#in terms of life experience I’m pretty much a child to my coworkers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Have you seen Linkara's review of The Dark Knight Returns? He goes into why the view of Robin as a soldier, popularized but by no means invented by Miller, is so dangerous.

I have not, but I need to refresh my memory before I go check it out because I’ll either agree with it or be infuriated by it and I can’t remember which just at the moment but would like to before I restart that argument ten years later.

LOL, so like, I knew Linkara yeeears and years ago. We were both regular posters on Gail Simone’s messageboard on CBR like fifteen years ago, maybe longer. Pretty sure we even met in person a couple times at Gail’s annual SDCC breakfast meetups, but not sure. I do know for sure though that he and I were both involved in a three way argument about this very topic with another guy.....I just can not remember if he was the one who agreed with me or the one we were both fighting with about it, LOL. I THINK we were in agreement as while I wasn’t like.....as pro-DC as most YABSers were given that it was Gail’s board and I mostly hung out at the X-boards and just swung by YABS once a week or so BECAUSE I couldn’t stand all the ass-kissing that went on at that board so that DC writers and artists would hang out and post regularly, LOL, like I’m pretty sure I remember Link as being one of the less....vehement of the pro-DC camp.

(Tbh, one of the biggest ways in which I disagreed with Gail on stuff is I UNDERSTOOD her feeling a need to be civil with other DC pros even if she didn’t like them personally, I just....couldn’t manage the same and didn’t feel any desire to try. Like for example, not sure how many people know who Ethan van Sciver is, but he’s a long time high profile DC artist, best known for his GL stuff.....but he used to hang around YABS pretty regularly. EvS is ALSO a haaaaaardcore conservative, Trumpian, and all around terrible person. And he always was.

Like he’d play it civil back then but his opinions were downright hateful on a variety of topics, particularly towards marginalized groups, but he was good at picking just the right moments to half-assedly walk something back the second he took something ‘too far’ - so like, the end result was he said it and everyone saw and remembered, but before anyone could react he’d drop the mea culpa card and be like oh I’m sorry I know that was out of line, I was just caught up in the moment and it’s all good cuz this is all friendly debate anyway right? We’re just talking here.

And he’d pull this crap all the time but because he was a DC pro, people would let him get away with it and warn people off coming down on him so he didn’t feel unwelcome at the board. Now the painfully ironic twist here is that shockingly, totally unexpectedly.....fast forward to about five or six years ago where good old Ethan burns a shit ton of bridges and decides well why not make things a dumpster fire for everyone in my vicinity....and he became the driving force behind a bunch of alt right comic book fans starting their own weak ass version of Gamergate, only called Comicsgate. It never was nearly as....big...as Gamergate was, but it was still ugly. And the thing is, Ethan sicced his sycophants on other industry pros he’d worked with over the years but always disagreed with on politics.....like really let the ugly fly....and most of these pros included Gail as well as a bunch of the other DC professionals from back in the YABS days.

Because thing was....that was literally WHY he’d hung out at YABS so much back then, despite being so far in disagreement with most of the progressive leaning board. He was always just interested in stirring shit up, he never actually had the slightest interest in debate or seeing the other side of anything....he just knew how to play the right cards to get the right people to come to his defense and cool things off rather than run him off, in the name of keeping things civil and such...all so he could start it all up again a couple weeks later.

And this is literally why that kind of thing doesn’t work for me at all. Because he wasn’t really that subtle even then, most people knew all along exactly what he was doing, and letting him get away with shit that would have gotten anyone else banned purely because he was a industry pro just meant that his opportunities to subject anyone in his vicinity to just vile, hateful shit ended up more protected than all the marginalized posters on that board who didn’t come to it to see his shit but had to constantly listen to it anyway because people were more interested in making excuses for him than making it comfortable for everyone else.

And in the end, he ended up turning on the very people who’d protected him from everyone else ripping into his hateful viewpoints with the directness they merited. Which just. Sigh. To me just smacks of a whole lot of unnecessary years spent putting up with his barely veiled bullshit until he didn’t bother even veiling it anymore....even though the reality is NOBODY was ever buying into his veil of it in the first place and we all knew what was right behind it all along. Anyway. Not that it matters LOL, but good old Eth, was one of the primary reasons I decided not to go into comics when I had a couple of opportunities come up, as I decided to focus my efforts on Hollywood at the time instead. Lmao, I figured if I was going to have to keep my mouth shut about coworkers whose opinions I vehemently disagreed with in the name of professionalism, I might as well focus on the profession that would pay me more money to keep that to myself. Look, at least capitalism is useful when ADHD and trying to pretend to be decisive about life choices.)

Long ramble nobody asked for aside, like I said, I can’t remember Link’s take on this particular topic but it’s likely the one I agreed with for the most part. My own take has always been that Miller sucks and if he said it chances are I said he was wrong because he is about everything and my religion is people saying so and by people I mean me. My religion’s also big on self-actualization. Not sure what else, I did just make it up and I think I’ll probably just stop there so I don’t accidentally make it a cult.

But yeah. I mean, maybe it’ll surprise people given how critical I am of the abusive elements of canon, but I’ve never applied the child endangerment/child soldier argument to sidekicks. It’s obviously not that they don’t get hurt in these stories and even traumatized, it’s not that they’re NOT in danger as kids....it’s just why I put such an emphasis on it being their choice to fight crime and be heroes and NOT something that Bruce or any other mentor or parent pushed them into.

Because this is one of the reasons why death of the author more often than not just doesn’t work for me. Authorial intent matters. Readers are always free to interpret a text however they want, regardless of authorial intent....but IF a writer has a specific intent behind a narrative choice, chances are most interpretations that refuse to align themselves with that viewpoint aren’t really all that RELEVANT to the story the writer was trying to tell in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong. Those other interpretations can still exist. They’re allowed to exist. People can abide by them all they want. But if someone’s takeaway from a story is a deliberate choice to read it entirely different from the story the writer intended it to be.....like, their interpretation is all well and good, but it’s not actually at all a RELEVANT commentary on or review of the story the writer was actually writing. They’re not actually saying the writer did a poor job of telling the story or was wrong in how they did it....because they’re not actually talking about the story the writer was actually telling.

Thus their commentary on it exists. But it’s just not that relevant. Because nothing in it even CAN offer an opinion on how else the writer could or should have written that story....because the story they ARE talking about isn’t the story the writer was even interested in writing.

Now, there are some times when authorial intent DOESNT matter. And when criticism of it is entirely fair and earned even if it’s of something the writer didn’t consciously or deliberately write into their story at all. But these things are almost ALWAYS unconscious. Unlike what I was just talking about, where the writer was very consciously writing the story a certain way for a reason, and thus people who aren’t interested in reading the story the way it was written to be read just can’t offer up a commentary that says anything useful or meaningful about the story that was actually written...the flip side of this is when the writer puts things they don’t intend into the text, but still are very much there all the same.

And this sort of thing applies to things like micro aggressions or racism, homophobia, sexism....things where a writer didn’t sit down intending to be offensive or alienate their readers but still put in things that they don’t think to view as offensive due to their own privilege and lack of experience EXPERIENCING the microaggressions that marginalized readers might be all TOO familiar with and thus can’t avoid reading into a passage where the writer might not have INTENDED harm or offense, but delivered it all the same. Because they didn’t think to put it into their story, they weren’t TRYING to....but they didn’t think to avoid putting it in there either, even if it’s because they didn’t know to until it’s pointed out to them that it’s there.

And this also applies to when the writer puts into their story, via whatever viewpoint they’re writing from, things that herald from their own viewpoints, how they view the world, even in terms of unconscious biases or expectations....but things that readers can still interpret as something they vehemently disagree with, even if the narrative seems to condone it. Because a lot of these viewpoints are things where the way they’re written....even just not coming out as clearly not condoning or agreeing it can effectively be read as tacitly condoning it.

So to apply all this to the idea of child sidekicks and child soldiers:

They’re not one and the same, and thus treating them as one and the same or interchangeable is IMO an inherently flawed perspective that doesn’t ever have anything USEFUL or RELEVANT to the stories that most people are trying to tell with child heroes and sidekicks.

With the notable exceptions of Miller, Ennis and certain other writers who by their own admission usually aren’t even trying to write about superheroes but rather deconstructions of the genre as a whole.....the vast majority of comic book writers, even the ones I dislike LOL, aren’t writing about child soldiers when they write characters like the Robins. Because CONSCIOUSLY, with INTENT, they’re already trying to write something completely different:

Child heroes and sidekicks are almost universally written to be child (although to be really fair, for the most part they’re largely teen) empowerment allegories. They’re youth power fantasies.

They’re stories about kids, about teens, getting to be the ones to save the world. About kids who don’t need adults to save them because they save themselves or their friends. Kids saving other people, other kids, grown adults. Stories about child HEROES are written as metaphors of hope for the future and the promise of the younger generations, or power fantasies where kids who feel helpless and powerless in their own lives can read these stories and vicariously imagine through the characters the idea of one day having the power to save themselves or other people, what that would be like, what they’d do with that.

But here’s the important part, and why people interpreting these teen and kid heroes as child soldiers doesn’t really offer relevant commentary to stories that are written to be allegorical youth power fantasies, regardless of authorial intent or death of the author....

And that’s because the key ingredient here, the thing that’s not really up for debate or open to interpretation....is that these stories can ONLY ever be allegorical.

Because like I said before, child heroes and child soldiers are not the same thing. There simply IS NO REAL WORLD EQUIVALENT for child and teen heroes as comic books style them.

And that’s why the fact that with most every child hero in comics, no adult makes them be a hero. They choose that for themselves, it’s almost universally characterized as a self-determination or empowerment moment rather than one of coercion like Miller likes to characterize it. His choice to characterize Bruce essentially drafting Dick as Robin to fight alongside him does nothing to provide commentary on any other superhero story, no matter what he’s told himself or his fans, because his story is the only one where Robin was drafted!

You can’t condemn narrative choices that nobody but you has actually written and then act like you’re saying something about any narrative other than your own fsjsjfshfzgzfhgs.

And you also can’t claim that you’re just seeing in the text something that’s inherently there and the other writers didn’t just see to avoid like I was talking about being a valid critique....because what’s being commented on there isn’t anything that was written unknowingly. Other writers consciously wrote the same things as Miller in terms of a child engaged in all that violence....but they deliberately wrote those moments to be metaphors of a kid that gets to save themselves and other people and CHOSE that, which is inherently opposed to the interpretation of a kid who is ONLY in harm’s way because he was forcibly drafted by a more powerful figure or force who cares neither what he wants or if he gets hurt.

These two ideas are mutually exclusive. They can not coexist in the same narrative because a character can not be powerless and self-empowering about the exact same specific choice. And thus anything that’s said about one of these narratives is inherently unable to say anything that’s relevant about the other....because the other is not written by its writer TO BE the kind of narrative that particular commentary is dissecting. It’s not TRYING to be that narrative, so no review of it can possibly say how flawed it’s execution is of an idea it’s not actually trying to execute.

And the differences between child heroes and child soldiers are not just limited to choosing that or being drafted and these other differences are equally key.

The biggest being that child heroes can not be seen as ‘basically’ the same thing as child soldiers.....UNLESS you are also perceiving adult heroes as basically the same thing as adult soldiers. And not even law enforcement or police or temporarily deputized or whatever else you want to spin it as....SOLDIERS, specifically. You don’t get to bring up something as charged as child soldiers and then get vague with your terminology when the close scrutiny that brings to your analogy stops working in your favor.

If sidekicks are child soldiers then you must in conjunction view adult superheroes as soldiers. And not in the abstract one man war on crime way Miller likes to consider Batman in his attempted deconstruction of superheroes. ACTUAL soldiers. If there’s no room in your comparison for child heroes to differentiate from real world child soldiers, there’s no wiggle room for the adults either.

And again, except for Miller, Ennis and specific others who by their own admissions are not TRYING to view superheroes the same way most other comic writers are, but fail to see that genre conventions are largely interpretive and thus seeing room for different interpretations of superheroes isn’t actually a commentary on how other people see and write those same heroes....like except for these select few, most writers are not writing superhero soldiers unless they’re Captain America or Captain Atom. Yes I know there are other superhero soldiers but let me be pithy. Even those aren’t really the same as their real world equivalents.

See, real soldiers don’t make distinctions about whether or not they’re willing to use guns. Their personal views on killing are not prioritized over whether they’ve been told to use lethal force to accomplish their objective. They have a chain of command. No matter the rationalization, they pledge their loyalty to singular nations and the aims and objectives of those specific nations over the abstract of acting in defense of the whole world.

Now again, maybe that applies to Captain Atom, but for the most part can you say the majority of comic book writers are TRYING to write Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman etc through that lens? No. So while Miller really thinks he said something when he wrote his Batman with guns, fighting in the Middle East, killing people left and right, none of that actually ‘showed’ people that at the end of the day, Batman is no conceptually different from a real world soldier like. No all he actually did was write his own take on Batman, and said look, he’s a gun toting murderous asshole, huzzah I have deconstructed the modern superhero!

Like. Shut up Miller. Honestly.

But seriously. Superheroes do not have a real world equivalent and neither do child heroes. Even when it comes to nonpowered ones like the Batfam, they’re still deliberately written in a larger than life, four color perspective that requires a suspension of disbelief at the front door. We ALL know and understand that they aren’t a blue print for how to go out and be a real world vigilante. Even real world vigilantes exist. But they don’t look anything like the Batfam and it’s disingenuous to pretend they do for the sake of teh discourse. Nobody honestly believes that there is even the OPTION of going out one day and deciding to become a comic book style vigilante like one of the Batfam. It’s why even they’re termed superheroes despite the lack of superpowers. On a CONCEPTUAL level it’s understood that the stories being told about them require an extrahuman medium. You can not simultaneously write characters according to a mythic scale but then attempt to interpret that very writing on a real world one. It doesn’t work.

Which brings me to my final piece of this pie. Or puzzle. Idk I’ve been doing this response for awhile I forget what this is.

And that is again, the difference between interpreting a story in a way the author probably didn’t intend and understanding when a story isn’t meant to be interpreted in the way you’re trying to.

And this difference is how I can understand and reconcile the idea that it’s not inherently abusive for Bruce to allow his kids to fight crime at all, even though that would inherently be child endangerment in the real world, but at the same time, I can view him as abusive in other ways that don’t make allowances for the differences between real life and comics.

Basically it boils down to: CAN this specific element of a story be duplicated in real life or mirror a real life action or idea? Is there a direct parallel to a real world equivalent at all?

I can view Bruce fighting crime or saving the world alongside a child Robin without viewing that as child endangerment or inherently abusive, even when Robin gets hurt in the process....because there is no real world equivalent to those parts of a story. NO ONE, child or adult, is going out there and doing those things Batman and Robin style. Even the people who dress up in their own real life vigilante personas basically just do niche neighborhood things like walk people home from the bar. And even people doing real life vigilantism in terms of taking out criminals, like, that’s usually more of a personal revenge thing and not one where they’re trying to attract attention via a costumed persona. When you think real world Batman and Robin, nothing comes to mind for a reason.

And thus this says nothing inherently abusive about their dynamic, even according to real life parallels of child endangerment, because it’s not a real scenario. And thus it’s not TRYING to say anything about real life. It’s innately allegorical. It’s power fantasy emphasis on the fantasy.

In contrast, when you have something like Bruce hitting one of his kids.....no matter who the characters are, that specific interaction and the dynamic it presents DOES have a real world equivalent. That’s just parent/child abuse. And thus even if the writer didn’t intend for it to be interpreted that way, it’s still a valid interpretation. If it looks like a parent hitting their child, you can call it a parent hitting a child.

Batman and Robin fighting killer mind controlled plants together? Can’t happen. I’m not going to call it child endangerment when it’s not a realistic scenario and not meant to be, and I’ve already been presented with a valid alternative interpretation of this being a child empowered to help save people alongside his superhero father. There’s no point in condemning a dynamic that CANT be translated to a non allegory in real life.

But Bruce hitting his son? A father no matter how good hearted normally, being affected by extreme stress or grief or something else that makes his behavior take a turn for the worse and reach a point where he physically lashes out even if he never would have in the past? Nothing remotely allegorical about that. That story has too many real world equivalents to dismiss as having nothing to say about abuse in real life. Even if the writer didn’t intend for this to read as abusive because they were thinking of how much worse Dick has been hurt fighting alongside Bruce and never held that against him even though technically it was Bruce letting him get hurt....doesn’t matter. That interpretation still requires viewing through a lens that can’t exist in reality. No kid can ever excuse a parent hitting them by thinking of how much worse they got hurt taking down their local mob together and if he didn’t blame his dad for that cuz he wanted to do it to help people then how can he blame his dad for hurting him in a moment of anger? Umm. Doesn’t track see? They’re not the same thing at all.

Or another one that really bugs....I’ve heard people defend shipping a Robin while underage with an adult by saying if they’re old enough to make the choice to risk their life and have that choice respected, they’re old enough to choose who they want to be with. Umm. No. That’s not just apples and oranges that’s genetically modified grapes and seventeenth century cannonballs.

That logic doesn’t apply because neither of those things is the underage character choosing ANYTHING. They’re fictional. Everything they choose is just what their writer wrote them choosing. But again, one of those choices is one that an underage reader CANT choose in real life and have respected by every adult in their life, and thus will never have a bearing on their life as anything BUT an allegory they have to interpret and translate into something actionable they can apply to their life and choices. The other choice is them being written as presented with an option that’s actually a textbook real life grooming technique and something abusers use to justify the relationship they’re trying to cultivate with a minor by saying aren’t you mature for your age, aren’t you old enough to know what you want or to do this or that in which case you should be old enough to make this choice?

See the difference? Putting on a cape and going out to fight robots? Not directly applicable. Saying yes to the grown man saying he wants to have sex with you and thinks you’re old enough given this other choice you’ve made that highlights your maturity? That’s a choice that can be presented both to a Robin or a real life minor, but a writer justifying that choice for that Robin by saying well he’s already previously made this other choice that has no real life equivalent.....that creates a pretty misleading interpretation to people reading that story and not stopping to think through the distinctions between what KINDS of choices the writer is presenting these characters with and then justifying via their narrative.

And while I haven’t watched the video you’re referencing, anon, I would definitely agree that this is an example of how viewing child heroes as child soldiers is....not great. Aside from being cynical, misusing the idea of death of the author and helping to validate Miller’s choices and thus ego which is NEVER a good look LOL....it also intentionally or not paves the way for putting fictional types and MEANS of harm on an even playing field with real life ones and acting like it’s all one and the same with no distinctions to be drawn. And this doesn’t actually offer anything substantive or constructive about holding characters accountable for reasonable expectations of harm, when the sources of harm have no reasonable equivalent and thus only exist in the medium of being a youth power fantasy in which the child involved is fictional and can’t truly be harmed, with the harm done the second the scene ends and where the character can be back in fighting form the very next scene. Thus the only lingering element there IS the power fantasy.

Nope, all it actually does is muddy the waters in the REVERSE, and make it so it’s actually easier to justify or rationalize types and means of harm that DO have a real world equivalent, but by pointing to examples from a fictional medium and emphasizing the fictional character’s lack of being harmed while de-emphasizing the fact that the writer has full control over depicting this in a solely positive light that doesn’t ALLOW the fictional character any angle from which to voice that this CAN result in harm when not written for fictional characters according to a writer’s specific intent.

And that’s that about that. My opinion: you have it.

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little-noko · 4 years

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Life Update: Confession time

Ignore this if you wish, I usually try to avoid personal life on the sites I'm on as I consider them my professional life. I always try to balance my art with a positive interaction with the people that comment/share/messages me. Because I feel like you are all part of a whole that is as important as my art. Art has been a large part of my life, but it would be nothing without your supports. And something I genuinely despise is to feel like my accounts are stripped from any form of identity and personality. There's a person behind this art, not just a screen after all... Bringing joy doing something that I love is... wonderful. I cannot express how much it makes me happy to be able to share all of this with your guys.... Truth is, lately things haven't been doing well for me. Not on the financial side, but... overall. I'm someone who love to work and give my best in every aspect of my life, I'm socially awkward and reserved and made my peace with that. It's not that I do not enjoy people's company but it is extremely emotionally taxing for me in the long term, it requires me to take a break after a while because I end up pretty exhausted (this is important information for later). It's been hard to actually accustomed myself to public places as I do not like to stay out for too long even since I was a child. Having a long 'casual' conversation "how's the weather?" type is far from something I can actually deal with. Back in may, I acquired a new car, and since my money cushion was running thin I had in mind to send applications to the nearby town to get a small job. I didn't expected things to escalate so quickly, first application, first interview, job acquired the same day! I was shocked and quite happy that they considered to hire me so fast, I worked there 30 hours minimum a week which sound pretty low from average but considering I had other obligation (Patreon and conventions) it was quite a lot to handle. Everything went smoothly, like usual I learned the rope pretty fast and earned my place at work, I even got some week off to get to the states to participate to cons! As much as I could handle it... these past few months has been draining for me, especially mentally, it's like I turn a switch off to just go through my days without really thinking which makes me extremely jolty whenever someone try to talk with me. I don't have issues with my coworkers, neither does my current schedule... but everything feel so soulless and dull... it's genuinely depressing... there's time I go through my day with the feeling that I'm close to cry at any second, especially when I find myself working on my own. I was proud I managed to adjust myself, that I could keep a job for once, that I am part of a team, I cannot say there's no positive through the experience I acquired... but. I am not happy... I feel like I don't fit... and I don't understand how some people can just go through their dull day without feeling broken inside. Part of me feel guilty.... maybe I'm picky... or lazy ? But overall, as I think about it, I feel like it isn't my place... So... if you see a lot of art coming from me lately.... it is mostly a coping mechanism... but even then.... I feel like there's not much passion in them anymore... and it scares me... If you had read through this wall of text... thank you.

#noko's ramble

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lifewithsehun · 4 years

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From Planet Exo: Xiumin

Who are you?

Kim Minseok/Xiumin (Alien) x Reader (Human)

Alien Au Superpower AuGenre: Fluff, Slight Angst, Smut

Warning: Smut (first timers, so maybe you can call it somewhat fluff smut)/cussing

Note: It’s long, didn’t want to split it into parts, since this is already a side story to a series I am working on.

Summary: Xiumin otherwise known as Kim Minseok here on planet earth is not a human, but an alien as humans would call him if they knew what he was. He was from a planet named Exo and he wasn't just any normal alien, he like his brothers had his own special gift, he could make and control ice. His parents sent him and his brothers far away from there home when he was the mere age of 5 and unfortunately got separated from his brothers, but he knew it was for the best in order to avoid being found by the enemy. He had ended up in Washington, D.C. which was where he met you and he became fascinated with you immediately and determined to make you love him and accept him for who he was... one day.

July 2019

It was a hot summer day, everyone looked annoyed with the heat and they kept fanning their faces, but not Minseok, he was lucky he could discreetly use his power to keep himself fresh. "Sucks for them", he whispered to himself as he smirked and got into his car. He was headed back to work after a nice week off visiting his adoptive parents. He worked for NASA, not a coincidence, it had been instructions his parents relayed into his memory, so he could be aware of any problems from outer space that could put his brothers or him in danger. He really did enjoy his job though and well he was very smart making it easy to get the job. Today he was instructed that a group of new interns were going to need a limited tour, which meant keep an eye on them, to which he rolled his eyes. "I have more important things to be doing, I'm not a tour guide", he complained to Mr. Mills. "I know, but David is out today and the others will probably end up taking the interns into restricted areas on "accident", Mr. Mills replied and chuckled. "They were hired as tour guides, but can't even do the job they were hired for'', Minseok groaned as he heard a knock at the door. "Looks like they have arrived", Mr. Mills pointed to the door and Minseok shook his head, but headed to where the interns were.

As he got a view of the interns he noticed you immediately, something about you caught his eyes, it was like a magnet pulling him in. He was taken aback because he had never found himself wanting to look at a human girl, no woman would be the correct term for you, he had never been attracted to any woman before maybe because although he was raised as a human his blood and nature was not. He always thought that his mind and body were expecting a woman from his planet to be with, but at the moment he wasn't sure any more. The other interns nor you had noticed him yet and he was thankful because he was trying to admire your features, you were quite short, possibly 5'2 or 5'3, he wasn't too sure but he liked that your head would rest perfectly against his chest. He was taking this too far maybe, he didn't even know you, but he knew he wanted to. You looked so perfect, small enough for him to hold you and your face was immaculate in his eyes, you had pretty eyes with long eyelashes that touched your soft full looking cheeks when you blinked and small but pouty lips. Shit he thought he was already so fucked, until he heard you speak, then at that moment he realized how really fucked he was. "Hello, are you Mr. Kim", he heard you speak again, but only realizing that you had already asked him that. "Uhh, ye..yes I'm Kim Minseok", he stuttered and cleared his throat. "Oh we're the new interns, I'm Y/N", you replied with a smile and extended your hand out to him. Minseok could feel his palm sweat, something new to him, but he cooled it down immediately before he shook your hand and smiled back. He held onto your hand a little longer than you expected, so you raised your eyebrows at him and he let go immediately with a small sorry.

After everyone had presented themselves, Minseok led them to the places on the list that they would be using for their work and other interesting areas they could explore. He tried not to be distracted by you, but he would sneak glances at you and he loved how excited and happy you looked. He also liked that you were the one mostly asking questions because you had such a beautiful voice. The tour was coming to an end sooner than he wanted. Mr. Mills suddenly popped up to introduce himself and noticed that Minseok didn't look upset. "You liked the tour?", Mr. Mills asked the interns and you. "Yes'', you all replied. "Good, maybe I'll make Minseok do these tours more often", Mr. Mills replied, causing Minseok to glare at him. "Or not", Mr. Mills laughed and the interns along with you laughed also. Okay something was wrong Minseok thought to himself, he was liking you too much, your laugh had just made his stomach flip or feel butterflies however people described it. He didn't want to seem like a creep, but what the hell was pulling him towards you so much, damn it. Once Mr. Mills was gone, you thanked and said goodbye to Minseok, which looked a bit conflicted, but replied that it was his pleasure and a goodbye. You walked over to get your badge and necessary items from the front desk, since tomorrow would be your first day and then you were off to your apartment without realizing that Minseok was looking at you with sad eyes. The next day arrived and you felt nervous, but excited. You met the rest of your coworkers and even got to see Minseok and Mr. Mills around. By the time you knew it a month had passed since your first day and you felt comfortable with your coworkers, everyone was so nice, especially Minseok, he kept popping in to check on everything and always sent a warm smile. He was quite handsome and nice you realized as you saw him walking towards you. "Hi, Mr. Kim'', you greeted him with a smile. "Hi Miss YLN, please call me Minseok", he replied back. "Okay, but you call me Y/N then", you replied. "Will do", he replied with a smile. His smile was cute, you noticed and realized you like seeing him smile everyday at work.

Time was flying by, you had been working with him for 2 months now and Minseok didn't know how to ask if you wanted to get lunch or dinner with him. He would get quite nervous every time he wanted to ask you, but he didn't want to waste more time anymore, so today he decided today would be the day. "Hey, Y/N", he called out to you as he stood in front of your desk. "Oh hi Minseok", you looked up at him. "Umm I wanted to.. umm are you busy tomorrow since it's Saturday and it's our day off", he finally let out. You looked at him surprised but nodded your head no. "I wanted to know if you wanted to go get dinner with me tomorrow", he asked with expectant yet nervous looking eyes. Cute, you thought to yourself as you saw him shift his eyes nervously. "I would love that", you finally replied after what felt like an eternity to him. "Great, I will pick you up then at 7 tomorrow, how does that sound?", he asked. "Perfect", you answered with a smile. He nodded and smiled as he started to walk away. "Wait Minseok, you need my number, so I can give you my address for tomorrow", you said with a teasing tone. "Ahh, yes how dumb of me", he chuckled as you handed him your phone number on a piece of paper. The next day you were feeling quite nervous, Minseok had texted you for your address and some details about the date, well he didn't specify that it was a date, but why else would he ask you out for dinner and to a fancy restaurant at that, it must be date right you thought. You decide to wear a nice black dress not too fancy, but appropriate for the restaurant with some matching heels, you waved your hair, and wore some light makeup. You felt pretty, well at least you hoped he would think the same, you were quite bad at this, you never had dated someone, always concentrated on school and by the time you knew it you were at this point in life without any dating experiences. You had learned Minseok was 30 and probably very well experienced and you at 23 weren't experienced at all in anything why lie, so you hoped you wouldn't fuck it up today. You heard your doorbell ring taking you out of your thoughts and you headed over to open the door. As you opened it, you were taken aback with how much more handsome Minseok looked and he looked at you from head to toe making you feel a little uncertain about your look until he suddenly said, "You look beautiful". "Thank you", you replied and tried to hide your blushing face from him, but he saw and smiled. You both took off to the restaurant and enjoyed dinner together, you both spent dinner getting to know each other and you realized that you really enjoyed his company and hoped he enjoyed yours too. Over dinner you learned about his adoptive parents and he learned about your family. Minseok kept his siblings a secret telling you he was an only child and giving you information about his human life, but you didn't know he had secrets anyway, so you just thought you were getting to know who he really was. After dinner, you both went for a small walk at the park and then headed home, Minseok didn't want the night to end and why lie you didn't either, but it was getting late. He drove you home and walked you to your door. "Would you like to come in for something to drink '', you offered, but he smiled and replied a small "Thank you, but I'm okay, next time though". He knew it would be harder to leave if he went inside. You nodded and smiled. "I had a great time", he said. "Me too", you replied with a smile. "Well I should go''... "Drive safe Minseok'', you replied with a smile. As he left and you went into your apartment you hoped you would have more dates with him.

More dates did happen and you enjoyed every single one of them, you even lost count of how many dates you both had. You even learned that just like you Minseok had never dated, so it was all new ground for both of you and you loved being able to experience new things with him. Today Minseok had told you to dress casual and that he would pick you up at around 5pm. You got ready and he arrived for you on time like usual. Minseok had planned a picnic and the weather was so nice on this October day, you were extremely grateful for his thoughtfulness. As you both sat there after enjoying the food, Minseok suddenly grabbed both your hands causing you to look at him with a questioning gaze to which he just smiled. "Y/N", he said afterwards. "Yes?"... "You know I really like you, I love spending my days with you, you make me feel cared for", he told you. "You make me feel the same way Minseok and I like you too", you replied. "Will you be my girlfriend?"... "I would love that", you said happily as you threw your arms around him causing him to laugh, oh how much you loved his laugh. "Baby", he said as he unwrapped your arms from him. Oh, him calling you baby just melted you right then and there. "Hmm", you hummed shyly. Minseok looked you in the eyes and then proceeded to put his hands on each of your cheeks and leaned forward and by the time you realized what was going on you felt his lips on yours. They felt so soft and shit you didn't know how to kiss, this was your first kiss! Minseok felt you tense and wondered if he did wrong, but then remembered that it was your first kiss, so he pulled you in closer and moved his lips more until he felt you relax and follow his movements. Once he felt that you started feeling more comfortable he swiped his tongue on your bottom lip and felt your mouth part a little more and he inserted his tongue in proceeding to explore your mouth completely and even suck on your tongue causing you to let out a small sound that he would say sounded like a moan. You both separated from the kiss and your lips were quite swollen and your cheeks were so red that he found you so adorable. "I thought you had never kissed", you asked him. "That was my first kiss", he replied and pecked your lips. "Now that was my second", he chuckled.

July 2020

Months passed and Minseok was always surprising you, he was such an amazing boyfriend. You could honestly say you loved him and you hoped he loved you too. These past months the world had been hit with a pandemic and you had been getting so stressed about it and Minseok was always there for you for anything, even when you freaked out for the smallest things. Today you both had decided to have a movie night and you cooked dinner. Once dinner was done and you both sat on his sofa, he turned on the TV, the news popped up immediately showing all the bad weather and pandemic crisis going on and you sighed. "This year has been so scary", you said to Minseok and he nodded while changing it to the movie instead. "I mean what's next, an alien invasion?", you asked. You felt Minseok tense and he put the remote control down. "You think so", he then said. "Well I don't know, I mean would they come kill us or befriend us", you replied. Minseok knew either or could happen, he knew his people wouldn't harm them, but he knew there were others from the enemy planet that wouldn't even second guess killing everyone here on earth. "Do you believe they exist?", he asked. "Maybe, I mean you could be one, even your grumpy neighbor could be one", you shrugged and laughed. "Yeah we could be right", he said with a serious tone. "Min, I'm kidding, I mean like hello that's too much and if you were one you would've told me anyway" you laughed. "Y/N, I should tell, I think I should've told you a while back", he started to say. "Tell me what Min, you're acting weird", you interrupted. "I'm an Alien, I'm not human", he responded. "What are you talking about Min, you're so weird", you said and laughed. "I'm not kidding, and look what I can do", he said as he stood and started to form some ice in his hand. You stood immediately and looked at him with wide eyes. "This is a dream, right or a prank, that can't be real", you immediately said. "Baby, it's real, I should've told you sooner, but I am not human", he replied. "Then why didn't you tell me?", you asked, still doubtful and a bit freaked out about the situation. "For safety reasons and to not freak you out", he replied and walked towards you. You stepped back immediately and you saw a hurt expression form on his face. "Safety?, did you think I would tell others and I am freaking out now, I thought I knew you Min", you said. "I'm sorry baby, I do trust you, I meant safety for you not me, and please don't freak out, it's still me, your Min", he said with a desperate tone. "My Min.. huh? If you were my Min, you would've trusted me!", you responded. He reached for you, but you moved back again. "Look Minseok, if that's even your real name, I need time, I'm freaking out okay", you said. "Don't leave", Minseok begged. "I'll come back, Minseok we need to talk, I just need some air right now", you responded and headed to the door and left.

You got in your car and drove to the nearest park. You just needed some air to calm down, it's not like you would stop loving Minseok in a couple of minutes. Alien or not, you were just hurt he didn't trust you, you would tell him everything, every single thing and yet he left out something so huge. After 2 hours of sitting on a bench and taking some deep breaths, you headed back to his apartment. You couldn't bare imagining how sad he must be right now and you were right as soon as you entered his apartment he was sitting on the couch staring at the wall with dried up tears on his cheeks. He turned around to look at you once he realized you were next to him and let out a weak, "Baby you're here". "I am", you responded and sat next to him. "I'm so sorry", he said and sounded so sincere. "Tell me who you really are.." He told you his birth name was Xiumin, he was from planet Exo, he has the power to make and control ice, and he has been on earth since he was five due to enemies wanting to either experiment or kill him and his brothers because of their powers. Once he was done telling you more about what he vaguely remembered and what his parents implemented in his memory, you couldn't help, but realize you had been selfish to leave because he was the one suffering away from his real parents and home. You hugged him and he responded immediately and even picked you up onto his lap within a second like if you didn't weigh anything. "I'm also quite strong and have a lot of stamina", he said after seeing your shocked expression. You hummed and buried your face in his neck placing a small kiss there. "Xiumin", you decide to call him to try it out. He leaned back into the couch so he could see your face and you just stared back at him. "Say it again", he said. "Xiumin", you repeated. He leaned forward and captured your lips in a desperate kiss. He was usually soft, but right now his kisses were hot and desperate. After shoving his tongue into your mouth and sucking on your tongue like if it was his favorite candy, he broke the kiss to let you breathe. "I thought you were going to leave me, but now have you here sitting on my lap and calling me Xiumin is doing things to me", he breathed out against your lips. "What kind of things", you replied back.

You saw his eyes turn blue for a mere second and then become full of lust as he pulled you closer to him to where you could feel his bulge. "Oh", you moaned lowly and decided to grind yourself on him. The friction made you both moan simultaneously. "You sure you wanna be doing that'', he said with a low moan as you grinded against him again. "Well I heard you say you have good stamina", you teased. "Oh, I'll show you, but only if you are 100 percent sure baby", he said as he remembered that this would be the first time for both of you. You had just learned something major about Minseok and although it made you feel shocked, your love for him was stronger and you felt the same from him in the way he held you, kissed you, and looked at you, so you were sure that if today was the day you'd both get closer than ever, this was the moment to give yourself completely to him. "I'm sure, I even wore matching underwear and bra", you giggled trying to calm your nerves. You saw him smirk and then you were being lifted up and he headed to his bedroom. "I can't wait to see that'', he whispered in your ear and placed a small kiss below your ear afterwards. Minseok laid you down gently on his bed and then hovered over you as he started to place kisses on your face starting at your forehead to your nose, your cheeks, and finally your lips. His kisses were gentle and he seemed like he was trying to be careful with you, which you appreciated because this was something you had never done before, but you also wanted him to touch you more. "Touch me please", you begged as you broke the kiss. "Of course baby", he said and kissed you again as he ran his hand over your body tracing from your neck down to your waist where he lightly squeezed and lifted your shirt up to feel the skin of your stomach. "You're so soft", he whispered against your lips and sat up slightly with both knees on either side of you and started to lift your shirt. You lifted yourself up slightly so he could slide your shirt off and once he did he pushed you back down and started placing kisses on your neck, collarbones, and chest. "Min more please you're going too slow", you slightly moaned as he sucked slightly on top of your breasts. "I want to take my time with you baby", he chuckled causing you to whine. "Let me take care of you..hmm trust me", he whispered in your ear as he reached behind you to unhook your bra.

Once he removed your bra completely he couldn't help but groan, "You're beautiful baby". You blushed and started to cover yourself with your arms, but Minseok pushed them away and pinned them next to your head. "Let me see you and touch you like you begged", he said as he wrapped his mouth around your breast and used his other hand to massage the other. His hands were usually cold, so you were accustomed to them, but his mouth felt even colder and it made you gasp once you felt it wrap around your nipple. "That feels so good", you moaned as he swirled his tongue. He switched to the other and continued to squeeze and suck. "Take your shirt off", you whined as you tried to pull it up. He sat up and pulled it off, tossing it across the room and you admired his firm chest, abs, and his arms, he was fit and you wanted to feel his skin on you. You pulled him forward and felt bliss when his skin came into contact with yours, since he was always somewhat cold to the touch, his cold skin against your hot skin felt so good. Minseok reached his hands down to unbutton of shorts and as he dragged them down with your underwear in one go. "Fuck, how are you so perfect", he said as he looked at you from your eyes down to your core which was wet and ready for him. He swiped his index finger through your lips and tapped your clit making you buck up at the sudden touch. "So wet baby", he groaned as he held your hips and continued to swipe two fingers up and down now and rub your clit in circles with his thumb. "You like that?", he questioned as you continued to moan. "Yes your fingers feel so good", you moaned out. Suddenly you felt him prodding your entrance with his finger and you tensed. "Relax", he said as he placed a kiss on your inner thigh and then on your clit causing you to relax like he said. He continued to prod your entrance and eventually slowly pushed his finger in. "Shit", you moaned at the sudden intrusion that felt weird, but good. Minseok slowly started to thrust his finger in and out slowly and suddenly you felt him add a second finger, it was making you so wet and when he added his tongue on your clit, you felt your body on fire. "How are you so good?", you whimpered in pleasure. "Umm I read about it..", he chuckled. "Wow, you read about it, that's random", you answered with amusement. "Well I wanted to be ready to make you feel good baby", he said and went back to swirling his tongue on your clit and pumping his fingers faster bringing that knot feeling in your stomach to increase. As he continued, he could feel your body slowly starting to tremble and he added a third finger. "Xiumun, Min, Minseok fuck", he heard you moan as you finally orgasmed and started trembling in his hold. He removed his fingers and started using his tongue to probe your entrance and clean up your cum.

He felt you tap him on the shoulder and he lifted his face away from your core and up to place a deep kiss on your lips, you sucked on his tongue and could taste yourself. "That was amazing", you breathed out as you both parted from the kiss. "That was only the beginning", he said with a smirk and started kissing you again. You reached for the button on his jeans and once you succeeded you reached in to stroke him over his boxers. "Baby", he moaned against your lips as he bucked into your hand. Minseok felt big and you felt like he probably wouldn't fit easily, but you trusted him. You started to push his jeans and boxers down and he pulled himself off you to push them off completely. You saw his member spring up and slap against his stomach, he was big like you felt and thick. His member look so hard and it was leaking precum at the tip. You felt yourself getting nervous, but mostly wet again and you wanted to feel it. You sat up and reached for his member, it was quite big in your hand, but Minseok seemed to enjoy your touch by the way he whimpered. You started to stroke it tentatively and as you saw his mouth gaping and his eyes roll back, you knew you were doing good, so you increased your pace a tad bit more. More precum started to leak and you wanted to taste it, so you licked the slit on his tip. "Damn.. baby wait", Minseok moaned pulling you away from his member. You looked up at him and he pushed you on your back while climbing over you. "I need a condom", he said and moved back up. "I'm using the pill", you said and pulled him back onto you. "Wait will that work with your cum?", you asked since he wasn't human. Minseok let out a laugh and nodded a yes. "Okay proceed", you responded shyly. "Oh, you're so cute", he said adoringly and pecked your lips. Minseok positioned himself at your entrance and rubbed himself up to your clit and back down to spread his precum and get you prepared. He then proceeded to put his tip in slowly causing you to whimper. It was definitely a foreign feeling more than his fingers had felt earlier. He continued to push in slowly as he asked if you were okay. You nodded, but still whimpered in slight pain as you felt him stretching you out slowly. He stopped again and caressed your face before he continued to push further in. He suddenly stopped moving completely and you could feel him in so deep and your walls pulsating around the foreign object. "Let's wait until you accommodate and tell me when you are ready", he said. "Okay", you replied trying to hide the slight pain in your voice. Minseok started to place kisses on your lips and then your neck. He rubbed his fingers soothingly on your hips and waited patiently for you to adjust. As you felt the pain subduing into pleasure you told him to move. "Are you sure?", he questioned. "Yes Min please move", you replied. He started to pull out slowly and push back in. He kept the pace slow as he listened to your whimpers turn into moans. As you continued to moan, he started to make his thrust longer and deeper. "Faster please", you moaned. He started thrusting a tad bit faster and your moans confirmed that you were feeling good, so he picked up his pace even more. As he thrusted in and out he could feel your walls pulling and pushing around him causing him to moan. "You're so tight", he groaned. He continued to thrust in and out, but at one particular thrust he heard you moan louder. He had hit your sweet spot. "I found it", he smirked as he kept thrusting and hitting the same spot over and over again. You felt your toes curl and you couldn't hold back from moaning out his name loudly, you didn't even care if his neighbors heard you. "Please don't stop", you begged. "I wouldn't even dream about stopping", he replied. You felt him rub your clit as he continued to thrust faster and faster. The knot in your stomach started to form again, but this time it felt bigger than the first. "You're doing so well baby, taking me in so good, I want to feel your tight walls trembling against me, hear you moaning out my name, and for you to look me in the eyes as you cum", Minseok moaned as he kissed your lips. "You're going to be a good girl and cum for me right?", he asked. "Yes, yes please I want to cum", you moaned. He increased his rubbing on your clit and his thrusts grew faster than you thought possible. Your toes continued to curl, your legs started to tremble, and the knot finally broke and your orgasm hit you like a train, hard and heavy. You tried to keep eye contact with him, but your eyes closed in pleasure and you continued to moan his name like a chant as he thrusted in and out, helping you ride out your orgasm while chasing his. As you felt his thrust become sloppy, you tightened your walls even more until you felt his cum shooting deep into you. He stopped thrusting as his cum filled you up and you felt him tremble slightly and saw his face contorted in pleasure while he moaned out your name.

As you both came down from your highs, Minseok stayed inside you and laid carefully on you while trying not to squish you. You wrapped your arms around him and rubbed his back as he laid his head on your chest. "Are you okay?", he questioned as he looked up at you. "More than okay, my alien boyfriend just satisfied me so well", you replied with a wink. He laughed as he slowly slid out of you and got up to the restroom to clean himself up. He came back with a warm towel and started to clean you up slowly, but you still flinched slightly at the touch. He threw the towel in the laundry bag and then laid back down next to and wrapped his arms around you while you snuggled against his chest. "Y/N", he said. "Yes Min?", you responded. "I love you", he said as he placed a kiss on your forehead. "I love you too Min", you replied and placed a kiss right above his heart. His hold tightened against you as he told you to get some sleep. You relaxed against him and listened to his heart beat. He ended up sleeping before you and you started thinking how today had been a surprising day, you found out aliens did exist and as a matter of fact your boyfriend was one and he had a superpower. You had definitely freaked out, but that didn't last too long, because alien or not you loved Minseok. He meant the world to you and you'd do anything for him. You had given him your heart and now your body, you were his completely and you were going to stay by his side no matter what. His secret was safe with you even if his enemy came to torture you for his whereabouts you'd never say anything. To them you were a weak human, but your love for him was stronger than anything. You were ready to face anything with him and for him, your boyfriend from Exo planet. You heard a phone notification ring and you reached out for the phone without waking Minseok up. You realized it was his phone, but the message on the screen made your hands tremble as you read it.

"Xiumin hide, they know we're on Earth -Suho"

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jalapeno-princess · 4 years

Text

Take My Hand

Mark Tuan X Reader

Genre: Fluff with some angst

Word Count: 3.1k

Summary: Your parents have been planning your marriage to the Park family’s only son Jinyoung from the time you were born. You accepted the arrangement and came to terms with the fact that you were going to marry someone in order to strengthen your family’s companies. However, everything goes to shit when you fall in love with your coworker.

A/N: This is my first request! I’m sorry anon if this doesn’t meet your standards and if it’s all over the place. I’m still trying to get better with my writing. if you like this, feel free to send in more requests! This was honestly so rushed I’m sorry but please enjoy! Based on Run Away by Got7

You didn’t mean to fall in love with him, but it was inevitable. When you met him almost a year ago, you didn’t think he would be the one to capture your heart. Especially because you were engaged. Love was a foreign word. You considered it to be taboo. Your parents decided that you wouldn’t have a chance at having any idea of what love was before you could actually talk. They made an agreement with your fiancés parents even before either of you were born that the two of you were to get married once you both were of legal age to do so in order for both their companies to thrive. Or so they claimed.

Both your and Jinyoung’s father were the presidents of some of the biggest technology companies in the country. Your father was fully aware that having his only daughter marry the Park family’s only son would make your companies even stronger than they already were. This also meant more income coming in for both parties.

It wasn’t that you disliked your fiancé. Far from it actually. You and Jinyoung were civil, to the point where you would even consider yourselves friends.

However, even before learning what love was through Mark, you knew you didn’t love Jinyoung. You could never consider Jinyoung as anything more than a friend; the other half of a very unfortunate and unwanted arranged marriage.

Plus, the two of you only really interacted when your parents were around. You were never one to go against your parents wishes. As the only child, you did whatever you could in order to make your parents happy. You did everything they told you to do and constantly changed yourself in order to be a daughter they were proud of. That was until Mark walked in to your life.

Mark Tuan. The actual love of your life. Your best friend. The man who showed you what love was. Even if the two of you weren’t together for too long, you knew he was the man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. The feelings you had for him were indescribable. A smile would rise on your face at just the mere thought of him. Even if you knew the consequences of having an affair and what would happen if you didn’t go along with the marriage, you were willing to take the risk. Especially if it meant getting to be with Mark.

You had just become a kindergarten teacher when your paths collided. He had been teaching for a little over three years at the time and so the principal had him show you around. He was extremely handsome, there was no doubt about it. But it wasn’t just his attractive looks that had you hooked on him. It was his kindness, patience, optimism. The way his eyes would light up whenever you’d observe him teaching his students brought warmth to your cheeks. He was the perfect guy and pretty much everything you could want in a significant other.

The two of you began spending more and more time together as the months went by and soon you found yourself falling for him. It didn’t take long for you to realize that you had feelings for him. You found yourself missing him on the weekends and when spring break came around, one week felt like months away from him. But you didn’t know what this feeling was, nor did you want to act upon it because it was wrong. And you weren’t too sure how Mark felt about you.

Sure, he was extremely nice to you, and you would catch him sneaking glances at you from time to time. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Little did you know, he was just as head over heels for you as you were with him. He thought you were such an amazing teacher and he truly believed you were otherworldly. To Mark, you were an ethereal being; a sight for sore eyes and he found himself craving your presence all the time. Which is why he finally built the courage to ask you out on a date.

When he pulled you on the side one morning while the kids were at recess and asked to talk to you, you didn’t think much about it. That was until you saw the beautiful bouquet of sunflowers he was trying to hide behind his back and the pink tint on his cheeks as he nervously scratched the back of his neck. When he confessed his feelings for you, you were over the moon. However, constant red flags went off in your head. No matter how badly you wanted to go out with him, you knew you had no right to. Nor did you want to lead Mark on by saying yes, only for him to find out about your engagement if the two of you were to get serious. Yet, you found yourself agreeing.

Your first date together wasn’t something you could put in to words. He was such a gentleman and also quite the joker. You didn’t think you were capable of so much laughter. Growing up, you would hear some of your classmates talk about having “butterflies swarm around in their tummy” whenever they would talk to their crush. But you never quite understood what it meant. As you walked hand in hand with Mark, you now had a clue what they were talking about. Although, butterflies didn’t even come close to describing the feeling Mark gave you.

Dating Mark felt like a dream. Sometimes, you had a hard time believing that he was actually real. You fell in love with him faster than you’d like to admit. He made you feel things that you were afraid of at first. Only because you didn’t think someone like you, someone who’s parents had planned out her life before she was even born, would have the chance to do something you actually wanted. Not something your parents wanted you to do.

Your relationship with Mark was one of the only things in your life that you had control over and you were going to make the most of it. He sent fire to your bones with the slightest of touches. He would always find an excuse to come in to your classroom just to see you and sometimes, he would sneak a few kisses when your students weren’t looking. Mark was also very thoughtful. Seeing as how you would always get up early to go to work, he had a feeling you weren’t taking care of yourself by eating your meals. That’s why you would always find some sort of pastry on your desk almost every morning and the thought always made you blush.

As the months went by, things only got harder for you. The wedding planning had begun. Since you and Jinyoung were both legal adults with full time jobs, your parents felt that it was time the two of you finally tied the knot. You didn’t know what to do. You felt torn. It’s been six months since the two of you started seeing each other and Mark had yet to learn about your fiancé and how you were months away from getting married to another man.

The two of you had just finished a passionate night of love making when you decided it was time to let him know. The guilt was eating away at you and you could no longer hold it in anymore. Right as you were about to open your mouth and say something, he beat you to it.

“I’m in love with you.”

You were stunned to say the least. Hearing those words leave his pretty lips sent your body ablaze. You couldn’t breathe. It was all too much. When he noticed your blank stare, he felt his heart sink. Was he rushing things? Did he say it too early? Did you not feel the same?

“Mark I-“ he sadly shook his head.

“No, it’s fine if you don’t feel the same. I just..I couldn’t keep it in anymore. I’ve been wanting to say it for months now but I didn’t want to scare you away. I should’ve waited a little bit longer shouldn’t I?”

Seeing his adorable pout made you feel guilty. You’ve been wanting to hear him say those five words for the longest time now. But you knew it was wrong. How could you have let Mark fall in love with you knowing you could not completely give yourself to him the way he deserved? Mark deserved someone who wasn’t already tied down to someone else. Someone with less baggage. Someone who wasn’t already theoretically taken.

“I’m in love with you too Mark.” His frown quickly disappeared as a smile rose on to his handsome face. However, it was quick to disappear again when you said the next words.

“I’m engaged.” When you felt him release his grip from off your waist, you could feel tears brimming at your eyelids. As much as you wanted to relinquish in your newfound love, you couldn’t continue hiding from him. The two of you sat in silence for what felt like hours. You wanted to wait for his reaction to your sudden confession, yet the silence was killing you. All too soon, he stood up and picked up his phone, all the while putting some clothes on.

“Mark..Mark please listen to me..I can explain-“ He let out a sarcastic laugh and scoffed. When you saw his facial expression, another pang of hurt hit your chest. Sure, he looked pissed. He had every right to be. But you’ve been with him long enough to know that he was upset. You had just told your boyfriend that you were engaged to another man and you’ve been keeping it a secret from him for the duration of your relationship. What did you expect?

“Explain? What is there to explain? Is this a fucking game to you y/n? Is my heart a fucking toy? You’re engaged? That’s a joke right? You must be kidding me. How could you..why would you..I can’t even think right now. I can’t do this. I have to go.”

You immediately made your way towards him, reaching out for him but he was quick to push you away. Is this what heartbreak felt like? You were sure of it. It was a feeling you never wanted to experience, but here you were. Hurting the only person who has ever meant anything to you.

“Mark. Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I love you so much-“ he stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at you. It took every bone in his body not to reach out to you and pull you in to his embrace. If there was something Mark hated, it was seeing you cry.

One time, you were being evaluated by the superintendent because she wanted to see how your first year of being a teacher was going so far. At first, you thought things were going quite well. That was until she pulled you to the side and pointed out everything she thought you were doing wrong. When she left, you let everything out and started sobbing. You were so deep in to your crying session that you failed to notice Mark entering your classroom until you felt him pull you in to his chest as he whispered sweet nothings in to your ear. Seeing you so fragile and so weak broke his heart and he vowed to make sure you would never cry again. But you weren’t the victim this time.

“Love me huh. You love me? You’ve been hiding the fact that you have a fiancé from me y/n! You’re engaged! You’re getting married to someone who isn’t me and you failed to inform me about it. That’s some kind of twisted form of love don’t you think?” He roughly pinched the bridge of his nose and released a frustrated sigh. “I wish you would’ve said something earlier. I wouldn’t have let myself fall in love with someone whose practically unavailable. Damnit y/n! How could you do this to me? Fuck. What else are you hiding from me?”

The tears wouldn’t stop falling and you never hated yourself more than you did in that moment. You wanted nothing more than to apologize to him and explain to him the entire situation, but it was too late. The damage was done. He released one more sigh before punching the wall and storming out of his room. Once he left, you sank to the ground and continued your sobbing. You were worried at the thought of him driving while he was so frustrated, but you were the reason he was so upset. No matter how badly you wanted to call him and see if he was okay, you didn’t want to make matters worse.

After a while, you finally calmed down and decided to go to sleep. Since you were in Mark’s apartment, you didn’t feel right sleeping on his bed just in case he were to come home and want to go straight to sleep. Therefore, you made your way to the living room and flopped down on his couch. Soon, you found yourself falling asleep. You woke up in the middle of the night when you felt yourself being picked up and at first you were worried, until you saw him. Even in the dark, you could see the dried up tears and how red his eyes were.

Although you were still a bit sleepy, the thought of him crying made you tear up. Mark was never one to really cry, but when he did you know something was really bothering him.

“Mark-“ he softly placed his finger on your lips in attempts to prevent you from talking and continued carrying you to his room.

“The couch isn’t a good place to sleep. Your back will be sore in the morning.” You looked up at him and hesitantly grazed his cheek with your thumb. To both of your surprise, he leaned in to your palm and placed a soft kiss against it. Once you both entered his room, he placed you gently on his bed before taking his place next to you. You purposely turned the other way just in case he was still mad, but deep down you wanted nothing more than for him to hold you. When you felt him turn you around, a small smile rose upon your face and he brought his hands in to your hair.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve let you explain yourself. I was just upset-“ You shook your head in disagreement. This was one of the many reasons why you were so in love with the beautiful man lying in front of you. Even if you did wrong, he was the one apologizing and wanting to take care of you.

“You have every right to be. I’m so sorry Mark. I didn’t mean to keep this from you, I just..I don’t know. I wanted to be selfish. I didn’t mean to hurt you. And God knows the last thing I wanted to do was make you cry. I’m engaged. But not for the reasons that you think. I’m not cheating on him or anything. He and I..we’re not actually together. Our parents..they’ve been planning this arranged marriage between the two of us before we were both even born.” You released an exhausted sigh and took a while to breathe before continuing.

“Our fathers are both presidents of their own companies and they wanted us to get married in order for both their companies to become more successful. At first, I accepted it. I was always one to listen to what my parents wanted me to do with no questions asked. But then I met you. And I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to kiss you, hold you, be held by you, love you. I wanted to be yours. So I pushed the thought of the marriage to the back of my mind and put myself first for once. Loving you was the best decision I’ve ever made Mark Tuan.”

Your fingers made their way up to his face and you started absentmindedly tracing his features. “I never knew what love was until I met you. I was willing to risk it all for you, for us to be together. I didn’t care about the consequences that came with going against my parents wishes, especially because this arrangement is set in stone. All I care about is you. All I want, all I know, all I need..is you. I love you. With my entire being. I didn’t mean to keep this from you. I just didn’t want to lose you if you found out and decided you didn’t want to be with me. But that went to shit didn’t it?”

He let out a soft chuckle and you found yourself cuddling closer in to his body. Mark was your safe haven. You always felt so happy, so warm whenever he was around. He could make all your worries and problems go away by just a kiss on your lips. He was your own personal drug and you were at the point where you refused to live without him.

“I don’t know what to do Mark. We’re supposed to be getting married here soon. I don’t want to marry him. I want to be with you.” He brought one hand down to your waist and started caressing your hip bone while tracing your lips with the other one.

“Do you love me?” You quickly nodded. If there was something you were confident in, it was the love you had for Mark.

“More than anything. You know that.” He lowered himself in order to be eye level with you before placing a chaste kiss on the corner of your lip.

“You wanna be with me?”

“For the rest of my life.”

“Do you trust me?”

“With every bone in my body.”

“Would you do something for me then?”

You looked up at him in curiosity before humming in agreement. “Anything.”

He placed his forehead against yours and sighed. “Run away with me.”

The idea of running away from your family upset you. It wasn’t that they mistreated you, nor did you have negative feelings for your family. Sometimes you wish your parents were cold towards you so that the idea of running away and leaving everything behind didn’t bother you. But you did have negative feelings for the arrangement and the thought of running away in order to spend the rest of your days with Mark sent shivers down your spine.

Just like they did all those months ago, red flags started going off in your mind. However, yet again, you found yourself putting yourself first. Looking at Mark, you knew you would do anything and everything he’d ask you to. A part of you didn’t want to upset your parents by not going through with the wedding, but you refused to marry a man you weren’t in love with for the sake of both of your companies. Your dad would just have to find another way of increasing business.

Sure, you were afraid of losing your family, but the man who’s arms were currently wrapped tightly around your waist as if he was afraid to lose you was all the family you needed. Which is why it came as no shock when you found yourself nodding against his lips as he pulled you in to a passionate kiss.

“God y/n, I’m so in love with you. I don’t know where we’ll go or what we’ll do or where we live. All I know is as long as I’m with you, I have everything I need. I’m going to take good care of you baby. I promise.”

#got7 imagines #got7 drabbles #got7 scenarios #got7 mark #mark tuan #mark tuan fluff #mark tuan imagines #mark tuan got7 #kpop imagines #i miss mark so much

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singeramg · 4 years

Text

Midnight: Chapter 12

Pairing: Clark Kent/ Metahuman! Black! OFC

Rating: Overall- E

A/n: You guys thought I was done for the night? Nope! Seeing as this chapter is a little shorter I wanted to get this one out because we are about to start getting into the meat of the story even more so and plus I have no ability to wait lol

CATCH UP HERE!

Midnight: Chapter 12

“MAMA!!”

We all turned our head towards the car. I smile softly at Martha and walk over to the car. Meanwhile Clark ushers her into the house.

I opened the door to the backseat where Kalen sat with tears in his eyes.

“Hey it’s okay Little man we are here. You want to go inside?”

“Where dad?” He asks me with a small voice.

“He is inside too. Come on let’s get you out of here.”

I unbuckled his seat belt and helped him out of the car, where he reached up for my hand, looking around at the vast land in front of us. He locks in on the small swing hanging from the nearby tree. He tries to pull me toward it, but I don’t let him get far despite his strength.

“Baby I will bring you back out here later okay?”

I could feel the moment Clark must have told Martha, because a large dose of shock hits me as we climb the steps.

“YOU HAVE A WHAT CLARK JOSEPH KENT?!”

I stifle a laugh when she breaks out his full name. I tap on the white screen door despite the front door to the house being open and me being able to see the stairs, not wanting to enter until I was sure everything is okay. I hear Clark tell his mom

“We can both explain everything, but first we would like you to meet your Grandson. Can we bring him in?”

“Do you even have to ask me that Clark? Get them in here now.”

I can feel the disbelief and anger roll off of her in waves.

Clark comes to the front door and Kalen yelps in excitement at seeing his father.

“Dad-dy you here!!!!”

He motions for Clark to pick him up and of course he obliges, giving him squeeze that I’m sure was like picking up a feather delicately.

“There’s my tough boy!”

Kalen is radiating pure happiness and love which balances out the confusion, fear and anger coming from Martha in the kitchen. Clark shoots me a look that says “Be prepared” and I follow him into the kitchen where Martha is waiting. She becomes filled with Love and excitement the second she lays eyes on her newfound grandchild.

“Ohh my goodness Clark, he looks so much like you at that age, but even more adorable.”

Ever the shy one, Kalen tucks his face into Clark’s neck, afraid to interact with someone he doesn’t know. I walk up next to them, touching his back again, then moving up to rub the curls in his hair.

“Sweetheart can you say hi to this nice lady for mama?”

“Hi.”

It’s quick and short, as his small hand grasps at Clark’s collar. I hated that my son got so nervous at meeting new people and I supposed it was my fault because I had spent so much time trying to hide him from the world, he hadn’t had much experience around people.

“Thank you baby, can you look at Mrs. Kent? She is really important to your dad and we wanna make him happy too right?”

He nods and un-buries his face slowly, peering nervously through dark lashes. Martha lights up again at seeing his face again.

“Hi sweetie. I am your father’s mother. I guess that makes me your grandma. What’s your name cutie?”

“Kalen Jo-esph Smith. You are really my grandma?”

She nods as Kalen smiles in acceptance of the new woman. He doesn’t try to go to her, only pushes at Clark’s hands, too young to know that it’s futile. Clark gets the hint though and sits him down.

“Do you have any toys Grandma?”

Her breath hitches in her chest as she tears up at him calling her Grandma. Kalen does not realize the magnitude of what he just called her and instead waits for an answer to his question. I look down at him, and try to distract him from Martha as tears begin to roll down her face.

“Kalen baby, I don’t know if Mrs. Martha has toys but how about you take your bag and color her a pretty picture okay.”

“But mommy I wanna go outside and play.”

Clark steps over.

“Hank is probably due for a walk anyway, How about I take the both outside? While you two catch up.”

If I thought it would hurt him more than me I would punch him in his handsome face as he calls for Hank the black and white collie dog that had been up until this point lounging in the living room. Kalen leaves out the Kitchen with his father and I am left as the sole target of Martha Kent’s ire, but in a surprise move her face softens.

“Gia have a seat.”

I listen with the quickness as she goes over to the stove taking the kettle from the top.

“Still drink more sugar in your tea than actual tea?”

I laugh slightly as she brings the kettle over to the table along with mugs, then finding some tea bags, and her sugar bowl. The kitchen was filled with silence as we made our respective cups and took a few sips. Finally Martha fixes a stare on me, I drink more, and get enough courage to look her in the eyes.

“So did you know at Clark’s funeral that you were carrying his child?”

“No. Honestly I had no clue and it wasn’t until I packed up my life and moved that I even realized it. By then however I had cut all contact.”

“But once you found out, you never came to me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why? Gia I literally helped nurse you back to health. You were like a daughter to me. You cannot honestly believe I wouldn’t have helped you. Especially with my Grandchild.”

“I don’t know.”

“Gia Delilah.”

I sighed.

“Mrs. Kent I...”

“What did I just say about the Mrs. Kent?”

She takes another sip out of her white mug, I follow suit. She looked at me again and I couldn’t lie or in a more specific case I couldn’t withhold the truth anymore.

“Martha, I was being selfish. I left Metropolis because everything and everyone reminded me of Clark, and when I saw this little ball of flesh in my hands that came out of me that was born of him, I realized that Kalen was all I had left of Clark. I wasn’t his mother, his coworker, his girlfriend... hell at end I wasn’t even his friend. I was nothing at all to anyone when he died. Not even to him.”

I can feel tears fall down my face, but I can’t acknowledge them by wiping them off. I feel pity pour off of her in droves, which just makes me feel worse. The feeling of heartbreak intermingles in with the pity, and it only amplifies my own. I compartmentalized everything, shouting down the incoming emotions.

“At the end of the day, as crazy as this sounds. Not telling anyone was the only way I could think to protect my son from what happened to Clark, coming back to come after him. That night I watched Clark die was honesty one of the worst nights in the short slash long history of my life. When I figured out I was having Clark’s child I vowed in no uncertain terms that I could not lose my child too.”

“Oh sweetheart these last few years have not been easy on you have they?”

Martha reaches over the table rubbing my hand. I shook my head no as I looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

“Look at me Gia.”

Watery Brown meets Brown.

“I perfectly understand how you feel as a mother the day Clark began to show his powers and all, I feared every single time he left the house. Despite the fact that my son is nearly invulnerable I feared the world for him. And the day that the world took my baby boy away and every day after than I wondered if I had done enough to protect him. Could I have saved him? I have even fooled myself once or twice into thinking I could lock him away. But then I think ‘what good would it do?’ To keep others away from the wonderful man that he is. I had to let others in, and guess what I’m glad I did. It has brought me so much more than just him now. I promised you a long time ago that you would always have somewhere to go and someone that loves you. I didn’t just lose Clark, Gia I lost you too.”

She cries and I stand up and hug her. I never realized all of the damage did when I left. I thought I was some token relic of Clark’s super heroism. I was reluctant to think I meant anything to anybody. I loved Mrs. Martha like she was my mother too, but I thought she always took to Lois more so than me. She was the daughter that Martha never had, it honestly didn’t occur to me that my presence would be missed by her, not when she gripped Lois’s hand so tightly at the funeral. It seemed I had been wrong.

“I am sorry Martha. I should have come to you, should have told you where I was going. I certainly should have told you about Kalen that was foul. Will you please forgive me for that and know that I will not purposefully keep him away from you again?”

She hugs me back tightly.

“I forgave you the moment you stepped out that car for leaving. As for Kalen, I understand, doesn’t mean I’m still not a little ticked off at you for not telling me and honestly disappointed in my son for deceiving Lois. That is not the man I raised him to be.”

I sighed and walked over to the window that showed Clark and Kalen playing with the dog in the yard. I smiled to myself and Clark looked up at me with a smile on his face.

“You have nothing to fear Martha. Clark was not two timing Lois and as cliché as it sounds Kalen was an “on break” baby. He and I weren’t in a secret relationship behind Lois’ back, I couldn’t do that to her. Without too many details Clark made it clear a long time ago that his heart was with Lois. I respected that always.”

“I know you did. You’ve been the self sacrificing type since I met you.”

My head whips in her direction quickly.

“Meaning?”

“If you don’t know what I am trying to say then you are not ready to hear it.”

I pondered her words, then not making sense in the context of our conversation. I was mostly just happy that she wasn’t mad at me about this anymore.

“Don’t overthink it Gia. Let’s make the boys some lemonade and you can tell me more about my grandson...”

*A few Hours Later*

Clark and Kalen had been having a ball all day, with Clark doing some of the most domestic tasks around the farm, but letting Kalen help him. I could feel Kalen’s energy waning and I figured he would be down for his dinner and a nap soon enough. I took a look at my clock and realized I needed to head home so that I could get ready for my date.

Martha now had Kalen in the kitchen helping her make cookies to my sons delight. So I called to Clark barely above a whisper as I stood on the wrap-around porch. He comes looking sheepish as we hadn’t much time to talk alone since earlier, he wouldn’t come out from the house.

“I won’t chew you out for making me face your mother alone you can come outside.”

The screen door opens and closes and he stands next to me.

“Gia I was listening for trouble the whole time.” He offers a way to save himself. He didn’t need to, I wasn’t mad at him. I was actually grateful because as nervous as I wouldn't have had the opportunity to clear the air with Martha as I had if he would have been there.

“Oh I know, that’s the only reason I didn’t chew you out. I called you because I actually need to head back to the manor. I need to get ready for my date, I am positive that Kalen will not leave this house without his cookies, and I think Martha is not ready for him to go. I can take the car home if you want to fly back with Kalen later, after he is sleeping.”

Clark thinks it over and shakes his head.

“I would like to take him on his first flight when he is awake. Plus I can never guarantee when some government idiots won’t think I’m a threat and try to shoot me down.”

I laughed remembering that time that had happened to him one day while he was a few states over. He came back to the farm covered in soot and mud seeing as they shot him down into a swamp. That had been hilarious. Turned out it had all been a big mistake by the army and they apologized repeatedly but he was always listening for a stray bomb and tried to fly high enough that his impact should he make one not leave anyone is danger.

“Well I guess I can call a car...”

“Or I could fly you home.”

I looked at him apprehensively.

“I don’t know...”

“It will be fine. I’ve flown with you in my arms plenty of times. You at least can protect yourself if needed.”

I really didn’t have much of an option.

“Fine I guess. Let me just let Kalen know I have to leave and that you will bring him to me.”

He concedes and after we let Martha and Kalen know we were leaving (the latter of which did not care because we didn’t have food for him) we went back out to the field.

“Are you ready?”

He asks me. I wonder if he wants me to get in his back and go to move but he just moves too.

“Yes, but bend down so I can get on your back.”

“I hate when people are on my back when I fly. Guess I’m just going to have to do this.”

He shoots me a mischievous smirk down moving forward and grabbing the back of my legs and arm around my waist, making my arms instinctively go around his neck as carries me cradle style.

“Waah geez Clark can’t you warn a girl before you do that?”

He laughs and looks down at my face smiling before saying

“Eh... I could but where’s the fun in that ?”

Then he takes off causing me to yelp and push my face into his pectoral muscle and grip him tighter as he laughs again into the night...

A/n: So what did you think? Who thought Mrs. Kent was going to strangle Gia and Clark? I thought about it but I need them in the story going forward.

#henry cavill #henry cavill x black ofc #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill x ofc #SUPERMAN X OFC #Superman

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meganshinsou-tm · 5 years

Text

Shared Walls. (m)

↳ chapter fourteen: starcrossed

❧ genre: pro-hero shouto, coworkers to lovers, happy ending

❧ chapter warnings: sappy confession, unprotected sex, first time together,

[multi-chap masterlist] [previous chapter - next chapter]

"So, the carpet doesn't exactly match the drapes huh," you chuckled playing with the top of the water.

Shouto quirked a red brow as he tilted his head to the side. His lips were busy kissing your scars as you sat between his legs with your back to him.

"What's that?" He asked, completely aloof.

"It means the hair on your head doesn't match the hair between your legs Roki."

"Oh, yeah I guess it doesn't. I like to think it's due to science I guess. I've read articles on experiments done where an animals fur changes color due to the environment it's exposed to. If they're in a hotter area the fur is a darker color and if it's a colder area, then their fur is a lighter color. I mean it makes sense to me at least."

You hummed and nodded, the theory did make sense. Considering his cold side had white hair and his hot side had crimson red hair. His pubic area is always covered and warm so that would explain his matching crimson red hair down there as well. Not that you really cared, but you had always wondered if his pubic hair was split colored or not, now you knew!

"Can I start calling you fire crotch," you snickered.

"No, no you cannot." Shouto pinched your side making you jump and laugh.

He leaned back and rested against the cool porcelain of the tub. Your head turned when you felt the warmth of his body disappear, he softly smiled at you as his body stretched, knees bending. His elbows rested on the edges of the tub and he asked you to come closer. Happily taking his invitation you swam closer to him and crawled into his lap. To be fully naked together for the first time, it wasn't awkward or weird at all, you were comfortable and seemed as if this was a normal thing. Shouto placed his hands on your hips as you looked down at him admiring his face more than usual. He quirked a red brow at you making you chuckle.

"Can I do something," you asked.

"Uh – sure."

You submerged one of your hands under the water and brought it back up, the warm liquid streaming through your fingers. Reaching the wet hand out to Shouto's hair, you combed his red tresses over and intermixed them with his white ones, styling the hair completely to the side and revealing his face clearly, along with his tarnished skin. His eyes looked away from you and you could tell he was feeling self-conscious as he tried to turn his face to the left and give you his undamaged side but you cupped his cheek and made him look at you.

When you had caressed his scar before that one time at the agency he didn't seem so embarrassed about it, maybe it was because his hair still hung in his face to hide the majority of it. His sudden nervousness made you think of all the times he constantly showered your own scars with unconditional love, always kissing and touching them. Before meeting Todoroki, those scars were the thing you hated most about yourself, they were hideous and held nothing but self-loathing. Shouto however made it his job to show them the love that you starved them of. While he wished you never had to go through what you did to get them, he wouldn't ever wish them away. And you felt just the same, you didn't know the story behind how he got his scar, you never asked to know and just figured he'd tell you on his own terms. But in the meantime you figured if he could learn to make you love your own scars then you could do the same for him.

Leaning forward you cupped his face in your hands and placed a soft peck to the bottom of his scar, trailing more kisses all over, covering every inch of the tarnished skin. Shouto let out a soft and relaxed breath as you pressed your forehead to his and brushed his cheek with your thumb.

"You know, it's strange how our scars are on the same side. Maybe Haru is right."

Body peeling from Shouto, you sat back in his lap, looking at him sweetly and letting your hands rest on his chest. He took them in his own and looked at you with a half smile.

"Right about what sweetheart?"

"About us being these star crossed lovers. I never really believed in stuff like that or these 'red strings of fate' but it's kind of hard not to when you think about it. I ended up getting hired by you, we happen to live right next to each other, and again, our scars. It's like the universe knew I needed saving but also knew I wouldn't accept that so easily, so it literally sent me to you, to an actual hero. No matter how bad it gets you refuse to leave me on my own, you're so hellbent on protecting me like it's your purpose in life."

Shouto smiled and brought you hands to his lips, kissing your palms, each fingertip and the backs of them.

"That's because it is (Y/N). Since before I was even conceived, my purpose was decided for me by others, I came into the world with my life already planned out. I didn't gain my own free will until a few years ago, even then I still went along with whatever plan was laid before me. Then you came along and all this shit happened and since that god awful day in the alley, I decided my purpose, on my own."

"Don't you want to have a better purpose in life though? Like happiness or something, not being my bodyguard for the rest of our lives."

Shouto dropped your hands and cupped your face in his and rolled his eyes.

"You are my happiness! As long as you're alive and safe, I get to see your face, hear your voice and touch your skin. That makes me happy. You're so clueless sometimes you know, but I love you with my body and soul and wouldn't change it for the world."

Your lips pouted and you could feel your heart soaring, tears threatened to fall and Shouto noticed. He leaned closer and kissed the corners of your eyes, making you smile. Pleased with the reaction he peppered sweet kisses all over your face until you were giggling and trying to push him away. Your own hand cupped his face again and brushed his red brow.

"I love you too Shouto!"

The hero smiled and kissed your lips sweetly before he laid back again, pulling you down with him and letting your cheek rest on his chest. His arms wrapped around and held you, your bodies melting together and breathing in sync. Shouto was blissfully happy at the moment and wanted to just savor having you in his arms as you were. One of his hands played with your hair and in no time the mixture of being weightless in the body of warm water and the security you felt within Todoroki's arms had you drifting off to sleep.

Shouto woke to the sunlight softly streaming through your bedroom blinds. Rubbing his eyes he sighed and rubbed your arm that was wrapped around him as you cuddled him from behind. After you passed out in the tub the night before he carefully removed him and you from the bath. You were in and out of consciousness as he dried your body off, falling over a few times and him chuckling as he had to quickly catch you. Eventually he was able to get you into bed and under the covers, both of you quickly falling asleep in no time.

He hummed and turned over to face you, making you groan and whine out from the movement, Shouto came to learn that you weren't exactly a morning person either during the past few weeks. The hero smiled and kissed your head while he pulled you to his chest, wrapping his arm around you as your arm quickly wrapped around him again. You hummed contently and wrapped a leg around his waist, your hips pressing against him and his still bare lower half against your warm thighs. He buried his face in your hair to muffle the groan that left his throat and he tried to calm his breathing.

After taking a few moments he was back to normal and started to play with your hair as the other hand rubbed the back of your shoulders. While you slept he thought to himself about the night before, he knew you had forgiven him for how far he pushed you and were pretty much over it but the unknown still gnawed at him. He needed to know what had happened to get you to such a point.

"I can't ... I don't want you to die."

Your words replayed over. Shouto could deduce just from that much that whatever happened, the safety of his own life was used to shut you up. But you should've known better than to think that some measly little threat would have him backing down. He's already declared that he'd do anything in his power to keep you safe, even if that meant giving his own life.

Mindlessly he placed a kiss to your head again and pulled you in closer, holding onto you like a parent comforting a child.

"Then again, if I did end up dying for you, you'd probably blame yourself for it," he thought.

Of course when he promised to live for you he meant it, but right now he realized just how much that promise meant and what it entailed. Even after all this madness is dealt with, he'll still have to make sure that even in his everyday mundane duties he comes out living. Leaving you behind, all alone, that would be the biggest betrayal he could ever commit. Sighing, Shouto pressed his cheek to your hair and closed his eyes.

"I promise, I will live for you (Y/N). I'll never leave you," he vowed silently.

Your face nuzzled into Shouto's chest as you tried to slowly wake up, making him pull his head away and look at you. You moaned and groaned, fidgeting around and rocking back and forth. The male laughed and brushed your hair back to reveal your face, your (e/c) eyes slowly fluttered open, well struggled open. Your brows rising and falling as you adjusted to the light.

"Either I drowned in the tub and I'm in heaven, or we're in the bed," you said with a groggy voice and smacked your lips, pouting them as your head fell back.

"We're in bed gorgeous, it's a close second to heaven though," Shouto replied and cupped your cheek.

"That's true, being that I have my own guardian angel and all."

Todoroki chuckled and placed a kiss to your tired lips. Your hand came up and rested on his that cupped your face. You kissed back and hummed as his lips felt like heaven as well. They were feather-like yet strong and tasted like nothing else. His tongue swept across your bottom lip making butterflies stir in your stomach. Smiling you parted your lips and Shouto quickly took the invitation. His tongue slowly inched in and massaged yours, it dominated as always but instead of being hasty and sloppy, he was slow and tender. He savored how your mouth tasted and slowly breathed you in through his nose. Smirking he then made his tongue ice cold, causing your eyes to shoot open and pull away, but his hand moved to the back of your head and kept you in place as he quickly warmed it again. His own eyes were open and watching as yours went from wide to half lidded, they softened and your brows relaxed as you moaned into his mouth. The temperature change made your skin tingle and the way his eyes looked at you made your body become inflamed.

Deciding to pull a move of your own, you pressed your chest to his and rolled your hips against his. His eyes narrowed at you as your lips and tongues continued to move against each other. Soon Shouto had rolled you over onto your back as he laid on his side, propped up on his elbow. He placed a knee between your legs as you wrapped you leg around him. You could feel how he was growing harder and it brushed against your thigh. His hand trekked from your cheek and down to the side of your neck. Finally he broke the kisses and looked down on you.

Your cheeks were pink and flushed, lips swollen and parted as you panted. Your eyes full of lust yet smiling. His thumb brushed the edge of your jaw and your bottom lip. You smiled and kissed the pad of it. He then remembered how during your first kiss together you teased him with your own thumb. He smirked and dipped the digit between your lip. Giggling you took it between your teeth and rolled it. Shouto's eyes watched you closely, drinking in every small detail of your expression. You used your tongue to encase his thumb in your mouth, lips wrapping around it and slowly sucking. The hero started to take deeper breaths and licked his lips, his eyes slowly becoming more and more full of lust and want.

Sighing he removed his thumb from your mouth and ran it down the underside of your jaw. "Your mouth is one of the many things I love about you."

Your hand latched around Shouto's wrist as you looked up at him from under your lashes. "Yeah? What else do you love?"

"Would you rather me tell you or point them out?"

You chewed on your lip and thought it over with a smirk, "How about you point them out with kisses."

A smile crossed Shouto's face as he kissed your lips one last time and proceeded to kiss both of your eyelids softly making you chuckle.

"I love your eyes and how bright they always are. I also love how you don't wear your heart on your sleeve, but in your eyes. I can always tell how you're feeling or what you're thinking just by looking at them."

You smiled and nodded not wanting to interrupt Shouto's demonstration. Next he kissed both your cheeks, lightly biting them with his teeth. The contact made you sigh and get chills. The hero pulled away again and looked at how they changed color. "I love your cheeks and how they can turn many shades of red and pink. They also give away how you're feeling. Your entire face in fact gives you away."

You rolled your eyes but didn't protest, he was right. Your face always got you in trouble more than your smart mouth. His face lowered and kissed your throat along to your windpipe. He wanted more of a reaction out of you so he breathed icy cold air onto your skin. In return he was given a drawn out hum.

"I love your neck just because it's always sensitive to my touch and can make these beautiful sounds come out. I also love the voice that comes from within, it always soothes me especially when you sing."

Shouto’s hand glided up your stomach and flattened on your ribs right underneath your breast that was closest to him. His eyes looked into yours as if asking for your permission to move further, you smiled.

"Well go on Shouto, what else?"

Todoroki lightly smiled and his hand encased the mound and lightly squeezed, you sighed as your eyes got heavy. His thumb brushed over your nipple and made you whimper, Shouto smirked and lowered his head closer to the hardening bud. He blew cold air onto it and you breathed in sharply. The hero dragged his lips across your cold skin before taking your nipple into his mouth and sucking lightly. Instantly you moaned as his hot mouth contrasted with the freezing cold sensation. Back arching you as you squeezed his thigh between yours. Your reactions and sounds were driving him wild but Shouto wanted to keep up his slow and steady show. His hand squeezed your breast as his tongue swirled, then his removed you from his mouth and kissed your breast one last time. Next, Shouto moved from your side and between your legs, hovering over you.

One hand placed on the side of your head holding him up as he moved on to the opposite breast and showed it the same attention. You purred and squirmed beneath him, his eyes looked up to watch every flinch of your face and the way your lips looked as you whimpered out his name. He could feel himself growing harder, wondering if he would even be able to last much longer with his teasing. Shouto decided it was time to move on and gave one last flat tongued lick to your nipple before it was rolled between his fingers. You looked down to him, panting and licking your lips like crazy. He had never seen this look on your before and it quickly became his favorite.

"Mmm, I don't thing I need to explain why I love these huh?"

"Oh shut up Roki!" You laughed trying to catch your breath and pushed his head back with your fingertips.

He smiled and placed kisses across your abdomen. Reaching your ribs his teeth bit down on them roughly causing you to flinch and cry out with a moan. Shouto's hands gripped your hips and squeezed them as he placed numerous bite marks and hickeys on your rib-cage. The hero had been dying to mark you but he wasn't a fan of placing the marks all over your neck like some trashy display. These marks weren't for anyone but him, he'd figure out a classier way to let the world know you were his.

"Shouto~"

The man looked up to see you staring at him with pleading eyes and pouted lips, your hands reached out to him and he came back up. You cupped his face and his hand wrapped around your wrist as he brushed your brow and looked at your eyes, you wanted something in particular and he knew what it was. His face inching closer he kissed you, making your body melt and hum.

"Shouto, I love you."

"I love you too (Y/N)."

"Touch me more, please. I need you to touch me more."

Todoroki nodded and his lips collided with yours again, with more force this time. As you feverishly made out, your leg wrapped around his waist and pulled his hips closer as your rolled yours against him. You could feel how hard he was and how bad he was yearning for you. He had yet to discover just how badly you wanted him in return, the arousal literally pooling between your thighs and your heart racing at an inhuman speed. Shouto groaned as his erection pressed against your skin causing him to bite down on your lip.

His hand trailed down your body and slowed once it reached right between your legs. You nodded during the kiss, knowing he was waiting. With your permission Shouto slipped two fingers between your lips, groaning and breaking the heated kiss once he felt just how wet you were.

"Excited much sweetheart?" He smirked.

"You have no room to talk Five Pee Pee Man!"

Heterochromatic eyes glared at you once the name left your lips, Shouto was going to be gentle and slow but he quickly changed his mind. Without warning his shoved his two fingers inside making you grip at his shoulder and cry out. He started to pump in and out slowly while his thumb rubbed your clit. Your head fell back against the pillow and your eyes screwed shut as you whimpered, fingers digging into his skin. He stopped his fingers, making you whine and look at him.

"Keep your eyes on me or else we start all over again." His tone was casual and his expression nonchalant. You blushed and nodded, not saying a word.

With a smirk Shouto started up again, his fingers gliding in and out of you with ease as his thumb drew circles on your clit again. Your eyes wanted to close but Shouto made a 'uh-uh' and you snapped back to attention. You choked out a sound between a giggle and moan as he curled his fingers inside of you and pumped faster. Your chest started to heave and burn from how hard you panted, staring at the hero you began to whimper and moan even more. You could feel yourself edging closer and closer until out of nowhere until you felt a sudden burst of cold inside of you making you unravel in an instant.

"Ah – Shouto~," you cried out bucking your hips up as you came around his fingers.

Todoroki groaned as felt your walls clenching around his digits and felt a rush of warmth. Removing his fingers he brought them up and smiled at how they glistened with your essence. He sucked them both clean and groaned at the taste, he wanted so badly to have more but his dick was throbbing from so much of the slow build up. Your noises, faces, just everything about you had him craving you. His lips crashed with yours again, hungrily but soft. His arm wrapped underneath you and brought you closer to his chest.

Shouto felt like you couldn't be close enough, he wanted to be one with you, he needed to be. He needed to fully make you his and show you how much he loved you. Breaking the kiss the two-toned male pressed his forehead to yours, panting heavily and staring into your eyes. You looked back and smiled placing your hands on his face, as you suddenly felt an overwhelming happiness flood through you.

"(Y/N), I can't - I need to –"

"Please," you quickly interjected, already knowing what he was going to say.

Nodding, Shouto kissed you again as your arms started to wrap around his neck. His hand grabbed onto his cock and he lined himself up with your entrance. You sighed feeling the tip of him rub up and down. Your eyes had taken in the size of him beforehand once he was fully erect and he was more than decently sized. Mentally you prepared yourself and breathed deeply.

"Tell me if I'm hurting you at all, okay?"

You nodded and he slowly pushed himself inside of you, inch by inch stretching you out. Your cry became a drawn out and low moan as he finally bottomed out in you. His hand on the side of your head clutched the pillow beneath you and he grit his teeth. You were so warm and so tight around him, and the feeling of finally being inside of you was amazing. He felt as if he were made to be with you, perfectly molded to fit your body in every way. You were his star crossed lover.

"Shouto, please," you begged letting a hand fall from his body and beside you.

He nodded and slowly thrust his hips into yours, his eyes never closing or leaving your face. With each slow and hard pump, your breathing would hitch and sound like little yelps. It was adorable to him and he smiled leaning closer and peppering your neck with kisses. As your hands cupped the sides of Shouto's neck he hovered over, his eyes watched attentively, taking in every face of pleasure and bliss you made, how your lips pursed and parted with each pant.

"You're so beautiful like this," he groaned out as you started to tighten around him.

"Mmm, Shouto faster please!"

Licking his lips the hero did as instructed and thrusted in and out with more force and with a quicker pace. You bounced back and forth and begged to be kissed. Shouto fulfilled the wish and kissed you once again, he removed your hand from his neck and pinned it down against the pillow lightly as his fingers interlocked with yours. Your entire body was burning up as he gave you everything he had. His own grunts and groans filled your ears as he broke the kiss and pressed his cheek to yours.

Your free hand ran through his soft locks and tugged. The knot in your stomach was coiling up and your legs started to tremble around him. His right hand hooked under your knee, lifting your thigh and helping him go even deeper making you cry out as he hit that one spot perfectly with each pump. Shouto's breathing became faster and his pace became more primal. Your hand squeezed his harder as you felt an extreme warmth on the leg he held, it didn't hurt but intensified your pleasure.

"Oh, Shouto!"

"Look at me (Y/N), I want to see those pretty eyes."

You obeyed and stared into Shouto's beautiful and blissful eyes. The look he gave had you becoming putty underneath him. Both of your breathing started to quicken and he started to fuck you faster, slowly losing control over himself as the sounds of skin slapping and your own noises flooded his mind. He grit his teeth and buried his face in the crook of your neck knowing with only a few more thrusts he'd be done. Your hands gripped each other tightly, his palm getting cold and warm again and his other hand starting to slowly sear your skin.

"Shouto, c-cum with me - please baby," you begged breathlessly in his ear and bit down on his lobe.

"Ah~ fuck," he hissed out between gritted teeth as his fingers dug into your burning skin and he gave you one last deep and rough thrust.

It was enough to make you both unravel together. Your knuckles turning white from how tight you held on. A wanton and beautiful moan left your lips and filled Shouto's ears and your walls clenched and milked him as he rode out his high inside of you. You sighed and bit on his cheek when you felt his hot cum filling and spilling out mixed with your own. You panted together and Shouto pressed his forehead to yours. Both laying there in silence, nothing but your heartbeats and breathing sounding off.

Once Shouto caught his breath he slowly removed himself and kissed your cheek and sat back on his feet. He looked over the skin of your leg that he had slightly burned, it was red but not blistered and he let out a sigh. You smiled and held out a hand which he took and pressed a kiss to the inside of your palm.

"I'm sorry (Y/N), I didn't mean to hurt you. Come on, let me clean you up then I'll make us some food."

You smiled and sat up on your knees, crawling to him as he got up and stood at the edge of the bed. Your arms wrapped around his neck and he rubbed your sides while you kissed each other. "You didn't hurt me Shouto, I like a little pain with my pleasure!"

Todoroki smirked and placed his hands under your ass and lifted you up, making your legs wrap around him. "You shouldn't have told me that."

You laughed as he carried you to the bathroom, your head resting on his shoulder, "I love you Shouto, always."

"I love you too (Y/N), forever."

#shared walls #shouto todoroki #shouto todoroki x reader #bnha #mha #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction

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catsitta · 4 years

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Handle With Care - Post Mortem

When I first started writing Handle with Care, it was going to be 100 chapters long and there were a few key differences in the plot. These changes occurred generally slowly as I gained a better understanding of my world and characters, while some shifted dramatically due to my feeling they were thematically inappropriate for the story I wanted to tell. So with the conclusion of the main fic and its various continuations, I decided to detail a little more in how I approached a 100 word daily drabble fic, and why certain events occurred or why certain characters played certain roles. This post is mostly for the folks out there who like all the nitpicky background information that goes around in the author’s head while writing.

100 WORDS A DAY

In choosing to write 100 words a day, I gave myself both a goal and a challenge. 100 words is often little more than a paragraph. Maybe two. I often found myself writing on my commute into work or during lunch on my phone, because while 1000 might feel overwhelming, 100 is not. Right? Yet some days I found just enough time to type up 100 words between work and other commitments (October was interesting, since I did Inktober and well as Promptober, on top of my usual working schedule). But the most challenging part was not writing 100 words. Writing 100 words was easy. Writing ONLY 100 words was where things became tricky.

In my original intentions for this fic, scenes were not supposed to span over multiple chapters. Each drabble was to be a self contained snapshot of time. But as the story became more emotionally centered, I shifted away from that idea and focused more on making each drabble exist as a chapter. Chapters can have cliffhangers. But they need to communicate a thought. An idea. A feeling. With 100 words a day, my objective became: Progress the story in a meaningful way or communicate some important information to the audience. With 100 words, there was often little room for getting lost in details.

Now one my ask again, why 100?

100 is the number of words in the definition of a drabble. 100, again, is an easy minimum to reach. But when you are used to writing 2-3k word chapters, flexibility is minimal and you have to decide what needs to be said, and what you were saying to fill space. And I found it a wonderful learning experience and valuable exercise as a writer. I’ve attempted to start drabble fics in the past, but rarely did they ever get past a couple chapters before I would get frustrated by the limitations. Because let’s be honest. Writing a 25,000 word story, 100 words at a time, is a test of one’s patience as much as anything else.

THE STORY

Handle with Care was originally supposed to be pure romantic comedy with just a splash of darker undertones in the background for color. But as much as I love fluffy comedies, as I wrote, there were conflicts that I didn’t feel should be glossed over. As some of my long term readers and commenters will know, I’m terribly fond of bitter with my sweet. Angst with my fluff. The bad things in life make the good all the brighter. And conflict drives a story forward.

So what changed?

There were many different variations on how Sans ended up raising Papyrus alone. Some took our overbearing science dad, Gaster, and outright cast him in the role of a villain as opposed to a mid story antagonist. Straight into, why aren’t you in jail, territory. Others barely featured Gaster at all, as he was disconnected from Sans after his son didn’t end up pursuing a ‘productive’ career in the sciences. There were even a couple considered drafts where Papyrus and Edge did have another parent and the reason Sans was distrusting and cagey was because of a broken Soulbond. (And for those of you who were Web/Sans theorists, well, there was a version where you weren’t wrong! Sans started an affair off with Web after the LOADs began as a sort of ‘regain control of his life’ thing.)

What may interest folks is that the story was originally not supposed to end with a wedding and a house in the planning. The happy ending was going to be less sugar and more height of the moment drama. Around the time Frisk intimidates Red into silence, she was going to instead start him on the path to discovering answers. No confessions from Sans. No journals. Instead Red goes on the hunt for clues and gets fragments of the story from different people, especially Gaster and Frisk. It was all quite emotional, but the pacing felt off, and I felt it would be more rewarding if Sans grew as a character and he was the one to confess all his secrets.

Another altered thread was Red being only Web’s son. Early, early on, Red was the product of Web and some other monster. I even considered that monster having died in birth with Edge. But I scrapped that quickly, and decided that instead, Edge was Pap’s twin, and that the grim mood Web was in, was because of what he saw as well as what he remembered from past timelines. He almost watched his friend and coworker dust in his arms. Properly traumatic, eh?

There is a completely cut scene that I may write in the spin off that goes more into detail about Red’s similarities to Gaster, and Sans’ to Web, and how people often choose partners that are like their parental figures. You may ask. Wait. What do you mean? Well, Webdings didn’t smoke. He drank. Red, despite having dabbled with the stuff, is never shown to drink recreationally or get drunk in the fic, for more reasons than being underage to do so. However, it is very lightly implied that Sans’ coping method of choice is alcohol, though Red quickly quashes this habit after the drunkenness incident. Now, who else smokes? Gaster. Sans doesn’t like that Red smokes (for obvious reasons it reminds him of his father and Red does try to quit in the fic, though ends up falling back on it when stressed.) There are other similarities if you look close. It’s one of the reasons that Gaster and Red don’t get along. They’re both strong personalities, and can be pretty quick to pass judgement on someone.

THE CHARACTERS

As many folks picked up on, Handle with Care, has multiple meanings. It is a moving pun based on the CAUTION: FRAGILE | Handle with Care, labels on the sides of some boxes. It is also one of the main themes of the fic itself. Everyone in the story is a person with their own pasts and pains, which makes them fragile in different ways. And some of them even represent different types of relationships and people we encounter in our lives.

Red - Our protagonist. He’s a young man picking up the pieces of his life after his father’s apparent suicide, left to raise his baby brother when he was only sixteen. He’s the child of an alcoholic and forced to take on an adult role too young. As a result, he has a few unhealthy coping mechanisms, struggles with his temper and his sense of self worth. But he’s the one that got out. That put his life on the straight-and-narrow.

Sans - The love interest. Grew up young from the sheer expectations in his life. He was never without, but when the LOADs happened, he cracked under a lifetime’s worth of pressure. He broke down. Stopped trusting anyone, including himself. And very likely only kept himself from Falling because of Papyrus. Much of his struggles is based on the single mothers who would say that their child is what saved them or got them through those darkest time by just existing. He is also the individual who was groomed for success that ended up with absoluting no proper coping skills because of his rigid upbringing.

Papyrus - The optimist. He stays positive through everything. Everything and everyone can do better, and he sees the best in all situations. But he also has a responsible streak with an urge to organize everything (clean/cook/no desserts before dinner). His relationship with Sans could have very well ended up problematic, with Paps taking on a parental role for his parent early on in his life.

Edge - The pessimist. Edge is the other side of the coin from Papyrus. While his world view is often just as rigid, he is emotional. While it is implied he was always a fussy baby, he’s very sensitive to change, and shows that children are capable of picking up on things that the adults in their lives try to hide. His abandonment issues run deep, and will cause him to lash out until he is older and learns better self control and comes to terms with his father’s death. It is not uncommon for children of single parent homes to become resentful, if not at their present parent, but at the one that is gone. It is difficult for Edge to separate his father’s death, and Red’s fights with Sans, away from himself, and his self-centric view of the world.

Gaster - The (sympathetic?) antagonist. There are points where you love to hate him, and other times, you have to step back. He’s the authoritarian parent that dictated most of his child’s life up until that child literally vanished and became a hermit for a while. It isn’t through callousness or unkindness that he acts this way, but in what he believes is the opposite. He struggles with emotions, especially showing them, an example of how often older generations, especially males, often don’t/can’t/won’t show emotional vulnerability. He wants the best for Sans and those he cares about, even if he often fails to show it properly.

Web - The dead dad. Red’s relationship with Web is complicated. He remembers when Web was a brilliant man, even if not the most fatherly of fathers. But he also laid witness to his fall from grace as well, his drinking habit the most evident. His role is ambiguous much of the story, though he’s left behind hole. His death is the catalyst to a number of the story’s events, and Red’s struggle with him in death is to show the complicated feelings people may have when they lose a loved one who may have not been the best person. Sans’ relationship with him was more to highlight how far he’d actually fallen in the end from where he used to be.

Toriel - The mother. She is a maternal presence in many character’s lives. Her mothering is revealed to be related to her inability to conceive a child. Infertility is a common problem for women. She goes on to foster, babysit and even adopt after Asriel is born. She also an example of the powerful bonds we form with others and how sometimes families are found. Toriel was as much of a mother to Sans as she was Asriel.

The Fallen Humans - The catalyst. If Frisk didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a story. After all, she was the child that climbed the mountain, starting the events of Undertale. Frisk and Chara both are implied to have troubled pasts, which lead them to being vulnerable to that idea of absolute power corrupts absolutely. The meddle. They are often selfish and don’t consider the consequences of their actions, and when they do, there is a sense of it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters when you can manipulate reality itself. But where Frisk possess a sense of guilt for what happened with Sans, Chara does not, and even outright tells Red that he is willing to do anything to accomplish his goals (even if that means hurting everyone else). Kris is a ‘dreamer’, and while he has more control over tweaking the events that play out, he is far less calloused by RESETS and LOADS. He just wants to be close to his brother Asriel, as well as help his ‘siblings’ find a sense of belonging.

Undyne - The Protagonist’s parallel. A child of divorce, which for monsters often leads to trauma and death, she is left to be raised by Gerson. She’s angry, resentful and prone to get in fights. Red often compares her to Edge, but can also empathise deeply with her troubles. At fourteen she is old enough to understand the reality of the situation, but also young enough to be deeply affected by the changes. Given the rarity of divorce, it is implied that her home life was unstable before the events of the story. Red tries to help her as he never got help himself.

Asriel - The miracle child. Mostly a background character. Asriel’s main connections are to Kris and the Dreemurs. He was the child that a couple struggling with fertility finally conceived. His being born, however, resulted Gaster creating Red for Webdings.

Asgore - The powerful person. Gaster and Toriel both have names that are impactful in the community, but Asgore is the founder of Dreemur Medical and Biotech. He was the King of Monsters. Despite his passive role, he influences many of the character’s choices and actions but simply EXISTING as a person of importance. Gaster tries to literally create viable monster cloning/fertility enhancement methods for him which lead to Sans and Red being born. His inviting Web to work with determination led to the creation of the Machine.

Gerson - The substitute parent. His main role in the story is as a family friend of Undyne’s and in the end, her new parental figure. She resents him and he takes care of her. He cannot replace what she’s lost, but he tries to provide her a future. A hard role to fill in a child’s life.

Grillby - The old friend. Grillby plays are far more subtle part. He’s survived a broken Soulbond, he’s friends with Sans, and through every up-and-down, he’s remained open to Sans when he comes back around. Sometimes as children we form friendships with adults that are just as strong as those we form with our peers. This is true for Sans.

There are a few more characters that show up mostly for color and world building but don’t play a significant part in pushing the themes of the story.

CONCLUSION

Would I do this again? Yes. I am planning on continuing the 100 word trend in the Pre-Sequel This Way Up. It may be truer to the spirit of drabbles since we will have a lot more ground to cover since it will be telling Sans’ history. We’ll get to learn more about Gaster, Webdings, the Dreemurs, Grillby and the Fallen Humans. And for those of you who want to know more about the HwC boys as they are? Moving Day will fill in the blanks. And I also promised a sequel. Bubblewrap Blues will take place significantly in the future and center around a certain aptly named skeleton and the edgy boy that likes to get coffee in his cafe.

I’m pleased with how the story turned out.

I never expected the reaction and the feedback. To those of you who commented and kudosed. Thank you. And to those who quite literally followed me from the start, reading and commenting near every day if not every day? You’re extra amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much.

#Handle with care #Undertale #fanfic #post mortem #kustard #textpost #babybones #daily drabble #100 word drabbles #personal challenge #finished #finished fanfic

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grelleswife · 4 years

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☀️☕🌼

☀️ : What makes your OC genuinely happy? A person, an item, their hobby? Where is the place they're happiest, or most at home? What is the happiest they've ever been?

Rose: Hanging out with her best friends, Liv and Ezra; successfully repairing a death scythe or tinkering with damaged cars with Grelle; spending time with her family (when they're not driving her crazy) or going on dates with her husband, Michael. She's happiest on the move, riding her motorcycle with her hellhound Eustacia at her side. One of Rose's happiest moments was when her coworkers at the Death Scythe Maintenance and Repair Division officially recognized her for being their most valued employee. It was an indication that she'd earned their trust and respect in spite of being a demon/reaper hybrid.

Xander/Rhea: Painting backdrops or helping people with their makeup; adding new stones to his pet rock collection; cuddling; playing with the family cats; enjoying a relaxing day in with the family. For Xander, home is where the heart is! One of the happiest days of Xander's life was when @deadly-safety-scissors OC Astre Phantomhive asked for his hand in marriage. :3

Viola: Playing the flute or cello; running a successful experiment; holding hands (and doing various and sundry other things) with her girlfriend Nina. She's happiest in the lab or in the privacy of her room (to which Rose sarcastically refers as her "inner sanctum"). Her happiest moment was when Sebastian taught her how to jump between different universes and introduced her to his favorite ones. It opened her mind up to a whole new world of possibilities and left a lasting impression on her. ☕: Give us one (or more, if you feel like it) of your OCs deepest darkest secrets. Why do they keep it hidden? Spill the tea!

Rose is very straightforward and honest to a fault. She's a no-nonsense girl, and what you see is generally what you get. The closest she has to a dark secret is the fear that she might be unable to protect the people she cares for, which is rooted in the attack on her and Xander's lives (when a pair of bigoted reapers broke into the house and nearly murdered them and Ronnie while Grelle and Sebas were at work).

When they first learned that Grelle was Jack the Ripper, Xander tried to act like it didn't matter to him in order to spare her feelings. In truth, though, he had a hard time coming to terms with what she'd done (Xander has a soft spot for mortals), though he eventually managed to reconcile with Grelle.

Viola loves soul-eating. Absorbing the person's knowledge and emotions is a fascinating, exhilarating process for her. However, she feels ashamed of this and tries to hide it because it's such a strong demonic trait.

🌼 Write a short drabble from your OC's perspective meeting their love interest

(Rose first met Michael Kennsington, a reaper and former MI6 agent, when he came to her department for minor repairs to his scythe. Michael investigated conspiracy theories as a hobby and became firmly convinced that Sebastian Michaelis was a supernatural being, which accounts for his excitement here.)

Rose had never met this man before, but she knew right away that he wasn't your average reaper. The way he carried himself reminded her of Dad: Self-assured, yet ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. His quiet confidence was more subdued than Dad's smug arrogance (thank the gods), but there was that same subtle sense of power, like a tiger keeping its claws carefully sheathed...for now. His appraising gaze cut far beneath the surface. In the seconds that he looked at her, Rose could sense the flurry of calculations in his mind as he sized her up. Huh. This guy might be an interesting one.

"Red eyes..." Rose braced herself for the usual confusion and disgust with which new reapers typically reacted to her, their divine instincts alerting them to her demonic nature. Instead, the man broke out in a boyish grin, looking as delighted as a little kid who'd just caught sight of his Christmas presents under the tree."You must be one of the Sutcliff-Michaelises!" he gushed, grabbing her hand and pumping it enthusiastically. "It's Rose, isn't it? Oldest daughter of the Phantomhive butler?""Uh...yes..." Rose laughed, cocking an eyebrow. Definitely not the reaction she'd been expecting. Dad had become something of a legend in the years since his "disappearance" and the young earl's death, but this man said "Phantomhive butler" the way teenagers fangirled over their favorite actors. Oh gods, the last thing Dad needed was a groupie--his ego was already inflated enough."So it's true, it's really true! All my friends at the agency used to laugh at me, say I was batshit crazy, but I knew that Sebastian Michaelis couldn't be human!"He paused, blushing as he glanced down and realized that he'd been holding Rose's hand for much longer than necessary. Letting go, he looked sheepishly at Rose, who was thoroughly amused by this point. "Damn, you must think I'm a ruddy great idiot. And I haven't even introduced myself. It's Michael, Michael Kennsington."

(Due his traumatic childhood experience of almost being killed by reapers, Xander experiences intense anxiety whenever unfamiliar reapers come to call at the Sutcliff-Michaelis residence. For clarification, Astre Phantomhive is my girlfriend’s OC, not our earl)

No matter how hard he tried to fight it, fear clawed its way up Xander's throat when he realized that a strange reaper had come to visit. The rational part of his mind knew that they weren't in danger, that there would be no flash of death scythes and hateful cries ('Die, demon filth! Die, you scum, DIE!'). Still, he shook with trepidation, breaking out in a cold sweat with his back pressed against the wall as he listened to Mum chatting away with this unfamiliar death god in the kitchen. But then there was Rose, kindly yet firmly grabbing him by the hand. "It's all right, Xander, I'm here, and so is Mum. Besides, he's a Phantomhive! You know how we loved Dad's stories about the Earl when we were kids."Astre V.C. Phantomhive. The moment he saw him, Xander's fear dissipated like smoke scattered in the wind. Tall, slender, and fine-boned, with a true nobleman's grace, messy cobalt hair, and eyes that shimmered with wit and good humor. There was a quiet melancholy hiding behind those eyes, however, and that struck a sympathetic chord within the softhearted child of heaven and hell. It would be a few months before the desire took hold with a silent passion that ate at Xander's marrow, and longer still before Astre would begin the intricate rituals of their courtship, but this first meeting was when providence tossed out her red string to tie their destinies together.(Nina Montmarcy is one of my reaper OCs. She’s autistic, hence the stimming and reluctance to look Viola in the eye)

"Hey, Vi!"Viola look up, a rat cradled to her bosom, to see Uncle Othello stroll into the forensics lab with a young woman in tow. She was dressed in a green cotton sweater and jeans, and her light brown hair was cut in a sensible bob. She was also the most adorable reaper Viola had ever seen, a fact that the hybrid tried to ignore by adjusting her grip on the docile rat held in her arms."We finally got a new recruit!" Uncle Othello grinned. "This is Nina Montmarcy. Fresh out of the reaper academy, sharp as a tack, and knows the science. I thought I'd let ya show her the ropes--she might as well learn from the best researcher our department's ever had."Viola groaned. "I'm not as great as all that." Her nerdy "uncle" could be worse about bragging on her abilities than Mum and Dad, and that was saying something. "But welcome to Forensics!" She gave the other woman a warm smile, heart beating a little faster than it ought to. Nina's left hand drifted up to her hair, and she twirled a piece around her fingers over and again in a gesture that seemed almost instinctual. "Th-thank you," she replied in a shaky whisper, not making eye contact. Awkward and shy, but endearing...Oh shit, Viola thought as a warm glow spread in the pit of her stomach. Why was she so illogical when it came to pretty girls?

#oc asks #my ocs #other people's ocs #the sutcliff-michaelis kittens #rose sutcliff-michaelis #xander sutcliff-michaelis #viola sutcliff-michaelis #michael kennsington #astre v. c. phantomhive #nina montmarcy

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astromechs · 5 years

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there’s nothing grand or revolutionary here, but i wanted to write down some pieces of my journey to... self-acceptance, i guess, before pride month 2019 is over. i never had a sweeping, cinematic moment of a big realization of my sexuality or anything like that, i didn’t have a dramatic coming out moment, so this story won’t be particularly interesting. but:

i kind of wanted to get it out of my own head, and

if it helps someone who’s struggling with similar things, i think that would be awesome, because i wish i had more of this when i was younger

i’ll put this under a read more for potential length to save your dashes.

i grew up, and still live, in the southeastern united states -- north carolina, to be specific. while i grew up in a fairly liberal urban area of the state that’s accepting of a lot of progressive values, i’m surrounded by a pretty conservative (and homophobic) southern culture. my immediate family consists of some fairly progressive and open-minded people, but the stock “southern” values do apply to my extended family, as well as to friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc who have been part of my life at various points. my state still doesn’t have laws in place to ensure protections for lgbtq+ individuals in terms of employment, housing, and other areas, and we are the state that passed the infamous “bathroom bill” a few years back.

this gives you an idea of the context from which i’m coming. a lot of self-acceptance among lgbtq+ individuals growing up in contexts such as these involves overcoming your own internalized homophobia instituted by the environment around you, and i’m no exception.

as a child and adolescent, i always knew something was “different” about me, but i could never put a finger on it -- it would take until adulthood before i really had the tools to do so. when i was in elementary school, the majority of my friends were boys, because at that time, i simply felt more comfortable around them; with a few notable exceptions of girls i formed intense friendships with (i’ll get to this more in a second), girls tended to make me... nervous, almost. i was very much against wanting to be boxed into stereotypes of traditional femininity, so i wanted to reject things like the color pink and playing with “girl toys” and “girl games” -- my emergence into adulthood and as a feminist has involved overcoming a lot of internalized misogyny; i’ve always been set in my gender identity as a cis female, but i resented gendered expectations put forth by society -- but upon further reflection, i think something else was going on there, too.

the “something else” involves multiple examples of very intense friendships with other girls that i can remember taking place through my late elementary school years and up through the end of high school. i won’t go into those in detail, but looking back, they had a lot of the same features -- the feeling that people described as “butterflies” that i desperately tried to feel for a boy and never did, intense connections, feeling like it was a true “breakup” whenever i encountered a falling out in one of these friendships. i bring up that last point, because i actually did date a boy when i was 17 (the one and only time i ever did), and when we broke up, i was sadder about losing the friendship i had with this boy than the relationship -- and my “friend breakups” with the other girls had felt much more devastating. (it’s also telling that i’m 30 now and have had zero desire to try to date a guy again since i was 17 but... you know.)

throughout high school as well, i had multiple “crushes” on guys that were either unavailable or turned out to be gay, and looking back, i think i did that very intentionally. there was a sense that i had to “fit in” with the other girls who were constantly talking about boys. i felt excluded during conversations about actors people thought were hot, so i definitely convinced myself to like a few of those, too; i was still doing this in the marvel fandom up until about a couple of years ago, but deep down, i honestly don’t care about which chris is more attractive than the other or whatever the hell. so this is how i’ve gone through many aspects of life: performative “crushes”, really trying to convince myself to like guys because i thought i was supposed to (and some guys, i really thought i did like).

i never closely examined that i could be anything other than straight until i hit college -- that was, you know, the default, what was expected of me by everyone around me. in my initial reflections, i determined that i was not, really, in fact attracted to men, a conclusion that i know to be true at this point in time, so that idea’s really been with me for a long time. i decided that if i wasn’t attracted to men, i had to be asexual, and in discovering that there was actually a label you could put on something that meant “i’m not really attracted to men and i don’t want to have sex with men like everyone else around me does”, i started to feel more secure about myself. i did a lot of reading about the asexual community at the time, about all the different places on the ace spectrum. it was awesome, people were welcoming, and i’m still grateful to the ace community for making me feel like something different could be “accepted” for the first time.

to any aces out there reading this -- you’re beautiful and valid, and i’ll fight anyone who gives you shit.

but here’s the kicker, y’all; in all that time, in the years between around 20 and 25 or so that i identified as ace, i had never, not once, considered that i could be attracted to women in a romantic/sexual way. oh, i had lots of dreams in my early-mid 20s about women (very often romantic/sexual) -- which i totally tried to repress, i talked extensively about how women were “aesthetically attractive” to me because they’re pretty and you can totally appreciate anyone who’s pretty without anything else attached right?, and i tried long and hard to convince myself that that was it. and by god, i kept trying.

i tabled this for the next three years, though, because there wasn’t a lot of time in my life for personal reflection or anything else; i was trying to get through an intense master’s program while simultaneously trying to keep my family from falling apart through the news of my father’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent hell with treatment, and it was really all i could do to keep my head above water. dating, relationships, how comfortable i felt in my own skin were all about the last things on my mind. it was “i don’t really need a label, anyway” and i left it at that.

after my father’s death, i went through a period of deep self-reflection. i think that’s a natural part of grief, to evaluate where you are in your own life when confronted with mortality much earlier than you expect to be like that. and in that self-reflection, i admitted to myself, finally, at the tender age of 28 years old, that i was attracted to women.

and that admission was terrifying.

i came to accept it, though, came to love it and embrace it as a part of myself, and i felt more comfortable in my own skin than i ever had. there was one lingering piece, though -- any attraction to men, or lack thereof. i pointed to all the times that i’d had crushes on guys, thought i felt attracted to them, and said, well, yes, i have these instances of being attracted to guys, so therefore i’m bi. that was the identity i carried for the next two years.

that label never felt 100% right, though. i knew that i had an overwhelmingly strong preference for women, and i was constantly interrogating the little slice of attraction to men that could potentially exist. was it genuine? was it compulsory heterosexuality? and the more and more i thought about it, the more and more i interrogated it, i realized -- it was the latter. i thought back to my experience of being in a relationship with a guy, and how everything felt fake. i thought about all the “crushes” on guys i really tried so hard to convince myself of. every single instance came back with the same thing: it was performative, rather than genuine.

about three weeks ago, at 30 years old, i called myself a lesbian for the first time in my life. standing in front of the mirror on a sunday morning, the word left my mouth with a rush of anxiety, the same rush that had come with the realization of my attraction to women, but after that passed -- i felt calm. at peace. like something had finally, finally clicked into place.

this pride month, i feel proud of myself and who i am. i’ve learned to love myself as a woman, and i’ve learned to love my love for other women. these things are beautiful.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

#lbgtq tag #personal #the pride 2019 post of self-acceptance and self-love or something #ok to rb if you want to #there's nothing that revolutionary in here but #if something in my story resonates with you i'm happy for others to see it

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leggigoesabroad · 5 years

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free rent living in my mind

Lyrical title, and all future lyrical blog titles from now until forever, will be from Taylor Swift’s LOVER which was released August 23rd and has already drastically improved my already great life. It’s 18 songs of perfection and we aren’t worthy. Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair have called it a career-capping masterpiece. God this bitch just continues to show us that she’s the only person who ever matters and good lord I’d kill a man for her if she asked me to.

In the meantime, weeeeeeeeeee’re back! Well, I am back, because I’m in Alaska and honestly that’s practically abroad. It’s so far from everything except Canada and Russia and other parts of Alaska and life here is wild and so different and thus, Leggi has gone abroad again. Currently sitting on my bed in my plush robe in my Veranda Suite, looking out into the seafoam green water of Endicott Arm and its little bits of glacier floating by. Which I learned today were called “bergy bits,” isn’t that the most made up “technical term” you’ve ever heard?! Someone was definitely sipping wine on a boat a while ago and saw some ice float by and said “lol look at those little iceberg pieces… those little…. ‘bergy bits!!!!!!!”

This journey begins a full week ago but I’ve literally been either gone all day, not had internet, or been too sleepy to even fathom blogging. And yet I have so much to say and so much that I want to remember that I just MUST document it all, especially considering I’ll be back in June 2021 on a member trip with my company and two years is a long time to remember minutia. I’m here on a site visit on the Seabourn Sojourn to experience the cruise firsthand, try out all of the shore excursions and visit tons of different vendors and partners, and make note of all details so I can answer all questions when we ultimately plan, sell, and execute this trip. Or as I like to say, “someone’s gotta make sure it’s good enough, right?!” One takeaway from this site visit is that it’s equal parts incredible and I’m pinching myself, and also at times I want to die and I’ve been close to full fledged panic attacks. Don’t worry, we’ll get into all of it!! Probably in several different entries to keep attention span up.

We started by flying to Vancouver early Monday morning, August 19th. After dropping bags at the hotel we immediately set off to do detailed site inspections of three hotels in the area (when we come back for the member trip we need a block of ~250 rooms so it’s no small feat) and then visited three different possible event venues for a welcome event the night our members arrive. The first was called Grouse Mountain Resorts which is about a 20-minute drive to a gondola that takes you up to Grouse Mountain, a beautiful resort area overlooking all of Vancouver. The area has so much to do once you’re up there – a ropes course, lumberjack show, bear sanctuary, massive chalet with dining options, etc. We look for things that I never would have thought of or noticed before, especially when paying attention to the demographic of our members and also the realistic logistics of moving a group of about 450 people around. Things like, “will members really want to come up the gondola after a long travel day and eat at the chalet, only to have to walk down a quarter mile path to do the lumberjack show? Which place will include tables and chairs so we don’t have to rent? What will keep their attention while also feeling special and unique to the area? How long is the walk from the bus to the gondola for people with mobility issues? What if someone wants to go back to the hotel early, how long will they have to wait? Will there be enough for kids to do?” On and on. It’s pretty interesting, especially because I’m traveling with three people who have done tons of member trips and know exactly what works and what doesn’t. Since I’ll be referencing them a lot, the three coworkers are Brooke (mostly in charge of the entire Once in a Lifetime Journeys team, travels over a third of the year doing site visits and member trips, not overly pleasant but I’m starting to wear her down), Ryan (other Journeys team member who will be Brooke’s co-manager on this cruise, we get along super well and he’s the one who encouraged me to apply for this Alaska trip, also fucking hilarious), and Nick (member services account manager like me who recently got promoted to be 50/50 for member services/journeys team and is my co-trip lead and also really great to be around.) Brooke and Nick have done a bunch of member cruises before but it’s a first for me and Ryan so it’s been a good balance. There’s also Yolanda, our Seabourn shore excursions expert/partner, who Nick and Brooke know well from previous cruises. She’s originally from South Africa but lives in Holland and is honestly a goddamn nut. Sometimes we love her deeply and sometimes we’re like YOLANDA WE CANNOT WITH YOU RIGHT NOW OH MY GODDDDDDDDDD. More on that later as well.

We spent Monday night in Vancouver doing the site inspections and then had a lovely, long dinner on the water with our Seabourn partners. Wine like, FLOWED. On Tuesday morning we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge to do a site inspection for that as a possibility as a daytime activity for members before boarding the ship. I remembered being there a loooong time ago on our Vancouver trip as a kid (I want to say… 1999? Mom, keep me honest) and I thought “wow, the bridge looked so much bigger when I was a kid! This is nothing now!” Famous last words. Got about halfway across and started panicking and couldn’t look down and told myself to just put one foot in front of another until I made it across. That was all well and good, until you get across and realize the only way back IS ALSO THE BRIDGE. As Hilary said upon reflecting on it when I told the family this, “I remember thinking, ‘there’s no way that’s the only possible way back.” Sure is, sure is. Ultimately after visiting the Capilano area, Grouse Mountain, the Vancouver Aquarium, and Science World (my personal favorite but got hardcore nixed…) we think we’re going to try to rent out Capilano for the evening and include food and drink and guided tours all around the park as our welcome event, and then just give members the morning at leisure. We’ll see, all of that work comes AFTER the site visit, and I can’t think about After the Site Visit right now because I’ll cry because this ship is now my home and I refuse to leave.

On Tuesday morning, we went on the ship early while they were still turning it over from the departing guests and getting ready for all of us to board later. We did a full tour and got to see all the different categories of suites available, because it’ll be important for us to know all the details when advertising and selling the trip. Let me just tell you, this ship is fuggin dope. To me, it’s a perfect size – about 225 cabins (not including crew) so it’s big enough that it doesn’t feel like a small little boutique liner, but small enough that you don’t get any of the creepy mass Carnival cruise line heebie jeebies and feel trapped on a skyscraper at sea. It’s been a week and I already feel like I know everyone. I keep joking that I’m the mayor of the ship and honestly it’s not ALL in my head, I’m very popular around here. You’ll notice that theme running throughout these blogs, so consider yourselves warned. It also helps that we are among the youngest people on the ship, as you could have guessed – I’d say about 60% of the population is in their 60s or above, and the remainder are spready through 50s/40s/30s. There’s literally ONE child aboard, a little 3-year old boy that we are all obsessed with. He wears bowties and suits to the formal dinners and little nautical themed clothing all other times, and carries his slinkie around everywhere wanting to play. Nick said at lunch today “he’s 100% my favorite person on the ship.”

We finally officially boarded the ship around 4 pm on Tuesday and it was honestly so exciting. I felt like a celebrity, especially because the entire staff knows that we are here for a site visit and I think has probably been told to pay us special attention. The captain, his officers, the maitre’d, the sommelier, the hotel manager, the hospitality director, the executive chef, the Alaskan Ventures director, the cruise director (Jan who we despise, more on her later), all have specially introduced themselves to us and have greeted us by name since the first day. I know the crew and staff all have manifests before we board with our names and pictures, but I’m honestly still floored at how impressive their memories are. On the first night, I ordered a double vodka soda with extra lime and a splash of cranberry juice from the head bartender. Three nights later, I hadn’t seen him since, I walked in and he made that exact same drink for me and just put it in front of me. What the fuck?!?! The captain’s staff captain passes by me daily and says “Ms. Rice, hope you had a lovely evening!” I was like “sorry who are you?!” I always fancied myself good at names and faces and now I’ve learned that perhaps a decade of marijuana usage has turned me into a trash brained human who has no special skills anymore. TBD.

We spent the next day at sea, which I’ll pick up in the next bloggy bit (inspiration drawn from bergy bits.)

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missmentelle · 5 years

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In a previous ask you talked about how you got into working with disadvantaged kids, and how they often connected to you a lot better than their assigned case workers. Do you think there's anything particular that has made you so well suited to the job/made the kids connect with you? Is it a learnt skill or did it just happen that way?

I don’t want to talk myself up too much, but I do think my personality played some role in it. In person, I have a pretty relaxed, easygoing demeanor in real life that I think a lot of the kids responded to really well, and it made it easier to cope in a chaotic environment with constant emergencies. We had a handful of staff that just didn’t work out in the time I was there, and a lot of that was just down to them not being a good fit. People who were rigid and needed a lot of order and predictability in their day didn’t tend to last - a lot of them successfully went on to careers in other mental health settings, but front-line mental health work with homeless and high-risk youth was not the right fit for them. I also found it really easy to match the energy of the kid I was dealing with - I was good at figuring out if a kid needed a really soft, gentle approach, or if they needed someone to tell them outright when they were being a little shit and they needed to smarten the fuck up. I think that might just be something that comes naturally to me.

I was also younger and a lot less burnt-out than a lot of the other staff. Some of my coworkers had been at this job for a long time, and even though we were given generous time off, it can get to a person after a while. I was 22 and fresh out of college with no real responsibilities beyond “pay rent” and “try not to eat Skittles for dinner 7 days per week”. Some of my coworkers were trying to raise children, get through divorces, care for sick partners or aging parents, and cope with their own substance abuse problems while also doing this incredibly stressful job. When you’re already exhausted from dealing with your home life, you just don’t have the energy to also put in 110% effort at an emotionally draining job. I wasn’t necessarily more skilled than my coworkers, I just had a lot more to give because of my life circumstances. Also, unlike a lot of the other staff, “homeless high-risk kids” was my first choice for the population I wanted to work with. Several of my co-workers were hoping to work in other mental health settings - like eating disorder clinics, or in programs for lower-risk youth with learning disabilities - but jobs are easier to come by in the extreme high-needs sector because there’s so much burnout. For me, the job was a crucial step in my career, and not just a holding pattern while I waited for something I actually wanted to open up. It made it easier to really invest myself. There was a lot of learning involved, though, and I definitely got a lot better the longer I was there. One of the most important things for building rapport with these kids was just learning not to visibly react to the things they said. They were used to having adults and authority figures freak out when they disclosed child abuse, sexual assault, heavy drug use, or any of the details of their living situation, and it made a lot of them cautious about opening up. Having other people respond with a big emotional display made a lot of them uncomfortable, and it meant that they had to stop focusing on their pain to manage the other person’s emotions. The best thing we as staff could do for them was just listen attentively without an emotional response, and act as if everything they were saying was perfectly reasonable. That’s something you get better at over time and with experience. The first time someone tells you they robbed a gas station at gunpoint, it’s hard not to react. The fourth time someone tells you, it’s kind of no big deal. Some staff had a really hard time ever perfecting their poker face, but most people learn pretty quickly.

It also took a while to learn how to guide these kids without instructing or lecturing them. It’s really hard to watch someone make bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, especially when you feel like you know exactly what they should be doing instead. When a kid comes in and tells you they’ve gotten pregnant by a stranger for the second time, or they’ve been arrested again, or they’ve been kicked out of their housing placement for bad behaviour, part of you just wants to grab them by the shoulders and yell at them to make better choices. It can take a long time to fully realize that these kids have grown up in very different situations than you have, and they think in very different ways than you ever had to. Most of the kids I worked with thought only about the immediate short-term. They’d grown up their whole lives having to hustle for survival, often not knowing where their next meal was coming from or where they’d be sleeping that night. Asking them to think about “next year” was like asking them to think about “in the year 2147″ - you can’t ask someone to make sensible long-term plans when their immediate basic needs aren’t being met. Helping these kids involved a complicated game of leading them toward resources, helping them make connections between the short-term and long-term, and forgiving them when they screwed up again. This is something I got dramatically better at in the span of two years, and it’s still something I’m working to get better at.

Hope this answers your question (and doesn’t make me sound incredibly conceited)!

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cryptid-crusader · 5 years

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My Tumblr History (feat. a LOT of rambling, I apologize)

I’ve been on Tumblr 9 years. I came to Tumblr from Xanga (which IDK if that’s even still a thing or not) after being thoroughly obsessed with latter for about 4 or so years. Xanga was much more of a typical blog blog, and though I interacted with far less people on it, those few I did became honest to god friends that I still think about to this day. Though, as years past, my few friends began to drop off one by one from the site and I found myself enjoying it much less once they were gone. Eventually, I left too.

A few months later, I decided to join Tumblr. It was still a fairly new site in 2010 when I had joined, and I had only heard a few things here and there around the internet before I decided to check it out myself. When I first started, I used this site a lot like I used Xanga and basically had it exclusively as an internet journal to talk about life and nerdy shit and the like (I remember even thinking the reblog option was dumb because why not just make your own content? Why reblog other peoples stuff? loooool) and also did a lot of those writing daily challenges. Do you guys remember those? I loved them. Anyway...

Needless to say as time went on and I got older and followed more people and gained more followers (some of you have been here from very early on and for that I am incredibly thankful) as dweeby as this may sound, I really grew as a person. God, I remember 9 years ago I would sometimes post uncredited art or really insensitive, not funny at all, “jokes” because I honestly didn’t see a problem with them (and the only reason I really remember these awful things is occasionally once in a blue moon random people would find them in the bowels of my blog and like them and I would shudder and delete them). I kinda started Tumblr as this young social media doofus that, again as cheesy as it sounds, learned a lot and grew from my experience here. I would never dream of posting uncredited art now, and those “jokes” make me want to vomit. I learned a lot about social issues through this blog and it also helped me open up and learn about my sexuality. I got to see a broader world view from all different walks of life here (which was incredibly refreshing after growing up in a very close knit predominately white republican community) , and met some fantastic humans I’m blessed to have interacted with and become their friend. I never would have met them without this site!

Not to mention just like... all the cool shit. There are SO many talented people on Tumblr. So much beautiful art, fantastic writing, and just all round hilarious and interesting humans that I loved to get even a small peak into their lives and learn about them and what they like and do for fun. I’ve picked up hobbies through this site, joined fandoms through this site, made friends, laughed endlessly, become inspired, found some of my favorite anime/books/movies, and have had so much fun in these nine years on Tumblr.

... Not to say that it hasn’t been without it’s bad. I’ve been here long enough to remember when Tumblr users proudly boasted about how open and inviting to any and all people they were, how they would never point fingers, be mean, or turn others away. Boy, how that has changed looool. I’ve been through the annoying but innocent enough superwholocks and the scandals of older users who used to be Tumblr royalty that fucked up in some way and fell from grace, to the disgrace of people who are totally fine humans that didn’t completely cater to exactly what certain people wanted or made a few wrong steps that people felt like they had to attack them viciously for the littlest asinine shit. The good the bad and the ugly, all the way through to now.

Now. :(

To be frank, this entire site has been a disaster for a loooooooooong time with a staff that seems to be equal mix of not knowing at all how to run a functioning site and not giving a shit at all about it’s user base and their feelings (which reeeeeeeally sucks for all the fantastic content creators and people who have been here forever who have essentially made this site what it is). Little things like ‘oh we made an update that ‘everyone’ will love but is actually dumb as hell and just pisses people off’ to their have been porn bots, pedos, and nazis on this site for YEARS terrorizing people and being awful but guess that is just how it will be... Until they got banned from the app store and THEN it’s an issue (because they lost money ofc)!

Suddenly, Tumblr staff cares, but only for themselves. Instead of actually resolving the issue THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR YEARS AND IS AN EXTREMELY WELL KNOW AND COMPLAINED ABOUT ISSUE they just decide fuck it, punish everyone. No “porn” at all, but I use that term lightly because they say some nudity is allowed (don’t get me started on female presenting nipples it also makes me laugh to hard and then I won’t be able to type) and for some reason apparently written erotica is allowed (which makes absolutely zero sense if you are truly trying to make this a ‘family friendly’ site, why is visual porn not allowed but written OK?) but... Is it really? Posts that are completely innocent are getting tagged left and right as not suitable content. Like, thousands of posts are getting tagged by whatever stupid algorithm they are using that are completely void of anything remotely sexual and you expect me to believe your incompetent asses are going to go through them and deem which are OK and which aren’t based on you shoddy stupid ass new rules? Fuck that.

And all the sex workers and people and run side blogs and NSFW art blogs and the like are just completely screwed (no pun intended). It upsets me because like... Porn blogs have never been the issue. There are definitely some horrible ones, no denying that, but for the most part they just stayed in their lane and interacted with other porn blogs. They weren’t the issue (And, if Tumblr knew at all how to create a damn site, they wouldn’t have been an issue at all if the damn safe mode toggle actually worked like it was supposed to). The ungodly amount of bots is the fucking issue. I can tell you right now, I have over a thousand followers and I am in no way kidding when I say half of those are porn bots that I just gave up reporting because I get like, 3 of them following me a week on average. It’s ridiculous! Also, ACTUAL FUCKING CHILD PORN? THAT IS EASILY ACCESSIBLE EVEN WHEN NOT LOOKING UP ANYTHING NSFW (which I very unfortunately know through experience)? And to top it all off, fucking NAZIS who for some reason are still allowed to spew their bullshit on this site??? Is this a nightmare?

So with all this happening, I believe it’s pretty safe to say Tumblr’s days are numbered. It makes me laugh and cry, it’s something you could see coming a mile away and yet something that you didn’t think would actually happen. I don’t want to leave Tumblr. I love you guys (the users not the staff). You have all brought joy and enrichment to my life and I am so grateful I got to be here with you. I also just like a lot of nuances of tumblr, like the fact I can read an entry so powerful and moving it brings me to tears and then just one post underneath is an over baked nonsensical cat meme which has me wheezing for reasons I can’t quite explain. I can be anonymous and as weird as I want to here without having to really worry about family, coworkers, or older friends seeing it and being like WTF is wrong with you, what does all this mean??? I like how my blog looks and how I can bitch in the tags and chat with my friends and message people and talk about my oc’s and randoms interests and get pointers and learn new things and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I love Tumblr. I don’t want to leave and don’t necessarily plan to. But then again, I said they same thing about Xanga, and if Tumblr keeps going in the way it is going... I’m not sure I really truly want to be lumped in with that. :/

Now this has already been entirely too long (and honestly I’m kind of feeling how I did when I started this blog in 2010 lul) but lemme say this: Thanks guys, I had a whole lot of fun. And if I do end up leaving sometime in the maybe not to distant future know that I will always be lurking around somewhere on the internet, and I had the best time while I was here. I wish nothing but the best for all of you, and may we all be able to remain a happy and dysfunctional little group, if not here, somewhere much better.

#I want to reiterate that I don't want to leave #I just wanted to say my piece #just in case #I love you guys #and I love what Tumblr could be #if staff actually gave a shit #:(#rant #Tumblr #also I am not going to leave #unless I have to #I'll be here until the bitter end tbh #thank you for reading #bleh #flapping my wings

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villiansarepeopletoo · 6 years

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7 Things They Don’t Tell You About the Disney College Program

It’s important to be realistic about the program. Everyone says that Disney World is the Happiest Place on Earth, but any Cast Member will tell you that it can be filled with the MOST unhappy people. The pedestal Disney sits on really makes it hard for Cast Members to please guests, because they expect perfection. But we are human, and we can often be looked upon as the villains of Disney World, but #VilliansArePeopleToo.

Before my program started, I had So. Many. Questions. But once training began, I quickly found out that this experience was going to be a lot different than I expected. Here are a few of the surprises I have received in the 5 months I’ve been Making Magic.

Your Hours

Nothing is guaranteed. Depending on your job (merhandise, custodial, seater (🙋🏼‍♀️), quick service food and beverage (🙋🏼‍♀️), water craft, bus greeter, character attendant, photopass photographer, attractions) you may work 30 hours a week, you may work 50. There are so many factors that go into how often you work. A lot of people don’t have time to spend in the parks like you think they would. Sometimes even on your day off, you’ve spent the week working until 1 or 2 am and you just don’t have the energy to go play in the parks. Just be prepared for crazy shifts. Sometimes I work until 12:30/1:00 and have to wake up and be at work by 7:30/8:30 in the morning. It all depends on your leaders, your location, and your job.

Your Paycheck

In correlation with your hours, your paychecks will often be disappointing. In the 5 months I’ve worked here, I’ve hit $200 twice. After taxes and rent (which they take out $122 a week for your living) there’s not much left. So a lot of people still get help from family or work part time jobs on their off days (which sounds exhausting..) But again, it depends on your hours and location! Some people make pretty good money.

Your Job(s)

Yes. That’s plural. I came into the DCP as a seater (hostess) at The Wave...Of American Flavors. Within three months, I was cross trained in 4 other locations. Being honest, I absolutely hate a few of them, and I didn’t sign up to work in Quick Service Food and Beverage. College Program kids (AKA CP’s) ALWAYS get the short end of the stick, and are almost always crosstrained in other areas. So no matter what you sign up for, be open minded to other locations. Don’t be surprised to get a phone call an hour before your shift to let you know to pick up a different costume before you come in. Or moved to a Disney Vacation Club Lounge half way through your shift in a restaurant... Disney 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 always👏🏻 short👏🏻 staffed 👏🏻 Which is why CP’s are so valuable. We work for less pay, and we are On Site temporary employees. So they use us up as much as possible. It’s not perfect, but we get into the parks for free so 🤷‍♀️ depends on how you look at it.

Your Perks

Honestly, they never get old. I still cry during The Happily Ever After Firework Show every single time even though I have it memorized. The Magic never gets old, even when you learn the Back Stage happenings.

Holidays are the best times to work at Disney. Other than the insane crowds of people, we get so many discounts. From Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day, all merchandise for Cast Members (AKA CM’s) is 40% off. And it’s fantastic. As a Spring CP I only got a month and a half of this amazing perk, so I envy the Fall CP’s who got this for the majority of their program.

Discounts vary for CM’s. We do receive a consistent 20% off all merchandise but it’s not on Alcohol. Restaurant and food discounts change from month to month and are updated in a newsletter. They are often only for breakfast and lunch, or the percentages change with the time of day. We don’t get ANY discounts on food during most holidays. Ticket Discounts vary with the time of year as well, discounts on tickets are the best during non peak season. Discounted Tickets are purchased at Disney Univeristy (yes it’s a real place).

The best perk of all is daily, all access, free admission to the parks. The only time this is not a thing is during block out dates for newer attractions (such as Pandora and Toy Story Land). We do receive guest tickets, but we have to work for them. All Disney Interns are required to work 350 hours to receive 3 free Guest Park Hopper Tickets, and you receive one free Glue Guest Ticket after you’ve completed the infamous Disney training, Traditions.

Your People

Everyone can confidently say that Disney only hires certain kinds of employees to better guarantee the best possibly customer service to guests. And that is completely the truth. I’ve never met more people in my life that I get along with. Going through training was insane and everyone was so nice. I haven’t had one bad experience with a Cast Member interaction.

There is an extensive personality test that every CP has to take before being accepted into the program. And a lot of people get rejection letters after this part, but honestly it’s really cool. I’ve never been surrounded by other Disney-loving, movie-sing-along, so-in-touch-with-their-inner-child, nerds in my entire life and it’s amazing. My coworkers and my roommates have become some of the best friends I will probably ever have. As someone who missed out on the close knit friend group in college, this was one of the best decisions I could’ve ever made.

Your Apartment

Apartment is a nice word, I prefer the term “Glorified Dorm Room.” It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. You can live with up to 8 people in an apartment and there are 4 Disney owned Apartment Complexes: Patterson Court, Vista Way, The Commons, and Chatham Square. They’re all pretty much the same, except Vista Way is the Oldest and the rooms are smaller, and The Commons is the only one that has washer and dryers in every apartment. You do share a room with one or two other people and sleep in a twin bed. Each bedroom has their own bathroom so at least it’s nice not to have 8 people to one bathroom.

There are rules. There’s a 2 am curfew for all guests. Overnight guests are not allowed. You must show yours Cast Member ID at the gate EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you come home.... And there are two types of apartments, Wellness and non-Wellness; basically, alcoholic or non-alcoholic. Therefore underage CP’s must all live together, or if you are 21 and don’t drink, you can definitely live with younger CP’s if you want to. All housing roommates must have the SAME arrival and departure dates. You can link up with other CP’s during the registration process and request your roommates, but it’s never guaranteed.

With such a tight living situation, your roommates are your outlet. Literally no one else in your life is going to fully understand what you do on a daily basis. And if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to come home to a ton of people, it’s ok. Your roommates are all going to be on completely different schedules. In my apartment there were only 3 of us, out of 6, home at one time.

Your Time

Like College and most other things in life, the College Program is what you make of it. There are so many Pros and Cons that you might not expect from something that sounds like the most perfect job on earth. Everyone has bad days. But then you go to Magic Kingdom and watch the fireworks, and you remember why you did this in the first place. I’ve heard almost every CP say at least once, “Screw this, I’m self-terming in the morning...” but then you make a little girl’s day just by giving her a Minnie Mouse sticker. When you watch her run back to her parents and shove her new treasures in their faces, you remember why you wanted to work here. To Make Magic.

#disneycollegeprogram #DCP #CastMember #Cast Member #back stage #happily ever after #questions #7 Things They Dont tell you about the disney college program #villians are people too #College Program #Apartments #Vista Way #The Commons #Patterson Court #Chatham Square #Disney Discounts #Cast member Discounts

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ezatluba · 3 years

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Female veterinarians say gender disparity remains an uphill battle

Colleen Kottke

This is the fourth in a four-part series, “On Call: Vets Under Stress”, that explores the pressures and overwhelming challenges facing those who choose a career in providing care for our animals.

In 2009, the American Veterinary Medical Association reported that female veterinarians outnumbered their male counterparts for the first time. While they make up more than half of the veterinarians in the industry today, a culture of masculinity still exists.

According to a study conducted by Lancaster University Management School and Open University Business School, female practitioners say gender discrimination remains an uphill battle.

“Many of the women we spoke to, especially those in their early career, reported experiences of clients – or even in their own practices – treating them as having limited competence and credibility..." co-author Professor David Knights of Lancaster University said.

Al Martens who has worked in a large animal practice in eastern Wisconsin for 43 years said many women starting out in the field with him faced many challenges.

"Women have really had a tough road. They had to be pioneers, in that they had to prove themselves more than the men," Martens said.

In areas of the state considered agriculturally dense, Martens says its common to have large animal practices staffed with more than one female veterinarian.

"If you get up in the rural areas where there's not a lot of farms, there may be a lot of farmers that haven't experienced a female veterinarian," he said.

Pulling their weight

Meg Mueller was fortunate that after graduating from the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine in 2010, she returned to western Wisconsin where many of her clients already knew her.

But as the "new" vet at Osseo-Augusta Veterinary Clinic, she still had to make the grade out in the field.

"The tough part is you need to prove that you're going to be a good doctor. But you shouldn't have that connotation behind it that you're a 'female' and you have to work that much harder," Mueller says. "Thankfully my co-worker Dr. Linda Giese who has been practicing for over 20 years went through those trenches of gender disparity so that those of us that came after haven't had to fight as hard. But it's still out there."

Today three of the four veterinarians that staff Mueller's mixed animal practice are women.

Mueller says one of the biggest challenges that females face in large animal practices is the issue of working with very strong and powerful patients in - much of the time - nonclinical, less than ideal settings. And client's perception that they 'can't handle the job'.

"It's a very physically demanding job with some risk involved and some of those issues can come to light in those situations," Mueller said. "But sometimes you have to figure out what your strengths are both physical and mentally and be able to take those tasks at hand."

Gender discrimination

Although gender doesn't play a role in how well a veterinarian performs a surgery on a DA (twisted stomach) or diagnoses hypocalcemia, if left unchecked, it can factor how a client interacts or trusts the opinion of the veterinarian.

One female veterinarian told Lancaster University researchers that a client demanded a male veterinarian come out to her farm because the woman was unhappy with the treatment that the female veterinarian had delivered – even though the male vet did the same thing.

Veterinarian Katie Mrdutt says that while farmers in her clinic's territory up in northwest Wisconsin had already been exposed to female veterinarians, she sensed the hesitancy when she arrived on the farm of a new client.

"My favorite part of those experiences was showing how I could use my brain to tackle challenges that maybe the client thought only could be done with brawn," Mrdutt said. "One particular client had a beef cow having difficulty calving. He had been working on her for a few hours before he called me and had not been making any progress."

Within 10 minutes of her arrival the calf was on the ground and alive.

"He was shocked at how quickly I fixed the problem, and probably more so because I was 8 months pregnant at the time," said Mrdutt.

Dual roles

Among the 75 veterinarians interviewed in the Lancaster University study, many felt that women practitioners were automatically presumed to be potential mothers, a perception that could be viewed as problematic for long-term careers.

One female equine veterinary professional told dvm360, a veterinary media organization, that during her interview to get into veterinary school, she was asked how long she planned to practice before starting a family. An older veterinarian intimated to her that it wasn't worth her time to invest her time and money in veterinarian school because she would eventually leave the profession in order to have a family.

Many veterinarians like Mrdutt and Stacey Adams, who is the sole practitioner and owner of her Lake Geneva area practice, have found a way to balance the demands of motherhood and a taxing career. Mrdutt left private practice after three years to join a non-profit that focuses on responsible drug use education among farmers and veterinarians.

Adams, who runs a small beef operation at home and is the mother of two children under 4, including one with special needs, says over the past 12 years she has learned to set boundaries between her personal and work life. This includes reserving after hours and weekend calls for emergencies only.

"If this costs me a potential client, then they probably weren't a client I wanted in the first place," Adams said. "Some clients want to say that I only feel that way because I'm a woman, but I say it is because I value my family and my health."

Surprisingly the clients that have been most judgmental about her boundaries and family needs have been women. She recalls a time when her special needs son then 2, had to be admitted to a hospital 95 miles from their home for a severe respiratory infection.

During this health crisis, Adams received a call from a non-client who had a sick goat. Adams relayed she was unavailable and supplied the woman with two other clinics to call.

"She had the audacity to tell me that she had never had a veterinarian put a child before an animal and that I needed to re-evaluate my career choice if I felt my child was more important than her goat," Adams said. "I told her that any veterinarian can take care of her goat but only I can hold my son and comfort him when he is crying for his momma in the hospital."

Mrdutt says most farmers were welcoming when on more than one occasion she had to bring her child along on calls.

"Usually the farmer had more fun with him and forgot about assisting me," she laughed. "The beauty of working with some clients is that they get to know you and understand the challenges we face, especially balancing the demands of afterhours care."

Afterhours calls to an unfamiliar farm late at night may put a lone female veterinarian in a vulnerable situation. While Mueller has been fortunate to have a good working relationship with her clientele, some of her friends haven't been so lucky.

"I have classmates that have been in some pretty bad situations. No one deserves to go to work and be put in a position like that," Mueller said. "And it's hard because we're out on the road by ourselves, and then there's the call in the middle of the night for that client that you don't really know. That can be daunting."

Bridget Heilsberg, equine veterinarian, owner of Crown 3 Veterinary Services in Whitesboro, Texas, and president of the Women's Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative told dvm360 that safety on farm calls is a regular discussion for the women in a Facebook group she's part of.

Solutions range from traveling with a canine companion to calling friends, coworkers or loved ones before visiting a new client—even to carrying a firearm for protection.

"I personally not only have a firearm but I also have a German shepherd, and I travel with her to my farm calls," Heilsberg says. "I feel like it's an additional concern that women have because we have that concern in our everyday lives. Then it gets amplified when we go out on a farm call visit with someone we don't know."

A ways to go

Mueller says it's important for a veterinarian's colleagues and their clients to respect their need to find a healthy work-life balance.

"I think in the profession it still comes down to a respect factor if a woman chooses to both work and have a family or needs to pull back and not work as much," she said. "I'd like to think that we've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go in addressing those gender disparities across the industry, whether that be pay or the respect factor."

A study from Cornell University researchers that surveyed 2,760 veterinarians discovered a pronounced wage gap between male and female veterinarians, especially among recent graduates and top-earning practitioners.

The study, published in the March 15 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, found that among the top quarter of earners, men were paid about $100,000 a year more.

While reasons for the wage gap were not identified, researchers noted that factors could include unconscious bias, size and type of practice and societal expectations.

Their analysis showed that type of ownership was instrumental in earnings. Partnerships were believed to be more beneficial for womens' income earning potential than sole proprietorships, while any form of ownership benefits men’s incomes. When it comes to the number of years worked, the study found that men move into higher income brackets at lower levels of experience than women.

Martens says female veterinarians on staff at Waupun Veterinary Service pull their weight the same as their male counterparts. He says that veterinarians - regardless of gender - that display a good attitude, strong work ethic and contribute to the practice are rewarded.

"This culture goes back to the guy that hired me. We try to make everyone a partner to make it economically feasible," he said.

Know your worth

Mrdutt says gender disparity and crushing student debt load, added to the strain on mental health from long hours and demanding clients and compassion fatigue, makes veterinarian medicine a hard profession for women to work in some days.

"I had my mind set on being a veterinarian since I could walk and talk, and I do love a challenge," Mrdutt said. "I'd tell any young woman considering this profession to know their worth. Know what you want and don't want, and that it's ok to take care of you first. Finally, know that you are more than capable."

Adams says she has never let being a woman hold her back in her profession.

"I have always been of the opinion that if you do your job and you do it well, people will respect you for it," she said. "Those who don't are people that you don't want for clients anyway. Those are the people who are going to take advantage of you and will never be happy no matter how much you do for them."

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