#You have to imagine that food would look really different from 1500 years ago

[fake-married-my-dead-fiance]

Do-ha (ghost who hasn't eaten in 1500 years): I don't know what this crap is or if any of it is good for you, but please eat some food.

#You have to imagine that food would look really different from 1500 years ago #and he was a member of the nobility he wouldn't have ever made food #so nothing from his life would prepare him to know about food #and he's been a ghost for a really long time #And doesn't have to eat as Possessed Jun-oh #He has no idea #it amuses me #moon in the day

[misc-headcanons]

Can I get a cute scenario for Aizawa where his pro hero wife is fighting a villain who has a quirk that can turn people into animals and she happens to get turned into a cat and the effects last for 2 days. And when he gets home he finds a strange cat waiting for him outside their home and she's trying to get him to understand it's her and that she hasn't disappeared but she can only meow

Aizawa/F!Reader: A Strange Re-mew-nion

Word Count: 1500+

(I had no idea what the title should be, but I DID know I wanted to make a shitty cat pun)

He wasn’t a stranger to finding new strays by his apartment. There were plenty of them in the neighborhood, and they always enjoyed the small bowls of water he’d leave in the summertime and the cardboard boxes lined with towels in the winter. But when he made it to his doorstep after a long night of work, he noticed a cat that was leaning against the small front window, pushing against the glass with all its might. The moment it realized it was no longer alone, it ran right up to Aizawa as it yowled and meowed over and over.

Aizawa knelt down to let the cat sniff his hand, but it seemed to already be familiar with him; instead of getting accustomed to his scent, the stray rubbed its head against Aizawa while it continued to mewl. Had it met him before? It didn’t really look like any of the other strays that would come up to him--and he would’ve definitely remembered a cat that babbled as much as this one.

He fished his keys out from his pocket and went to unlock his door, and he saw the cat eagerly watching him as it stood beside his foot. “...I don’t usually let you guys inside,” he said with a yawn. He tried to guide it to a small wire basket with an old towel placed inside, just a few inches away. “You can sleep there, alright?”

The cat didn’t even give the makeshift bed a second glance. It looked intently at Aizawa, and then at the door before letting out an insistent chirp as it rubbed against the door. Why the hell were they so eager to go inside his house? It wasn’t as if it was cold or rainy out, and even if it was they would have plenty of shelter in the bed underneath the apartment awning.

Aizawa was about to just pick the cat up and place it in the basket when he froze in place and stared at the front window. Even with the thick curtains in front of it, he could tell that the lights were off in the living room. He hadn’t come home to that sight since he was still living by himself, before ____ had moved in and insisted on leaving the lights on for him no matter what time he came home during the night. “It’s just to let you know that I’m thinking about you out there,” she’d insisted with a bright smile. “I won’t leave every light on obviously, but you can see the light coming from the window and know that I’m here waiting for you.”

It was nearly 4 in the morning. She should’ve left the light on hours ago when she’d gotten back from her shift at her own agency. She should be inside. Aizawa remembered that he’d first seen this stray cat desperately trying to make its way inside, and a sick feeling of dread crept into his chest.

He withdrew his bindings and carefully turned the key to unlock his front door, with a soft click of the bolt moving in the lock being the only sound he made. As he opened the door and was ready to face a potential ambush from whatever--or whoever--was inside, the cat ran inside and jumped onto the sofa nearby. Aizawa made a quick and stealthy sweep through the house, checking for any signs of disturbance or a struggle. Oddly enough, he couldn’t find that seemed to indicate ____ had gotten hurt or kidnapped; in fact, the still-hanging laundry on the balcony, the pristine bed, and the missing leftovers she usually placed in the fridge for him pointed to her not coming home at all since she left to go to work.

The stray cat followed him through the apartment, its head swiveling around as it seemed to search for something. Aizawa noticed it peering at a photo frame on a bookshelf in his bedroom, and then watched it make a dash for the shelf. “Oi, what--”

The cat leapt up to the third shelf and placed a paw on top of the frame, meowing louder than before. It used its other front paw to beckon Aizawa closer as if it were a stereotypical maneki-neko placed on a shop’s front counter. With no other leads to go on, Aizawa hesitantly stepped forward and waited for the cat to do...something. It carefully placed a paw on the photo, right on top of ____’s smiling face; it then moved to place its paw on its chest. It continued to meow more and more, repeating the same gesture.

Aizawa’s bloodshot eyes narrowed as he observed the cat. He had to be sleep-deprived, misinterpreting or humanizing what this animal was doing. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d imagined something strange, only for his wife to tell him that no, the little flashing light he’d seen on the ceiling wasn’t a camera or bomb: it was the smoke detector they’d had for three years, just blinking the way it usually did. He must have forgotten that ____ had plans with someone, or was going on an overnight trip, or--

“Nyaaaa!”

Aizawa blinked a few times, snapping out of his tired train of thought as the cat pressed its nose up against his. Without breaking eye contact, it slowly pointed at the photo of ____ again, and then to itself. “Mrrow?”

“...____?”

The cat nodded, and Aizawa stared wide-eyed at the cat--no, his wife...his wife-who-may-also-be-a-cat. “You’re ____?”

The cat-who-may-have-been-his-wife nodded.

Aizawa sat down on the bed and stared at them with his fingers tented. After taking a deep breath, he rubbed his eyes and then looked back at the cat. “Nod for ‘yes’, shake your head for ‘no’,” he said flatly. “Do you understand?”

____ nodded.

“Did this happen due to someone else’s Quirk?” Nod.

“Is it from a criminal with a registered Quirk?” Nod. Aizawa nodded slightly to himself; if it was a registered Quirk user, he could find out the specifics of this ability and hopefully find out if this transformation would go away on its own or if he needed outside help.

“Okay.” He pulled out his cell phone to access the country’s Quirk registry using his Hero credentials, and noticed that he’d missed two voicemails from his wife’s personal assistant. A very nervous voice came over the speaker:

H-Hi, Eraserhead. I know ____ said to only use this contact number for emergencies only, and this isn’t really life-threatening or anything, so don’t worry! She’s okay, she’s unhurt, but...um...There was a Villain she fought, one with a transformation Quirk. It’s temporary, the registry file says the effect only lasts 48 hours, but...yeah. She’s currently a cat. Her Hero costume is at the agency, since she kinda, you know, crawled out of it after changing sizes and species and all that. But don’t worry! She’s perfectly safe here at the agency, so call us back and you can come pick her up whenever you’re back from your shift.

Aizawa listened to the next voicemail, made a few hours later.

Hi again, Eraserhead. So, about the whole cat situation. ____ seemed to be in shock about the whole thing, she was meowing nonstop and running all over the place. And the thing is, one of the janitors we have on staff, he um...He hadn’t been informed about the situation and kicked ____ out of the building while I went to pick up some cat food. That was about twenty minutes ago...I’ve been searching for her, and if she’s not at the office then she might be trying to go somewhere else that’s familiar. So if you see a cat by your house with no collar, and it’s meowing a lot and is like...WAY too intelligent and human-ish to be a regular cat, then it’s ____. Probably. Hopefully. Oh my god, I am so fired…

Aizawa set his phone aside and felt something soft land in his lap. ____ fidgeted with her paws and sulked about her current situation, trapped as an animal for the next day and a half. Would she have to eat cat food? How would she go to the bathroom? Would she still be able to think like a human the whole time, or would she lose her mind and really become an animal before she changed back? Aizawa couldn’t really think of what to say that could comfort her, so he simply crawled under the covers of their bed and patted the space next to him. ____ curled up next to him and smiled as he scratched a spot behind her ears and then stroked her from head to tail. She let out a low purr as she started to doze off comfortably in his arms, and she moved to rub her cheek against his before finally falling asleep. Aizawa smirked and let himself drift off to sleep as well, thankful that even though his wife was a bit different than when he’d left her this morning, she was safe and cuddling him as he slept like every night they spent together.

#bnha #bnha scenario #aizawa #shota aizawa #mine #female s/o

[nerd-of-sorts]

Reminisce

Summary: What would happen if Peter survived the snap instead of Aunt May?

Warnings: A little fluff, a lot of sadness

A/N: I’ve seen rumours that Tony’s BARF tech may be making an appearance in A4... the thought of Peter using the tech prompted this one shot :)

Word count: 3033

Pete couldn’t help but feel immensely intimidated – here he was, sitting at the round table surrounded by the heroes who had stopped the very first attack on New York.

Natasha Romanoff.

Bruce Banner.

Thor.

Steve Rogers.

Clint Barton…

 Tony Stark.

And then there was Peter Parker. The guy from Queens who was undeniably and incredibly in over his head.

The nerd who was most comfortable behind a literal mask, now open faced and with the living legends he’d grown up watching on TV. He was honoured to be there, but these guys were on a another level.

But people needed him, and not just those in New York. The whole universe needed the Avengers, relying on them to reverse what Thanos had done while it clutched at its losses. Peter could only hope he was the guy for the task – he had to be.

“Carol said that the Seer told that one of us had seen the clue to taking Thanos down, even if we didn’t know it at the time. These watches are team versions of BARF – a little more robust and secure that the original. Completely made of vibranium, courtesy of Shuri.” Tony explained as he handed out the devices. Peter thanked him quietly as he accepted his own, gently turning it over to examine it. It was smooth, circular and very expensive looking.

Two black bands crossed over underneath, and Pete slipped them over his hand, intending to wear it like a watch. Before he could move it to his wrist, the bands fastened around his hand on their own accord, fastening the tech on the back of his hand.

Cool, he thought to himself, twisting his hand around to check out his new accessory.

A definite upgrade from the Rolex I never had.

When he turned his hand over to look at the face again, he was taken aback to see something loading on the screen. He whipped his head up to look at Tony in panic.

“That’s good Pete,” Tony reassured. “Everyone else, put yours on too. They will need a few moments to calibrate.” He instructed. The other five followed suit, Thor letting out a small chuckle as he held his hand up to admire it. “Not bad, Stark.” He remarked.

“Thank you, Thor.”

A silence fell over the group. It wasn’t awkward or tense, but nor was it comfortable. It reflected the weight that was on each and every person’s shoulders, and the insurmountable loss that was slowly consuming them. Peter sure as hell didn’t want to think about what he had lost because of the snap. Because he had been so close to taking the gauntlet, but not close enough. He was not the only one in the room who had missed their chance, so it wasn’t like he was alone.

In fact, he was probably surrounded by some of the loneliest people in the world. There was no one left out there for them besides the people in this room.

Peter opened his mouth before he could stop himself to fill in the quiet. “Did the Seer say anything about what memories we should be checking? I’ve got the least out of all of everyone here, but 18 years is still a lot.”

“We believe that she implied it happened during a moment of conflict or sleuthing,” Banner chimed in, clasping his hands together and leaning forward on the table. Natasha let out a groan.

“Are you kidding me? That’s my entire life summarised in two words. How am I supposed to look through over thirty years of memory?” she asked.

Thor scoffed in response. “Try having over 1500 years to sort through. I ought to speak to this Seer myself,” he grumbled.

“Fair point,” Nat conceded.

“No Thor, we need you here. It’s important that we stick together,” Steve insisted.

The bickering started to pick up, and Peter shrunk back into his seat, feeling guilting for sparking it. He hadn’t known three years ago when he wanted to join the team just how much arguing there was, which thinking back was pretty dumb of him – considering they were in a middle of a civil war when Tony enlisted Peter.

“ENOUGH!” Hulk roared, silencing the room immediately. He had only half emerged, but he quickly morphed back into Banner.

“Thank you Hulk,” he said haughtily. “Now, stop complaining like little bitches because you’ve got some homework. You don’t even have to read anything!” He ranted, glowering at everyone as if he were the a high school teacher at his class. Peter hadn’t finished his final years, but he almost started laughing as he imagined Hulk trying to teach a class.

“Right, everyone go and get to work now. The due date for this mission was two years ago,” Tony muttered, walking out of the room. Peter was the next to stand, heading for his room to be alone while he relived his memories.

* * *

Everyone was exhausted as they reassembled in the kitchen for food. It had become an unspoken rule that everyone had to come out and eat at least twice a day, after Tony was almost hospitalised from not looking after himself.

Peter knew as he walked into the kitchen that he wasn’t the only one who had had to revisit some awful memories that should be left alone.

Thor especially looked worse for wear. Pete wondered what had happened to the god during those 1500 years, but quickly gave up the contemplation as he slid onto a bar stool, hunching his tired body over the benchtop.

He wasn’t the only one with red eyes, but that didn’t stop him trying to hide the fact that he’d been crying. No, scratch that, he’d been sobbing. Hysterical.

Seeing Uncle Ben die again was even worse than the first time, because he had to watch himself, this newly bitten kid, try and stop the man from bleeding out on the pavement. Of course, just like the first time, the blood had uncontrollably pooled out from between his fingers, soaking his uncle’s plaid shirt in a deep crimson.

No one said a word as Clint handed out mugs of coffee. This time, Peter didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. They just sat there together, spread out across the kitchen and trying to seek comfort in the presence of real people. It didn’t matter that they were still stuck in their own minds.

Peter jumped at the grating sound of a chair scraping against the tiles. He twisted around to see Steve standing up from the table. “We should get back to it,” he murmured, leaving without another word. Gradually the others peeled off too, until it was just Tony and Peter. The billionaire set down his mug to leave too when Peter leapt off the stool and joined him.

“Hey, I was wondering if maybe I could head back to my place and do this?” he asked, looking earnestly at Tony. They were the same height now, he didn’t have to look upwards anymore.

The man looked reluctant. “Are you sure that’s a good idea kid?” he asked cautiously.

“I think so,” Pete nodded, putting on a façade of confidence. He knew what Tony was referencing, but there was something he needed to do.

“Alright then. Take one of the cars, but come straight back if you need to, okay?” Tony made him promise. Peter gave him a small smile of thanks before spinning around to head for the garage.

Despite the Stark range of cars having the programming to run completely independently of the ‘driver’, Peter still preferred to drive it manually, revelling in the mundaneness of it. He didn’t really know why he preferred to do it himself. Maybe it was the feeling of control, or the feeling of something that a normal person did.

Of course, the first time he drove one of the cars, he had had a fair bit of help from FRIDAY. Tony had been to distracted to actually ask Peter if he had a license, and Peter hadn’t had to guts to correct him. So FRIDAY taught him how to do it, taking over occasionally, when he left it too late to brake or nearly had a brush up with a concrete pillar.

Now it was like second nature to him as he cruised down the highway, significantly over the speed limit. If there was one thing that had come out of the snap, it was that traffic had more than halved on the roads.

Not that he wouldn’t trade an easy commute to have everything back the way it was before, he thought bitterly as he passed another wreckage on the side of the road. Over a year on and they still hadn’t cleaned up all of the accidents that had happened, simply because people had vanished from behind the steering wheel. Crumpled skeletons of cars were now a common sight on the side of the road – people had bigger problems to deal with.

By the time he arrived to the familiar apartment block in Queens, a cool dusk had settled over the city. Even now, just sitting outside the apartment, Pete’s hands trembled as he turned off the engine.

With a deep breath he heaved himself out of the car, walking across the sidewalk and through the main doors to the elevator without giving himself a chance to think. He hit the number for his floor and listened to the machine lift him slowly up through the building.

You want to be here, you want to do this, he reminded himself as the familiar ding signalled his arrival. As he stepped out he naturally reached into the back pocket of his pants for the key. He’d kept it on him all this time, a force of habit mostly. But also to keep a piece of home close.

Right before he slid the key in, he froze. What was beyond that door terrified him, and already a sick feeling was building in his stomach. Every fibre was screaming to run away back to the Avengers, away from the place that reminded him of the truth.

“You want to be here, you want to do this.” He murmured firmly to himself, pushing the key in and unlocking the apartment.

The door swung open slowly, revealing a home that totally different to what Peter remembered. Everything inside was still the same – right down to the pile of mail on the side table. But the apartment lacked the warmth, the life and the love that used to fill it.

It was a cold place now. Literally.

Pete shivered as he stepped inside, both from the temperature and the eerie feeling settling over him. He flicked on the lights, and his eyes fell straight to the spot on the floor near the counter.

To his relief, the shattered mug and spilled tea had been cleaned up by Tony’s men. He remembered seeing it for the first time, arriving home praying that May was okay. That she had survived the snap. But that broken mug had confirmed his worst fear, and the image of it would stain his mind forever.

That day he had collapsed beside the cold tea, shaking uncontrollably and unable to catch his breath as tears cascaded down his cheeks. Tony had picked him up and taken him out of the apartment straight away, leaving his men behind to gather up Peter’s things. He’d been moved straight into the Avenger’s compound, and he hadn’t been back to the apartment since. Tony had been kind enough to fund its upkeep, knowing that Peter would need it one day – if not before, then after they reversed the snap.

But today, he had to come back. Deep down he’d known it as soon as Tony had given him the BARF tech. So, instead of letting himself fall apart, he moved to start opening up the curtains. May always said that the natural light was a blessing, and that it made the apartment look bigger.

The light was fading quickly outside, so Peter quickly got to work and took a seat on the sofa. He was nearly finished aligning the tech on his hand when he remembered something.

May’s favourite sweater.

He knew that it was hanging in her closet, but could he bring himself to go into her room?

Yes, he decided. He wanted to feel as close as he could to her, as painful as it was. So carefully he crept into her bedroom, almost afraid to breath in fear of disturbing something. The wardrobe doors creaked as he swung them open, revealing the pale pink wool that brought a remorseful smile to his face. Desperately he grasped at it, eager to be out of the room.

Once again seated on the sofa, nestled up with the pink sweater, he made the final adjustments before setting the tech to play out the memory.

Suddenly, the room was lit up with the warm light of a Tuesday afternoon. Behind him he heard footsteps, and he turned around to see his aunt walking out from the kitchen, carrying two glasses and a bottle of wine.

“May,” Pete whispered.

“Hey honey,” May looked past him as she smiled sweetly – it was a smile that Peter hadn’t seen for a long time, not since…

Peter spun around to see the man that May was smiling at, sitting in the armchair across from him.

“Ben,” Peter’s voice cracked.

“Happy birthday,” she whispered as she gave her husband a soft kiss, sitting the glasses and the bottle down on the table. The tender moment was cut short as another person entered the room.

“Happy Birthday Ben!” A younger Peter chirped as he arrived home late from band practice. Pete remembered he hadn’t seen him that morning because Ben’s shift had run late the night before.

“Pete my boy, how was school?” Ben cracked a smile, opening up his arms to embrace his nephew.

Peter watched himself become enwrapped in his uncles arms, desperately craving for that feeling again.

May was pouring the drinks, and handed one to Ben before pointing to the kitchen. “There’s a soda for you in the fridge,” she winked, rolling her eyes as Young Pete dumped his bag by the sofa. Peter ignored the younger version of himself rustling through the fridge and flitted his gaze between May and Ben, unsure of who to watch. May was taking small sips of her wine as Ben stood, moving towards the record player and sifting through their vinyl collection.

“Fooled around and fell in love,” Peter murmured with Ben as he declared what he had chosen, carefully sliding the record out of its cover and placing it on the player. May lit up as she heard the song begin to play, sitting down her wine as Ben moved back over to wrap her in his arms. Together they started doing their own version of a slow dance, the Parker version as Ben declared it. He had sworn it was the best way to woo a lady.

May let out a joyed sound of surprise as Ben tipped her back suddenly, a charming twinkle in his eye as he admired his wife.

Young Peter sat on the bench and watched on with his soda as Peter watched on from the couch. His uncle and aunt swayed together slowly, basked in the warm light that shone in through the window. May laughed softly and rested her head on Ben’s chest as he whispered sweet nothings into her ear, her dark eyes warm with a deep love.

It was a beautiful moment, and Peter couldn’t help but smile.

Young Peter behind him jumped down from the bench and headed for his room, apparently having better things to do than watch May and Ben slow dance in the living room. Stupid boy. The memory slowly faded in front of Peter, the song dying out just as the chorus began to start.

Suddenly, the room was quiet again, the warm light dissipating. Peter was alone in the empty apartment. He gripped the sweater a little tighter.

He hadn’t realised that he had been crying, but his sticky cheeks begged to differ.

The memory was of Ben’s birthday, nearly a year before he was murdered in the street. No one had known that it was to be his last at the time, but how could they have?

Pete brought the sweater up to his face, breathing in the sweet scent of May’s perfume. He wasn’t ever very good with girly stuff like perfumes, but he knew that it was something flowery. He found comfort in it regardless.

The silence was too loud he decided, so still gripping the sweater he walked over to the record player. Ben had always kept his vinyl filed alphabetically, so Peter went straight for the top half and flicked through the covers until he came across the Boogie Nights #2 cover. Ever so carefully he pulled out the record and placed it on the record player. It had been years since he’d used the thing, but Ben had made sure back then that he knew how to work one.

As he dropped the needle and the intro music began to flow through the apartment, Peter almost felt as if he could turn around and see May and Ben back in the living room, dancing again. As Elvin Bishop’s voice sang the first words, Pete turned around to face the lonely room, subconsciously drawing the sweater closer to his chest. With a sigh, he slowly walked back to the sofa, dragging a blanket up and over his shoulders as he laid down.

The gentle words of Fooled Around and Fell in Love helped to ease his pain, but not enough to stop the slow trickle of tears that made their way down Peter’s cheeks. He stayed there, utterly exhausted under the blanket with May’s pink sweater clutched close to his chest. He let the words of the song lull him to sleep, all the while imagining May and Ben in front of him again in the living room, alive and in love.

#one shot #marvel #marvel fanfic #peter parker #peter parker fanfic #tony stark has a heart #poor peter parker #sad peter parker #peter parker survived the snap #but may didn't #mcu #mcufam #fyeahmarvel #fluff #peter parker needs a hug #irondad

[flirting-with-psychology]

Truth of Dare (and I’m gonna do them all cause I’m bored)

1: (truth) Who was your first major celebrity crush? (dare) Put your music player on shuffle and post the first five songs.

Truth: I guess Peter Pan even though technically he was a character and not a celebrity

Dare: 1. The Stranger - Billy Joel. 2. You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift. 3. You’ll Be Back - Hamilton. 4. The Trolls - Frozen. 5. Second Chance - Shinedown

2: (truth) What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you in the past week? (dare) Refresh your dashboard and send an anonymous compliment to the person who posted whatever’s at the top of your dash.

Truth: I got tongue tied in front of a cute guy. He either found it adorable or pathetic

Dare: Done

3: (truth) What are your three favorite things about your appearance? (dare) List all nine of your tumblr crushes, and describe each blog/blogger in one word.

Truth: My eyes, my hands, my boobs

Dare: Mint-rumneigh: funny. nope4hope: roommate? potatouprising: nerdy. thegirldownthelaine: cool. wonderwomanlovesyou: fandoms. flynnomalleys: Choices. choicesobsession: Choices. mrsperegrintook: Roommate. an-indecisives-choice: Choices

4: (truth) What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you? (dare) Post the oldest selfie on your camera roll.

Truth: Raised me

Dare: Done

5: (truth) If your parents knew everything you’ve ever done, what would they think is the worst thing? (dare) Tag the three nonmutuals you admire most.

Truth: Probably slapping myself when I fuck up

Dare: @taylorswift @the-average-gatsby @juliajm15

6: (truth) What is the last thing you purchased? (dare) Tag three people you’ve thirst followed.

Truth: McDonalds

Dare: @asimplepotatofarmer @therulesdonotknowme @joshpeck

7: (truth) How many hours did you sleep last night? (dare) Send an anonymous compliment to the last person who followed you.

Truth: Like 7 whole hours but I’m still tired from this week

Dare: Done

8: (truth) If you could go on a date with any of your mutuals, who would it be and what would you do? (dare) Send an anonymous compliment to one of your four “Biggest Fans” on tumblr.

Truth: Therulesdonotknowme but unfortunately I’ve already burned that bridge, I think the only reason we’re still mutuals is because he never gets on tumblr. It would be cute for him to show me around his city

Dare: Done

9: (truth) How did you meet your best friend? (dare) Refresh your dashboard. Open the blog of the person who posted whatever’s at the top of your dash. Reblog their most recent selfie.

Truth: Our parents got us together when we were one

Dare: Couldn’t find one

10: (truth) What was your favorite band five years ago? (dare) Tag a blog that posts very different content from yours, but that you couldn’t imagine not following.

Truth: Glee

Dare: @benditlikegumby

11: (truth) Where did you get each article of clothing you’re wearing right now? (dare) Pick up the closest book to you. Turn to page 39 and copy down line 7.

Truth: Necklace: museum gift shop. Shirt: my friend’s grandma. Pants: goodwill. Glasses: glasses store. Bra: Kohl’s. Underwear: Kohl’s

Dare: It’s blank

12: (truth) What are your five favorite girls’ names and five favorite boys’ names? (dare) Copy and paste the 14th line of text from the last document you worked on in Word or Google Drive.

Truth: Rachel, Diana, Phoenix, Hannah, Star (why I picked it). Shane, Eric, Matt, Lucas, Connor

13: (truth) What’s your most irrational fear? (dare) Tag five mutuals who take amazing selfies.

Truth: Spiders

Dare: @mellifllxous @cultured-pearl @benditlikegumby @im-significant @homofied

14: (truth) If you could only wear one outfit for the rest of your life (consisting of clothes you already own), what would it be? (dare) Tag someone you follow who has amazing fashion sense.

Truth: A dress that’s comfy but also cute

Dare: @thewonderofafairytale

15: (truth) If you could rock any unusual article of clothing/makeup technique/hairstyle, what would it be? (dare) Go to the blog of the last person you reblogged a text post from. Reblog your favorite of their selfies.

Truth: A bob. But I tried it and I can’t quite rock it

Dare: Couldn’t find one

16: (truth) What is your dream job? (dare) Post the four most recent pictures in your camera roll.

Truth: Something in the film industry

Dare: Pretty much done already, half of them were in another post

17: (truth) Where is the last place you went that took over two hours to get to? (dare) Post screenshots of your phone’s lock screen and home screen.

Truth: Probably somewhere close, fuck the bus

Dare: Done

18: (truth) How old were you when you had your first kiss? If you haven’t had it yet, how old do you want to be? (dare) Go to the last app/tab you opened. Post a screenshot.

Truth: I was 18

Dare: done

19: (truth) What is the first thing you remember having to keep secret? (dare) Tag five bloggers who you associate with being obsessed with something particular, and list what each of them is obsessed with.

Truth: Me and my friend climbing onto the cat structure

Dare: @literally all the choices blogs: Choices. @parfaitfaye: kpop. @cultured-pearl: boys and Taylor Swift (it’s ok me too). @person #1 who I’ve fallen out with: Once Upon a Time. @other person I’ve fallen out with: music. I know they’re not all really tags but I couldn’t think of many

20: (truth) What does your bedroom look like? (dare) Take one selfie and post it. You only get one shot! (No old selfies or retrying, even if you think you look bad)

Truth: Actually pretty cute, pink and turquoise accents, posters and stuff on the walls

Dare: Done

21: (truth) What three fictional characters would you most like to meet? (dare) Write your name down on a piece of paper and draw a quick picture of yourself. Take a photo of it and post it.

Truth: Kelsier from Mistborn, Harry Potter from Harry Potter, Raydan from Choices

Dare: No more pictures, my phone’s dying

22: (truth) What are three things you’re looking forward to? (dare) Tag the last three people you reblogged posts from, and estimate how many followers they have.

Truth: Film shoots later this summer, seeing the cute guy at the gym cafe, getting some damn sleep

Dare: @nayla-sa: 4000. @potatouprising: 1500. @thegirldownthelaine: 2000

23: (truth) What are your three biggest turn ons, and your three biggest turn offs? (dare) Put your music player on shuffle. Without actually listening to it, write the lyrics to the chorus of the first song.

Truth: I’m bored of this question, I must have answered it a thousand times

Dare: My phone is dying so no

24: (truth) If you could only own five material objects (not counting life necessities like food/water/a house/etc) what would they be? (dare) Put your music player on shuffle. Post what the first three songs are, and for each one, tag a blog that the song reminds you of.

Truth: Laptop, phone, stuffed dog, crush log, stuffed cat

Dare: Phone is dying so no (i’m on a school computer for the rest of this)

25: (truth) What is the last thing you lied about? (dare) Tag three people you want to know better and ask them each three questions about themselves.

Truth: The reason I was late to work was a half-truth

Dare: Nah fam that’s too much work

26: (truth) What’s the last movie you watched? (dare) Reblog the most recent of your own selfies posted on tumblr, and in the tags say two things you like about your appearance in it?

Truth: Coco

Dare: Done

27: (truth) What are three things you like about yourself unrelated to your appearance? (dare) Post a picture from your camera roll that you’ve been meaning to post on tumblr.

Truth: I’m creative, I’m smart, and I like boys

Dare: Phone is dead

28: (truth) How do you take your coffee? (dare) Post the last picture you posted on a social media platform other than tumblr.

Truth: I don’t

Dare: Phone is dead

29: (truth) What are your worst habits? (dare) Put your Top 25 Most Played songs on shuffle and list the first five.

Truth: Procrastinating, staying up late, eating junk food. Most of my bad habits involve lack of impulse control

Dare: I don’t even know how to do that

30: (truth) What is the last thing you did that you have to keep secret from someone? Who do you have to keep it secret from? (dare) Tag five blogs with great URLs.

Truth: Crushed on a married coworker. I have to keep that secret from pretty much everyone including him

Dare: @irunwithscissorstofeeldangerous @the-average-gatsby @huffylemon @joshpeck @this-is-my-temporary-url (I helped her pick it)

#truth or dare #survey

[harrietspatial400]

1500 word write up:

Globally there are more honey bees than any other types of bee and pollinating insects, making honeybees the world’s most critical pollinator of food crops. It is predicted that one third of the food that we as humans consume each day relies on pollination mainly by bees. It is proven that if honey bees were to go extinct there would only be four years left of human existence. This fact is unknown to a lot of people, and it is a problem of our society right now as we do not understand the risks at hand. Bees are responsible for the majority of the fruits, vegetables and other things like almonds, coffee and chocolate. Oilseeds like sunflower, coconut and oil palm, will run out eliminating more than half of the world’s diet of fat and oil. It’s not only cottonseed that’s important, without cotton we would be stripped of countless clothing and household items, including blue jeans, shoe laces, towels, mattresses and high-quality paper products. Honey bees are also known to pollinate clover and alfalfa, without honey bees alfalfa fields will perish which are fed to cattle. Because of this there is the dairy and meat industry will die out, also a massive range of food products that are manufactured are made from these ingredients. Another significant role that honey bees play in is the pollination of other crops such like cotton and flax, along side these there are a number of important non-food products created by the honey bee, such as beeswax used in beauty and cleaning products products. By keeping the cycle of life turning, bees boost the colour and beauty of our countryside. As the years go on bees become in trouble even more and it is not becoming a public and political concern all over the world. It is important that people become aware of the importance bees have on our lives and on nature. Years ago it was known for miners to carry a canary in a cage through the mines to act as a basic air quality test. Canaries are much more delicate to the air quality than humans are, so when miners saw a bird in trouble, they knew something bad was about to happen and knew to get out quickly. Bees are todays society’s “canary in the mine” by simply doing the same thing, warning us of the environmental and health issues of the path we are currently on. The various factors of this are things like, a poor diet, stress, pollution, infection, pesticides, climate change, and many more. It has created conditions that have dramatically decreased the number of hives. Some threats to bees consist off specific diseases. Bees can become too weak to fly or be unable to reproduce, or lead to death. Various mites and pests, a specific mite known as Parasitic tracheal mites causes a threat, these mites can take over bees respiratory system as they are so small, and as they grow they make it nearly impossible for bees to breather as they completely cut off their air supply. Along side these, climate change is a threat to bees. With all of these different weather events it can effect the timing of when flowers bloom, were flowers mean less food for bees and they will starve. Its important to help protect bees and their declining number, growing your own garden that produces food for bees will attract them to collect nectar from your plants. Some of the best flowers for bees to collect decor from are blue and yellow flowering plants. Mass plants are highly effective so bees can spend most of their time in one area foraging instead of looking elsewhere. The life cycle of the bee consists of each bee to have a specific job best suited to each bee, these jobs have been divided into three castes which is dependent on their age. The first caste is the workers, this is the most popular caste. The workers make up 85% of the colony, the worker bees are known to be the most hard working as it includes forage to collect pollen and nectar. Usually when the bee turns 20 days old they are able to leave the colony and forge. The second caste is the queen, the queen gives birth to every single bee in the colony. With her pheromones it influences the mood within the colony. The final caste of the colony are the drones, this is made up of the male bees, typically there are only a fee hundred male bees in a colony. The male bees don’t have forging tools or stings, they have larger eyes which are used to locate the queen on mating flights. In order for the colony to communicate it lies on the queen bee. The queen gives a signal which encourages workers, without the queen to give directions the colony would fall apart. The main movement bees make while foraging is often called the waggle dance, the waggle dance is how bees communicate if they’ve found a amazing nectar supply. As bees forage resources up to 8km away from their hive bees use the round dance. When the nectar is more more than 40 meters away from the hive the bees perform the waggle dance. This dance allows bees to share information on direction and distance. It is important to inspire environmental education by offering new ways of thinking about existing problems and working to protect the environment. Ecological art is something created by artists that are concerned with the state of our environment. “Artists interpret nature and create artworks to inform us about nature and its processes or about environmental problems we face”. (Green Museum 2003, 4). “Others define ecological art as a movement that uses art that is restorative too promote awareness, engagement and activism around major environmental issues”. (Blandy etal, 1998; Cembalest 1991). When a designer has a extensive understanding idea of a design problem, they get a valuable insight that informs the importance of the experience. An experience is a type of event to personally engage individuals to implant a impression or leave a memory. A experience is a different way of practice that creates opportunity for change, it gives the narrative a chance to engage and create their own experience that they will remember. Experiences give individuals the chance to visualise new solutions and understand the problem and issues at hand, this is a way to create a new comprehensive and dynamic path to innovation. Experiences are responsible for services, products and the environment. A great experience is a imaginative combination of al these things, it creates a single narrative for everyone. Joseph Pine & James Gilmore states that “Passion to serve our users, make meaningful work in this world, and of course, to provide a personal experience to them. This curiosity and openness to what design could do have led us into the fields of research”(The Experience Economy, 1999, pg. 9-15). To truely experience the essence of a design is to strip it back so its raw and you can see it for what it really is. The hive is made up of three major materials, wax, honey and propolis. Wax is the main material, it basically makes the hive. The structure of a hive which is majority comb is completely bee made. A series of hexagonal cells are made of wax which interlock the hive, bees store honey and pollen within these cells. The goal for a bee is to make honey. Propolis is the glue for a bee hive, propolis is 50% tree resin which makes it very sticky which is why bees use it to insulate and patch holes in their hive. The Hive, designed by Woolfgang Buttress, is a exclusive structure themed around the lifecycle of a bee inspired by valid research into the health of bees. The Hive shows an detailed metal honeycomb with an illuminated dome at its centre. This is made from thousands of pieces of aluminium which create a lattice effect which is fitted with hundreds of LED lights that fade and glow as a particular soundtrack hums and buzzes around you. These multi-sensory elements of the Hive are acknowledging to the real-time activity and movement of bees in a beehive. As the energy levels in the real life beehive surge, the light and sound within the instillation changes, allowing visitors to experience an insight to life inside a bee colony. 1000 LED luminaries line the interior of a beehive, vibration sensors are used to read the activity from the bee colony. A rotational twist in the structure proposes movement, symbolic of a swarm. “I’m not an architect, I’m an artist, so I was more interested in the experience and in how you could convey an idea and a feeling through an experience rather than an object or a building,” Buttress. The Hive is an abstracted analogue of a honeycomb, which speaks for the underlying and important relationship between bee and human, sound, science and landscape through an immersive and multi-sensory experience. “The Hive creates a powerful, immersive space for us to explore the urgent issues we face in relation to pollinators, their intimate relationships with plants and their vital role in helping us feed a rapidly growing population,” added Richard Deverell, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. 

[smt-here]

A Cocktail of Emotion (Part 2)

Pairing : Peter Parker x Reader (first person POV, ‘I’ pronoun)

Genre : Soulmate!AU

Warning : idk what to warn you guys lol

Word Count : 1578

A/N : Heyaaaa I finally post the 2nd part... sorry it took so long! I just came back from Singapore 3 days ago and I was super tired and as usual, my brain isn’t functioning properly... Anywho, since I’m making this story 1500 words per part, this story would probably have several more parts before the ending and just to be clear, there will be angst somewhere over the rainbows.lol. btw I really appreciate the support some of you have been sending me through dms, comments and even submissions, it means a lot to me and I’d definitely reply them. I think I might make more Tom holland stories so if you wanna be notified, go ahead and dm me, I’ll put you in my tag list! 💕

Part 1

School wasn’t bad.

So far at least.

I managed to get through the first and second period without a hitch. The teacher didn’t bully or tease me for being the new student and the other students were actually very accepting of me.

But despite all that, I was very disappointed that my imagination didn’t became a reality.

I had imagined that the minute I stepped into the classroom, my eyes would trail off to one of the students and our eyes met and my soulmate sensor would activate at its peak and every emotion that he felt, and his heart beat, I’d be able to feel them and he could feel mine.

But of course that’s what romantic novels are for, right?

They enhance our brain to make scenarios, imaginations, all sorts of things that allows us to be hopeful of what may come in the future. Although we are unawarely conscious about the fact that those scenarios are most likely not able to happen. Or even if they do, it’ll make you feel like something’s not right.

“Spacing out I see, hope the teacher didn’t caught you mid-class”

I look up and see Michelle with an eyebrow raised and a book open in her arms. I grinned at the sight of her fulfilling her promise and stood up immediately, “Sorry! I-I tend to imagine... A lot...” I said sheepishly as I gather my books and head out with her.

“I won’t judge, don’t worry... But I will get cranky if we don’t get my usual spot during lunch so let’s go” she told me before speed-walking with her head down to her book, forcing me to copy her action just so that I won’t lose her in the crowd.

Soon we were both seated on a table with a group of kids on one end of the table and Michelle and I on the other end. The cafeteria was filled with kids to the brim. There were all sorts of kids around and the line for food was insanely long.

Michelle sat across from me and as I munch on my home-made lunch I had managed to make this morning, I noticed that she had finally put her book down and grinned at me, “Well newbie, are you ready to get the proper introduction to students here in Midtown High?” she smirked.

I rolled my eyes playfully but nod, “Yes, please, do enlighten me with your knowledge of other students in this school” I answered back.

Michelle propped herself on her elbows on the table as she began pointing around, “Those are the football jocks, as you can see... Varsity-wearing, stinky, popular dudes that thinks that they rule the school... Their captain is Cole Grant Langley, honorary student, one of the top students in class, would probably go to an Ivy League on a football scholarship, he’s a Junior... And of course, sitting with them are the cheerleaders... Pompom loving fancy poodles that shows off their cheerleading outfit like a trophy, the captain is Brittany Lee and she’s a total daddy’s girl...”

I looked at her with an eyebrow raised, stopping her mid-sentence as if asking her, ‘Are you serious?’, “What? I may not be close to them but I am very observant... Next!”

Michelle then continued on with her ‘storytelling’ session as she points to different tables of different groups of students that have their own ‘label’.

“And there’s Liz Allen, probably the most popular student in this school, everyone adores her, she’s nice, smart, a senior, and Peter has a major crush on her” she said, scoffing at the end.

Again, I raised an eyebrow at her, “Peter?” I asked, not knowing who the person is. Michelle hadn’t pointed to a student in the cafeteria and told me the name Peter. I was surprised that I remembered considering the names that were spat out by Michelle over the 20 minutes of the get-to-know-Midtown’s-students session.

“Oh, yeah...Of course you don’t know Peter Parker... I mentioned him earlier this morning, you remember Ned, right?” I nodded and let her continue, “Well Peter is Ned’s best friend, they’re like super tight buddies and all and they’re both total nerds hence the main pillar to their friendship was that and... Peter has a huge obvious crush on Liz Allen in which he thought was super subtle but, come on... He’s stupid” She rolled her eyes.

“Again... I don’t know who this... Peter Parker is yet so I can’t make a fair judgement as of now...” Michelle raised an eyebrow at me, “You’re a goody-two-shoes, aren’t you?” She asked in a bit of a curious tone.

I shrugged at her, I propped my chin onto my elbow before answering, “I’m not quite sure, I just like playing by the rule book, alright? It’s better that way and the results are most likely to be easily predicted”

Michelle scoffed playfully at me with a grin on her face, “Wow, you must be the life of the party, aren’t you?” I feigned a shocked and offended expression at her while putting a hand on my chest, “I have never been so offended in my life! You, my dear friend are a menace to society for addressing a person such as I am in such way!”

Surprisingly, Michelle laughed heartily at my abnormal joke which would often annoy people.

“Alright, princess... No need to cast me out of society for calling you a party pooper!” she replied.

As I was about to retort something back to her, her eyes trailed to something or someone. I looked at the direction she was looking at and saw Ned walking away while talking to someone, Ned was on the left side and the other person had their back to me as he talked with Ned. They both then took a seat on the table nearest to the exit door whereas Michelle and I were sat in the middle-ish row of the cafeteria. The person Ned was with still had his back on me but I could still get a perfect view of him despite the amount of students surrounding the are.

Strange.

The more I see him, the calmer I get.

That and he looked oddly familiar in some way.

Have I met him before?

Do I know him?

I don’t recall having a friend back from LA who moved here to Midtown.

“Speaking of party pooper...”

I turn my head back to Michelle and raised an eyebrow at her in a questioning way.

“That guy...” she then pointed to the guy Ned is walking with, “...Is Peter Parker, THE Peter Parker that I’ve been telling you about, the Peter Parker that totally disappear here and there like ghost and also the Peter Parker that has a huge crush on Liz Allen”

“Really Michelle... You totally sounded like you’re obsessed with this... Peter Parker just by the way you talk about him” Michelle furrowed her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes at me, “I am so not obsessed with him! I’m just simply observant to the people I usually hang with!” she desperately said, she had her arms raised in an annoyed kind of way at me.

“Anyhow, what’s the beef with him? You made it sound like he’s a jerk in which I don’t think he is... I mean, he’s friends with Ned and Ned is obviously not a bad guy, so I don’t think this Peter is as bad as you said he is...” I ask her as I put my lunch box away into my school bag.

Michelle shrugged her shoulders at me, then she took a short pause, thinking about what her answer to my question is before answering me, “I... Don’t actually have any problem with him... It’s just... I have been observing him since the first day he move here to Midtown, I forgot where he was before he went here but that’s not the point... Around a year ago he suddenly changed”

That made me raised an eyebrow at her, “Changed? What do you mean by ‘changed’? L-like a physical change or something?”

She shook her head vigorously, “No no no, it’s more like... He became a whole different person...” she took a deep breath while closing her eyes, seemingly trying to focus to find the perfect way to describe the current topic to me. “See, before he became the Peter Parker he is now, he was a super nerdy, studious, loyal to his friend and careful Peter Parker... Now, he’d sometimes became reckless and won’t even realize it, he is still nerdy though but sometimes he’d ditch Ned to walk alone after school... Not to mention he dropped all of his extracurricular activities, it was a miracle that he still hold onto the decathlon team” she scoffed while crossing her arms on her chest.

“Well, we don’t know for sure as to why he dropped out of all of his extracurricular activities, right? I mean, he must have his own reason!”

“I guess... He did lost his uncle not long ago...” she muttered softly while looking down onto her own lap, “But I still refuse to believe that’s all... He completely changed the day after we all went to Oscorp...” she scoffed one more time.

At that my eyes had somehow automatically trailed to the boy across the room, sitting with Ned, talking things only the both of them knows.

I really need to stop feeling weird about him.

Taglist is still open. DM me if you’d want to be tagged in my Peter Parker/Tom Holland stories !

Taglist :

@x-wing-starwriter

#marvel imagine #peter parker imagine #tom holland imagine #tom holland #peter parker #spiderman imagine #spider-man #spiderman #spider-man: homecoming #imagine #scenario #marvel scenario #peter parker scenario #tom holland scenario #soulmate!au #spider-man imagine #spider-man scenario

[heartsofstrangers]

What has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“I think one of the most challenging things was learning how to feel again after I had gone through so much trauma. I ended up actually disassociating as a means of survival; and so trying to have normal relationships with people after the fact, including my daughter, who is my favorite human being ever, but the truth is I didn’t plan to be a parent. I was trying to leave, but I didn’t have a say over that. Yeah, so being authentic and honoring my feelings in making decisions and who I am including in my life. And where I am going to go from here. I really had to work very, very hard at trusting myself again, and really even knowing what I was feeling in the moment at all.”

Tell me about some of these traumas, if you’re comfortable.

“I wasn’t allowed to take birth control pills, nor was I allowed to not have sex when I didn’t want to, it didn’t matter. So I very quickly got pregnant by my ex-husband, but he did not stop beating me, so I had a miscarriage, then I had another and he told me that it was my fault because I wasn’t strong enough to carry a child. I was pregnant a third time with my daughter who I have now, and I saved her by wedging my stomach in the corner of two walls every time he hit me, so he only hit me from behind and not the front. After the second miscarriage he was drinking and using drugs a lot more so one night I came home and—I don’t know where he came from, if he was walking or where he came out of, but he was walking and it was dark outside. I didn’t see him until it was too late. He didn’t say anything, which was strange. I didn’t even know if he was angry, I couldn’t assess his demeanor. But he just walked up to me and lifted up his arm; he had a gun, and he shot at me one time and, fortunately, he missed. So, doing the work that I do now in domestic violence, it’s really, really hard. Sometimes I just go home and cry, because for a while I had survivor’s guilt. I heard about certain women who were shot to death and I thought, well, it’s not fair that they’re dead. How did I make it and why? So, for a while I went through that too. Like I said, I did not have much of a choice about having a child, but she’s the reason why I left, because I had her.

“And I had a really hard childhood. My parents were alcoholics and addicts, so I was a parentified child by the age of nine. I was cooking and cleaning to take care of my sisters. My dad’s friend was molesting me. So I tried to make sure that he stayed away from my sisters, and as adults I have asked them if they were okay, and they told me they were okay, so I am happy that I did my job. At least I thought that was my job at the time. I learned to disassociate way back then, and now that I remember being molested. I would imagine myself as this tiny little person in the corner of the ceiling and I would have my back turned to whatever was happening to me. So you learn how to get through these things by not feeling anymore. How could you? Now as an adult I am teaching myself how to feel for the first time, and know that it’s okay to not want something, and that it actually is my choice.”

What was your relationship like with your parents, being in that environment?

“I didn’t see them an awful lot. My dad worked as a mechanic during the day, then he would work at night in our garage, so he would be physically at our address, but not in our house. So I did not see him. My mom was home during the day, but I was in school. She waitressed in the evenings, so she was gone. My dad being there, there was an adult, but in the house I was the oldest, so my relationship with them was that in a way I think I was taking care of them too. Even through my parents’ divorce, I chose to stay with my dad. When I was thirteen, I was doing laundry, I was cooking meals, so when he came home there was food. Even before that, when my parents would argue, I would stand up for my mom, who at the time was very weak. I don’t want to judge her, but she was in a different place. So I don’t know that I had a real child relationship with them. I don’t even think that I had a normal relationship with my sisters. So when we were separated, when I chose to stay with my dad, I felt like I was losing my kids. That was a very skewed way of thinking for a thirteen-year-old. I was the one taking care of them.”

What was the transition like from your getting out of that household and moving on from playing the parental role to both your parents and your sisters, to moving into your first relationship?

“That’s a good question. I left my home right after high school. I was accepted to Berklee College of Music in Boston for singing. That is what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a singer. That was my out. That was my expression. I love music, I love singing, and I left my sisters. I didn’t know at the time that they needed me more than I realized, so there was a bit of resentment for my leaving. When I did leave, I began to remember having been molested. So, I didn’t even know at the time, it wasn’t present in my mind and it happened over the span of years, up until I was thirteen years old. I went away and I was doing well at first, then I started getting these flashbacks and memories and dreams, and I began to get depressed. I slept more, and I isolated. I didn’t tell my friends. I didn’t tell my family. I started messing up in school, which I had never done my whole life. My parents thought I was screwing up, so they left me in Boston with my stuff, and this guy I was dating over the summer had to come get me because they kicked me out. You can’t leave your stuff there. They turned their backs on me. I was living with this guy, which wasn’t great. I was waitressing at the time, and I felt like I failed myself. My entire dream was handed to me, and I couldn’t live up to it, and no one knew why—except me, but I didn’t say anything at the time. They thought I was depressed, and they put me on all kinds of antidepressant medications. For five years I was on every kind of Seroquel Lamictal, Neurontin, Zyprexa, Celexa, up until they had me on 1500 mg of lithium a day, and I couldn’t even go grocery shopping by myself. I had gained so much weight because of the medication and the fact that I didn’t do anything, because I couldn’t. I still feel as if I have wasted five years of my life in this haze, when they just could have loved me through it, instead of just throwing pills at me. Anyway, I tried to kill myself twice, but after the medication, I think that was why I tried. It wasn’t until they started giving me all of this different stuff and a lot of them, that’s the side effect, but they didn’t know at the time. I lived, but I will never forget having my stomach pumped in the emergency room, and my mom being there and me begging her to make them let me die. She had to leave. The doctors didn’t stop. That’s not their job. And now I am grateful. Before I was angry they kept me alive, but now I’m not.

“So actually I stopped taking all of the meds when my now ex-husband got me pregnant for the first time, and I stopped cold turkey. They told me to never stop taking my meds, that I would not function without them, and I believed that. I had doctors telling me I would never work a normal job. And that’s crazy to think about. How do you second guess them? Of course I didn’t know any better, but they were wrong.”

Do you think it’s possible that rather than being smothered with medication and labeled as not being able to participate in society, what you really needed was space and time to heal and work through the trauma in a safe and comfortable way, and maybe built on a foundation of unconditional love?

“I definitely think that never was available to me, and I worked really hard at realizing my parents are fallible human beings. I used to wish that they were exactly what I needed them to be, and they couldn’t they—they just couldn’t. They weren’t there. It helped me learn that, because I am a parent now so I hope that I am doing the best that I can and I think that I am. But you never know, we just do our best. And at the time, I guess that was their best.”

What was their reaction? Did you have a conversation with them at some point and tell them what was causing all this suffering and pain in your life, and the reason for these other symptoms?

“I did. I talked to my mom, and she is in a very different place in her life now. She is clean and sober twenty years, a long time. So now she is in a position to help others and be a support in that way. She apologized to me, and it was a heartfelt conversation that she was able to be present for, and I am grateful for that. My dad, he’s not really there. Actually, I started having these memories, but I couldn’t remember who the person was, I could not, up until about eight months ago. I went to a hypnotist and did real hard work, real tough work that leaves you raw, and I figured it out that way. Because I wanted to know for me. And I was able to tell my dad, because it was one of his friends and he is in denial. He still brings up that guy’s name to me like it never happened. He’ll talk to me about him. He’ll bring up his name to me and tell me he did this, he’s this, like it never happened. That is painful, and I have told him off in my mind about it a couple of times. But not out loud. We’ll see if that ever happens.”

It seems like there must have been a fair amount of forgiving your parents. You mentioned getting to a place where you realized they are human, infallible, and maybe were doing the best they could at that time, which, I assume, led you to a place of forgiving them so you could continue to move forward with your healing. What did that look like for you?

“It’s not an easy place to get to, especially if you think your parents owe you one thing or another—a safe life, a happy life, a healthy life, any of the above. I really had to dig deep. I did a lot of therapy, and in the end it helped me to do energy healing. I came to the realization that holding onto resentment really was inhibiting me and not them. That is a simple enough concept, but to live it out in a situation like this is hard. And you have to work at it. Sometimes every day. It looked like a lot of tears and a lot of forgiving myself too. Because I got stuck and I blamed myself for not finishing school and getting into this abusive marriage: ‘How couldn’t I know?’ and ‘Why wasn’t I smart enough?’ and all this other stuff. I was judging myself when really I was just doing my best too. You know? And I was carrying this pain around like the heaviest weight, thinking, why can’t you run a marathon? Well, I had to drop that at some point, because I wanted to go farther than I had. I couldn’t carry that anymore. I didn’t even want to. It did not serve me anymore. And I thought at one point by letting it go, it was like it didn’t happen and it didn’t matter. And it didn’t change my life forever, and at the same time it did change my life forever. But it doesn’t mean I am stuck or I am not worthwhile, or I am a failure. I mean, I went through all of that and I am still here. That’s my victory, and I have this amazing little person who calls me Mommy, and she is my favorite human being. I didn’t mean to have her, but I didn’t know at the time that I needed her as badly as I do. It’s just the two of us, and that’s cool. I think another part of the healing is being able to give her stuff that I never had. I wanted someone to protect me; I walked around like this wounded little girl for so long, and I was looking to other people to stand up for me because I wasn’t doing it for myself. I actually wanted a boy, because I imagined him growing old enough to stand up to his father for me. How sick is that? To pass that onto my son. I had a girl. And I looked at her and said, ‘It’s just us.’ So now it’s up to me.”

How do you think those experiences shaped who you are today?

“I think they had everything to do with who I am today. I know I am an extremely resilient person, and I know that from my own example. That is the reason why I don’t look at my limitations, I look at everything as a hurdle, but not insurmountable. I look back and say, ‘Well, I lived through that. This is not a big deal.’ Even public speaking and trying to help people through, there are times when I am having conversations with people that I will never meet, I will never know these specifics about them and I will help them for hours just try to survive. I don’t think I could have ever been that person if I had not gone through what I went through myself.”

Did you think maybe, at the time when some of these traumas were starting to surface and you were starting to recognize the pain and the impact it was having on your life, that there was some alternative way around it, or that you could bypass it all together? I think some of us, when something is painful or it makes us uncomfortable, we’ll tuck it under the rug and it will go away, you know? That is not necessarily true.

“It’s definitely not true. It’s so funny you ask that, because I remember people who know me well, I’m a Capricorn, so I’m like, let’s get down to brass tacks. You know? And I sat down in a session with one of my counselors who happened to be new and I said. ‘Look, I wrote down a list of things I needed to heal from, process, and work through.’ I put it on her desk and said, ‘Here are the things I need to do, and I don’t have much time to do them, so could we get on with this?’ [laughing] She just looked at me as if to say, ‘This is not really how this works.’ I definitely did. I have to constantly surrender to the process. It’s different for every single person, because we are all very different individuals. It’s changed over time. At times it was church and faith, and now it’s more of a universal energy and my own personal power. And that’s okay. The things that work for us for a season may not work for us for the duration. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that what worked before doesn’t work at all, it just means that I’ve taken what I can from this and I’m moving forward to do the same thing with something else. There are so many different ways of healing: meditation, yoga, praying, nature, family, cooking, exercise, art. The list can go on forever. So I think that it’s almost like this collage. Your own personal healing collage. Mine has changed a lot. But I kind of like that. It means I’m changing.”

When you look back, can you see areas where the healing process was already in effect and may have not known it yet?

“Yeah, I can. Even in my marriage, the attempts at reclaiming my control. Not always doing what he said, or it’s the tiniest little thing. I used to go to the grocery store and he would be screaming when I got back because, ‘Why did you take so long?’ He always looked at the receipt and check the time I checked out, and always checked the name of the person who did. And if it was a male, he would lose it. ‘Why did you have to go in that line? You were talking to him, weren’t you? Did you flirt with him?’ Or whatever. I would always have to try to get a female checkout person, and then I would have to get straight home. I couldn’t stop and get gas or get a burger. I had to go straight home, and that was grocery shopping. Which is this mundane little activity that you never think of, but it was like this for every single thing. I used to crumple up my receipt and throw it out of the window. I hate littering, but it was symbolic for me. I crumpled it up and I let it fly away, which was a problem, and I didn’t care. Because I knew it would be. My little tiny rebellions.”

It sounds like there was something growing inside of you, sort of this acknowledgment that “I don’t belong in this cage, I need to be free. I’m coming out.”

“It’s so interesting that you use the word ‘cage.’ Because it was like being locked in an open cage. You’re so scared to walk out, you don’t even try. It’s like mice in an experiment. You are so scared that the cage door could be left open all night, and you would stay in there. And that’s how I was. I could leave. I had a car. I went to work. I could call someone and do something. They convince you that they will hurt you, they will hurt your family, they will never leave you alone and you are not worth it, no one else is going to love you. You should take what you get from them. And I believed that. That was the best that I could do, and I’m lucky to have him.”

It sounds as if a lot of what keeps people in that cage is not only fear, but your own sense of worthiness. And if you don’t have a sense of worthiness, and you’re believing that you do not deserve the freedom, the love, the independence, a loving partner, then you’ll stay.

“You will. They systematically strip you of your humanness and your self-worth to the point where my name could have been on my license on my birth certificate as ‘stupid bitch.’ And he never called me by my real name, and that’s one way just to make a person feel less than. Another thing was haircuts. He would come to the hairdresser with me, and he would tell her how to cut my hair. I couldn’t do that myself. It would always be to make me look not pretty. He wanted my hair short. He wanted me look a certain way. Another thing was I could not pick out my clothes. They were always supposed to be baggy; they were always supposed to be what he picked. I had some clothes in a drawer, and one time when I came home, they were cut with scissors with bleach all over them and the cat litter box dumped on top. And that’s what you get when you try to wear your own clothes.”

Wow. So what is the tape in your head now? What is the voice? Is it still ‘stupid bitch’ or what is it now?

“No, that’s not it at all. It’s really quite the opposite actually. The tape in my head is, well lately I’ve been taking these self-checks, because I’ve been working the hardest on identifying my true feelings in the moment and honoring them. So my mantra is, ‘How does this feel? What do you want?’ Two very simple questions that I am sure most people don’t walk around asking themselves. Because, you sort of do what you are supposed to do. You walk here, you do this, you dress this way, and we have these things that are ingrained in us. My new thing is just being authentically myself, whatever that looks like, and not caring if I look goofy or silly, because those are other people’s judgments of me, not mine.”

I love that, yeah. You definitely have to journey through a lot of vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable, which takes a lot of courage to get to a place where you are willing to be authentic and not care what the spectators are going to say or how they feel about you. You know that because you have done work within yourself, it doesn’t matter what anyone else things about you. Your worth is not based on their opinions, it’s based on how you feel about yourself. That is a wonderful place to get to, and I don’t think that’s an easy journey. And I don’t think that once you get there, it’s guaranteed that you stay there. I would imagine from my own experience that it takes daily practice to remain in that space.

“It does. I have days where I’m like, I don’t want to. I mean, we are adults and we have jobs and we have these responsible things that we may say, ‘I don’t want to do this or it doesn’t feel right.’ Even if that’s the case, I can examine that, I can notice that, I can arm myself with that knowledge. ‘I don’t want to do this and I am not going to do this.’ And if that’s going to work in making your paycheck, you’re going to need that. I’m a mom, I can’t just not. But I can examine it and say, ‘Okay, what are you going to do about it?’ And that makes you take that next step. So, what’s your action? What are you going to change? How are you going to change this? We have a tendency to follow our habits and these behaviors that are sort of inherent in us. We can at any point switch that up; all it takes is a decision. Well, first you have to notice. Then you have to decide, and it is usually uncomfortable. But that’s cool too. Because it’s different. None of this whole process was easy or comfortable. A lot of times, I had to consciously say, ‘This sucks, I hate it, but I have to do it, so I’m going to sit in this discomfort, because it is going to help me in the end.’ It’s an investment in yourself. It’s like re-breaking your bone to grow it back right. That is not a comfortable process.”

It sounds like a beneficial one, no?

“Definitely. I don’t regret any of it actually, which is a nice place to be too. It has a lot to do with forgiving myself. I’m not a screw-up, it was not an accident. It all happens for a reason, and you can look at it with the attitude of ‘this happened, I’m going to make the best of it.’ ‘The best of it’ is almost limitless, actually. It’s really your potential to see how far you can take it. Some people are just happy to heal, and that’s perfectly fine and wonderful. I just happen to be someone who wants to go bigger. I share this painful stuff and I want people to know that they are not alone.”

That’s huge.

“Yeah, thanks.”

I feel that it’s our responsibility, having gone through difficult times and finding our way and getting back to light and to safety, not to forget about the people who are still trapped in the well. To offer them a ladder, to offer them some help or some slack. It’s really amazing that you have moved through your healing and your journey, and that you are in a place where you are sharing your story and offering help to others who are still stuck in that situation. There are many men and women who are stuck in abusive relationships and stuck in that place of “I’m in a cage, the door is not locked, but I’m too afraid to push it,” which is scary; and I think some people spend their entire lives being stuck in that cycle. As you share your story with me today, and on a platform you have created outside of this, you have given people an opportunity to see hope—there is light, there is hope. I know what you are doing outside of this interview, but for the purpose of the interview, why don’t you share where this path has lead you and what you are doing?

“Okay. This actually started with a poem for a class I was taking in college and that I had shared with someone. Well, first I was volunteering at the Prudence Crandall Center in New Britain. I took over the support group I had been attending for four years, and that is how I began being a DV counselor. I happened to send this poem to someone who picked it up and sent it along and they were like, ‘Geez, this is great. Can we use it? Can you say it somewhere?’ And so I said sure. They said, ‘Would you mind being in this short film for the Prudence Crandall Center?’ and I said, sure. Then I was asked to speak on behalf of the Prudence Crandall Center, then I was asked to speak at a second event about my experience there. It was like every speech I did, someone would ask me to do another. I was looking for a professional email because I wanted to make a business card. I was thinking of things I wanted to say, and ‘Sarah speaks up’ is what I decided on. Sarah Speaks Up is now my non-profit organization that I started, because I wanted to really encourage and empower people by my example, and from that sprang some ideas that I had. How can I help people speak up, really speak up? In the meantime, I had a parole hearing for my ex-husband, which was the second one I had been to, so I knew what to expect and I had friends with me so I wasn’t alone. He was on a teleprompter, he was on video chat, so he wasn’t in the room. This was a couple of months ago. This is still me, myself, now, going into a room with my ex-husband on a TV, and my involuntary response was physically shaking and crying. I thought to myself, ‘If you’re this person now, and you still get this as your response, what are these other victims feeling?’ They’ve just come out of this relationship, and they are expected to go to court and testify in front of that person, and sit in the hallway while they pace right in front of you, stare at you—because I’ve been through that. And then you have to walk out, your both free to go and you both walk out at the same time, and how do you feel when you walk to your car, and do you want to go at all? Because you know it’s going to be like that. Which is why I thought of the Veterans for Victims program that I am currently in the process of creating. We would engage two demographics. I have always supported the veterans, and appreciate greatly what they have done for all of us. And then these victims. Which would give this person like an escort, to be there together, to walk in together and walk out together, so they are not alone. So I’m really hoping for great success with that. Depending on how far we can take it, I would love to make it a nationwide project. But again, we are working on baby steps right now. I do public speaking at events. Anywhere they could use my story. I also talk about personal empowerment and making choices that serve you as an individual, rather than feeling obligated to always do what is expected of you or what you think you are supposed to be doing. Really feeding your own happiness in that way. Newspaper articles, writing books—it’s a lot, but that’s my mission.”

Did you ever imagine that those really traumatic experiences and times in your life would lead you to this path of purpose and a mission that is helping other victims?

“I did not, I never did. It happened so organically. How I was growing and the people around me noticing that and supporting me through. It took a lot of separate individuals to see something in me and to tell me and push me along, not in a pressure-type way, but a very, very supportive way.”

What advice would you either offer to yourself as a young adult or the child you were in a parental role? Or to somebody else who can relate to that situation themselves that is stuck?

“I would tell them that the place they are in is not the place they are always going to be in. A lot of it has to do with the choices they make. Sometimes we don’t realize that not making a choice, is making a choice. By staying in a toxic environment, by staying in a dysfunctional relationship, we are essentially crippling ourselves—it’s like tying our own sneakers together and expecting to run a race. You have to really think about what’s best for you. Another thing too, a lot of times, domestic violence victims are people who are caretakers, people who want to help, fix, change, and they want to make this person better. We are not God. We are not responsible for the success or failure of anyone but ourselves. Even our children—we are there to teach them and guide them, but we cannot make their decisions for them. We love them through it all, but we are only responsible for ourselves. That is really freeing, because you can say, ‘What do I want?’ and know that is all that you really can ask.”

That’s huge! Is there another mantra or a quote you would like to share, something that maybe you stumbled across in your healing process that was an “a-ha’’ moment for you?

“Now I’m on the spot. I don’t know, in terms of a mantra or a quote. I love quotes, so I don’t have one in particular. My favorite one lately is from Malala, I cannot remember it verbatim, which is to the effect of, ‘I raise my voice, not to yell, but so that people who cannot be heard have someone to speak for them,’ or something to that effect. It’s not a mantra for me, it’s the way I choose to live my life.”

And what does that mean to you? Why does that resonate with you?

“It resonates with me because I remember being such a mouse. I remember being or feeling so powerless that all I wanted was for someone to swoop in and tell me, ‘You’re not crazy, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be okay.’ And I hope I can do that even for just one person and I’ll be happy.”

You’re doing it right now. How has it felt to talk about these experiences with me today?

“It’s all part of the point of it all. It feels great, I’m not embarrassed by it. I don’t hold it as trauma anymore, I just hold it as experience.”

Do you think it is possible that by sharing this story with me, you could be helping some people who might be ashamed of or feel silenced in some way to make a decision, make a change, set the ball in motion to get out of that situation that they are in?

“Yes. I count on it, actually. I hope for it every day. That’s why I do this. I wouldn’t even care if I never knew either way, I’m okay with not knowing. I just want to believe that it happens. And people tell me anyway if in fact it has helped. Just to know that people hear someone say, like you tell everyone they are beautiful. I want people to know that they are worth living. They are worth being happy. These are not frivolous things. They are things that they deserve. So yeah, I count on it.”

#domesticviolence #abuse #recovery #healing #resilience #heartsofstrangers #everyhearthasastorytotell #yourstorywillinspireothers #hope #photojournalism #survivor

[elevenhoursinfront-blog]

12th June 2017

By 0600, I got up. I couldn't lay in that bed any longer. I got dressed and went outside. Steve was awake too but he stayed in bed. It was freezing outside but I wanted Julie-Ann to see we was awake so I could have a cup of tea. I walked along the balcony/decking area and looked over the lake. A noise made me jump and I turned around. Turns out, I scared the kangaroos and they scared me! Three of them were within 2 metres of me and just stared. I walked towards them and said hi. They just sat there. I quickly and quietly walked back to the room and told Steve to wake up. I grabbed my GoPro and we went over to them. Only one wasn't too scared to stay near us. The jumped off and we went for a walk around the house. There were Kangaroos everywhere. It was amazing.

There were cockatoos in the trees making the funniest of noises, making me laugh everytime they chirped. The kangroos were hopping round us. It was like a dream. I can imagine in the summer it would look beautiful with all the flowers and trees booming. The house is called Banksia B&B because of the banksia's surrounding. Julie-Ann said she provides flowers for the local florists because she gets so many.

By 0800, Steve was frozen. We jumped back into bed to try and warm up. I heard Bouncer barking away so I thought Julie-Ann was awake. Bouncer sleeps outside and he often barks at the kangaroos. Steve and I were still the only ones awake. We went back outside at 0830 where Julie-Ann finally was up and ready, she invited us in for tea and coffee.

We had two slices of toast and I had tea, Steve had coffee. She had cereal in the tiny boxes you used to have as a child, too. We felt too rude to ask for more. We sat in the front room watching Australia's version of This Morning. I miss Holly and Phil though, they are brilliant. Steve was talking to Oscar the cockatoo for a while as he was lonely. The second Steve would walk away, he would start screaming. He was so loud! He said morning to us and 'would you like a coffee?'. Steve would love a parrot if he could have one.

Eventually, the other 4 woke up. It was about 0930. Steve and I went to shower as they were eating. Steve got in first and washed and I got in second. As I was shampooing, the water went freezing. I've never felt cold water like it. Steve reckons Julie-Ann put the dishwasher on. I had to wash the shampoo out in what felt like ice on my head. It was awful. The worst part was, my towel was still soaking from the jacuzzi the night before. The house was too cold to dry it off. I almost cried (again, obviously) it was that cold. I got dressed and ready as quickly as possible.

Steve was outside speaking with Julie-Ann for ages. I went outside and she was feeding the birds. The birds were bright red, almost tropical. She said they get so many different wildlife animals here. Julie-Ann takes photos and puts it into an album when she sees something different. She gets different plantation, flowers and toadstools too. She let us flick through the album which was great. The red deer look amazing. I wasn't all that fussed abut the Emu's though because they scare me. The Kangaroos came over and scared the birds off. They then started to have a fit over the bird seeds. It was comical to watch. Bouncer used to chase the Emu’s but one time, they turned around and chased him. They rolled him over, so now he’s scared of them. Lesson learnt! 

She said she would take us for a walk around the forest if we wanted, which we said yes too. We were all waiting for Dan to get ready, as we do every time we go anywhere with him. He was laying on the bed for ages before getting showered. He wasn't ready until 1130 which was slightly annoying but never mind. He got a really hot shower too. Boo.

We all left and walked around with Julie-Ann and Bouncer. He was 12 years old but I can see how he got his name - he jumps and runs everywhere. He's so full of energy. Julie-Ann said that fires happen so often here, which we all knew about Australia anyway. Three years ago, a massive bush fire spread and she almost lost the house. Gum trees were falling (they're absolutely MASSIVE trees). The firemen took all the local residents into a hall and one by one they went out in the trucks to see whether they had a house or not. Julie-Ann and Rob lost their shed but not their house thankfully.

We came across loads of kangaroos, emus and toadstools. The toadstools were absolutely massive, bigger than 5 human heads! It started to rain but we carried on walking. We went to one of the fallen Gum trees. I couldn't believe how big it actually was. We stood inside of one that got half burnt but didn't fall. You cant touch the tree even when your arms are out wide.

She took us back and our feet were soaking wet. I changed my socks and put on my slides (slipper sandles) and put my trainers into the front of the car to dry. We all packed our stuff, said our goodbyes and left around 1230.

We went to Mackenzie Falls as we decided not to do it yesterday. Unfortunately, the weather was rubbish today but we still wanted to see it. We got to the carpark after a 30 minute drive as we were following Jack and he took a wrong turn. The falls were down the bottom of a steep hill/stairs. Going down was easy but coming back up was going to be hard, again. My poor legs!

We couldn't see much outwards due to the fog but we were up high. Hopefully, it was going to be better the lower we went. We climbed to the bottom and the waterfall was beautiful. It was cold, cloudy and rainy so it wasn't appreciated as much as it probably could've been. We all took our photos and decided to leave. My legs were in pieces going back up. After all the strenuous climbing yesterday, with no sleep and no food, I wanted the world to swallow me up.

With Steve's help pushing and pulling me, we got to the top. I managed to stay in the lead for the majority of it too which was good. Megan and Dan struggled and they were last up. We were all very tired and sweaty.

That was the last climb, hopefully ever. We went on to drive down towards Halls Gap where the shops were. Everyone wanted to go to the Chip shop but I said nothing would be open being as it's Bank Holiday Monday... Steve said they would be because they'd make loads of money.

Steve started to drive and took a detour to the 'Borocay' lookout which is something we all wanted to see. As we were passing, he took the opportunity. Unfortunately, it was too foggy to see anything at all. He also took us down a dirt track into the middle of nowhere. We decided to turn around after 15 minutes of driving. There was a sign saying that we would hear gunshots due to pest control. We didn't want to get hit so we left. We were worried about turning round incase the car got stuck in the mud/sand but both cars managed it. We were in Toyota Stylers, so we named our car Susie Styler. She did us good. Ours was white and Mel's was red. The carhire called them Stylers but I actually think they're Corolla Ascent's but never mind.

When we eventually got to the bottom, the chip shop was shut. JUST LIKE I SAID! But, I'm not one to boast... We went into the little newsagents and ordered food. The newsagents is ran by fairly old people which is nice because they're probably very bored otherwise. The service was really slow though. It was one man and one woman, but we never see the woman do anything. The man would take one persons order and make the coffee, then the toastie and onto the next person. You would wait a good 15 minutes for your drink and a further 15 for a toastie. We weren't in a rush which was okay. We wanted to order foods like jacket potatoes but everything had sold out apart from toasties. Megan and Mel are vegetarians so the man had to make new sandwiches from scratch as he only had ham and cheese left. We were there for quite some time.

We left after having a toastie and went to see if we could do Mount William before leaving for home. It was about 1500. Apparently, we could drive to the top of the moutain for the lookout point rather than climb. It was right at the bottom of the Grampians park so about a half an hour drive away in the opposite direction from Halls Gap. Steve was driving and I was reading the map...

We got there eventually and the car was climbing uphill for ages. It was so circular too. The visability and rain was getting worse so we decided to abort this mission (when we could). There wasn't anywhere to stop for at least 15 minutes. We pulled over, told Mel it was pointless and headed back down the mountain. Time to go home.

I was driving us home so Steve and I swapped over and on the road we went. Home would take us just over 3 hours which didn't seem all that bad until midway through. The motorway got dark so quickly, and again, there weren't any lights. They work in KM instead of MPH here too. Psychologically, when you're going 100kmph, it feels like you're going stupidly fast when in reality, its about 60mph.

We got about half way through when a lorry decided to be an idiot and get the hump with me for no reason. I was continuously in the slow lane following Jack. I was going 100 and the speed limit was 110. He got within 1 metre of our car 3 times before holding his horn down at me. I'm not sure what he expected me to do - I was going as fast as I could, I wasn't going to break the speed limit, I was in the slow lane... He tried to overtake me about 3 times but couldn't get in front of another car that was doing the speed limit too. He was being a right arse! (sorry Dad). He made me so nervous. He eventually overtook us by going stupidly faster than the limit and overtook Jack, too. We ended up overtaking him a while down as we were going through a town. The speed limit dropped to 60kmph and he got stuck at the traffic lights. I was so happy because a lorry of that size should not be within 1 metre of my back window on a motorway at 100kmph. Idiot!

We carried on the motorway when the lorry ended up behind my window again after about half an hour. He must've been going so fast to catch us up... He did the same again and overtook us. I was getting so stressed mainly because there were 3 other people in the car in my care... It was pitch black and when he got close, his headlights were in my rear window. I wish I could report him!

Eventually, I pulled over in the 'services’. We tried to find a proper one for miles but nothing was there. SES (state emergency services) had a tent in a lay-by with free tea, coffee and biscuits for motorists which was great. We went for a wee in a brick 'house' that was FULL of spiders. I didn't tell Meg otherwise she wouldn't have gone. The SES do it every time there is a long weekend because motorists travel so often. It's a great idea. They had stickers, leaflets, activity books and all sorts. Free coffee and biscuit was the best. My stomach felt empty. I only had 2 toast and 1 sandwich today.

I was too scared to drive but I knew we had lost the nutcase lorry driver. Steve took over and we led the way. We had about 1.5 hours to go still which went quite fast luckily. The worst thing was, we had to go into the city. Steve doesn't do well when he's under pressure. We had to fill the petrol tank up before we gave it back too which gave him more stress. We followed the satnav which was difficult as Steve couldn't see it, he could only go by what we were saying from our phones. The lanes changed and trams were everywhere. The traffic lights are different here because you can turn on red too. Steve got really stressed and I'm almost sure he went grey. We took loads of wrong turns but luckily we ended up on the right road with a petrol station. We filled up and managed to turn in Jucy and leave the car with us all, including Susie, in one piece. Successful trip in my eyes! Steve calmed down after and apologised to us - we told him that we couldn't have drove in the city so well done to him. Especially as he's still a 'new' driver.

Mel and Jack weren't in the car park. We sorted our stuff out, made sure it was tidy inside and I rang Mel. She was having a mental breakdown, lost in the city somewhere. She was being honked at and all sorts. They eventually pulled up and she was shouting in the car 'I HATE DRIVING IN THE CITY!!'. I don't blame her. We dropped the keys in the 'letterbox' and left for the tram.

The tram took about 15 minutes, we jumped on and it took us right to Flinders station. Jack stays in a different hostel so he stayed on. His hostel is called Space Hotel (its really expensive, I wish we could stay there). We got back to the hostel around 2130. Everyone got McDonalds but I didn't want fastfood. I went without. We sat down in the kitchen, sorted out who owed who what money and everyone went to bed.

I sat in the kitchen on my own for a bit, having a breather. We just had the weekend of a lifetime and now we're back to reality. Dead excited for a good nights sleep, though. I was the only one who didn't have work in the morning.

I got into bed and died within a few seconds!

[topicprinter]

I'm starting to really hate my business. It wasn't always this way.I entered the teen-young adult streetwear hat niche 2 years ago, specializing in designing a certain type of hat. Neff, Surpreme, and other skate/hiphop culture streetwear brands are my main competitors. After making loads of money illegally, I wanted diversify to something legal, sorta like the mob. I was 16 at the time. I got the idea after spotting a kid wearing a really awesome hat in my driver's ed class. It was sorta obnoxious, sorta feminine, sorta loud, but sorta chill all at the same time. I just liked it. I ended up buying it from him for $20. I fell in love with it myself, it used to be that kid's signature hat that he wore everyday, but then it became my signature hat. I started looking online where I could buy another and even went as far as to ask the brand if they still sold it if I could get another. "Nope, sorry we discontinued that item." I looked around for other similar types of hats online and they honestly all looked terrible to me (at the time, now I sorta like them). Eager to enter any legal business with my stockpiles of cash, I decided to make and sell my own awesome hats just like the discontinued one I loved so much. They'd be aesthetically far superior to the "terrible" ones my competitors were making. Worst that could happen is that I fail and walk away with tons of entrepreneurial skills.Fast forward two years, I've learned about sourcing from China, hiring and working with freelancers, web design trends, DSLR photography, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, basic accounting, social media marketing, interpersonal skills, cold calling, cold emailing, cold knocking, and sales. I've sold 4 hats online on a haphazard ecommerce strategy and am in 2 stores as I've been cold calling as of late, trying to get into enough stores to approach chains. I'm at what seems to be a crisis point. It feels like the "make a business around you passion" bubble burst a year ago. I'm not really in love with my hats anymore, I hardly wear them, and could hardly imagine designing any more of them even if they became an overnight firebrand success. I feel like a caterpillar that has gone through a metamorphosis; who I was in 2015, in love with the idea of making my own line of awesome hats that would outcompete the bigger brands and with ton of blood money from illegal activities to spare, is not who I am in 2017. My stockpiles of blood money have run dry from spending $1050 on my first two designs (200 hats) my first year and then after realizing just two designs was too little to be taken seriously, $2500 on four more designs (1500 hats) to total six hat designs. Also, the website and design freelancers cost a lot along with rent, food, and other basic necessities. I'd say in terms of just business expenses, I'm $5k deep in the hole.I've convinced myself to move forward for two years by saying, "Just wait until you have the hats made", "just wait until you learn DSLR photography", "just wait until you learn photoshop to manipulate product photos to post on social media for sales", "just wait until you have 6 hats instead of 2", "just wait until you learn accounting", "just wait until you learn cold calling", "just wait until you move halfway across the country to sell to stores in person", "just wait until you get your first store sale". Now it's "just wait until you're in 7 stores, then you can start approaching 10-20 store chains." But the closer I get to the end of the tunnel, I just don't see much of a route to take or a ending that I feel comfortable with. The ending that was fuzzy and imprecise in 2015 of "yeah, I'll just become a famous and great selling hat brand that sells purely off aesthetics!" is now much clearer. You see, from the start, I decided that cool designs trumped brand image. I thought the idea of wearing clothing to "represent something" was the biggest load of BS ever and that awesome aesthetics should trump a dumb logo on a nondescript piece of clothing. I still strongly believe this and would still never buy a piece of clothing because with a logo that symbolizes "forever fun", "Supreme", some home/regional affinity, and the litany of inspirational or edgy messages you will find as logos plastered on clothing (just look at /r/streetwearstartup). Aesthetics trump all in my mind.But here's the catch-- I don't even like my hat aesthetics now. Hell, I don't even like my hat type all all, forget the design printed on it. So I've essentially checkmated myself because I can't even evolve my brand because I got into this to not have a fucking brand at all! Aesthetics, aesthetics, aesthetics, right? Well that really helped out when my tastes naturally evolved away from a seemingly unsaturated and uncapitalized hat niche towards liking hats of a totally different breed and saturated in the market. And I have no desire to make my clothing brand into a lifestyle brand that "means something" like Neff, Supreme, Volcom, and the other lifestyle streetwear brands out there. At this point, I'm also super detached from my main demographic I'm trying to sell to-- skaters, teenage punks, and potheads. Closest thing I ever was to those when I started the hat company at 16 was a teenage punk. Today, I'm so much more interested in making money (legally and safely), achieving financial freedom to travel the world and do whatever I want. I feel like an adult now and not a teenage punk who'd want to wear the hats I design. It feels like I hedged $5k and 2 years on a short-lived phase of my life.Here's the weird part: I only started having serious doubts about my hat business after I got my first store sales. I had one period of serious doubt after my first store sale about a few weeks ago which caused me to start a second backup venture with shopify dropshipping. After my second store sale I'm having this second period of doubt right now. It doesn't help that for each yes I inevitably get many no's which erodes my already low confidence in my products. The closer I get to the end of the tunnel, the more clearly I see the end game and the less I like. At heart, I'm an opportunist and an entrepreneur first, not a fashion designer. I'm not Shaun Neff of Neff or James Jebbia of Supreme, engrossed in the cultural intricacies surrounding their brand (skateboarding, streetwear, punk/hiphop culture). I'm a businessman, focused on money first and anything else second. I feel like I'm in an industry of cultural snobs, none of which resonates with me so I can't resonate with them. If I go forward, I feel like my attempts will be like Hillary Clinton desperately trying to appeal to young voters-- forced, ingenuine, and ultimately failing. Making money and growing a business gives me so much more of a thrill and feeling of being alive than designing hats and connecting to some "lifestyle." I can trudge forward with cold calls and getting IG influencers but all the sales material I've ever read said to be 100% convinced/in love with what you're selling. I'm at 3/10 convinced. Maybe if I become rich again and I have a lot of money, I'll be back in the same abundant mentality I was in 2015 and somehow like my hats again. A long shot.The other option is that I just throw it all away, accept defeat that this is not the business I'm meant to succeed at, store/sell my hats for $2 a piece, and throw away $5k and 2 years of work, ALBEIT keeping the skills I've obtained. I can go into doing internet marketing or social media management for clients (I already have one that pays me $300/mo, long story). But what if I just focus 100% on cold calling more, get into 7 stores, and then get into regional chains? I've read the book The Dip and it talks about when to give up. What if I'm just throwing this all away at the last moment before victory? What if I just pump myself up to 10/10 enthusiasm while selling, get into more stores, get into chains, and make an assload of money? My first priority right now is making money, and my hat business could potentially make me a lot of money if I somehow fake it til I make it. Somehow I'd have to build a brand over clothing I'm not fully in love with but can make me a lot of money because other people like it. God it's such a messed up situation. I wish I had never gotten involved in this and somehow did internet marketing instead two years ago, but here I am now and I must make a move with the position I have.I'm not necessarily giving up on my hat company yet. But what do you guys think? Rarely do I feel lost but right now I am. What would you do in my situation?EDIT (from the comments): As to demand, there's demand for the product, similar products (like the original I bought) have been designed for years. I just feel like I can't design them or do the niche anymore because I'm personally no longer interested in the product as my tastes have evolved. For example, I used to eat a ton of chili all the time last year, but now I don't eat any chili and just eat a ton of pasta with alfredo sauce because that's what I like. Doing my niche feels like becoming a world class chili chef because I can be the best, losing interest in chili and not really eating it except for taste-testing/quality purposes, and then eating alfredo sauce pasta on the downlow. People still want to eat chili whether I'm the world class chef making it or some other lesser chef is making it. The ultimate question is do I be the world class chili chef if I can't even enjoy my own chili and is it even possible for my chili quality not to suffer as a result?

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

[teruyalab]

© Peter Eichler (reefkeeping.com)

Read more at teruyalab.com

For many years I have looked at the tank of the month as something to take inspiration from and to aspire to. So I was particularly honored and excited when I was informed my aquarium would be featured as tank of the month for April. The timing was a bit disconcerting, but if you’re reading this now, it’s not just some sick April fool’s joke designed to mess with an aquarium junkie!

My Aquarium Journey

I have had an aquarium in my home for as long as I can remember. My first tank, a stainless steel framed slate bottom 20 gallon aquarium, was set-up prior to my ability to remember. Around the age of 11, my mother and I were shopping for some bird and fish supplies at the local pet shop. That shop had recently added a salt water section, and I was absolutely transfixed by the dazzling colors and amazing variety of fish. I was instantly hooked, and soon talked my mother into helping me buy a new aquarium.

My first saltwater aquarium… 30 gallons of pure joy and anguish all in one! Under gravel filter: check. Non-submersible heater: check. Random bleached and dead coral decorations: check. Condylactus anemones, “live rock” full of sponges, an “Assorted Butterfly” and a powder brown tang for my first non-damselfish: you bet! As you may be guessing, that didn’t end so well. I was heartbroken to fail so miserably, but I was more driven than ever. Driven by my failure, over the next five years I read every aquarium book and publication available, every marine biology text book in existence., I studied fish nutrition and developed my own frozen fish food line, expanded my aquarium collection to over 10 marine aquariums, bred dozens of species of clownfish and Tanganyika and Malawi cichlids, and managed the marine section at the best fish store in the area. Did I mention I was hooked?

In the 25 years or so that have followed, some of that intensity I had for the hobby had to take a backseat to school, girls, partying, getting married, having children, buying a house, and all the things we all do as we grow up and try to become responsible members of society. However, no matter what my situation, I’ve always been a part of this hobby and have done what I can to gain a greater understanding of these wonderful creatures we keep. The tank you’re about to see and read more about is the result of my journey through this hobby.

System Profile

• Display: 156 gallon (575L) Oceanic with Starphire Glass (60in x 24in x 24in) • Sump: 100 gallon stock tank • Frag and Anemone Tank: Deep Blue 45 gallon / 45 Gallon Marineland Cube • Skimmer: SWC 250A • Calcium Reactor: GEO 624 with Aquarium Plants Carbon Doser • Heaters: 300W Visitherms x2

• Lighting: 250W Radiums with LB III Reflectors & Lumatek Variable Watt Ballast • Filtration: Nothing other than the skimmer & a rarely used media reactor • Return Pump: Laguna Max-Flo 1500 pump for the display and Cube

• Circulation: Ecotech MP40s x3 (CLICK TO SHOP)

• Chemical Filtration: GAC run every month or two for a few days • Rock: A mix of 10 year old Uaniva live rock, Dry Pukani, & Fiji rock • Sandbed: One inch deep special grade Aragonite

Current System

My main display sits on a half finished, yet sturdy, homemade stand in my ugly old basement. Three tanks, a 45 gallon frag tank, 45 cube anemone tank, and the 156 gallon display all flow into a central sump. Hopefully my next home will have a much larger tank on display in a living area, but for now the ability to be messy and worry only about the function of the aquarium has it perks.

The display, as the rock sits now, is about three years old. But, this tank was set-up back in 2010 as a transfer from an overgrown 65 gallon reef I started 10 years ago. Many of the current corals have been grown from frags of colonies I grew in that 65. A little over three years ago my tank had gone into some disrepair because I was traveling extensively for work, and thanks to some zoanthids that wanted to take over my tank. I decided to rededicate myself and turn things around by redoing roughly half the rockwork, fragging many dying corals, and doing a couple large water changes.

Philosophy

A big skimmer, quality light, a lot of flow, and a decent stock level of fish that are fed heavily, are my basic keys to success. When I had my fish food company I learned early on that feeding heavily was in the best interest of my inhabitants. I feel tanks will adapt and adjust over time to extra food coming in. Sometimes grazers are a big help here. With a good and oversized protein skimmer, you can feed heavy and still be successful. Whether or not phosphate will need to be controlled via other means will depend on the system, but don’t let phosphate addition keep you from feeding your inhabitants regularly.

Water Parameters:

Salinity: 35ppt

pH: not measured

Calcium: 480 ppm

Alkalinity: 7 dKH

Magnesium: 1450

Phosphate: Undetectable - 0.2ppm

Nitrate: Undetectable - 5ppm

Temperature: 75 - 83˚F depending on time of day

Maintenance

I do water changes when I feel like it, but try to do a 50 gallon change on my roughly 250 gallon system every two to four weeks. I’ll also throw in a 100 gallon change every year or so. I fill the calcium reactor when the media is low, I fill the CO2 when I see the pressure drop on my tank, and I clean the glass when I’m feeling motivated and see it’s dirty. GAC is run for a few days when I notice the water is has a slight yellow tinge when looking through the side glass the length of the tank. RO/DI filters are changed whenever I’ve exhausted two full DI resins.

The biggest maintenance has become figuring out what to clip, prune, move, or even remove as corals grow into large colonies. It’s a good problem to have, but is proving at times far more difficult than maintaining a younger aquarium.

As far as maintaining parameters, there’s a fairly wide acceptable range for me. I purposely encourage the temperature in my tank to fluctuate throughout the day. Less than 75 and I throw another heater in the sump. On the high side I don’t really get concerned in summer until beyond 85, though having the tank in the basement prevents that from being much of a concern. I try to maintain my dKH around 7, but I don’t fret too much if it gets a little higher or lower. 6-8 dKH is my preferred range. Calcium, as long as it’s over 400, I’m happy, and I’ve never seen much difference between 400 and 550. I test alkalinity (API) several times a week, calcium (API) every month or two, magnesium (Salifert) a few times a year, and nitrate (Red Sea) and phosphate (Hanna) when I feel like it.

Supplements

I’ve dabbled with just about every supplement and form of dosing imaginable. However, for most of the last 10 years I’ve done little else besides maintain calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium.

For the last year and a half I’ve been experimenting with dosing potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate to keep nitrates detectable, so nitrate has been tested more frequently of late. I no longer have to use GFO to keep phosphates low. As a result I have to feed heavier and be cautious about skipping feedings or else corals will lighten in color and show signs of stress. I can’t attribute this shift in naturally low phosphates to much else other than the Redfield ratio and my dosing of a nitrate source, but that’s based on speculation and anecdotal evidence. I could probably solve the issues with my phosphates and nitrates being too low by downsizing my skimmer, but finding that perfect size is a difficult task.

One thing I am very confident of from all my years of “experimenting”… When It comes to supplements, simply maintaining the big three elements is all that’s needed to have a great aquarium.

Stability and Breaking from the Norms

Stability is something I feel is often hyped too much within the hobby. I have encouraged fluctuations in temperature for many years on my tanks. I won’t hesitate to boost my magnesium by a few hundred PPM or calcium by 100 ppm in one shot if they’re getting low. If my alkalinity jumps by 1-2 dKH from a water change I’m not worried. Though I would prefer to keep these stable, I don’t see much detriment to small dips and spikes. I have seen issues from dKH rising above 9 dKH in my lower nutrient tank, so I do whatever I can to avoid this. Stability certainly isn’t a bad thing to shoot for, but I feel stability within a range should be the focus. Having stable parameters that are outside desirable ranges is where the problem really lies, not with small fluctuations.

Livestock Inhabitants Coral:

Nearly all corals grown from small frags. All Goniopora have been in the system for at least two years and have shown considerable growth.

Acropora

RR Red Bull

RR CJ’s Pinky

RR Sabertooth

RR Wolverine

RR Prometheus

RR The Vinh

RR Purple Dragon Eyes

SC Orange Passion

Greg Hiller’s Aqua Delight

Original SSC Sapphire millepora

Purple Slimer

Tyree Lime in the Sky

Tyree Mr. Pacman

Tyree Pink Lemonade

Tyree Phonape Birdsnest

Tyree Soli

Bananas Suharsoni

SunnyX Sunset mille

Ultimate’s Rainbow

CITR Red Dragon

CC Blue Valkyrie

CC Red Oxide

CC Grape Lemonade

ORA Hawkin’s

ORA Red Planet

ORA Joe the Coral

ORA Scripps mille

ORA Ice Tort

Oregon Tort

Royal Blue Tort

Miyagi Tort

PC Rainbow

Garf Bonsai

Rommel’s Watermelon

Copp’s Azure Stag

Copp’s Hulk mille

DFS Pink Panther

Aquascenes Icefire echinata

Green Turaki

Original SSC

$500 Efflo

Upscales microclados

Highlighter stag

Rouge mille

Bubblegum mille

Sapphire mille

Mr. Pacman

Several no names and some I’m forgetting

Montipora and Porites

Setosa

Rainbow

Sunset

Season’s Greetings

Idaho Grape

Starburst Cap

Sand dollar

Eruzione

Favia

Mia’s Pot of Gold

Christmas

Raptor’s Peace

Goniopora

Goniopora stutchburyi

Goniopora burgosi

Goniopora palmensis

Goniopora planulata

4 x unknown species

Zoanthids

Fruitloops

Spidermans

Utter Chaos

Rastas

Vivid Rainbows

Purple hornets

Red hornets

Goochsters

Bambams

Pink elephants

Sopranos

VDM

Challices

Crazy Fox

OG Mummy Eye

Miami Hurricane

Red

Fish:

Some of these are in my frag tank and anemone tank, I buy small Zebrasoma and Ctenochaetus tangs and always have at least a couple in my frag tank, I will sell them or trade them as they start to get too big for that tank.

Purple Tang (Zebrasoma xanthurum)

Powder Brown Tang (Acanthurus japonicas)

Chevron Tang (Ctenochaetus hawaiiensis)

Tomini Tang (Ctenochaetus tomini)

Yellow Tang (Zebrasoma flavescens)

Magnificent Foxface (Siganis magnificus)

Pseudochomis Fridmani

Pseudochromis spingeri

Pseudochromis aldabraensis x Pseudochromis springeri

Bangaii Cardinal (Pterapogon kauderni)

Copperband Butterfly (Chelmon rostratus)

Melanurus Wrasse (Halichoeres melanurus)

Marine Betta (Calloplesiops altivelis)

Golden Damsel (Amblyglyphidodon aureus) x2

Whitetail Dottyback (Manonichthys cf. alleni)

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank my mother. She loved this hobby as much as I do, and was always supportive and full of love and encouragement. This held true not just for me, but for anyone that was lucky enough to meet her.

Thanks to all the reefers who take the time to share their thoughts and opinions in order to help others succeed. Thanks to the forums out there, (RC, Wisconsin Reef Society) that give people a place to learn and share ideas. Thanks to Brian, Judy, Kevin, Laura, Tyler and Mark at Best Fish for being a part of one of the best local fish stores in the country.

Thanks to my wife and past roommates who have allowed me to do my thing without complaint; even with condensation on windows, puddles on the floors, and a salty crust forming on just about everything near the tank.

Lastly, big thanks to the gang from the SPS forum and for all the kinds words and simply being a good and helpful group of reefers, an especially large thanks to Sahin and those reefers that took the time to nominate my tank! It’s always a great feeling when peers recognize the hard work that is put into something. Thanks for reading!

#aquarium #fish tank #saltwater #nano reef #reef tank #reef aquarium #marine aquarium #marine tank #pico reef #水族館 #アクアリウム

[nightmareduskie]

A Soul’s Power (Part Three)

Summary: Y/N is a hunter and is friends with Dean and Sam. But one day she joins a hunt with them and find something interesting. A man with wings! How is this possible? How can she see them? Soon enough, she finds out she can see other things too. What makes her see these things? What makes her so special? Characters: Sam, Dean, ugly ass demonz Pairings: Future Gabriel x reader Warnings: Swearing, gross stuff, I guess that’s it.

Word Count: 1500~ (listen, I’ll never really know the true amount)

Part One.  Part Two.   READ THESE FIRST NOOBS!!! :P

A/N: Here’s part three. Which was supposed to be part of part two, but this part is more exciting.Expect Part Four next week. I am a busy lady. Enjoy! ~Hollifer

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It didn't take long to pick a quick diner to eat at. Of course, I took shot gun from Sam. We didn't talk much on the ride. All I could think about is the missed opportunity to catch a glimpse at this man again. I had to admit, it was starting to become a bit obsessive. But I had to know what he was. Who he was. Just anything. It's something that no one else has ever seen. And only I saw it for what it was. Dean, Sam, Bobby... none of them saw it. If I confronted him, maybe I'd learn something about me. What made me see what they couldn't?

“Y/N,” I felt Sam's large hand at my shoulder, “Don't worry to much about it. You're a great hunter. The trickster... well... he's just... tricky.” Sam awkwardly offered.

“Wow!” Dean laughed with coated sarcasm, “I'd be damned if I thought of a better description for the trickster.”

I laughed and offered a small smile to Sam. He was always so sweet. Definitely the more emotional one, but he was the guy to talk to if you needed to get a load off. “Thanks.” I said, cracking the door of the Impala open. Sam and Dean followed my lead.

As always, Dean was the first to bust his ass through the door for some food. Sam and I soon after. But stepping through the doors gave me a sharp shiver and made me stop in my tracks. I glanced around my surroundings looking for what would cause this sudden instinctual reaction. A light smog surrounded a couple of the waiters and waitresses. And then I came face to face with the waiter handling us.

“Table for three?” They said. I gasped loudly at what I saw. Behind the waiter's face... was another face. A face that was there but almost wasn't. A bit transparent. But this face didn't look like an alive person's face. No, it was quite the opposite of a pump, flesh colored person's face. The face was that of a corpse, almost like the body was burned. It's skin was gray. Wrinkles giving it a traditional Chinese dragon looking appearance; just super not cute. Very grotesque. Some of it's gray flesh had been torn away from the side of it's scalp. Messy, frail, thin dark hair was caught into the bloody flesh that was left over from what had been torn off. It looked almost like a zombie, just much more menacing. It held itself as if it was the king of the universe. It smiled and it was reflected onto the human's face; showing it's control over the human's body. The waiter's teeth being clean and white. The face's teeth being jagged, yellow, and ever so slightly pointed at the ends. A slight odor of death came off of it as well. That light smog, which was more like dust, was surrounding this man's body. As it was for the other three waiters. His eyes were pitch black. It was ugly. It was unreal. I wasn't even sure if it was a man or a woman. The rest of it's body was also fairly human-like. But aged like it was sitting in a coffin after being burned for years. I almost gagged but mostly from the scent. And for some reason, I knew and I accepted that this was a demon's true face.

My sudden outburst caused Dean and Sam to turn and look at me with confused faces. I had to get over my shock and disgust and get them out. There was no way we could take four demons right now. I glanced over the other demons who all looked similar but still had different varieties of hair, gray skin colors, scars, and body types. It's too much. I had to get them out. And really had to get myself out to breathe and grasp what I just saw.

“I forgot- I-,” I stammered, grabbing the boy's arms, “Car!” I pulled them out of the diner as fast as I could drag two full grown men who were beating me with questions. “Get in the car!” I hissed at both of them. Which made them shut their mouths and obey. I opened the door and literally just fell into the car seat.

“Y/N, what the fuck is going on?” Dean breathed, seeing the fear in my eyes. I couldn't breathe a second ago. Breathing, I looked between both of them. I tried to find words but I couldn't find a single word. I had barely even a second to think about all this! How is this possible? Was it related to the trickster and his wings? Does that mean I could see any wings if someone had them? Angels? Demons? It's all real now. Angels... I can't deny that the trickster is actually an angel. If faces like demons exist, then the soft, beautiful appearance of the trickster means angels do to. My mind was racing a million miles a second. My anxiety, my fear, my confusion, my realization... all of it just overwhelming me.

“Y/N!” Sam shook my shoulder firmly but still soft, “What's going on? You're freaking us out!”

“The faces...” I managed to get out, trying to work out my thoughts.

“Faces?” Dean and Sam looked at each other with confusion as Dean spoke.

“The waiters. Their faces,” I started to come back to reality. Sam's hand offer comfort as he lightly pat my head. He used to do this after Bobby found me after my parents had been murdered. I was scared and anxious for awhile after what had happened. The fear of not knowing what happened was the most unsettling part for me as a kid. And still is today. Sam always took care of me best he could when it came down to my trauma with my parents. I breathed out slowly, “They're demons.”

“Demons?” Sam seemed more curious now, “How?”

“I saw their true faces,” I frowned looking at both of them. They both started to look worried. “They... look like corpses. Their eyes are black. So disgusting.” I paced myself trying to describe what I saw. Dean and Sam exchanged a glance of amazement. Which in turn made Dean look back at me with a more stern face. He needed more answers and more proof, as usual.

“Yeah, but how do you see the faces? They look like people to me.” Dean, always a skeptic.

“It's like a face faded behind another face. I don't know. It's hard to describe,” I sighed, fidgeting with my hair, “I'm... not sure how I see these things. Trust me, I'm just as confused. I feel traumatized. You just gotta trust me on this.” Dean sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. Probably also trying to grasp this concept as well.

“You looked pretty traumatized there for a good couple minutes,” Sam offered an arm rub. It was good to know they looked out for me and trusted me. Sam especially with his psychic thing he's been going through. They both don't talk much about it to me. I heard it was demon related possibly. Dean didn't like him using the psychic stuff because of that reason. I wondered if the fact I saw demons made him anxious about my situation too. I'm sure they all had their secrets about this and that and I definitely wasn't ready to drop the angel bomb yet. I can only imagine just telling them that I thought I saw an angel. Dean wouldn't believe it for a second. Sam would be easier to convince but it's still far-fetched. Even I was still coping with that.

“Well,” Dean turned to look at us, “Game plan: wait it out until the civilians are out of the place. Night time, obviously. And we go in there and give 'em an old fashion exorcism. That's all we can do. I got a good amount of holy water in the trunk.”

“Right,” Sam eyed me carefully, wondering if I needed more time to deal with what was going on.

“Good plan,” I said with a smile. I wasn't gonna let this change everything. If anything, it's a good thing. I can be a better help. I can spot the demons now. My usefulness as a hunter went up pretty high.

“We have our secret weapon now,” Dean playfully punched my arm and smiled, “Our very own Y/N demon radar detector.”

This was enough to relax Sam out of his concern. However he still seemed tense. Maybe because Dean wasn't a fan of things that weren't “human” or “natural”. Either way, this was a plus. There was no freaky side-effects. I just saw things for what they were. I was probably always like this. I'm no different now.

As the plan, we waited until nighttime and raided the four members of staff who I pointed out as demons. We exorcised them and thankfully didn't harm the lives of the humans they possessed. I watched the demons faces as they were exorcised. Pain, and fear crossed their features until they just vanished. I had to give demons props though, they sure knew how to shit talk about how tough they are and how they'll come back, all through scared, ugly faces. And with that, we went back to the hotel room. I spent the night and carried on the next day. The boys offered me some supplies to take on my trip. They practically begged me to stay but I told them I had to take care of some things of my own. And that wasn't a lie. I had to find the trickster; the angel. There were a lot of unanswered questions and who better to answer them than an angel.

+++++

@readingreaver @books-netflix-and-pizza @the-chick-with-the-best-fandom

#spn #supernatural #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #gabrielxreader #samxreader #deanxreader #gabriel #spn gabriel #sam winchester #dean winchester #bobby singer #supernatural gabriel #gabexreader #gabriel x reader #spn gabriel x reader #supernatural gabriel x reader #trickster #supernatural trickster #spn trickster #spn gabriel fanfiction #supernatural gabriel fanfiction #spn demons #demon #demons #angels #angel #spn angel

[smudgeypudge]

Lately I’ve been avidly watching “The Great British Baking Show” on Netflix and became familiar with Ruby Tandoh. Even though I’m years behind on the series, I still look up articles about the contestants while I’m watching, so eventually I searched for Ruby. She seems like a well-intentioned person caught up in a fishbowl of first-world problems such as body-positivity. I was really disappointed to read quotes such as, “Food should never be linked to guilt.” and then extolling her cookbook for containing recipes that, “include sausage and potato pie and five different types of chocolate cookie; many are prefixed with words like 'soothing’ and 'comforting’.” First of all, food absolutely is linked to guilt in Ruby’s mind, namely class guilt, but she has things all mixed up and backwards when she frames everything in a first-world context. She promotes McDonald’s while condemning “healthy food movement” darlings like chia or coconut on the basis that in first-world countries, chia and coconut are, at face-value, more expensive than a McDonald’s hamburger. What she doesn’t recognize are the hidden costs of McDonald’s hamburgers, ones that will impact the poor more than the inability to buy chia drinks or potentially developing negative body images-- I’m talking about climate change. In this case, perhaps food should legitimately engender guilt. The beef industry is hugely responsible for the destruction of the rainforest, and the world-wide meat industry is as responsible for our environmental problems as is the fossil fuel industry. She’s consumed by the comparatively insignificant crisis of carbs vs. protein or chia vs. potatoes when in fact, the growing crisis that will impact poor people around the world the most is choosing which child to feed and which child to starve.

Review pictures of famine victims around the world and imagine that becoming a more common problem than it is today, and then reconsider how revolutionary your counter-culture rebranding of the hamburger really is. If you knew the real cost of your sausage pie, it might not feel so comforting or soothing anymore. Also it’s laughable that five different chocolate cookie recipes are featured in this supposedly socially conscious cookbook when most people that raise chocolate have never even had the privilege of tasting the results of their own labor. Talk about a class divide!

Also, this judgement about the “health-conscious” superfoods industry being strictly a class issue that shuts out the poor overlooks that in some countries of origin, products like argan oil and moringa have actually opened economic doors for women in particular, and elevated them economically and socially. In the eyes of third-world women that have started businesses based on these markets, the first-world health industry is a blessing. I had always heard that we’re living in a postmodernist world where the moral danger is that everything is relative, yet I’m increasingly surprised to find that “everything is relative” isn’t as much of a danger as people warned and in fact, maybe things aren’t viewed as relatively as they should be.

Another thing that was a huge eye-roll for me was the charge that healthy eating is a fad. From the 1977 cookbook, Rodale’s Naturally Great Foods: “For too many Americans the fact that natural food is naturally great is a well-kept secret. They hear that fresh fruits and vegetables are too perishable, too expensive and too much trouble. They hear that processed foods are better because they’ve been 'enriched' with extra vitamins and minerals (no mention of the many lost in manufacture and not replaced) for improved nutrition and better health. They hear that only food faddists and health nuts bother with yogurt, brown rice, wheat germ and the like, and, anyway, none of these foods fits into the ordinary American menu.”

Sound familiar? Later in the introduction of this cookbook published 40 years ago, the writer quotes, “Food faddism is indeed a serious problem. But we have to recognize that the guru of food faddism is not Adelle Davis, but Betty Crocker. The true food faddists are not those who eat raw broccoli, wheat germ, and yogurt, but those who start the day on Breakfast Squares, gulp down bottle after bottle of soda pop, and snack on candy and Twinkies.... If any diet should be considered faddist, it is the standard one. Our far-out diet-- almost 20 percent refined sugar and 45 percent fat-- is new to human experience and foreign to all other animal life.... It is incredible that people who eat a junk food diet constitute the norm, while individuals whose diets resemble those of our great-grandparents are labeled deviants.” Or, nowadays, class snobs. The author also argues that the health food industry is not as socially dangerous as the major food corporations that spend millions of dollars in advertising per year (during the 1970s the General Foods advertising allowance was $189 million per year; now the budgets must be in the billions) to normalize highly processed and fast food to the masses.

And to go on talking about the history of food faddism, perhaps we should revisit the 1800s, and existentialist communes that sprang up and explored diets such as vegetarianism, veganism, and fruitarianism, and how this exploration led the the founding of groups such as the traditionally vegetarian (and still-existing) Seventh-Day Adventists. Maybe these ideas could have spread more, but they were considered wasted efforts as Americans prioritized pursuing their Manifest Destiny and relied upon salt pork, sugar, coffee, and potatoes to fuel their pioneering path of genocide and land-seizing across the continent. (Our Western obsession with sugar itself didn’t begin until the 1500s, and spread thanks to slavery and imperialism during the following centuries.) So what I see Ruby advocating is anything but revolutionary, but is instead complicit to a system rooted in a long history of imperialism, genocide, environmental destruction and socially/culturally destructive industrialization, which led to the foundation and growth of large corporations that capitalized on mass marketing body-shaming to sell their products, corporations that would continue environmental degradation at alarming rates and drastically widen class divides as the poor become poorer and the rich become richer. Her philosophies don’t liberate people from suffering, they just work to make people feel more comfortable and complacent within a threatening and oppressive system. The feel-good vibes of her “do what you want” philosophy ring hollow as the world suffers real consequences for what we choose to put on our plates. You can’t feel or intellectualize nature’s repercussions away. Nature doesn’t care about how we feel. 

#personal #vegetarian #vegan #global warming