRONUS: -cronus smiles and runs his hands ovwer bros chest, looking off and nods quickly-y-yes! p-please daddy, wv-vwanna see your eyes 2 BRO: -He nodded, taking off his shades, blinking a few times to adjust to the light.- 1 CRONUS: -he stares for a second, completely transfixed my bros eyes-f-fuck 2 BRO: What did I say about language, Cronus? 1 CRONUS: im sorry daddy, forgivwe me - cronus mumbles and rubs the back of his collar - 2 BRO: It's fine, babe. 2 BRO: Now, you wanna ride me? 1 CRONUS: -he nods and lifts his hips up, lovwering himself on bros member- 2 BRO: C'mon, now, don't keep me waiting. 1 CRONUS: -he nods and shakily pulls himself up , starting a steady rhythm and bites dowvn on his lip to keep quiet- 2 BRO: Moan for me, baby. Show me how nice this feels. 1 CRONUS: -he immediately moans lowvly, rambling random thoughts that popped into his head, movwing his hips faster as he gets closer - 2 BRO: There you go, such a good boy. -Bro grunted, moving his hips upward- 2

#incomplete

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years

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Exploring the U.S. by RV: The price of adventure

Shares 348 Two years ago today, Kim and I returned to Portland after fifteen months traveling the United States in an RV. Believe it or not, Ive never published an article about the trip and how much it cost. Although we kept a travel blog for most of the adventure (including a page that documented our expenses), Ive never gathered everything into one place. Until now. Today, I want to share just how much we spent on the journey and some of our favorite stops along the way. It seems like the perfect post to celebrate the start of summer, dont you think?

The Lure of Adventure All my life, Ive wanted to take a roadtrip across the United States. When I was young, I was lured by the adventure. I wanted to climb mountains, swim rivers, and explore canyons. The older I got, the more fascinated I became by the countrys regional differences. The U.S. is huge, a fact that most foreign visitors forget. Most American citizens dont even realize how big the country is. I wanted to see and experience it all. Although Ive dreamed of a cross-country roadtrip, its never been practical. As a boy, my family was poor. My parents didnt have money for something like this. As a young adult, I couldnt afford it either. For a long time, I was deep in debt. Besides, where would I find the time? I had to work! To top things off, my wife had zero interest in driving cross country. But in my forties, a curious set of circumstances came together to move my epic roadtrip from dream to reality. One day in early 2014, my girlfriend Kim asked me out of the blue, What do you think about taking a cross-country roadtrip? What did I think? Hell yeah! is what I thought Making a Plan As Kim and I began to discuss this adventure, our biggest concern was money. As a financial writer, Im acutely aware that every dollar I spend today is roughly equivalent to seven dollars I could have in retirement. Every day, I preach the power of saving. I wanted to keep our trip as cost-effective as possible. (Besides, Kim would have to quit her job as a dental hygienist in order to travel a huge financial sacrifice.) My goal was to keep our costs under $50 per person per day. In fact, I had high hopes we could do the trip for $33 per person per day (for a total of $24,000). But the U.S. is expensive. How could Kim and I make this happen? From the start, we knew hotels were out. Even cheap lodging would be far too expensive for us to stay within budget. Personally, I liked the idea of bicycling across the country like my friends Dakota and Chelsea have done. Kim wasnt keen on the idea. (Nor was she willing to make the trip by motorcycle despite being a die-hard Harley girl.) After a lot of research, and after talking with Chris and Cherie from Technomadia, I came to a conclusion: The best balance of cost and comfort would come from crossing the country in an RV. With this bare outline of a plan, the true trip prep began. Searching for Bigfoot After deciding to travel by RV, there were more questions to answer. Neither of us had experience with recreational vehicles. Among other things, we needed to figure out: Should we buy a truck and a trailer?Would it be better to buy a motorhome and tow my 2004 Mini Cooper?What about new or used? With used, you never know what youre getting. But a new RV costs $80,000 or more and loses value quickly.How much space did we need? What kinds of amenities? After crunching the numbers, there was an obvious best choice for us. If we bought a used motorhome, we could tow a car we already owned while (we hoped) avoiding a big hit from depreciation. In fact, if we were diligent every step of the way, it might even be possible to resell our RV after the trip and recoup most of what wed paid for it! We spent the autumn of 2014 patiently sifting through Craigslist ads for used motorhomes. We visited dealerships. We attended the local RV Expo. We walked through dozens of models searching for the right fit. Some were too long. Some were too short. Some were too fancy. Many were run-down and in a state of disrepair. Finally, in early January 2015, we found the perfect rig: a 2005 Bigfoot 30MH29RQ. (Translation: A 29-foot motorhome with a queen bed in the rear.) The owner wanted $38,000 for it a fair price. He wouldnt budge when I tried to negotiate, but I was okay with that. My research revealed he was actually selling a slightly better model, one worth a few thousand dollars more than he was asking. We bought it. [embedded content] Over the next two months, Kim and I prepped Bigfoot for departure. We spent $2000 making minor repairs and installing a towbar on the Mini Cooper. We cleaned the motorhome from top to bottom. We took weekend test trips to RV parks around Oregon and Washington. When all was said and done, wed invested $40,000 to get our caravan ready for the road. Into the West Kim and I left Portland on the morning of 25 March 2015, my forty-sixth birthday. We sped through Oregon we love the state, but were both familiar with it and entered northern California. We spent our first week on the road exploring the Redwoods and weaving through wine country.

Along the way, we got a crash course in driving a motorhome. Near Cloverdale, California we took a wrong turn onto a cliff-side gravel road. We stopped immediately. Good thing, too. Turns out a week earlier some other poor soul had driven his RV over the side of the cliff. East of Sacramento, we took another wrong turn and found ourselves driving down a narrow dike road during rush hour while high winds buffeted the RV. Very scary. At times we felt like Lucy and Desi in The Long, Long Trailer, but after a couple of weeks Kim and I had learned how to handle our motorhome, both on the road and off. [embedded content] Early in the trip, our expenses were out of sight. We ate out too often. We bought too much wine. We did too many touristy things without searching for discounts. We rationalized that since we were visiting all of these new places (and might never return), we might as well pay to experience them to the fullest. This was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, after all. The problem, of course, was that lots of fun costs lots of money. Ten days into the trip, our average spending was over $120 per day (or over $60 per person per day) almost twice what wed hoped to spend. Yikes! We tightened the purse strings. We stopped eating out so much and cooked in the motorhome. (We cook a lot at home normally, so this wasnt a tough transition.) We bought a National Parks pass, perhaps the best purchase of our entire trip. (For an $80 one-time fee, you get one year of unlimited access to all sorts of government-owned sites.) We learned to entertain ourselves at night with books and boardgames and a hard drive filled with old movies and an iPad filled with comic books.

During our 33 days in California, we marveled at the states vast variety of terrain. We drove through forests and deserts, skirted ocean cliffsides and walked across mountain streams. We hated L.A. traffic not recommended when youre in a motorhome towing a car but enjoyed almost everything else.

We loved Arizona even more. Maybe we had low expectations, but we were blown away by the magnificent scenery of the Grand Canyon state. For nineteen days, we basked in the warm spring sun and admired the colorful rock formations.

It was in Arizona that we discovered the joys of drycamping (or boondocking). For the first seven weeks of our trip, we mostly stayed in RV parks and campgrounds. At $20 to $50 per night (with the average park costs around $35), lodging was our biggest expense by far. Drycamping costs nothing. All you do is find a spot where you can legally park for the night National Forest land, a friends driveway, certain businesses and casinos and set up camp. You dont have access to electricity or fresh water, but thats okay. The beauty of an RV is that its self-contained. (Our Bigfoot had a generator for electricity and a 63-gallon freshwater tank.)

After boondocking only once during our first 50 days on the road, we managed to live off the grid for 33 of the next 80 nights. Once we began pinching pennies, our travel costs plummeted. We werent spending $120 per day anymore. Our average daily spending fell to $50, which lowered the trip average to about $80 per day. A Costly Repair With all this frugality, did we feel like we were depriving ourselves? Not at all! As we made our way from Arizona to Utah to Colorado, we found we could still afford wine and an occasional restaurant meal. Plus, we were paying to do a lot of touristy things, such as soak in the hot springs in Ouray and ride the narrow-gauge train from Durango to Silverton. At the end of May, we stopped for a week to visit family and friends near Denver. During this break, our RV costs dropped to zero no fuel or lodging expenses while we stayed with Kims mother and hung out with Mr. Money Mustache which allowed us to spend a little more on fun. Good thing too because Fort Collins has a great beer scene.

We hit the road again in early June, making our way into Wyoming to visit Yellowstone and the Tetons. We zipped over to Idaho to spend time with Kims father in Sun Valley. From there, we drove north into Montana to lounge around Flathead Lake and explore Glacier National Park. Costs stayed low as we crossed Montana to enter the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota.

After celebrating Independence Day in Deadwood, our average daily spending for the trip was about $84. We felt good about that number. Itd be nice if it were lower, but $42 per day per person seemed reasonable. At that rate, the trip would cost us $30,000 for the entire year. On July 8th, the tenor of our trip changed. So did our costs. We were cruising across the vast emptiness of central South Dakota when the motorhomes engine overheated. We pulled off to give it a rest. The oil level looked fine, but I added more just in case. It didnt help. An hour down the highway, the engine seized up completely. Turns out Bigfoot had spun a bearing and the engine was toast. (Also turns out that spun bearings are not uncommon with this particular engine.)

Unfortunately, we were in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town was Plankinton, South Dakota (population 707). Fortunately, the folks in Plankinton were friendly. The owners of the local garage diagnosed the problem and ordered parts. Meanwhile, we got to know the owners of the only RV park in town. We spent ten days drinking beer with Plankintonians while exploring nearby attractions such as the Corn Palace and the real-life homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In the end, the engine repair cost $7751.39. Ouch! We did not count this against our daily trip budget but instead factored it into our overhead, much like we had with the purchase price of the RV. (You might choose to account for it differently.) The Expensive East When the new engine was ready, we waved good-bye to our new friends in Plankinton. We drove through Minnesota to Wisconsin, where we spent a week in the Great North Woods. (At the recommendation of world traveler Gary Arndt, whom we had lunch with near Milwaukee, we took a boat ride out to view the amazing Apostle Islands.)

After eating our fill of Wisconsin cheese, we crossed into Michigans upper peninsula and then drove south to Indianas Amish country, where we rested for a week. (We also took the time to dart into Chicago for an overnight trip.) From there, we moved to Indianapolis and Cincinnati. As we made our way east, we noticed some interesting changes. First, there were fewer opportunities for boondocking. Theres less government-owned land in the East than there is in the West. (The western U.S. is largely government land, which means lots of places to camp for free.)Second, while gasoline prices were lower in the east, everything else was more expensive. RV parks were more expensive. Groceries were more expensive. Beer and wine were more expensive. Restaurants, especially, were more expensive. Our average daily spending started to creep upward. By the time we reached Ohio in mid-August, we were shelling out $120 per day again. After 150 days on the road, the average for the entire trip was $93.48 per day (or $46.74 per person). By this point it was clear that we couldnt spend a year on the road for our initial $24,000 budget. (You might, but we couldnt. Not while enjoying the lifestyle we wanted.) Even $30,000 for the year seemed unlikely. We revised our budget upward to $36,000 (or about $50 per person per day) not counting the expensive engine repair. We had plenty in savings, so we could afford to stretch some, but we still wanted to spend as little as possible. From Cincinnati, we traveled to beautiful West Virginia, then north to Cleveland. After that, we hopped over to Niagara Falls, where we camped for a few days at a winery. (We helped bottle brandy and bought a few bottles of wine in exchange for firewood and a place to park.)

Stopping in Savannah During September, we sort of lost our steam. The enthusiasm wed had at the start of the trip petered out. Instead of exploring Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina, we holed up in the RV and worked. It might sound crazy, but we missed being productive and making money! Being hermits saved us money, of course, but we felt like we were wasting an opportunity. After much discussion, we decided to take a break. We spent a week driving around the eastern seaboard, looking for a place to park for the winter. We fell in love with Savannah, Georgia, so we rented a condo and put the RV in storage. For six months, we lived a relatively normal life. Kim found full-time work as a dental hygienist, and I launched Money Boss (which Ive been folding into Get Rich Slowly since re-purchasing this site).

Our six months in Savannah were interesting. I had never lived outside of Oregon, so I suffered some culture shock. I always say that Im relatively conservative for the Portland area but that still makes me pretty liberal for anywhere in the southeastern U.S.! While in Savannah, we didnt just work. We made sure to have some fun too. Over Christmas, we flew to New York City for a long weekend, where we got to hang out with some of our favorite money bloggers. In February, we took a couple of weeks to tour the state of Florida, from Jacksonville to Tampa to Miami to Key West to the Kennedy Space Center.

Important note: By this time nearly one year into our trip Kim and I had both started packing on the pounds. Sad but true. We were eating great food and drinking great beer everywhere we went, and we were out of our exercise routine. Not good. After returning from Florida, we began planning for our return trip to Potland. It had taken us six months to make it from the Pacific to Atlanta. It seamed reasonable to budget the same amount of time for heading home. Old Pros If this were a travel blog, Id cover the return trip in depth. A lot of fun stuff happened during our final three months on the road. But this is a money blog, and Im trying to focus this article on the financial side of our journey. As a result, Im going to gloss over a lot. Financially, not much exciting happened. From the start, the return leg felt different. For one thing, we were old pros at the whole RVing thing by this point. At the start of the trip, everything had been new and exciting and even a little scary. A year later, however, Kim and I had things down to a science. We were no longer freaked out by little problems. On our first day back on the road, one of our headlights went out. No problem! Kim promptly repaired it.

The return trip felt different too because we spent less time with friends and family. While we did stop to see people along the way, we didnt have nearly as many contacts in southern states as we had in the north. Also, we spent much more time in state parks during the drive home. Traveling east, our camping spots had been varied. Sometimes, we parked in driveways of friends or family. Other times, we did drycamping on Forest Service land. Many of our campsites were located in Thousand Trails parks, which means they were essentially free. (Kim had access to an annual pass through her father.) But these options were few and far between in the Southeast, so we learned to love state parks, which are cheap and plentiful all over the United States. (State parks can get busy on holiday weekends, but otherwise are nearly empty especially midweek.) Finally, we changed the pace of our travel. On the outbound leg, we moved camp every two or three days. (We moved every 2.84 days, to be precise.) But going home, we intentionally slowed down. We tried to say four or five days in each location. (Until we picked up our puppy in Oklahoma about which, more in a moment we moved every 4.25 days.) In short, we stayed in each location nearly twice as long on our way west as we had on our way east. The Journey Home We had intended to spend six months driving home, just as wed spent six months getting to Savannah. That was the plan. We knew that our first two months would be spent carving an S through the southeastern United States. And, surprisingly enough, those two months went as we thought they would. We left Savannah at the end of March and drove to Asheville, North Carolina. (This town is like a training ground for hipster who arent ready for the West Coast, I observed.) We visited Dollywood and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee. We dallied a few days in Nashville home to the worst drivers we encountered on the entire trip (no joke!) where we had a lot of fun immersing ourselves in country music culture. I was pleased to see the Taylor Swift exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame!

One of our favorite stops on the entire trip came in Lexington, Kentucky. For one, we got to hang out with friends for the first time in months. More than that, northern Kentucky is beautiful, filled with rolling green hills and horse pastures. Kim and I spent our fourth anniversary as a couple watching the races at Keeneland. And, of course, we sampled the Bourbon trail. [embedded content] From Kentucky, we drove west to St. Louis, then to central Missouri. My grandmother was born near Lake of the Ozarks, so I spent my time there trying to imagine what it must have been like for her as a girl 100 years ago. (By the way, did you know that the Ozark Mountains are the opposite of most mountains? Most mountains are formed when land thrusts up from the Earths crust. The Ozarks were formed by erosion when the vast inland sea that once occupied the space between the Rockies and the Appalachians drained away.) Our next stop was special. In late April 2016, we drove into northeast Oklahoma to visit my cousin Gwen and her family. She and her husband Henry moved from Oregon many years ago, and they now own a 100-acre creek hollow outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma. (Tahlequah has two claims to fame. First, its the endpoint of the Trail of Tears. Second, its the setting for Where the Red Fern Grows. In fact, one scene in the book takes place on my cousins property!)

From Tahlequah, we doubled back on ourselves, turning east. This part of our trip was educational, to say the least. We got to see some of the poorer parts of the country. We spent a couple of nights in beautiful Hot Springs, Arkansas, for instance. Hot Springs was once a booming resort town, popular with tourists from the East Coast. Today, the downtown area is a hollow core of what it once was (although there are a lot of people doing their best to save it). Memphis was even worse. Kim and I spent several days in the Memphis area, driving down into Mississippi to travel the Blues Highway. This part of the U.S. is poor. Its infrastructure roads and services and so on is falling apart. It was shocking. (About a month after we drove the Blues Highway, we stayed a few days in Natchez, Mississippi, a few hundred miles south. Conditions in that region were even worse.) Our eastward extent ended in Huntsville, Alabama, where we enjoyed spending time with my college roommate and his boyfriend. From there, we headed south to the Gulf of Mexico, which we followed from Gulf Shores, Alabama to New Orleans.

Kim and I loved southern Louisiana. The culture is distinct. The people are friendly. The food is amazing. It was here that we realized our favorite parts of the United States are those that retain a distinct character. You see, much of the U.S. has become homogenized. Indianpolis could be Orlando could be Sacramento could be Cleveland. No knock on any of these cities, but theres a sameness about them despite the unique aspects of each of them. Cities like Miami and New York and New Orleans, however, feel very different. Theyre unique. They have a unique culture, and they cling to it in the face of pressure to conform. As a result, theyre the most fun places to visit. (In each case, we believe this is because the population of these places is so diverse.) Our leg across the Mississippi to Houston was interesting. And frustrating. It was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend 2016, and the heavens opened up. It rained and rained and rained. Texas isnt equipped to handle so much rain. There was flooding everywhere, and roads became impassable. What ought to have been a five-hour drive to our campground turned into eight or nine hours of struggling to get where we wanted to go. We had to change plans and camp at the first place we could find with open space.

As you know, Texas is h-u-g-e. I mentioned earlier that the United States is larger than most folks realize. Well, Texas is too. During our nearly two weeks there, we visited Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas. Even with all of that driving, we barely scratched the surface of the state. The Home Stretch At this point, we were just over two months into our planned six-month return trip. We had planned to head toward west Texas, then revisit some of our favorite western spots from the previous year. That plan changed when: The couple who had been watching our condo in Portland found a home of their own. The extended housesitting gig worked out well for them because they were between places. It gave them time to be patient and purchase the perfect house. But once they found it, they were eager to leave. (And understandably so.) As a result, we needed to return to Portland sooner than anticipated.We got a dog. When wed stopped in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in late April, Kim fell in love with a litter of puppies. Can we take one home? she asked. At the time, I argued against it. But over the next few weeks, she whittled down my defenses. By the time we reached Dallas just a few hours from Tahlequah I agreed we could get a dog. So, after our time in Dallas, we returned to the 100-acre creek hollow where my cousin lives. We picked out our puppy (which we named Tahlequah, naturally) and spent a few days getting her used to the RV. When we felt like she was ready, we hit the road making a bee-line directly for home.

But even when youre trying to make tracks in an RV, things still take time. Despite the fact that we were rushing the last part of the trip, it took us three weeks to get from northeastern Oklahoma to northwestern Oregon. We spent our first two nights with the puppy in tiny Kingman, Kansas. There, we enjoyed one of our favorite campsites: An entire country fairground where we were the only guests. We had the run of the place, which was awesome because we could get the puppy used to us and we could get used to her. Plus, the fairground was cheap cheap cheap. Note: By the way, we found this location with our copy of the book Free and Low-Cost Campgrounds, which was a godsend on the trip. Although were all accustomed to great cell service in cities, the reality is that most of the U.S. has shitty coverage. Theres just no need for it in sparsely populated areas, and most of the U.S. is sparsely populated. (This fact surprised me, by the way. For some reason, I thought the reality was population density but the opposite is true.) As a result, when youre doing an extended road trip, you need important info in print format.

From Kansas, we drove through the most barren stretch of our entire trip eastern Colorado to visit Kims mother in Fort Collins (and to see our pal Mr. Money Mustache once more). Then we burned rubber (literallytwo of the RV tires started to fall apart!) to make it to her father outside Boise. We spent the last two days of the trip visiting my brother in central Oregon, then on 29 June 2016, we pulled into Portland. At long last, we were home.

Culture Shock at Home Once Kim and I returned home, we experienced unexpected culture shock. After fifteen months of what was essentially an extended holiday (despite the fact we both worked in Savannah), normal life feltwell, normal life felt crazy. We were overwhelmed by the busy-ness of it all: the pace, the scheduling, all of the requests for time and attention. Why is this so tough for us? I asked after a couple of weeks at home. I dont know, Kim said. But it sucks. She was right. It did suck. About that time, I read Guardians of Being, a short book that mixes the philosophy of Eckhart Tolle with the animal art of Patrick McDonnell (from Mutts). Tolle, of course, is best known for his massive bestseller, The Power of Now, which encourages readers to get out of their heads and be more present in the moment. I was struck by this quote from Guardians: Most of us live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptualization, and image making a world of thought. We are immersed in a continuous stream of mental noiseWe get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. While we were on the road, Kim and I lived in the Now. We were always present in the moment. We might have vague plans for where we wanted to be in a few days or a few weeks, but mostly we made things up as we went along. Where do you want to go next? Kim might ask, and then wed pick a spot. Where should we camp tonight? I might ask as we drove to the new town, and Kim would find a campground. What should we do for dinner? Should we visit that park? This site is awesome lets stay a few more nights. Nearly everything we did was spontaneous. We had no plans or commitments and it was wonderful. But back home, even without jobs to go to and few plans, the pace of modern life was staggering. We were always doing something with somebody. We scheduled appointments and anticipated commitments. We had to-do lists. We went to the gym three mornings a week, took the puppy to puppy classes, agreed to help colleagues, and so on. There was so much going on that there was never a chance to simply be present in the Here and Now. We had no margin in our lives. And the stuff! There was so much stuff! We had few possessions in the motorhome; we didnt miss what we did not have. At home, even though we had less than many folks, we were surrounded by tons of stuff. Tons of stuff! So many books! So many clothes! So many dishes! So much in every closet and cupboard. Kim and I were overwhelmed because we made a sudden transition from doing and having very little to doing and having a lot. All of the stuff and commitments comes with mental baggage. It takes brainwidth. Even after we had settled down, we found it tough to resume normal life. Kim went back to work four days a week as a dental hygienist. I resumed writing and giving speaking gigs. We did our best to return to our old lifebut it all felt wrong, like old clothes that no longer fit. So, we bought a place in the country. We have access to the city when we want it. Mostly, though, we stay at home and enjoy the relaxed pace with our ever-growing zoo. It feels good to not be racing around so much. It feels nice to just be, you know?

Getting Rid of Bigfoot Aside from the culture shock, Kim and I faced another problem upon our return. We no longer needed a motorhome. It was time to sell our loyal companion. For some reason, we thought selling the RV would be simple. It wasnt. From the time we started the process which was eight or nine months after returning home it took a year to actually get rid of Bigfoot. We started by listing the rig on both Craigslist and RV Trader. Plus, I created a sales page that contained more information than we could fit in a normal advertisement. We waited. And waited. And waited. Nobody seemed interested. Maybe were asking too much, Kim suggested after a few months with zero responses. We had purchased the RV for $38,000, remember, and then spent nearly $8000 to replace the engine. By our reckoning, we had a $46,000 vehicle on our hands (and wed made other upgrades too!) so we wanted $40,000 in return. Nobody wanted to pay $40,000. We lowered the price to $38,000. As a result, we received a few email inquiries, but nobody came out to see the RV in person. We lowered the price to $35,000. We got more email inquiries, but still nobody wanted to view it. When we lowered the price to $32,000, we finally got a reasonable number of responses and had a few people come out to take a look at the motorhome. We also learned that the price wasnt the only thing holding people back. To us, the fact that Bigfoot had a new engine was a selling point. Turns out, thats a red flag to a lot of people. Their reasoning is that if the engine went out once, itll go out again. This baffles me, but thats what people were telling us. Weve got to get rid of that thing, Kim said last Christmas. I know, I said. Its an albatross. Lets lower the price to $30,000. After we lowered the price to $30,000, we immediately had buyers interested. We were flooded with email. One guy drove out right away to look at the RV. I cant have money for you until Monday, he told us. Will you hold it for me? Given our inability to sell the thing, you might think wed take him up on his offer. But we didnt. The next day, a couple drove seven hours from Sandpoint, Idaho to look at the motorhome. Weve been looking all over for a Bigfoot! they told us. After several hours of inspecting the rig, they made us an offer: $28,000. We accepted. After three years of ownership, we were rid of the RV. The Great Reckoning So, this is a money blog. The most important question to answer is: How much did this trip cost us? Great question. We dont have a precise answer, but Ill share as many numbers as I can so that you can decide whether a trip like this would be worth it for your family.

Because Im a money nerd, I keep detailed stats on most of my life. The RV trip is no different. I have a spreadsheet with detailed trip info, and I published trip stats at my travel blog. Here are some highlights: During 283 days on the road, we spent 371.3 hours (15.5 days total!) driving the RV across the U.S. We put 17,250 miles on the motorhome and 17,718 miles on the Mini Cooper. Thats a total of 34,968 miles driven about 1.5 times the circumference of the Earth! Between the two vehicles, we drove an average of 120 miles per day.Everyone wonders about fuel efficiency in an RV. Well, it sucks. We had hoped to average 10 miles per gallon; we got 7.7. (No, replacing the engine didnt make things better.) The motorhome consumed 2202.6 gallons of fuel at an average price of $2.48 per gallon. It cost us 32 cents per mile to drive that beast and thats only counting gasoline.On the first leg of the trip, we spent a total of $17,137.07 for budgeted daily items. Fuel and routine maintenance for the motorhome and car ate up a third of that budget. Food (both groceries and restaurants) consumed another third. We spent $3086 on lodging, which works out to $16.24 per night. The remaining $2000 was spent on alcohol, fun, and miscellaneous expenses. (Our stats for the return leg werent as detailed.)About two-thirds of our nights were spent in campgrounds or RV parks. We drycamped 19% of the time on the way east (but not once on the way home). We spent 18% of our nights in somebodys home or driveway. We visited 38 states. We spent the most time in California (33 nights) and Colorado (25 nights). We loved them all.Arizona and West Virginia were the two most beautiful states we saw on our trip, although the area around Jackson, Wyoming was probably the single prettiest place. Charleston, South Carolina and Lafayette, Louisiana had the best food (the Midwest had the worst) and Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, New York had the best beer. The worst drivers? Orlando, Savannah, and especially Nashville. To me, the most important numbers is what Id call our base costs. These are the combination of gas and lodging, the costs for keeping the RV in action. During the first leg of our trip, our base costs were $35.09 per day (with an overall cost of $90.20 per day). During the second leg, our base costs were $41.25 per day (and I didnt keep track of total costs). How much you would spend beyond these base costs is, well, up to you. Obviously, we were spending an extra $50 to $60 per day, or about $25 to $30 per person. This includes food and fun but it does not include the cost of the RV and/or maintenance. (Our net cost for the RV was $10,000 $38,000 purchase price, $28,000 sale price plus the $7751.39 for engine replacement.) And dont forget that we spent about $2000 to furnish the RV before setting out, plus had to make miscellaneous repairs. My guess (and this is only a guess) is that our total cost for for the RV trip outside daily expenses was $23,500. This equates to about $80 per day. If you add this to our ongoing daily expenses, you get a total of $170 per day. Lets round that to $175 per day. [Note that these are corrected numbers. My original calculation of daily cost forgot the engine repair. Oops.] All told, to live like we did on the road which was living well it cost about $180 per day (or about $5400 per month) for two people. Im sure it can be done for less. And we met tons of people who spend much more. I realize that not everyone can afford this sort of adventure. Nor do many people have the ability to pick up and leave their lives for six or twelve or eighteen months. In other words, this isnt the sort of trip that everyone has the time and money to make happen. But for those who do have the resources, exploring the United States by motorhome can be relatively affordable especially if your engine doesnt need to be replaced!

On the Road Again? Heres the thing: Our story is not unique. Theres this idea that RVing is only for old people with more time and money than sense. Sure, there are plenty of retired couples out there in brand-new $200,000 luxury motorhomes, but there are also a surprising number of younger couples on the road full time including couples with kids! Everyone we talked to reported the same thing: If youre careful, its perfectly possible to live large in a motorhome on a modest budget. There are plenty of awesome side-effects too. The trip strengthened my relationship with Kim. (If you can make things work in 245 square feet, you can certainly do it in a larger space!) It taught us that we need far less Stuff to live than we thought. The best side effect of all? Realizing just how awesome everybody is. Im not joking. The media has whipped us into a state of hysteria in this country. The Left hates the Right. The Right hates the Left. Nobody talks or takes time to understand the other side. Thats bullshit, to be honest. During our fifteen months away from Portland, we had two bad experiences and they werent even that bad. (Maybe the people were just having off days?) Universally, everybody was friendly and polite and fun. This morning, as I was finishing this article, Kim and I got to talking. Wouldnt it be fun to do a trip like that again? she asked. Maybe we should buy another RV. Haha. Maybe. I told her we should put it off until next year. Our adventure across the U.S. truly was the trip of a lifetime. What are you waiting for? If you too have always dreamed of an epic cross-country roadtrip, get cracking. Draw up a plan. Save your money. Make it happen.

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