#but i'm feeling v self conscious because i'm having a difficult time getting to know ppl

[mothmanchronicler]

feeling lost . wondering if you can know yourself when youre isolated ,, who am i when not in relation to others? i don't feel like anyone and now it feels impossible to connect w anyone it feels so hard and awful and weird and i m really trying !! but it's not getting any easier yet! shucks to that!!!

#i thought abt what i like about myself #and couldn't come up w anything that wasn't in relation to something i'm into #like oh i'm into sewing and riverdale and kimchi and then all this other stuff i'm no longer into #that at one point i kinda based my entire identity around #like farming ... bitch i used to be a farmer™ but i don't do that anymore #anyway just came up w one thing - i love that i'm queer #anyway the ocd really got me again but only for like two days #i was like oh i can't eat these bananas i just bought because they'll ferment in my stomach and make me sick #and they all when bad before i was like oh that's fucking insane just eat the nana #work is good and my new coworkers are nice #but i'm feeling v self conscious because i'm having a difficult time getting to know ppl #anyway it's fine !! kinda!! but i'm okay just thinkin

[antiochean]

hey! another rika and vanderwood enjoyer :-D! i love the semi-realistic way you draw MM characters (which is to say is an art style that is rarely ever seen in this fandom, unfortunately)! may i ask what are your thoughts on the other MM characters and/or their respective routes--or, instead, if that's alright w/ you, could you share more of your CMC Jake Park? so far, i'm interested in Bleeding Paint and I can't wait to see more of it :-)!

Anon I am kicking my legs around in my bed hugging my pillow like a schoolgirl bc this is the first ask I've gotten in this sideblog and it is literally so sweet and I'm so excited to have gotten it

Because of that you will have to endure me discussing every single topic you brought up in great detail

1. So glad to hear from another Rika and Vanderwood enjoyer. I get pretty self-conscious about liking Rika because of all the negativity, but the truth is that she's a major comfort character for me. When I realized what she meant with all of her talk about darkness after therapy one night I cried for hours LMAO it was a major milestone in my mental health journey.

And that event is actually what made me start writing bleeding paint, AND this is the part where I tell you that if you like Rika and Vanderwood, the good news is that they're the two love interests in the fic. But the bad news is that Rika and Jake's relationship is Extremely toxic. Radioactive. But the good news again is that with Vanderwood, it's the opposite.

2. Thank you for complimenting my art style :)) If my different background means I'm bringing something new to the table, then I'm ecstatic to provide.

3. My opinions on the other characters are!! Difficult to word, because until a couple months ago I hadn't played since Ray's route came out, and this year I've only replayed another story and Seven's route. I'll try my best to give you a summary, though.

Zen and Yoosung: my B plot KINGS. Where would I be without you. Adorable brotherly dynamic. A much needed wholesome break from all the angst. I would die for you.

Jaehee: her role as the Straight Man is executed extraordinarily, in my opinion, because of how often she's just tired. It's so realistic and it makes you feel for her so much. But when she's something else instead of tired, she absolutely slays, it really sticks out. AND I would like to say I think the way her voice changes when she starts fangirling about musicals is ADORABLE. I've been in love with this woman since I was 17.

Jumin: I HAVE THE MOST CONFLICTING FEELINGS ABT HIM OUT OF ANYONE ELSE. Okay stay with me for this one but I'm a hardcore anarco-communist. Which means there are multiple points in the game where, if he were in front of me, I would grab him by the neck and shake him like in that Simpsons bit. Shut up about the free market shut up about the free market. He's so privileged and his lack of empathy means he only alienates himself further and further. So on one side I feel extreme frustration and anger towards him. Then on the other, the emotional maturity of this character is unparalleled. He is, like, completely actualized. On top of Maslow's entire shit. While in Another Story, some of his dialogue has been having me awestruck. I think that IRL, Jumin and I would have the kind of dynamic where we would be able to talk until 3 AM and not realize it. So yeah man I don't know. He's on both sides of the love and hate spectrum for me at the same time.

707: what can I tell you about my bestest boy in the whole world? I would not change a thing about him. He can have my entire house and life and hand in marriage.

V: in my opinion. Okay look. God. I don't have any strong *feelings* about V. But I have very strong opinions.

If you asked me to list any other characters who display the level of emotional complexity his guy has going on, I'd have very few examples.

But the execution of the concept falls short for me.

How many days does the game have in total? Think about it: He's the MOST STUBBORN FRUSTRATING MAN TO DEAL WITH IN THE WHOLE WORLD for ALL but 3 of them, the 3 days at the end of his route. He's a goddamn broken record. Furthermore, his route is so focused on the backstory MC wasn't there for, that it forgets to tell you why you two should feel a bond at all.

It's hard for me to suspend my disbelief and look past all that to enjoy the potential he had.

Saeran: SE Saeran is one of my faves :)) he's not my type in his route, but his portrayal of mental illness matters a lot to me. I have talked to my therapist about Saeran.

4: IT'S JAKE TIME - GET ABSOLUTELY SILLY

Where can I start with Jake William Park. Well first off, he's a bitch. Second off, he had his bisexual awakening in a sasunaru forum post at age 12. Third off. See that picture? He has a septum gauge and, while shitfaced one night, put a silly straw in it. He then couldn't get it out, had a panic attack, and ended up in the hospital.

He was born in Canada. When he was 8, his parents got divorced and his dad moved back to Korea while he stayed. Now he's in Korea as an exchange student for his senior undergrad year.

He's a literature major. He's Extremely pretentious about art. He has a cat named Rodya (nicknamed Rascalnikov). He dabbles in writing horror, but is mainly aiming at becoming a professor.

His superiority complex is his most annoying flaw. He thinks he's so smart and his taste is the only correct one and he's a different grade of human being from most people. He can be mean about it (he bullies Yoosung).

The meanness ties into another flaw of his, which is that he thinks showing emotion is a weakness.

His first version was much goofier and careless and dressed a little bit differently. In Another Story, he becomes what I've come to refer to as Traumajake. The kidnapping and cult stuff really gets to him, he's almost killed or cleansed. And he decides that, if Rika wants a boytoy, then he will be the perfect boytoy until he can get out alive. He pretends to develop Stockholm syndrome - but he's not every worried about it, because he's FAR too smart to develop it for real. Right? Hilarity ensues.

By the time he's rescued, half of him doesn't even want to be. For the rest of the fic, he struggles to find a balance between emotion and reason.

There's a lot I'm leaving out, but this is already far too long and I doubt anyone will read it LMAO

5. I appreciate you mentioning Bleeding Paint a lot!! I have no evidence anyone ever read it and sometimes it makes me embarassed to keep posting sjdaskdjkjds but if just one person has given it their time of day, that's good enough for me :))

Tysm for the ask.

#robin.txt #asks #jake park

[doing-downtime-hero-shit]

Tws for: talk of works, trauma, ableism sort of? i think itncould be classified as?, anxiety etc not overly explicit but those are main topics

I'm not working currently. And I am kind of like. Having Thoughts of options for jobs

I am pretty sure it is safe to say that the type of place I was working isn't a really good long term option anymore. This place was fantastic and genuinely caring individual people. The owner would personally check up on me and others if something was up or he was worried about you, so many coworkers were kind and did their best to be understanding if they didn't know or understand. It was genuinely fun with coworkers and, while there was a rise in rude and worse customers, managers did what they could while being bound by corporate rules (as in at some point when there were THE MOST ahole customers, suddenly everyone who wasn't a manager or stuck in a cash line had work to do in the back or outside all the time. And if anyone was yelling or rude to the cashiers a manager was there pretty damn quick)

But I think. No I KNOW I have trauma from a similar place. My first paid job, I really should have gotten the police involved for some of it. I should have gone up the ladder to corperate even if it wasn't going to be the answer I wanted. I don't know if it crosses into PTSD levels of trauma, but it STILL fucks with me over 10 years later.

And I am also still coming to terms with missed diagnoses that could have helped me get resources to THRIVE in school and jobs. But that sailed and I am still sad and I guess grieving about it. I am also still trying to let myself be myself and how to navigate that and let myself feel free of guilt for needing accomidation

Anyway tldr. I am having a sort of working vacation. Working on coping and stuff and working to find a way to have comforting mannerisms in ways that help me and don't make me feel self conscious and thinking about career options because I am now at a point of life and self acceptance and healing that I can even consider a career instead of some dinky part time whatever because I can see a future and believe i deserve one more often than I ever used to.

I am also procrastinating v much so rn and just going ham stimming with my hair which makes doing things difficult because it uses one of my hands when I am trying to do tasks that require both hands, but I know I need this rn going by how much I keep finding myself doing it absent-mindedly

#doin downtime hero shit and healing #sort of? #tbh a career for me may still be part time only but its a different feeling and i dont know how to put it into worfs #words*

[millenialfanfictionaddiction]

Please Me: Oikawa's Oasis Part 3

⚠️This Fic is 18+, Minors DNI⚠️

Welcome to week 4 of the Please Me Series!  A collaboration with @axoxtxhxh! This weeks theme is Virginity Loss featuring Oikawa and Goshiki!  This weeks fics are broken into 3 parts! Parts 1 and 2 are linked in the master list below! Please check out Joey’s fic, Guiding Goshiki!  I will also link it in the Please Me master list!  

Warnings: swearing, slight angst, fluffy ending, virginity loss, kissing, male oral receiving, thigh riding, masturbation,  locker room sex, shower sex, unprotected sex, creampie, guided female masturbation, sub! oikawa, fem dom reader, petnames, one hell of a safeword 

Word Count: 5,000

Staring at the wall, you heard your alarm sound the following morning as you slowly arose from your bed.  You hadn’t slept at all since you had arrived home last night.  You couldn’t shake the feeling of shame and guilt for running away from Torū.

You’re feelings were valid, you knew that. But you knew it wasn’t right to run away from him like you did. You should have talked to him.  In a way, you probably made him feel more self conscious then you had your first time.  

You sighed as you got up to shower and head to the gym. You knew you needed to talk with Torū.  You needed to explain to him that none of this was his fault.  

Locking your door, you headed to the gym as you mentally prepared yourself for the conversation that would follow.  You wanted to tell him about how you were afraid you would ruin his first time.  How your first time failed miserably and that you didn’t want him to regret anything.  

Torū had become very special to you as both a teammate and a friend. You didn’t want to make his time with the team awkward in anyway.  You knew the conversation would be a difficult one but you had to do it.  

Arriving at gym you saw several of the other players nursing hangovers and you began setting up for the days practice.  You yawned as you went to the bench, to grab your notes as the teams captain approached.

“You must have really worn Torū out YN” he said nudging your side as you looked at him confused “he texted me this morning telling me he was too ‘worn out’ to come to practice” he said throwing up air quotes “I’m actually surprised you’re here today.”

Hearing the Torū wasn’t coming to practice hit your like a ton of bricks, the feeling guilty washing over you as you felt the urge to cry.  You turned away from the captain as he watched you walk away in silence, going to fill the teams water bottles.  

Stepping from the gym, you felt the tears flow as the guilt and shame of your actions washed over you. How could you act so immature?  How could you just run away?  

You cried as you went to fill the teams water bottles. God I probably made him feel so insecure. I’m such an idiot you thought to yourself as you tried to calm down enough to finish your task and excuse yourself to your office.  You could camp out there the rest of the practice, telling the coach you had some work to catch up on.  At least then you could cry in peace.

Torū groaned as he woke up from his small nap. He hadn’t been able to sleep because of what had transpired between YN and himself.  He felt so shamed, so inadequate.  These were feelings he didn’t often have, causing chaos in his mind as he jolted hearing the sudden ring of his phone.

He answered the FaceTime call to a smiling Iwaizumi as he tried to bring a smile to his glum face.

“Shittykawa what’s the matter with you?  I didn’t expect you to pick up. Don’t you have practice? Iwaizumi says as Oikawa just stared at him.

Iwaizumi was confused. He had known Oikawa for many years and this was the first time he had ever seen the former high school captain so gloomy. Even losing their 3rd year volleyball tournament hadn’t made the captain as sad as he was now.

“I messed up Hajime” Torū said as Iwaizumi reeled back.  Oikawa never used his full name.

“What happened? Are you ok?” He said as Torū tried to hold his composure in. His emotions were all over the place, he had never felt so vulnerable, so destroyed “Hey Torū, are you ok?”

That did it. Iwaizumi saying his name caused Torū to cry like he had never cried before. He wasn’t even embarrassed, not one bit. He didn’t have time to feel embarrassed. He felt too ashamed.

“Hajime” Torū said finally calming down “she- YN doesn’t want me.”

Iwaizumi was stunned.  Never had this ever happened. A girl didn’t want the Torū Oikawa?  What kind of alternative dimension was he living in?

Iwaizumi watched as his friend wiped his face with his palms, trying to figure out what to say.

“Uhh- well umm what happened” he managed to muster up as he tried hard to still comprehend the previous statement made by his friend.

“Last night, I went out with the team.  Things with YN got heated.  We came back to my place.  Everything was going so well.  Then I told her I was a virgin and she freaked out and ran” he said as he looked down, unable to make eye contact with his friend.

Iwaizumi couldn’t help but chuckle to himself and try as he might, he was unable to hold a straight face.  He laughed loudly as Torū’s head whipped up into view, sending glares at him.

“Dude, I'm sorry” he laughed “but please tell me that you just didn’t say ‘YN I’m a virgin’ and expect her to be like ready to rip your v-card from your grasp.”

Iwaizumi laughed loudly as Torū just continued to stare at his friend “I don’t think it’s very funny Iwa-chan” he said he  scuffed at his friends laughter.

“Boy, you really are lame shittykawa” he said chuckling “are you sure you really are good with women?  I mean I don’t blame her one bit!  Taking a guy’s virginity would suck!  I mean men really don’t know shit about pleasuring women so what’s in it for her?”

Torū thought hard while his friend talked. Maybe he had approached it wrong to begin with. Not that he thinks about it, his method of delivery was a bit hasty.  

“Dude, I think you need to just talk to her You don’t really know why she turned you down.  I mean it sounds like she likes you from the way things went last night. Maybe you just made her nervous.”

Torū knew his friend was right. You had never given him any indication that you didn’t like him and he knew that, last night you felt something just like he did.

Torū looked at his friend as he smiled “you’re right Iwa-chan I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” Iwaizumi laughed as he watched the light stream back into his friend’s face.  

“Good luck idiotkawa” he said hanging up as Torū laid his phone down.  It was getting late, well after practice had ended. He knew he should try and get to the gym to practice some before tomorrow. He gathered his gear as he made his way to the gym, hoping someone was still there so he could practice.

You had managed to avoid the team for the entire practice. The coach had bought your excuse and you stayed cooped up in your small office until after practice.  

You signed as you stood up from your chair, tired from sulking and crying the entire afternoon.  You grabbed your bag and locked the office door.  Thankfully it was Friday and you could spend the weekend sleeping.  You were exhausted but yet somehow found the strength to cry for hours on end.  

You approached the gym doors as the all too familiar sounds of volleyball slamming into the floor radiated into your ears.  You checked your phone, nothing that it was 7pm and well past practice time.  You approached the gym doors as you quietly peaked in to see a sweating Torū setting up a serve, smashing it straight into the net  

“UGH DAMMIT” he said shouting as he prepared the throw another one up, once again managing to net the ball.  He leaned over, placing his hands on his knees and he grabbed his towel and headed to the locker rooms.  He had only been practicing for an hour but he was just unable to get into it.  

You watched as he made his way into the locker rooms, following to the doors as you slowly opened them, hearing him shout from inside.

“Torū,you idiot!” he shouted as you winced at his words.  You felt awful. You knew he was like this because of what had transpired between the two of you the previous night.  

You walked in the doors, standing for a moment as you see Oikawa sitting on the bench, a towel placed over his head and his elbows rested on his knees.

You knew you had to say something.  You couldn’t let him think any of this was his fault.  This was all your doing and it was time you owned up to it  

“Hey Torū” you said softly as the locker room door closed behind you and Torū’s head snapped up to meet yours. He looked at you as you walked over to him, sitting directly in across from him on the other bench.

“We need to talk” you said as he put his head down, trying not to cry again.

“It’s ok YN.  There’s nothing to talk about” he said he went to stand up, stopping when you grabbed his forearm.

“No Torū” you said as you sniffles lightly “I need to apologize.”

Torū was confused as he sag back done the bench, removing the towel from his head.  He stared at you questioningly.  What were you apologizing for?

You played with your fingers for a moment as you tried hard to muster up the courage to talk.  You knew what you wanted to say, rather what you needed to say.  

“Torū, I’m sorry I ran out on you.  I shouldn’t have done that.  I- I just got really nervous” you say, still looking down at the floor as you took a deep breath and tried hard not to cry.

“When you told me you were a virgin, it made me nervous.  I remember my first time all too well and I- well I just don’t want your first time to be like mine was” you speak as Torū looks at you, still confused.

The whole time the issue hadn’t been that he was a virgin, it had been that you wanted him to have a good experience?  He was shocked.  Here he though the issue was him, when in reality the issue was your own self doubts. He listened as you continued to talk.

“My first time wasn’t good Torū.  I didn’t know what I was doing and I thought I had feelings for the guy but like he didn’t have feelings for me.  And I really like you Torū and I just don’t want you to regret anything.  The fact that you trusted me with something so special made me nervous and scares” you said as your eyes went up to meet Torū.  

He looked at you, staring into your eyes as he tried hard to comprehend everything you had just said. He felt awful that your first experience wasn’t good but he also knew his feelings for you were valid and now he knew you had feelings for him too. He continued to stare as he worked his way thought the issues in his mind.  

You frowned as you took his silence as a bad sign, sighing as you stood up.  

“Thanks for letting me explain myself Torū.  You are so amazing and you deserve someone special” you said as you went to leave the locker rooms.

Torū snapped from his thoughts as he quickly grabbed your hand, pulling you back into his as he placed a light kiss on your lips. He smiled as you looked at him, very confused as to what had just happened.

Torū put his forehead on yours as you smiled softly.  

“YN, you don’t get it.  I want you to be my first because of how I feel about you” he said as he looked at you softly. You had become an oasis for him. An escape from reality and daily life. You had loved volleyball as much as him and you had always been genuine with him.  

You smiled as you grabbed his neck, kissing him softly again as he pulled your body flush against his as he deepened the kiss.  He placed his hands on your soft waist as he moved his hand up and down your back as you grabbed at his hair pulling him in closer to you.

You break from the kiss, staring at each other as your lips hovered over his.  Your body hearing up as you could feel his erection forming against your thigh.  You kissed his chin to his neck as he pulled your pelvis in closer, grinding where he could, trying hard to gather any amount of friction to ease his aching cock.

He backed away from him as he watched in confusion as you approached the locker room door.

Not again he thought as he heard the lock click, watching you stroll back to him, pulling him back into a full embrace.  He needed you and bad.  He couldn’t stand this pain in his cock anymore. He needed relief and the only medicine was you.

You push him back to the bench as he sits down looking up at you as you smirk down at him.

“Torū do you really want this?” You said as he groans, looking up at your gorgeous figure.  

He nodded frantically as you took his chin in your hand “I need a verbal response Torū” you said as his eyes widened.

“Yes- yes YN I want this” he said as you step back, removing your shirt and leggings, watching him ogle at your nearly naked form.  

“Ok Torū, I want you to pick a safe word just incase things get to be too much for you” you said as he gawked at you in your bra and panties. He was having a hard time concentrating on the task at hand with you standing tall in front of him.

“Torū!” you repeated as you snapped your fingers in front of his eyes, trying to get his attention turned back.

“Oh shit- yeah a safe word, umm how about ‘Kageyama’?” He said as you stared strangely at the word.

“I’ve never heard of ‘Kageyama’?  What does that mean?” You said as he stood up from his spot approaching you as he grabbed at your scantily clad hips.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just something will definitely snap me out of the mood” he said as you chuckled lightly embracing Torū in a heated kiss.  

Your tongue licked his lips lightly as he granted you access, opening his mouth to your wet muscle as you massaged your tongue against his, pulling light groans from his pretty head.

You tugged on his shirt as he lifted his arms up, letting you pull the shirt from his body as your fingers and palms run up his sculpted chest.  

Your fingers graze lightly over his nipples as he shutters and groans.  His body was so reactive to every touch, every movement. The fact that you were about to engage in intercourse with the setter still made you a bit nervous but you tried hard to cast the self doubt aside, wanting to make the experience memorable for both you and Torū.

As if on queue, Torū looked at you sweetly as he brushed the tip of your nose with his. “you know YN, we could just count this as your virginity loss too.  I mean clearly you are as nervous as I am” he said chuckling as you laughed loudly throwing your head back.  

“That’s a good idea Torū but I am experienced in pleasuring a partner” you said as you push him down to the bench “just be a good boy for me and let me take the lead, ok?”

Torū gulped as he eyes widened at as your form sunk to your knees in front of him.  This was really happening and in the team locker room.  Not an ideal place to lose your virginity but he was not about to interrupt you.

“Umm YN” he said as he looked at you , kneeling before him with your hands placed on your plush thighs “don’t you umm, don’t you want me to make you feel good too?”  

You chuckled lightly as you reached up pulling him into a heated kiss as he gently rubbed his hands along your soft arms.

“How about I show you what I like while I make you feel good, then you can try?” You say as he nods quickly watching your hands go to his gym shorts, pulling his erection free as he shifts his hips upwards, helping you to remove his pesky shorts.

Your eyes widen at his size as you think about all the possible ways his cock will pleasure your wet cunt.  You felt your core heat up as you looked up to Torū.  

He was completely blissed out. Lost in translation between here and fantasy.  He’s eyes sparkled with excitement as you tested the waters, lightly kicking the tips of his hard cock.

Groaning he threw his head back in pleasure as you smirked to yourself, going in for another lick.  Your tongue laying more and more on his stiffened cock as he writhed in pleasure under your control.

Your body headed as you watched his abs contract in the moment, his mouth hanging open as his tongue lolled out in ecstasy.  He watched as your fingers traced lightly from his legs to your own, peering down at your chest as your fingers danced lightly over your clothed clit.

“Fuck YN” he moaned as he tried his hardest not to come from the sensation of your tongue on his cock.

Taking one final lick, you stand up as you slowly remove your panties from your body, revealing your cunt to him as he stares at the wetness coating your inner thighs.  

“Did you- did I” he said staring at you as you laugh, pushing him back on the hard bench, placing one leg on each side as you rub your clit with your fingers.

“Yes Torū you made me this wet” you say as you widen his legs on the bench, his cock standing tall as you bend down, grinding your cunt on his lower thigh.  

“Holy shit-” he groans as you moan throwing your head back as his leg rubs your clit perfect.  He grabs his cock as he slowly begins to stroke himself, trying hard to concentrate on your moments and pleasure as he feels the wetness pool on his legs.  

You lean over, placing two of your wet fingers in his mouth as he sucks violently, causing you to grind faster and harder.  Your orgasm builds as moans and groans fill the air

 Your body heats up rapidly as the cord in your stomach tightens. Your pace quickens as does Torū’s as you feel the cord begin to loosen.

“Oh fuck Torū” you moan as Toru groans deeply, letting go of his aching cock to watch as you tip over the edge.  

“Come on baby, come for me” he says as the pet name tips you over the edge, your cunt pulsing on his thigh as he watches your face contort into pleasure.  

“That was so hot YN” he says he has gently caressed your arm and leg as his cock aches painfully beside you.

“We are just getting started Torū” you say as you adjust yourself over his pelvis, pushing his cock between your wet folds as your grind back and forth, trying hard to ensure your good and ready to take his cock.

“Fuck YN- I, I’m not going to last long” you say as you shush him, halting your movements.

“Hey its OK.  I already came so now we need you to come. How do you want to come Torū?” You say as he bites his lower lip, watching your pussy settle above his cock.

“Please YN- please put it in. I need to be inside of you princess” he squeaks out as you smirk at his request. You knew he wouldn’t last long inside of you.  One thing you prided yourself on sexually was your ability to ride a cock and boy was Torū in for a treat.  

You line his cock up with your wet cunt, slowly bending your knees down as you impaled yourself in his cock.

The stretch was delicious as Torū’s mouth fell open as he groaned and panted beneath you.  You knew he could feel the tightness you felt as you waited for him to adjust to being inside of you.

Torū’s hands flew to your hips as he tried his hardest to remain calm.  Your cunt was so tight and so warm around his cock. The pleasure was unimaginable.  All he wanted was to feel the release.

“Torū are you ok?” You said as you steadied your hands on his chest watching to make sure the man below you was still coherent.

“It’s so tight YN, please” he moaned as his hands went to your hips and you ground a little down on him as his core shuttered, causing his dick to jolt inside you.

“I’m going to go slow ok” you said as he nodded.  Your feet planted firmly on the ground, you pushed lightly on his chest as you propelled your hips up and down, impaling yourself on his cock over and cover again.  

The pace was agonizing for Torū as whimper and moans fell from his mouth.  You could feel your orgasm building and you knew Torū couldn’t hold on much longer.  You needed to go faster.

“Torū” you groan from above him as you continue your leisurely pace “I’m close can I go-”

“GOD PLEASE BABY FUCK ME” he shouts as your hips speed up, jerking his cock as you felt the familiar knot began to unwind “fuck YN I can’t hold out-”

“Almost baby” you moan as you feel the cord snap inside your stomach as your cunt pulses on Toru's cock causing him to groan and grunt.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK-” he shouts as his hips still into you, painting your walls white as he grips your hips firmly, whimpering below you as he tried his hardest to come down from his high.

He felt absolutely spectacular, like his body was floating on air.  He couldn’t believe how amazing his first time had been. He never imagined it would happen the way it did but he wasn’t complaining.  His body and mind were in complete bliss.

Coming down from your high, you laugh as you look at Torū’s blissed out state.  He smiles at you as he opens his eyes slowly caressing your cheek.  

“That was amazing YN” he said, breath shaking as he came down from his high, breathing steadily.

Your chest filled with pride as you felt sheer happiness fluid your body.  You had redeemed yourself and you had made Torū’s first time amazing.

Standing up slowly, Torū watched as his cum leaked down your thigh as you stood in front of him.  His eyes traced your form as he felt his cock jolt to life again, ready for another round.

Standing up, he quickly grabbed you in a bridal carry, running towards the shower as your screamed and laughed as he set you down, turning the water on and pressing your body against the shower wall.

“eww Torū, this wall is gross” you groan as his lips attach to your neck as you feel his erection growing against your pelvis.

“It’s fine YN, I’ll clean you up afterwards” he says as he kisses you deeply, pulling your body against his as he pulls you under the warm water.  

You break the kiss as you smile softly up at his tall form, water cascading down his body as you feel his hardened chest under your hands.

“I need you” he says as you smirk at him, turning around to face the wall.  You grind your ass into his already hard member as he grabs your hips, pulling you firmly into him.

“Then fuck me Torū” you say as you peer over your shoulders, watching Torū’s face fill with excitement as he lines up his cock with your still damp cunt, slowly pushing in as he slowly sinks deep into your hole.

“fuck YN- your pussy is just amazing” he says as he slowly pulls his cock back out, moving at a snails pace in and out of you.

“Torū” you moan as you mouth falls open  “give me your hand” you say as Torū’s hand appears in front of you as you place it between your legs on your hardened clit.  Torū moans when his fingers hit your clit as you rotate his wrist, showing him exactly how you like to be pleasured.  You let go of his hand as he continues to rub tiny fast circles into your clit as you propel yourself faster onto his cock, meeting his thrusts half way.

The air feels with the smell of sex and the sound of skin slapping as your ass meets his hips over and over.  

“Fuck baby” he groans

“I know Torū, just a little more” you squeak out as he picks up his speed, meeting your ass fast and harshly as his fingers speed up on your clit.

“TORŪ FUCK-” You scream as his hips still on your ass as he presses hard, his head falling to your shoulder as he tries to gain control of his breathing.

“Ahhh fucking hell- FUCK” he shouts as he chest heaves in relief as you both come down from your highs as he releases you and you turn to face him, kissing him softly as he grabs you, pulling you into a tight embrace.  

“Thank you YN” he says whispering into your neck as you smile softly.

After cleaning up and getting dressed, Torū helps you clean up the gym as you get ready to leave for the night.  Locking the gym doors, Torū grabs your hand as he pulls you along with him.

“Torū” you say laughing as the brunette pulls you hastily out of the building “my apartment is the other way!”

“Who said the night was over YN-chan?  I need to practice pleasuring you” he smirks as you gulp, following behind him quickly.

You sure were in for a long night ahead.

taglist: @chaotic-nick @yep-seeyalaterbranflakes @serostapesweat @lovelyzabrak-meadow​

#please me #Please Me series #virginity loss #haikyuu #haikyuu!! #haikyū!! #haikyu x reader #seijoh #aoba johsai #oikawa #oikawa toru #oikawa torū #oikawa toru x reader #oikawa toru x you #oikawa toru x y/n #oikawa x reader #oikawa x y/n #oikawa x you #haikyuu oikawa

[makoodlesarchive]

when i was young i fell into a river

pairing: kirishima x reader

word count: 5k

warnings: none, really! a bit of angst, a bit of fluff i guess?

notes: hello, it's me, back again with some writing! it's been a long time and i'm very sorry about that, but i've finally gotten around to writing and posting my spirited away au! i'm v stressed with college so this turned out more vent-y than i had originally intended, but hopefully it's enjoyable anyway! thank you all for being so patient with me, i am endlessly grateful for you

The dream is the same as always, comforting in its familiarity.

A salt-scented breeze cools your sweat-soaked brow as you pause behind one of the sliding screen doors, the rice paper windows doing nothing to block out the chatter of the other workers. The bubbling noise of the bathhouse is constant, and the quiet little moments you steal away for yourself in the middle of the working day is the only solitude you’ve gotten since you came here. The work is physically back-breaking, but you know that you’re working towards a goal. It’s just a shame that you can’t remember exactly what that goal is.

One of the other girls calls your name, and you sigh as your unofficial break comes to an end. You slip back into the room, ignoring the way the frog spirits snicker and hold their noses as you pass. They like to complain a lot about your human stench, but it doesn’t stop them from threatening to eat you every time you make a mistake. Fear, you’ve found, is an uncomfortably successful motivator.

The days bleed into one another, full of scrubbing dark wooden floors and the rich earthy scents of the herbal mixes they use in the baths. The spirits that frequent the bathhouse, that once inspired so much awe and fear in your heart, become so commonplace that you hardly spare them a glance anymore. From the cackling masked spirits that always travel in threes to the grinning cat spirits to the sombre, unspeaking river spirits, you only go as far as to offer them a polite bow before scurrying out of their way. They never spare you any attention, anyway -- most of the time, the spirits’ eyes seem to look right through you.

All but one, that is.

He looks to be a boy around your age, but appearances can be deceiving around here. His red eyes are often dull and blank, but even so they have a certain ageless quality about them that no human twelve-year-old could ever possess. His scarlet hair sticks up in gravity-defying spikes, and his skin is as smooth and clear as running water. His face is often stuck in a carefully cultivated blank expression; the only thing about him that doesn’t seem intimidatingly otherworldly are the deep purple shadows under his eyes.

He helped you once, when you first came here. The rare act of kindness had stuck in your head, made even more remarkable in the face of the following weeks and months of harsh work and cruel co-workers. You wonder if he remembers; he doesn’t often look at you, but sometimes when he does you swear you can see a flicker of something in his eyes.

Two of the girls start yelling at each other, arguing heatedly over the way the work is being divided. A foreman appears to break up the fight, but then they both start shouting at him instead. You take the moment of distraction to relax, wincing at the pull of your tired muscles in the back of your neck. All the other girls working at the bath house are older and bigger than you, which means you need to work twice as hard to keep up with them and prove that you’re worth keeping around.

In the brief moment of rest, your eyes are drawn slowly to the corridor, where guests and workers alike bustle past as they travel to the treatment rooms and bathtubs deeper into the bathhouse. As if you’ve conjured him just by thinking about him, the boy stands in the doorway.

You straighten up on instinct, suddenly self-conscious of your sweat-soaked body and dishevelled uniform. He’s not even looking your way, preoccupied with the two girls who are still yelling at the frog foreman. Slowly though, his eyes began to travel the room, and you take a deep breath and hold it as his dull ruby gaze lands on you like a physical weight. You crack a nervous smile, feeling the muscles in your cheeks that have gone unused for weeks ache at the strain, and raise a hand to give him a tiny wave.

For just a moment, that blankness in his face seems to quiver and fall away. He smiles back.

You jolt awake, breathing heavily and coated in a light sheen of sweat. You’ve had the same dream, or some variation of it, regularly ever since you were twelve years old and while it’s become familiar to you, you still find yourself feeling vaguely panicked when you wake up after it, as though you’ve forgotten something very important.

Once your heartbeat has calmed down a little, you pull yourself out of bed and trudge into the kitchen to make yourself some tea. The weak, milky light of dawn filters in through the windows, lighting your apartment up just enough so that you don’t have to turn on a light to make your way around. You take your tea out to the balcony and sit, gazing out at the purplish early morning sky.

Most of the time when you wake up from those dreams you feel blessedly lucky to be living alone with no one to question or bother you, but sometimes you can’t help but be overcome by overwhelming loneliness. The dreams are silly and most of the time they don’t even make any sense, but in the aftermath of them you’re always left with a vague sense of unfulfillment, though you can’t put your finger exactly on what it is you’re missing. You always end up exactly like this; sitting outside on your balcony in the early morning light, drinking tea alone and desperately wishing for something more.

You sigh, and go back inside.

The dream is the same, but different.

The garden is in full bloom, greenery overlaid with bursts of beautiful bright colours. Camellias, rhododendrons, and oleanders wave and shiver gently in the warm breeze, and apple blossoms hang heavily from a nearby tree. The flowering garden is enormous and maze-like, and you have yet to see it in any state other than fully flourishing.

It’s a beautiful place, especially after the hot, cramped working quarters of the bathhouse. You inhale the sweetly fragranced air and feel the knot of tension in your spine unfurl; it feels like the first time that you’ve been able to breathe all week, but that’s not the only reason that you’ve found yourself outside.

At the bottom of the garden, the grass drops off into a sheer drop. The cliff face overlooks a seemingly endless ocean, and you perch a safe distance from the drop before leaning back in the grass. The sky is an almost surreally deep blue and you watch as enormous fluffy clouds float by, looking as though they’ve been painted on a jewel-blue canvas.

It’s not the first time you’ve had this dream, and you know what you’ll see if you keep patiently watching.

It doesn’t take long — it never does. You time your lunch breaks precisely, all so you get to see this sight.

The clear blue sky makes it so much easier to spot the shiny white scales, flashing jewel-bright in the sunlight. The dragon writhes in the sky, streaking through the air like a great serpent caught in the wind. Even from this distance, you can see the knife-like teeth, the great sharp claws that gleam like pyrite, and the twisting horns that erupt from his head like daggers made from calcified bone. He looks deadly, a living weapon that swims through the air like a salmon in open water, but the sight of him makes something settle in your stomach.

You wonder what it would feel like to fall through the air with nothing but the wind to break your fall. You imagine it must feel like freedom.

The dragon flutters through the air, buoyed by the gentle sea breeze. If you didn’t know better, you might almost think that he was showing off — his movements are hypnotic, dreamlike, more like a dance than anything. His scales glow pearlescent in the midday sun, otherworldly and earthly all at once.

You could happily stay and watch him skim through the sky forever, but already the bell is being rung to call all workers back into the bathhouse. You heave a sigh so deep it feels as though your chest is about to crack with the force of it, before hauling yourself to your feet.

Your break is over, and now it’s back to work.

Sometimes you find it difficult to tell when you’re dreaming and when you’re awake. It feels as though everything is always happening all at once, in the present tense, forever. You don’t get to rest when you close your eyes and drift off to sleep, because the dreams just keep coming and coming. Sometimes you don’t feel like your life is real when you’re awake.

Riding on the train has always been therapeutic, especially at this time of the early morning. The sun rising lazily over the horizon sends milky threads of purple and pink across the cloudy sky, and you cradle your chin in your hand as you gaze out across the moving landscape. You love these little trips, feeling more at home in the creaky, overfull train carriage than you do in your own bedroom sometimes, though you can’t quite work out where that particular feeling comes from.

You know sometimes that stories end with “And then I woke up — it was only a dream”, but in your experience the story simply doesn’t end. You cannot fully wake up without the tail-ends of your dreams clinging to you for the rest of the day, and you never fully sleep. You just dream, dream, dream.

Sighing, you lean your head back against the seat that you’re slumped in. The train carriage is too full, and you were lucky to get a seat in the first place — from your vantage point, you watch as people sway in tandem with the motion of the train. It’s almost hypnotic, how they undulate back and forth with every turn, brushing against each other only to be pulled apart again by the lurching train.

Through the sea of bodies, you catch a man’s eye. It breaks the monotony of the morning commute and your own spiralling thoughts, and your spine straightens unconsciously. He quirks an eyebrow briefly, slightly, in such a way that no one would be able to safely accuse him of having done it.

You look away, startled for no good reason. Do you know him? He feels familiar in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. The train rattles on, and it takes several long minutes before you work up the nerve to glance the man’s way again. He’s still watching you, but you’re ready for it this time. His attention isn’t such a shock, and you allow your eyes to wander over his face properly.

You must know him, you think. Your eyes track over his features as though they’re winding over a well-worn path, admiring the curve of his nose and the fullness of his lips and the arch of his eyebrows over his intense, watchful eyes.

He smiles at you, and it feels as though you’re sharing a secret from across the crowded train carriage. You smile back — it’s just a small tug of the corners of your mouth, but it’s the most you’ve smiled in months. Longer, maybe.

In the middle of the carriage a woman laughs at something her friend has said and sways backward, blocking your view of the stranger. It feels like a loss.

The train trundles onwards, and the carriage gradually empties out. You watch people step off the train with friends, with their heads ducked low, lost in thought, arguing over the phone, distracted with their book bags. By the time it comes to your stop, the man is gone.

You try not to feel disappointed as you step off the train — it’s silly, after all. You don’t know the man, and whatever you thought you felt as you looked at each other was surely all in your own head. Your head has been awfully full, recently.

As you step off the train you grapple with your bag, side-stepping a businessman who is busy shouting down the phone at some unfortunate coworker. You’re distracted, which is the only reasonable explanation for how long it takes you to realise that the man from the train is standing in front of you.

“Oh.” You blurt, startled. You had already begun to resign yourself to never seeing him again, so you can’t help but feel distinctly caught off guard at the sight of him standing before you. “Hi.”

“Hello.” The man says. He’s looking at you expectantly, but you have no idea what he’s waiting for — as it is, you get completely distracted by his eyes. You hadn’t noticed on the train, but now that he’s up close you see that they’re a truly unusual deep burgundy. He tilts his head when you remain silent, and bites his lip. Now that you’re really looking, you notice how sharp his teeth are. “You’ve barely changed at all.”

You blink at him. “Er…” You trail off nervously. You don’t recognise him, but you feel like you know him. Clearly, he thinks that he knows you.

“It’s fitting, isn’t it? Meeting again on a train?” He smiles, and it’s an impossibly knowing expression. You don’t think you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a look that intimate in your life, though you have no idea what he’s talking about.

Someone collides hard with your shoulder and you stagger for balance. You only look away from the man for a mere second, but it’s enough; when you look again, he’s gone.

You take to walking. There’s a wooded area behind the town, and you enjoy traipsing idly through the trees. Ancient roots erupt out of the dirt and fan over the ground like hairs, and the moss that covers the trunks of the trees is such a deep green that it almost seems like paint pigment. It’s soothing, being surrounded by nature like this. It reminds you of childhood — the simplicity of being able to jump over tree roots under a canopy of pale green leaves, of being able to leave all your thoughts and stress at the boundary of the forest.

It’s where you come after waking sweat-soaked and disoriented from a dream that clings to you like a burr, where you walk among the ferns and the needle-leaved weeds until you manage to shake the last vestiges of memory from your mind. You need it, especially in the mornings where you wake up with the acrid scent of herbal cleanser stinging in your nose or the bite of hard calluses on your palms from non-existent rough cloths. On mornings like that, you walk and walk until you no longer feel as though you’re more alive in your dreams than you are in reality.

Deep in the forest is a great red facade, painted a flaking, faded red. You wander by it frequently, admiring the overgrown greenery that crawls up the walls like reaching fingers, the mossy stone guardian that stands sentinel amongst the cracked flagstones that lead into the tunnelled entrance. You’ve asked around in the town, curious about what exactly this building was for, but most of the locals either don’t know what building you’re talking about or admit that they’re not sure. One man told you that the facade was built for a theme park in the 90s that had ended up going bust in the recession, and that the building only looked old.

You remain unconvinced on that front. The building has the kind of presence that only very old things have; it feels like it’s watching you.

For the most part, your walks in the forest are peaceful. Recently though, you’ve found yourself plagued by an insistent, irritating sense of deja vu. You don’t know where it’s coming from, and it hits you at the strangest of times — when you’re making tea, or in the bath, or cleaning your apartment, or on the train, or admiring the sky on a cloudless day.

The man from the train is the boy in your dreams. It takes you weeks to come to that realisation. You just wake up in the middle of the night on a random Tuesday, with wide eyes and clammy skin and his name slipping from the forefront of your mind.

It shouldn’t be possible, but once it dawns on you, you’re certain of it.

Even stranger is that once you realise it, it feels as though you see him everywhere. You see flashes of red hair when you’re walking down the street, when you’re grocery shopping, when you’re walking home late at night. It’s only ever the barest glance out of the corner of your eye, just overt enough for you to know it’s him, but subtle enough for you to question yourself immediately after.

One night, you travel to a local city to meet some old school friends. At night, the city seems to pulse. The music from seedy clubs spills out into the neon-lit streets, muffled shouted arguments echoes from alleyways and apartments alike, and the streets are peppered with people either scurrying or stumbling home, with very little variation. Though the perpetually overcast sky hides any trace of the moon or stars, the streetlamps reflect in the ever-present stagnant puddles littering the street, lighting them up in varying shades of sickly yellow.

At night, the city seems alive. Chronically ill and struggling to breathe, maybe, but clinging to life all the same.

The way the neon lights flicker in the gloomy darkness, just barely illuminating the shadows of people hurrying through the streets to get in out of the rain, reminds you of something you can’t quite remember. It sits in the back of your mind like a sour taste, but no matter how much you reach for the memory it remains just out of reach.

You spend most of the night staring out of the steamed up window of the pub, entranced by the sight of the night streets and frustrated by the memories that seem to dangle just out of reach. You know that it doesn’t make for good company, and you feel guilty for that. Your friends don’t seem overly surprised at your detachment. You’ve been drifting away for years, and though tonight was supposed to be all about reconnecting it seems clear that it’s not going to work.

When you eventually stand up to leave, with forced smiles and awkward goodbyes, you can’t help but feel melancholy settle over you like a second skin. As you slip out of the pub and onto the dark streets, the thought crosses your mind that you’re not used to being alone like this. It’s a silly thought, really; you’ve been alone for years. But sometimes, in those liminal moments between waking and sleeping, you swear you can hear the gentle drowsy breaths of dozens of people sleeping all around you, as though you’re surrounded on all sides. On those nights you wake up hot and claustrophobic and uncomfortable, but never feeling lonely.

It is probably your own fault, you reflect as you drift down the sidewalk like a ghost. It’s difficult to make an effort to know people when you feel as though you don’t know yourself. You don’t know how to bridge the distance between yourself and other people. You think sometimes that you’re missing chunks of yourself.

You pass an open shopfront that’s serving street food, and glance briefly in at the kitchen. The cook is illuminated only dimly in the smoky room, standing out as a shadow figure more than anything, and for a split second you could swear that he has six arms. You look away quickly and carry on walking — you don’t want to look again only to be proven wrong. You want to preserve that little second of magic strangeness for as long as you can.

The puddles on the street seem like they’re glowing with the light reflected from the neon streetlamps, and you weave your way carefully around them to avoid getting your feet wet. The night has a strange quality about it, almost as though it’s holding its breath.

Considering the combination of your pensive mood and the expectant air of the evening, you don’t feel surprised at all when you look up from the wet cobblestones to find the man standing only a few feet ahead of you.

He smiles like he’s nervous, his gaze tracking carefully over your face. In his hands, he’s holding flowers. Camellias, you think. It’s the first time since you first saw him on the train that hasn’t been a fleeting glance out of the corner of your eye— he’s here in front of you and he’s real and solid and sturdy. He seems more substantial than the streets around you, than your friends back at the pub had been.

“Do you remember me?” He asks, voice soft as though he’s afraid of the answer.

“Remember you?” You croak. It feels as though the words are catching inside your throat. “No. But I’ve seen you every night in my dreams for years.”

If that’s the answer he’s expecting, he doesn’t show it. He just keeps looking at you, your face, your body. You wonder exactly it is that he’s seeing. “These are for you.” He says eventually, holding out the flowers. “I didn’t- I wanted to bring you something, when I saw you again. And I know that you always liked the garden.”

He’s talking as if the places that you’ve dreamed about are real. It doesn’t come as the earth-shattering surprise you might have expected — rather, it feels like a key turning in an old lock. A click, and then a sense of yes, that’s right.

You take the flowers, and clutch them to your chest. They’re a fleshy pink, with a vibrant yellow centre. The petals are as soft as velvet. Holding them feels like holding a safety blanket. “Thank you.” It’s the only thing that you can manage to say right now. Your thoughts are too full, and nothing else makes it out of your mouth.

It’s rather startling, the feelings that bubble up in your chest. It feels like something has just been unlocked, as though you had stored away all this emotion somewhere deep in your ribcage and then forgotten about it only for it to resurface at this precise moment, for this precise person.

“Eijirou.” You croak. “Kirishima Eijirou.”

His whole face brightens, and his eyes sparkle. “Yes. That’s me. You do remember!”

They’re not quite memories, you don’t think. They come in dreamlike flashes — the garden, an ocean, train tracks, the feral snarling of a dragon with sharp teeth, hard work and hot food, friends.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Kirishima is saying, his face open and earnest. “But I told you that I’d come and find you again, remember?”

You do remember, sort of. A flash of a warm hand holding yours, pushing you forward over a boundary between one world and another, and a goodbye whispered behind you that sounds like a promise.

“You saved me.”

Kirishima laughs, though his eyes look a little shiny. “It was the other way around, actually. I would have stayed trapped in that bathhouse forever, if it weren’t for you.”

“The bathhouse.” You murmur, wide-eyed. It was real, real, real.

“Things are different now.” He edges closer to you. He’s large and imposing and taller than you, but he’s hunched slightly in an attempt to make himself unthreatening. “That’s why it took so long for me to come for you. Things were changing. Me and Katsuki run the bathhouse now.”

Katsuki. In your mind's eye you see a boy with wild blond hair and a dangerous look in his eyes, a boy who gives you extra rice when he can manage and takes over parts of your chores when you get so tired that you’re fit to pass out.

“I didn’t mean to make you wait.” He says quietly, and the tide of emotion that you had just barely been holding at bay comes crashing over you. Before the first tear has welled over the edge of your eyelids, Kirishima has stepped forward and wrapped you in his arms. The flowers are crushed between your chests as you cry.

“I didn’t even know what I was waiting for.” You cry into his silk suikan.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers into your hair. “I’m here now. I’m not going to leave again.”

You don’t release your grip on him. You’re not willing to take the chance.

After a moment, Kirishima speaks again. “Are you ready to go?”

“Go?” You echo, finally pulling away. “Go where?”

“Home.” He says, and he means the bathhouse. He means the spirit world.

“You want me to work for you?”

“I want you to help us run it.” He corrects. The distinction is important for both of you — though the memories are distant, you both know what it feels like to have your names and voices erased so cleanly that it makes you wonder if you ever existed fully at all.

“I don’t know anything about running a bathhouse. Especially not one for spirits.” You say, but Kirishima just laughs.

“You were always a hard worker. You’ll learn as you go. That’s what we’ve all been doing.”

You want to say yes. The word beats in your head like a drum, and you can’t think of a good reason to say no. The bathhouse. Home. The chance to feel real and awake at the same time.

“Okay.” You say on a breath, staring at him with wide eyes. “Stay with me, this time.”

When Kirishima’s face lights up in a smile, it’s the first time that you think you can accurately describe someone as incandescently happy. “Good luck getting rid of me again.”

You laugh, feeling nearly delirious with relief and joy. It’s real. He’s real. He’s come back for you, and now you’re going back with him. You think you should probably feel nervous or hesitant, but this brief encounter has felt more solid and right than the rest of the night spent with distant school-friends made uncomfortable by your silences.

“So, how do we get there?” You ask, but Kirishima just grins at you like you should already know the answer.

The train station is tucked away down an alley just off a busy main shopping district.

“It’s easy to miss if you don’t know exactly where you're going.” Kirishima tells you with a sharp smile, and it’s easy to believe. The red brick building that housed the train station is unmarked, and the trains couldn’t be seen from the main street. The alley itself is home to many curious sights -- paper lanterns bob overhead (though they don’t seem to be suspended by anything in particular), a yellowed flyer from the 1950s advertising Marlboro cigarettes drifts along on what seems to be a breeze despite the noticeable lack of wind, and three magpies sit on a wall wearing little golden timepieces on chains around their necks and caw in time with the ticking.

“Ready to go home?” Kirishima asks quietly. In his hand, two train tickets flutter in a non-existent breeze.

A family of mice scamper past your feet, pulling a miniature suitcase between them. A tall, thin woman wearing a blank white mask assists them onto the train.

You laugh at the whimsy of it all — it feels as though you’ve stepped into a fairytale, into a dream, into your childhood. “Yes,” You grin, “I’m ready.”

Kirishima beams back at you, and holds out a hand to help you onto the train. Finding a seat was easy — despite all the passengers you had seen boarding, the carriage was oddly empty. As soon as you’re seated, you sigh. It feels as though you’re sinking into an old overstuffed armchair, comfortable and familiar. When the whistle blows and the train starts moving, you turn eagerly to watch as the train begins to pick up speed. Within moments, you find that you can barely recognise the landscape blurring past the window — It seems that you’re zooming passed a beautiful sea-view, despite the fact that the city the train station was located in was conspicuously land-locked. You sigh happily and lean against your seat.

You still don’t remember everything about your experience in the spirit world all those years ago, but you think you remember hearing someone telling you “Once you meet someone you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return."

You make eye contact with Eijirou, who smiles back at you so fondly that it nearly hurts to look at. He’s changed so much from the boy in your dreams, in your memories. His eyes are no longer glassy and distant — now they’re shiny and expressive and so bright. His hair is longer too; still spiked and wild, but longer and curling softly over the curve of his neck and shoulders. He’s the boy your remember from all those years ago, but he’s also a man now. Grown, like you have, but smiling at you gently just like you’re ten years old again.

Through the window behind his head, the sunrise begins to bathe the water in delicate pinks and yellows. You’ll wait for as long as you need to for the memories to return, but even if they don’t that’s alright. You can just make new ones.

#this is so cheesy lol but whatever i've been staring at this doc for too long and i want it out of my sight #kirishima x reader #bnha x reader #kirishima eijirou #ghibli au #kirishima eijiro fluff #kirishima x y/n #mha x reader

[voiceless-terror]

Okay SO !!!! I'm taking your questions post as an invitation to invade your inbox, and I NEED to know more of your ADHD!Jon thoughts !!!! Like I am v much on the Jon is not neurotypical train, but I want to know your takes on it !!! [I LOVE the way you write him in your ADHD series]

I am SO sorry this ended being much longer than i expected but here you go.

God I feel so strongly about ADHD Jon! The way I write him is very much based on my own experience with ADHD. Here are some of my headcanons, some of which you can probably find peppered in all of my fics. But I will definitely be adding to that series in the future!

-Jon didn’t get a formal diagnosis until he was in college, and pretty much just really internalized that ‘deeply annoying child’ bit. This still sticks with him even after he gets diagnosed because of course getting therapy and medication doesn’t magically make things better

-He’s probably his most easy-going and personable (the soft Jon we get to see now!)  when he finally realizes he’s not ‘defective’ like he thought, and that there are people who care about him and want to hear what he has to say

-BUT he still has a lot of RSD flare ups, especially when anyone he loves gets frustrated with him. He goes through quiet periods when he doesn’t want to speak for fear of upsetting others

-After his falling out with Georgie he falls back into this majorly, and his first two years at the Institute are pretty hard for him, until Tim and Sasha break down his walls and support him

-I headcanon Tim as either having some form of ADHD himself or that his brother had it, and he feels very protective of Jon because he’s seen first hand how difficult it can be sometimes

-Jon Sims? More like Jon STIMS. He tries to hide it when he’s not alone, but he’s a big hand flapper and very restless. When he’s thinking through things he has to pace and he’s always bumping into things. Martin thinks its adorable but is always worried when he comes home with a new bruise. He also likes to spin in his chair, even though it makes him feel dizzy and nauseous  

- He thinks his intense ability to focus on statements is just another form of hyperfixation until it very clearly isnt

-Jon’s not a good listener. His mind is always wandering, and he often interrupts. He feels self-conscious about this only afterwards when its pointed out to him. He’ll go into his quiet periods again, and has a really hard time trying to find a balance between talking too much and too little. It doesn’t come naturally for him.

-His assistants all react differently to this. He and Sasha get into really intense conversations, so there’s a lot of give and take there that he doesn’t ordinarily get and that’s good for him. Tim just rolls with it- he’s a good conversationalist, and he’s great at putting people at ease. Martin is a bit of a harder nut to crack, and Jon feels like he’s on unstable ground until they get to know each other. There is a lot of awkward and misconstrued convo in the beginning of their friendship.

- Jon has so much love to give but he doesn’t know how to express it sometimes!! And that’s why in my adhd jon series everyone lives and he gets the support and love that he needs, because sometimes i am sappy and i want things to work out

#asks #i have so many more of these headcanons but this is what ill write for now #i am always avaiable to scream about adhd jon #tma #jonathan sims #kaiserkorresponds #adhd jon au

[paraemu]

From Toei Hero MAX 57

Parad and Poppy were the main characters in the second part of the trilogy, which was the most flexible in terms of content. Kai and Matsuda's bugster team looks back on their activities in V-Cinema, which were in a sense the same as usual, or even more outrageous than usual!

A different kind of competition realized in a compilation trilogy

本作「仮面ライダーパラドクスwithポッピー」はタイトル通り、お二人が主役。初の大役を務められていかがでした？

Interviewer: As the title suggests, the two of you play the main roles in this film, "Kamen Rider ParaDX with Poppy". How was it for you to play your first major role?

僕の意識としては、ただパラドを演じただけなので、特別感は特にないんですよね。なんというか、これまで通り「エグゼイド」という作品で演じていたら、結果的にパラドが真ん中にいたって感じ。主役の自分がなんとかしなきや、みたいな気持ちもまったくなかったですからね。

Kai: As far as I'm concerned, I just played Parad, so I don't really have any special feeling. I was just playing the role of "Ex-Aid" as I always have, and as a result, Parad was right in the middle. I didn't feel like I had to do anything as the main character at all.

そうだよね。ずっとポッピーとパラドとして生活していたら、たまたまカメラがこっちを向いてて、いつのまにか作品になってた。感覚としてはそういう感じに近いような気がします(笑)。

Matsuda: That's right. We've been living as Poppy and Parad for a long time, and the camera just happened to be looking at me, and before I knew it, I was making art. I think that's how I feel about it (laughs).

申斐さんは、本作で新たに登場するブラックパラドとの一人ニ役にも挑戦されています。

Interviewer: Kai-san is also taking on the challenge of playing two roles with Black Parad, a new character in this work.

クランクインの当日とかはけっこう大変だった記憶がありますね。同じカットに2人とも映るシーンは、まずパラドで撮って、そのままカメラを固定して、ブラーックパラドに着替えてから、今度は反対側に立って…..というのをやらなきゃいけなくて。たぶん、あの日だけで4回ぐらいは入れかわったんじゃないかな。

Kai: I remember it was quite difficult on the day of the crank-in. For the scene where both of us are in the same shot, we had to shoot in Parad, hold the camera in place, change into Black Parad, and then stand on the other side of the screen and shoot... I had to do this. I think we probably switched around four times that day alone.

ブラックパラドは見た目がほとんど変わらないから難しそうだよね。ポッピーと明日那の場合は、見た目も声も喋る言葉尻も全然違うから、同じこと言ってても別人に見えるけど。

Matsuda: Black Parad is going to be difficult because he looks almost the same. In the case of Poppy and Asuna, they look, sound and speak very differently, so they look like different people even though they say the same things.

それはそうかも。演技だけでまったく違うキャラの人物に見せるというのがいかに難しいかは、今回初めて実感したかな。飛彩（瀬戸利樹）が劇場版 (「仮面ライダー×スーパー戦隊超スーパーヒーロー大戦」) で二役をやってた一ときも「大変そうだなぁ」と思って見てはいたけど (笑)。

Kai: That may be true. I think this is the first time I realized how difficult it is to make a character look completely different just by acting. When Seto Toshiki was playing two roles in the movie version ("Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Chou Super Hero Taisen"), I thought "That looks like a lot of work." (laughs).

衣裳チェンジという部分では、"ポッピーの七変化" も本作の見どころのひとつですよね？

Interviewer: In terms of costume changes, the "seven changes of Poppy" is one of the highlights of the film, isn't it?

みなさんにそう言っていただくんですけど、私自身はこの1年半ずっとコスプレをしてきたようなものなので、コスプレをするってことに対する特別感がわりと携れちゃっていて.....。ちょっとバグってます (笑)。

Matsuda: That's what everyone tells me, but I've been cosplaying for the past year and a half, so my sense of specialness about cosplaying is rather gone... It's a little buggy (laughs).

もはやあれが私服と。

Kai: That's no longer what I call casual wear.

そうだね。ウェディングドレスも……おめでたい私服 (笑)。

Matsuda: That's right. The wedding dress is also... an outfit for special occasions (lol).

ヲタ芸もやってたよね？

Kai: You also did some wotagei, right?

やったねえ。鈴村監督から、着替えるたびに「ひと言なんか言って、なんかやって」って言われて、全部アドリブでやったんですけど、そのひとつがヲタ芸で (笑)。最初は「アイドルっぼいことを」ってオーダーだったんだけど、なんか違うことをしたかったから、監督と相談して「アイドルカルチャーとはこういうものだって勝手に勘違いしてるポッピー」という設定でやったんです。でも、ちょっと激しくやりすぎて、今回の「トリロジー」に携わってないスタッフさんのなかには別人がやってると思った人もいたみたいですけどね。

Matsuda: I did. Director Suzumura asked me to "say something, do something" every time I changed clothes, so I improvised everything, and one of the things I did was wotagei (laughs). At first the order was to do something idol-like, but we wanted to do something different, so we talked with the director and decided to do it as "Poppy, who mistakenly believes that this is what idol culture is all about". But it was a bit too intense, and some of the staff who weren't involved in the "Trilogy" seemed to think that someone else was doing it.

さすがにヲタ芸にまで吹き替えは使わないよね(笑)。アクションじゃないんだから。ってか、途中で「松田るか」も出てきてなかった？観てて「あれっ？ポッピー?」って思ったよ。

Kai: You're right, they don't use dubbing even for wotagei (laughs). It's not an action movie. I mean, didn't "Matsuda Ruka" appear in the middle of the movie? When I was watching it, I was like "Huh? Where's Poppy?"

出てたね。あそこは思わず素が出ちゃって....(笑)。

Matsuda: You were in it. I couldn't help but show my true colors there.... (laughs).

明かされる衝撃の真実そのとき演者たちは?

The Shocking Truth Revealed: What Will Happen to the Actors?

一方、今回のトリロジーではこれまで語られたことのなかった新たな過去も明かされます。

Interviewer: On the other hand, this trilogy will also reveal a new past that has never been told before.

ブラックパラドが何者か？というのもそうだし、ポッピーの一宿主である櫻子さんが顔出しするのも今回が初めてだよね。

Kai: Who is Black Parad? This is also the first time that Sakurako-san, Poppy's host, shows her face.

これがすごくキレイな人でね。なんでこの人はクロノス（＝檀正宗）みたいな人と結婚したんだろう、と改めて疑問に思いましたよ、私は。

Matsuda: She was a very beautiful woman. I wondered again why she married someone like Dan Masamune.

美人で俺もビックリした。こんな人からどうしたら黎斗ができるんだって。

Kai: She was so beautiful that I was surprised too. I wondered how such a person could give birth to Kuroto.

いや、クロノスと結婚したら黎斗は産まれちゃうよ (笑)。まあ、あったんでしょうね。きっとお父さんにもいいところが。

Matsuda: No, if you marry Cronus, Kuroto will be born (laughs). Well, there must've been a reason. I'm sure the father had his good points.

もとをただせば、正宗と櫻子さんが結婚したことが「エグゼイド」のすべての始まりだったということなんだよね。

Kai: To put it simply, Masamune and Sakurako's marriage was the beginning of all of "Ex-Aid."

どこに惚れたのかっていう最大の謎は、トリロジーでも結局謎のままだけど (笑)。

Matsuda: The biggest mystery of what made her fall in love with him remains a mystery even in the trilogy (laughs).

テレビシリーズでもあとから明かされた“新事実、はいくつかありましたが、演じる側としてはやはり戸惑いもありますか？

Interviewer: In the TV series, there were some new facts that were revealed later, but as a performer, did you feel confused?

ありますね。パラドに関して言えば、「最終的に人間の味方につく」という設定は、正直あとから知ったんで、「えっ？どうしよ!」とはなりました。最初のほうの取材とかでは、普通に「悪役のまま終わりたい」って答えてたぐらい、僕自身は悪役をまっとうするつもりでいましたから。

Kai: Yes, I did. To be honest, I didn't know Parad would end up on the side of the humans until later, so I thought "What? What should I do?". In the first interview, I said that I wanted to end up as a villain, and I was planning to play a villain until the end.

私も本編のほうで「私、黎斗の母親だったんだ！」って知ったときは衝撃だったな。あれを最初から知っていれば、たぶん接し方も変わってたはずなので、「教えといてよー」と思ったもん。

Matsuda: I was also shocked when I found out in the show that I was Kuroto's mother! If I had known that from the beginning, I probably would have treated him differently, so I thought, "Why didn't you tell me?"

でも、きっとそれがいいんだよね。知らずにいることでいつのまにか役作りをさせられてる。僕が人間側につくのを知ってたら、グラファイトとの距離感とかも絶対ヘンになってたと思うもん。急にそういう台本を渡されて、自分の感情が追いつかなくなるというのがパラドにとっても逆によかった。リアルに窮地に立たされてる感じがさ。

Kai: But I'm sure it's for the best. By being unaware of it, I'm somehow forced to create the role. If I had known that I was going to be on the human side, the distance between me and Graphite would have been weird for sure. It was good for Parad that he was suddenly given such a script and that his emotions couldn't keep up. He felt like he was in a real predicament.

東映さんの作品はそういうところがあるみたいだもんね (笑)。『シンケンジャー』のときも、松坂桃李さん自身は「実は影武者」という設定をギリギリまで知らされてなかったんだって。演じるほうとしては最初から言っててほしいけど、そのあたりが難しさであり、面白さでもあるのかなって。

Matsuda: That seems to be the case with Toei's films (laughs). For "Shinkenger," Tori Matsuzaka himself wasn't told that he was actually a shadow warrior until the very last minute. As a performer, I wish I would have been told from the beginning, but I think that's both the difficulty and the fun of it.

そうだね。パラドが永夢に感染したバクスターだというのも最初は僕だけが知ってて、飯島くん本人は実際教えてもらってなかったし……。永夢の瞳が赤くなったときは絶対パラドが近くにいるとか、そういう匂わせはたくさんあったけど。

Kai: That's right. At first, I was the only one who knew that Parad was the Bugster who infected Emu, and Iijima-kun himself wasn't told about it. There were a lot of hints that Parad was definitely nearby when Emu's eyes turned red.

うんうん。だから「エグゼイド」も2ラウンド目が面白いんだよね。いろいろわかったうえで観ると、「そういうことか！」ってさらに楽しめるし。

Matsuda: Yeah, yeah. That's why the second half of "Ex-Aid" is so interesting, isn't it? If you watch it after you understand everything, you can enjoy it even more.

信頼しあえる関係性

A relationship of mutual trust

トリロジー全作を手がける鈴村監督の現場はどうでした？

Interviewer: How was it working with director Suzumura, who is working on the entire trilogy?

かなり自由にやらせてもら雰囲気でやれたかなってえましたね。 監督自身がすごく柔らかくて器の大きい方だから、周りも切羽詰まったりせずに、いい雰囲気でやれたかなって。

Kai: The director himself is very soft and big-hearted, so the people around him didn't feel pressured, and we were able to do it in a good atmosphere.

うん。よくご飯にも誘ってくれたしね。監督がそうやって気さくに接してくれるからこそ、距離感もほどよく縮まって、現場でも「コレ、こうしたいんです」って気負わずに言える空気感ができてた感じ。私のなかではすっかり焼酎ばかり飲んでる人というイメージだったりもしますけど (笑)。

Matsuda: Yeah. He often invited me out to dinner, too. Because the director was so open with me, we were able to close the distance between us, and I felt like I could say, "This is what I want to do," without feeling self-conscious. In my mind, he has the image of someone who drinks only shochu (laughs).

演出プランは当然、監督のなかにもあるはずなのに、芝居をつけてる段階で僕らが別のアイデアを出すと、決まって「じゃあ、そうしようよ」って言ってくれる。そうやって積極的に採用してもらえたら、こっちも一生懸命考えようって気持ちになるし、それはすごくよかったなって思います。自分の発想力みたいなものも否応なしに鍛えられましたしね。

Kai: Naturally, the director has a plan for the direction of the film, but when we came up with a different idea during the play, he would always say, "Well, let's do that". I think it's great that the director is willing to adopt our ideas, because it encourages us to think harder. I think that was really good. I was also able to develop my ability to think out of the box.

しかも、周りにはずっと一緒に走ってこられた同世代の役者陣。もはや鬼に金棒ですね。

Interviewer: In addition, he was surrounded by actors of the same generation who had been running together for a long time. It's like the devil's advocate.

みんな、ホントに仲よかったよね。人数が多いと自然とグルーブに分かれたりもしがちですけど、「エグゼイド」に関してはそういうこともまったくなくて。

Matsuda: We all get along really well. When there are a lot of people in a group, it tends to naturally divide into different groups, but that didn't happen at all with "Ex-Aid".

うん。個人的にも、みんなで笑い合えて、楽しく仕事ができる現場が一番いい。そういう意味でも、オンとオフのメリハリがつけられるメンバーばかりだったのはよかったなって。

Kai: Yeah. Personally, I think it's best to work in a place where everyone can laugh together and have fun. In that sense, I'm glad that all the members were able to have a good balance between on and off work.

お二人の信頼関係は？

Interviewer: How is the relationship of trust between the two of you?

バッチリですよ。私が右なら、彼は左に行くので (笑)。

Matsuda: It's perfect. If I go right, he goes left (laughs).

そうかな？でも、確かに違うことをしたがるかも。同じ方向向いてって言われても、素直にできないし (笑)。というか、そっちも "おしゃべりクソマシンガン" って言われてたじゃん。

Kai: Is that so? But I think we may want to do different things. Even if you ask me to look in the same direction, I can't do it honestly (laughs). I mean, you've been called a "shitty talking machine gun" too.

"クソ" じゃないよ、"サブ" だよ (笑)。なんだろ？私がバーッとひとしきり喋って、横から彼一がポロッと鋭いことを言うみたいな、そういう流れは現場でもありましたね。

Matsuda: It's not "shitty", it's "sub." (laughs) What is it? There were times when I would talk a lot, and then he would say something sharp from the side.

でも、おかしいことは言ってなかったでしょ？ちゃんと事実を言ってただけで。

Kai: But I didn't say anything funny, did I? I was just telling the truth.

大人はみんな知らんぶりして目を課るようなことをあえて言うんですよ、彼は。

Matsuda: He dares to say things that all adults pretend not to know and avert their eyes on.

そういうのすごい嫌いなの。日本人はなんですぐ "付度" するのかなって思っちゃう。あんな言葉、英語にはないからね?

Kai: I really dislike that kind of thing. I wonder why Japanese people are so quick to use "tsukedo". There is no such word in English, right?

はいはい (笑)。

Matsuda: Yes, yes (laughs).

では、お二人の関係性が十分伝わったところで、これから作品を観る読者にメッセージを。

Interviewer: Now that we have a good sense of the relationship between the two of you, do you have a message for the readers who will be watching the film?

夕陽に照らされたパラドクスとポッピーのポスタービジュアルを鵜呑みにすると痛い目を見ますってことは言っておきたいかな。

Matsuda: I guess I'd like to say that if you believe the poster visual of Parad and Poppy in the evening sun, you're in for a world of hurt.

あれはちょっと、謎のタイタニック感があるからね。

Kai: That one has a bit of a mysterious Titanic feel to it.

二人が出るってことしか合ってない (笑)。ただ、「ブレイブ＆スナイプ」も「ゲンムVSレーザー」もわりと重いし、「パラドクスwithポッピー」は箸休め回だと思って身構えずに観てほしいな、とは思うよね。

Matsuda: The only thing that fits is that the two of them are in it (laughs). However, both "Brave and Snipe" and "Genm vs. Lazer" are rather heavy, so I hope people will think of "ParaDX with Poppy" as a chopstick rest and watch it without getting defensive.

そうだね。3部作だと1本目は掴んで3本目は落とさなきゃいけないけど、それがない2本目は何でもできる。そういう自由度の高さはよかったよね。

Kai: Yes, in a trilogy, you have to grab the first one and drop the third one, but in the second one you can do anything. It was nice to have that kind of freedom, wasn't it?

監督のフェティシズムも一番詰まってる作品だしね (笑)。

Matsuda: It's also the film that contains the most of the director's fetishism (laughs).

ちなみに、パラドとポッピーを演じてきて、ー番「心が躍るな」と思った瞬間は？

Interviewer: By the way, what was the most "exciting" moment for you while playing Parad and Poppy?

うーん。たくさんありすぎてひとつには紋れないですね。今回で言えば、ポッピーじゃなく「松田るか」として主題歌を唄わせてもらえたのは「躍った」かな。

Matsuda: Hmmm. There are so many that I can't pick just one. In this case, I was able to sing the theme song not as Poppy, but as Matsuda Ruka, and I think that made me "jump".

僕は初めてナパームを見たときかな。あの大爆発には童心が騒ぎましたね。あと、これは余談ですけど、僕、クランクアップのときに現場に放置されたんです。

Kai: I think it was the first time I saw napalm. That huge explosion made me feel like a child. Also, this is an aside, but I was left unattended at the scene when the filming had wrapped up.

置いてかれてた (笑)。

Matsuda: You were left behind (laughs).

花束をもらって、せっかくだからって自撮りをしていて、「よし帰ろう」と外に出たらロケバスがもう出ていて…..。1年半を演じ終えた役者に対する「心震える」仕打ちとして、このことはぜひとも太字にして語り継がれてほしいと思います (笑)。

Kai: I got a bouquet of flowers and was taking selfies for the occasion, and when I went outside to go home, the location bus had already left... I hope this will be bolded and passed down as a "heart-breaking" treatment to the actors after a year and a half of acting (laughs).From Toei Hero MAX 57

#kamen rider ex aid #parad #poppy pipopapo #kamen rider #kamen rider ex-aid #ex aid cast interviews #kai shouma #matsuda ruka

[youngvolcanoes]

Hey! I noticed you haven't posted in a while and I was wondering how you are doing these days? I hope you're doing well! Also it seems like your blog isn't explicit anymore, I don't know since when but I hadn't noticed it before🙃 I'm pretty sure it was marked explicit ever since the purge

Ignore this if you want to, no pressure!! 😊

hello lovely! thank you for sending this, i really appreciate that you want to know what’s going on w me and feel very touched! i wanted to make sure i had enough time to respond properly and give you guys a full life update so here we go!

-remember my boyfriend who broke his hands and we had all that drama and conflama? we’re still together! we’re living together as a duo for the first time (before we lived in 2 different houses with other housemates)! it’s going really well, im getting really into decorating and cooking with the whole kitchen to ourselves is such a dream. i love him v v much, he still makes me really happy and does the absolute Most to support me and love me back. it’s corny af but i feel like all of the difficult stuff we went through taught me a really valuable lesson in giving forgiveness when forgiveness is due, which has really helped my emotional development

- in terms of my mental health, i’m doing much better! i’ve not experienced crisis in about two and a half years now, same with self harm! i still suffer with trauma and am considering returning to therapy at some point soon because i really struggle with concealing the truth when it comes to therapy and not talking at all about the seriously traumatic things that happened to me because i’m too scared lol. but i’m getting better! when i was younger i had no interest in keeping myself alive but now i have a joie de vivre like i’ve never felt before, i’m able to get excited by small things and appreciate the world sooo much more and that’s like. theee most beautiful feeling in the world!

- you might have seen me saying that i started drag last year. i’m still doing drag! i’ve performed twice and have more gigs coming up. i love everything about it, the community is so stunning and the crowds are always so receptive of what i do! i do a performance about mental health funding cuts which feels soooo fuckin good to perform because i can channel all my anger at the trauma i experienced from that and turn it into something that people laugh and cheer at. if you wanna watch it it’s on my instagram: @shes.liv.vicariously!!

-i’m still struggling with my physical health a bit but have moved GPs and am hoping someone will eventually get to the bottom of what’s wrong. im trying hard with it though and noticing more and more small victories!

if anyone wants to keep up with what i’m posting, i’m now @shes.liv.vicariously on tiktok and instagram. this isn’t a plug- i just post on there every day so if anyone else wants to keep up with what i’ve got going on then you can do! also i’m sorry if this seems like i’m bragging bshshsh i’m just really conscious that i only update when i’m doing really badly, so i wanted to make sure i’m being positive when i have reason to be for once!

again, thank you so much for asking after me! it’s felt really nice writing this update and reflecting on my life and things!💖💖

[91062854-ka]

Twist MC Hybrid AU:

Andrea the Merling

"Just because I'm a Merling, doesn't mean I'm helpless!"

-Basic Information-

Name: Andrea Williams 

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Date of Birth: December 23rd

Status: Alive

Hometown: Oceania

- A beautiful underwater city that's filled with sea creatures from sea animals to mythical sea creatures from stories and legends. It has a powerful barrier that makes the city invisible in order to protect the city from the surface world.

-Hybrid Information-

Hybrid: Merling

Additional Power: Has a special necklace that transforms her into a human.

Weapon(s) of Choice: Throwing knives

(Doesn't have them in the beginning of the story, but she will have them later on.)

-Appearance-

Eye Color: Blue

Hair Color: Platinum Blonde 

Hair Length: Long, reaches past her waist.

Skin Tone: Pale

Height: 170cm (5'7")

Weight: 105 lbs

Wardrobe:

As a Merling, Andie has ear-fins and wears a flower crown she made and a seashell necklace. She also has her hair down and wears a white seashell top and from the waist down, she has a pale blue horizontal fish-like tail with pale blue scales and fins, and matching V-shaped waist-line, resembling fish-lips that reveals her midriff and her belly button. 

As a human, her hair is in a low ponytail, she also doesn't wear a flower crown and instead of ear-fins, she has normal human ears. She still wears a seashell necklace and wears a off shoulder light blue shirt with grey jeans and black boots. 

-Personality-

Andrea has been a warm hearted and passionate girl since birth. Andrea has self-esteem in handling tasks herself. Andrea is careful and analytical, as well as being a natural fast learner and observant. But being bullied, Andrea has a hard time standing up for herself and trusting others, fearing they'll trick her. But as the story goes on, she learns to defend herself. Andrea is curious and loved to learn about the surface above the ocean, due to her living under the sea her whole life.

Being born with natural beauty, Andrea feels self-conscious about her beauty due to her bully, Tracy, always picking on her. However thanks to her best friends, she slowly embraces her beauty and focuses on looking beautiful, but it wouldn't be a problem since her beauty increases as she grows older, making her to become alluring to all those who come across her. 

Because of her beauty, Andrea unknowingly uses it to charm people around her. Andrea is sometimes sassy and sarcastic if she wants to, especially to those who annoys her. Andrea gets shy when she meets people when she's on land, due to her experience of being bullied, but as time goes on as she gets to know the hybrid gang, she becomes less shy and warms up to them.

-Background-

Andrea Williams is the youngest daughter of Kevin and Maybelle Williams, and youngest sister of Elena Williams. Most likely, she has a difficult but somewhat normal childhood. From a young age, she was constantly bullied by her bullies, mostly by a girl named Tracy whom she knows from elementary. All because she doesn't have any powers due to all merlings in Oceania can either waterbend or icebend. But she kept her power, the ability to transform into a human a secret. So the only ones who knew about her power are her family and her best friends. Because of this, Andrea became vulnerable to their words and actions, she barely talked to her family about it due to them working at the royal palace, back then she didn't have any friends, so it caused her to feel very lonely. However, she does tell her best friends about her power, which they accept it instead of judging it, and covers for her so she can go up to the surface world and learns to control her shifting ability between her Merling and Human forms.

-Relationship-

(Can be update as the story goes to see our OCs interactions)

-Like & Dislike-

Like:

Cooking 

She learns how to cook by Jonah and Lynette throughout the story and enjoys it.

Reading

She enjoys reading books whenever she's on land, and reading books to learn about the surface world.

Dancing

She loves dancing when she first came to land as a human thanks to her necklace.

Candy

She has a sweet tooth after she tasted her first candy when she went to the surface for the first time, so she loves candy.

Dislike:

People who hates hybrids 

She hates the people who judge hybrids and wants to harm them.

Seeing people in danger

It causes her pain to see anyone who is injured, especially her friends.

Being underestimate 

Being judged because of her beauty that causes almost everyone to think she's a damsel in distress, makes her easily annoyed.

-Trivia-

She has four best friends who cares for her and grew up together since middle school.

She prefers to be called "Andie" than "Andrea".

Unlike all the other Merlings, who have either waterbending or icebending, she is the only Merling in Oceania who doesn't have waterbending or icebending and can only transform into a human, but she kept her transformation a secret.

#twst mc hybrid au #andrea williams #character sheet

[featherypromises]

RP Transcription Part 1: Flower Boys

Okay folks, I had to break this into chunks to make it readable. We worked on this RP for more than a week. I will post these consecutively before taking any other requests or adding additional fics. 

I am so grateful… for so many things:

First, for my friend @sickiebabytae, I am so grateful that you asked me to RP with you. I had such a good time and it will always be my favorite RP that we did.

Second, I am grateful that you are allowing me to make this into a fic to share with our friends. I'm so excited.

Third, to people who are our mutuals and followers, you inspire me to write better, more beautiful stories about these amazing men.We appreciate you so much!

TaeKook shipping happens. I will be leaving the rp as intact as I can. The talented @sickiebabytae is playing the indescribable V and myself, @featherypromises will be playing the role of Jungkook.

Small later roles:

RM: shared between both

Jin: @featherypromises

Jimin: @sickiebabytae

------------------------‐----------------------

Taehyung knew that he was coming down with something for days. He had all the telltale signs: sore throat, stuffy nose, headaches. But, being the stubborn boy that he is, he, of course, wouldn't admit defeat. 

Granted, this probably wasn't the best course of action, because a week later, on the day of a photoshoot, all of his previous symptoms had multiplied tenfold. He couldn't breathe through his nose at all, his throat felt like there were knives being stabbed through it, and his head was practically pounding. Not to mention that he'd been sneezing and coughing all morning.

Fortunately for Taehyung, the photoshoot was set for some kind of floral scene. This was a good thing, because it gave Taehyung an excuse for his constant sneezing: allergies.

************************************************

Jungkook was nervous. He normally did really well with photoshoots but he was doing a lot of floral shots today and worse he knew a lot of the shots would be hard on his hyungs, as a lot of them had allergies to pollen. Especially... Taehyung. 

The younger man felt strangely protective of his hyung and hated seeing him uncomfortable. He had decided, as he took his own allergy pill today, that he should bring the bottle with him. ...Just in case. 

He shook his hands and hopped a few times to get rid of his nerves, before joining the others.

************************************************

Taehyung was mainly standing off to the side as he waited to be given instructions, just looking down at his hands and playing with his fingers. He was sort of worried his allergies WOULD act up, but assured himself that his nose was too blocked to be irritated by anything. 

Well, anything but his cold. And that proved to be true moments later when he turned and let out a soft, sickly sneeze into cupped hands. "Heh'KITSHHuh!"

************************************************

Jungkook heard the photographer call his name. Distractedly, he looked through and around the staff and crew milling around the set. The scene was similar to an old Victorian style garden, complete with hanging trellises of real hanging flowers and potted trees. He tried not to rub his nose and wreck his makeup as the heady smell filled it. This would be a long and difficult process. 

Standing on his tiptoes, he spotted Suga-hyung and Hobi-hyung with the hair and makeup noonas. Rapmon-hyung was talking with a manager off to one side. He couldn't see... 

"Jeon Jungkook-ssi!" The photographer called again, sounding annoyed. Jungkook blushed slightly, embarrassed and bowed an apology before taking his place on a bench beneath a blooming Forsythia bush. 

He was supposed to look into the glassy eye of the lens like it was ARMY and he was inviting them to come and spend a "refreshing" time with him in this garden. Jungkook wasn't really sure of what the director meant by refreshing... it made him think about a commercial for soft drinks. 

He gazed longingly at the camera and reset himself into a standing position cupping a wisteria blossom in his hand. The strong scent made his sensitive nose twitch, but he just sniffled, trying to will the tickly feeling away. 

Looking at the blossom now, he posed again, like he was caring for the plant. 

"Now," said the photographer, " I want you to smell the flower and turn to me slowly and smile."

Jungkook swallowed reflexively. Oh, god... He obeyed, bringing the purple flower closer to his face and closing his eyes. He inhaled and managed to turn before he felt the tickle flare up in his nose. Against his will, his mouth dropped open slightly and he froze, caught in limbo, before the feeling faded away to nothing. He sniffled, feeling his nose start to run. He apologized and reset, completing the turn and smiling sweetly.

The photographer was satisfied but reminded him of the group shots that would happen after all the individual members shoots were finished. Jungkook nodded and trotted off set to wipe his nose. 

He grabbed a tissue packet off of the makeup noona's cart and went a little ways off to the side to subtly blow his nose. He fought with the tiny pull tab on the packet for a moment before freeing a tissue and pressing it to his nose, jamming the rest into his pocket. He looked up and saw Taehyung ahead of him.

The older man looked tired, even under his makeup. He must not have slept well. Suddenly, the slighter man turned and released a relatively quiet sneeze. Ah, Hyung's allergies must be giving him hell already. But usually Taehyung sneezed openly and loud enough to scare bystanders.  Jungkook scratched his head in confusion, a habit from his younger years that he'd never really outgrown, before going up to the other vocalist and asking, a bit shyly,

"Hyung, are your allergies bothering you? I brought extra allergy pills, if you want one?"

*************************************************

Taehyung turned to Jungkook with a small hum and managed a smile. "Ah, thank you, Kook-ah, but I'm alright." He sniffled thickly. "I took a pill at home. If my allergies get worse I might take you up on your offer though." 

He sniffed again and sighed, desperately wanting to rub his eyes or his nose, but he didn't want to ruin the careful makeup noona's work. She'd spent enough time already trying to cover his red, puffy eyes and pink tinted nose.

*************************************************

Jungkook frowned, but nodded, his eyes not leaving his hyung's face. His concern made his shyness lessen and he was not as self-conscious as he was around Taehyung normally.

 He admired the singer's beautiful soulful voice and his acting skills. More than anything, he wanted to be able to learn from his hyung and to be as good as he was. 

Since the older man had turned down the allergy medication, Jungkook decided to let the matter drop... but V's deep eyes looked so tired, he seemed drained almost. 

"Did you sleep okay?" He asked in what he hoped was a casual way, "You seem tired." 

Ugh, he sounded pathetic and like he was trying to baby his hyung. Why couldn't he have Rapmon-hyung's way with words? 

Suddenly, he felt his nose start to drip again. He pulled a tissue free and wiped at it, looking away and blushing slightly.

************************************************

"I slept fine..." He lied quietly. He eyed Jungkook with a small smirk. "Looks like your allergies are bothering you too." He said with a small laugh, rubbing the younger's back. "Do the flowers smell strong?" He asked, genuinely worried. For both himself and Jungkook. His nose was sensitive enough without having a cold. Maybe his blocked nose wouldn't protect him after all…

************************************************

Jungkook sniffled into the tissue and nodded. 

"You know how I get with flowers and perfume, hyung... I get this tickle and feel like I'm going to sneeze, but..." he blushed again, remembering his embarrassing moments from earlier, and trailed off. 

Jungkook suddenly realized his still had the tissue packet and smiled. He could help his hyung at least a little. He pressed the rest of the pack into Taehyung's hands gently. He looked down and said softly,

"Just in case... you might need them. They can always redo part of your makeup. I think they get paid by the hour." He smiled at his small joke and looked at Tae, his dark eyes shining.

*************************************************

Taehyung let out a small laugh and nodded. Bad move. It aggravated the back of his throat and forced out wracking, harsh coughs from him. He turned away from Jungkook to protect the younger from his germs and bent over at the waist from how strong the coughs were.

************************************************

Jungkook jumped slightly. This was not normal for Taehyung at all. He immediately wrapped his arm around Taehyung to steady him and rubbed small circles into his back.

"Hyung! Come on, let's go sit down for a minute." The youngest member swallowed down the panic he felt building inside his chest. This was not okay.

*************************************************

Taehyung sighed and complied, sitting down on a chair nearby. Well, it was closer to collapsing into it. 

He ran a hand through his hair and tried not to focus on how dizzy he was.

************************************************

Jungkook knelt down in front of Tae and looked at him, worry and dismay filling his big eyes. 

He reached up to gently touch his palm to Taehyung's cheek, but stopped himself part way there.

"I don't think this is just allergies, hyung. You sound sick..." He hesitated and then said, " I should go get Rapmon-hyung. He can get them to let you go home."

*************************************************

"No no no!" He said immediately. "It's fine. I'm fine..." He said softly.

*************************************************

Jungkook took his hyung's hand gently, his sympathetic eyes pleading,

" Hyung, look at me... please?"

*************************************************

Taehyung slowly looked up at Jungkook with tired eyes as he chewed on his lip and held back a sniffle.

*************************************************

"You have to tell me... if you are sick, or anything... please, I... it hurts watching you put yourself through this." Jungkook shook his head to clear his runaway thoughts, " I mean... I just want you to tell me honestly if you start feeling worse." He sighed and released Taehyung's hand from his own trembling one. "I won't say anything but I am going to get you some water at least."

************************************************

Taehyung sighed and thanked him quietly, watching the younger walk off. He ran a hand through his hair again and bit back a groan when his name was called. 

He went over to the bench and put on a smile, waiting for instruction. The photographer told him to take one of the flowers in his hand and 'invite ARMY to come with you.' Taehyung wasn't all too sure what that meant, but one of his instructions was to smell the flower. He could already tell that this would be bad.

He took a deep breath, heard that the camera's were rolling, put on a smile, and sniffed the flower. As Jungkook had said, the flower had a strong, unbearable scent, and his sensitive nose immediately decided it didn't like it. 

He whimpered and raised a finger, as if to say, 'wait a minute,' and clamped a hand over his mouth as he pitched forward with a few rapid fire sneezes. "Heh'kitshh! Ishh! Ehh'itshhu! Hah'ishhuh!" He blushed and apologized profusely.

************************************************

Jungkook was on his way back with a water bottle, worrying about what he should do about Taehyung. The older man seemed really sick, but didn't want to think that his hyung would lie to him. That thought made his heart feel like it was being squeezed by a vice. His heart dropped into his stomach as he returned to the chair he had left the older man in and found it empty. 

"Oh, no!"

He sprinted over to the set, just in time to watch as Taehyung lifted the flower to his face and inhaled. He watched Taehyung's face fall into his hand as he sneezed and Jungkook felt his face flush with anger and frustration at himself, at the photographer, and even the flowers. His hands became fists at his sides. 

"Damn it!"

He started forward, and struggling to compose himself, interrupted the photographer with much apologizing and went to Taehyung's side. He blocked the older vocalist from the crew and staff's sight and under the pretext of giving him water, asked in a whisper,

 "Are you sure you can keep going?"

************************************************

Taehyung sniffled thickly and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes with a sigh. 

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be finde..." His voice was laced with heavy congestion by then.

 "Dond't worry about mbe..." He offered what he hoped was a small, reassuring smile.

*************************************************

Jungkook sighed, his shoulders slumping. 

"Okay... I... guess that's okay then..." He felt so uneasy. What was this feeling in his chest? Kookie walked off set and stood off to one side, watching nervously as the shoot continued. 

God, he was being ridiculous... This was Taehyung. His video game partner and his singing partner. Why did he feel so sure that Taehyung was hiding how bad things were from him?

And why did that thought bother him so much?...

************************************************

Taehyung sniffled one last time and turned back to the photographer, apologizing once more. "I-It's just allergies..." He excused. 

After a few more tries of the shot (with excessive sneezing, of course), Taehyung's nose was now officially too blocked to smell anything. So he managed to smell the flower, turn to the camera, smile, and wave 'ARMY' over. 

The words, "Okay, you're done! Remember the group shots later," had never felt so gratifying or relieving to Taehyung. He practically jumped off the bench, gave a hurried thanks and rushed off to go be miserable in peace.

************************************************

Jungkook followed as Taehyung left the awful pollen-ridden set. He kept a distance from the older man, trying to see some hidden clue that would help him to make this horrible photoshoot better or easier for Taehyung. 

Jungkook wished, not for the first time that day, that he could just take the suffering man home and get him to shower to remove the pollen. Then he'd put on a movie Tae loved and let him rest. He thought about how it would feel to have Taehyung propped up against his chest just watching tv or a movie together. He smiled and shook his head. They were close but Taehyung wouldn't be okay with something like that... would he?

He shook himself out of his wonderings and slowed, watching Taehyung with curious eyes.

************************************************

Taehyung leaned against a wall and blew out a breath. He closed his eyes with a grimace and breathed through his mouth to combat the dizziness he was feeling from what he supposed was a fever, judging by how cold he felt. 

A fierce, familiar tickle burned in his nose, and he scrambled for the tissue packet Jungkook had given him earlier. Breath hitching, he fumbled with the tab, pulled out a tissue, and held it to his mouth and nose as he shook with two desperate sneezes. "Heh'TSHHuh! Hah'ITSHHoo!" His breath continued to hitch for a few torturous, tickly moments, before he let a last, incredibly unsatisfying sneeze. "Heh'kitshhuh!" 

He groaned and rubbed his face, not caring anymore that he was ruining the makeup. He felt awful. He just wanted to go home.

************************************************

Jungkook watched miserably as Taehyung snuffled and sneezed explosively into the tissue. He saw as Taehyung rubbed at his face how much paler he was than the makeup had lead him to believe. Now he was sure, Taehyung really was sick!

He approached cautiously and called out, 

"Taehyung, it's just me."

***********************************************

Taehyung turned to him and sighed. 

"H-Hey..." He blew his nose, which sounded as awful and congested as it felt. He winced and kept the tissue in his hand, knowing he'd probably need it in the near future. 

He coughed lightly and sighed again, rubbing his eyes.

*************************************************

"You sound really bad, Hyung." He reached out and cupped Taehyung's cheek gently, before drawing back in amazement and worry, "You are really warm. I think you have a fever. We need to get you home so you can get the pollen off of you and you can rest." He paced, thinking hard. 

"I could tell them that I'm sick, and that you are taking me back home early. That is, if you really don't want to tell the others."

*************************************************

Taehyung bit his lip, feeling tears well up in his eyes. It was probably the fever messing with his emotions, but he just felt so grateful that Jungkook was doing so much to hep. And guilty, because he didn't deserve this much attention and love just because he was sick. 

"I-I'll just tell themb I'mb ndot feelig well..." He mumbled congestedly. "You dond't have to lie."

*************************************************

"Hyung... oh, Tae, don't cry." Jungkook felt his heart twinge in his chest. He pulled a tissue from the pack and dabbed gently around Taehyung's eyes, being careful not to aggravate the swollen tissue around them.

"I..  really just want you to feel better, and I will do whatever you need to make sure that happens." Jungkook hesitated but finally got up the nerve to bring the slender vocalist into a warm embrace. He gently rubbed small circles into the older man's back and wished he had thought to bring his hoodie to wrap Taehyung in.

************************************************

Taehyung pretty much melted into Jungkook's arms with a whimper and involuntarily leaned most of his weight onto the younger. He just felt so exhausted and miserable.

*************************************************

Jungkook's heart felt like it could burst through his chest as the older man leaned into his hug. He took a deep breath to calm himself before wrapping his arm around Taehyung and asked,

"Do you want to wait here while I let them know?  Or do you want to tell them?" Thinking it over, he added, 

"Are you okay to walk? I could carry you?..." he offered this last option shyly, but seeing how unsteady Tae was on his feet, he thought it might be safer that way.

************************************************

Taehyung sighed and closed his eyes. "I-I'll tell themb..." He bit his lip. "C-Can you carry mbe?" He slurred, much too feverish to really comprehend what was going on.

************************************************

Jungkook bent slightly and let Taehyung lean on his arm, he swept the other under the smaller man's knees and raised him up comfortably leaning him against his chest. 

The maknae could feel the intense heat rolling off of the older man in waves. He murmured soothingly to Tae as he walked into the main area of the set. 

He caught a lot of odd looks on the faces of the crew and staff, but he didn't have the time or the desire to care about that. RM had just finished his set as Jungkook approached him, carrying Tae.

"Hyung... we need to talk to you... right now!"  The leader raised an eyebrow at the youngest members but nodded, taking them off to one side, away from the crowds.

************************************************

Taehyung waited until they'd stop and tapped Jungkook so that the younger could put him down. 

When he was down, he leaned against Jungkook for support and turned to Namjoon. "H-Hyug... I-I dond't feel well..." He whimpered, coughing as if on cue. "I-Is it okay if I g-go hombe?"

************************************************

Namjoon's eyes widened at this sudden development. He reached out and gently pressed his palm to Taehyung's forehead. He sucked in a breath and nodded. 

"Kookie, are you going to take him?"

Jungkook nodded and said, "Yes, hyung. I can't stand the thought of leaving him like this." 

Namjoon pulled out his phone,

"I'll let the driver know to come to the side to pick you up. Get him home safely! With Jimin and Hobi's allergies this shoot might take another 3 or 4 hours anyway. Jungkook, I'm counting on you. Take good care of Tae. If he gets worse, call me immediately." 

"I will." Jungkook responded gently, picking his hyung up once more and heading to the less busy side door.

************************************************

Taehyung barely understood what the other two had talked about and, frankly, didn't have the energy to keep up. 

When Jungkook picked him up, he let out a small yelp, since he wasn't expecting it. "A-Are we going hombe?" He asked, his voice so small and raspy.

************************************************

"Yes, Tae, I'm taking you home. We will get you home and you can rest. I've got you." As he spoke the sprinter van pulled up and the automatic door opened. Jungkook leaned in, lowering the other vocalist into the seat closest to the door and buckled Tae into it. He reached into the back and pulled out a travel worn blanket that the others used to nap with during long rides. He tenderly covered Taehyung with it and took the seat right next to him, holding his hand.

************************************************

Taehyung leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. With his mouth agape so he could breathe, he slowly drifted off into a fitful, restless sleep. 

He constantly woke up over the course of the ride only to stir slightly, maybe let out a small noise, and go back to sleep.

[letsbefeminist]

Hi, I hope I'm not bothering you but I was wondering if you had any advice for like getting your self-esteem/positive self-image back after being cheated on? My s.o. and I decided to still stay together but I'm just having trouble in the aftermath with feeling like myself, or feeling good about myself, or feeling like I'm still attractive to my partner. Also I love your blog and you're always so amazing and sweet in your replies so I hope you don't mind, thank you!

You are definitely not a bother & I’m incredibly sorry you’re even dealing with this right now. It’s a devastating thing to go through & it really can change who you are & how you see/think about yourself.

((This is gonna be looooong as hell tbh & also, thank you for being so sweet! It really made my night & I don’t mind at all you coming to me to talk! 💜💗))

Okaaay, I found out all the way back in November that my partner cheated on me. Like you, i decided to stay with him & work through things but I gotta say, this has been a challenge like no other.

Sooo, I know EXACTLY what you mean about not feeling good about yourself & not feeling attractive to the person you love so dearly. It’s incredibly difficult to feel like yourself when you’ve been betrayed by someone so close to you. By someone who’s supposed to have your back. But you’re still in there my love. It’s just a new scar, that’s all.

Like, it’s taken me months to even attempt this, but day by day lately, I’ve been stacking bricks, trying to build a wall between me & all that bullshit & hurt. Like I literally envision a wall. So yes, it is hard but it’s also doable. Even if it’s slow to happen.

You gotta remember/find out who you are outside of your relationship & outside of being cheated on. Yes, it changes you, it makes you angry & sad & sometimes it’s just agonizing to live with it but it’s not who we are at all. Being cheated on isn’t what defines us!

We are so much more than this shitty thing that happened to us. Sooo much more.

My angel, remember that you weren’t cheated on because you’re unattractive, unworthy, unlovable, or whatever. You’re gonna have to tell yourself this until you listen. Until you actually start believing it. This is legit one of the bricks for my wall & it’s going to be one of the most important ones tbh.

& yeah, this part is DEFINITELY easier said than done, but I’m closer to listening to that today than I was just last month. You’ll get there too. Biggest thing is, don’t rush. Healing takes time. Working on trusting again takes time. Working on feeling like yourself takes time. That’s okay. Believe me.

Next step to building that confidence back up is don’t fucking hate on yourself!!! My goodness, I struggle with this so every time I say that I’m just ugly or that he doesn’t love me I’m knocking a brick off my wall & I got to start over again. That’s unfair to ourselves. We can’t do that.

So every time you start hating on yourself you HAVE to make the conscious effort to quit that shit. Say something nice about yourself. I don’t care if it’s something like your earlobe is cute. Anything positive, no matter how small, is AUTOMATICALLY better than whatever hateful thing you’re saying at the moment. Work on that. Work on being nice to yourself because you’re already going through so much & without a doubt, you did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to deserve being cheated on. You wouldn’t say mean things to someone who is already hurting, so why do it to yourself?

Ask for help is the next thing on my list. Find people who boost your confidence & who you can vent to. A family member, your BFF, anyone. Ask them to be your hype man. To remind you how great you are. How fucking gorgeous & sweet you are, how damn funny & smart you are. This is especially important when you start falling into a self-hate spiral. It’s sooo easy to forget how others see us when someone so close changed the way you view yourself, but that positive reinforcement does do a lot. ((& yeah, you’re gonna be like bullshit a lot of the times, but it does help to hear it. Even if you only believe them for a minute, that’s one less minute of feeling horrible)).

You should also try to do all those things that make you feel good about yourself. The things that made you feel lovable & attractive. Whether that’s dressing up & going on a date or something more intimate & personal. Allow yourself to feel sexy in your own eyes & in the eyes of your partner.

Do the things that always seem to make your partner go wild for you (I know how cheesy this sounds😎). If they’re all like “daaaaaaamnnn,” that’s gonna feel pretty fucking good. Bask in those moments because you need that good feeling. It helps so much to feel like you’re fine as hell to your partner & if you find yourself no believing them, revert back to the above.

Also, you’re gonna have to tell your partner what you need from them. Specifically & generically. Like, that was the biggest thing for me & our relationship. I needed him to be an open book so he’s steady being open about who he’s talking to on his phone, what he’s doing on social media & so on & so forth. Like it’s gotten to the point where Im not always having to ask, he’ll just tell me. That helps build the trust back up.

I also asked him to do things that make me feel important & special again. Things that are outside of sex (this is so damn important). Like when he buys me flowers randomly or calls me beautiful when I least expect it, that feel so good. That helps me feel like I’m thought about, cared about, loved & special to him. It sounds basic but that’s what normal partners do & the goal is to feel normal within the relationship again.

You clearly love this person & want this relationship to workout so you’re also gonna need to remind yourself about how they used to make you feel. Like, at some point they made you feel like you were on top of the world. Hold on to those feelings & memories. REMIND YOURSELF THAT THE PERSON WHO MADE YOU FEEL SO GREAT IS STILL IN THERE!!! THAT THEY LOVE YOU FOR YOU!! THAT YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED!!!!

Yes, a lot has changed & you’re gonna have to accept that things can’t go exactly back to the way they used to be. So you gotta work on a better tomorrow. A tomorrow where you can trust this person again. One where you feel normal & good & attractive again. Hold onto the good memories & make even better ones. This all helps you move forward, & that’s the whole point. I know you miss those good ol’ days but those aren’t the only ones that are going to matter & getting caught up on how things used to be is just gonna depress the hell outta you. Like I’ve made myself sick doing this & I’m trying like hell to stop doing it. It’s okay to miss how things were, but if you really want to move on, you got to accept that things have changed & that it can be a good thing.

Another great thing you can do for yourself is live up the moments you feel good. Like when you had a good day, hold onto that. Be excited about that. Be proud of e v e r y single moment that you didn’t think about yourself negatively or about being cheated on, because like I said, it isn’t what defines you.

There’s a lot you are going to have to work on personally. There’s also a lot you’ll have to work on together. You’re going to have to be open when you can & sometimes you’re just gonna have to wipe the tears & keep on keepin’ on. That shit is hard but it’s for you & your relationship. It can be worth it!

Don’t be so quick to doubt yourself & the impact you have on your partner. There is soooo many qualities of yours that would make anyone lucky to have you in their life & lemme tell you, they know this.

Soo if you gotta walk around like the cockiest mofo around in order to believe it, so be it. If that’s what helps get your confidence back up, shooooo then fake it till you make it boo.

It’s gonna take so much strength & courage from you to feel better & to feel like yourself again but it will happen. It’s gonna be agonizing at times & it’ll probably be slow too but progress is progress, no matter how much bullshit you go through to get there.

But, all in all my dear, you are smart, beautiful, kind, sweet, strong as fuck, & worth loving & if you need me to remind you of that, I will. Every day I will.

I want you to be happy & it’s okay to struggle with how you feel. Just know that that’s not the end of the road. This isn’t the only chapter that’s written in your book. You have to remember all the great things about you & that happens one day at time. So be patient. Be gentle with yourself & allow yourself time to heal.

You’ll feel like yourself again one day & you’ll feel attractive & good about yourself one day too. Just know you have my support & I know exactly how you feel so if you ever need to talk shugg, I am here for you.

So let me end all this with hopefully a smile because I’m gonna send you all the great, incredible love vibes your way sugaaaaah 🌈🔮💕💚💘

#anon #(: #cheating #relationships #I love ya sugar & I hope this helps some #I got your back no matter what #💛💛💛💛💛💛

[alexsilvermusic]

6.

I never spent any time on the driveway side. But I could go to a garden shed with some tools and bags of topsoil, woodchips, and other miscellany. It had no windows and no door, just an oversized opening about five feet wide. The threshold was worn into the ground so that you walked both down and up to get through. Facing the house from this point, there is a plain wall; it is unadorned; none of the plants that cheer the front and back. The driveway butts right up to the side. An electric meter hung there alone by the window.

Returning home, I always continue along the driveway and enter through the back door, but today I am stopped at the wall. I looked at the electric meter. It was older than what you might see installed today, without the round bulging cylinder where the numbers are read. Instead, it had two smaller glass circles through which each reading is made. The afternoon sun, though not intense, was concentrated directly on the wall and it reflected strongly off the two glass circles. All of my attention was led toward the two circles, but my gaze would immediately divert away from the painful glare. I would look away from the wall entirely, or pass my eyes over the window. The sun on the dust gave it a color almost equal to the white of the house. That is, a color equal to my idea of the house. The siding was more yellow in this sun, so the window stood out as an unevenly toned white square. But I only occasionally saw this. The whole process was of reflexively moving my eyes away and toward the meter.

I shifted the sleeve of my t-shirt slightly with my hands, feeling the cold skin of my bicep. It warmed my hand as I left it in an exchange of heat with my body. The wall was maybe twenty feet away from where I stood at the front of the shed. I found myself staring at the wall and as I did it began to seem a deflated, almost ghostly form of green. As I made a minimal movement with my eyes, an afterimage appeared so that there were two houses in my field of vision; I purposely carried this new house toward the fence, where it appeared purple and green simultaneously. I considered the core of the afterimage to be purple but if I tried to look at its edges, which was perhaps impossible—my eyes could not move without moving the afterimage itself—they seemed hollow green.

I looked at my hand turned back-side up and dangling stiffly at my waist. I can fix my eyes on the center of my hand and still consider its edges. This comes more easily from certain distances. For instance, if I look at my hand held away about a foot, I can see its entirety without moving my eyes at all, and indeed the whole hand can become my focal point. I usually move my eyes instinctively, even at this distance; but it is possible to run over its surface using another mechanism, my eyes stationary. I can center different points in my visual grip; each becomes the center of a picture.

This seems to point to a seamless juncture where our internal visual field meets our external one. If, for example, I consider not the house before me but the present ovular visual field, fixed in place—which includes a trapezoidal-shaped wall, the lower sky, and fragments of trees and ground—I can scan across that entire field without moving my eyes. This may be a sort of internal, imagined scanning of the image at hand. Even if naturally I move my eyes rather than do this kind of explicit internal scanning, doesn’t each normal eye movement provide a new field that I could consider in the same way? That is, doesn’t every new view include an ovular field that is scannable in place?

Cézanne would have tracked the eyes’ movements as they situated perception of the object, and tried to include that in the painting. I'm artificially fixing my sight in one direction, trying not to move my eyes. Do these imagined approaches play any role in normal vision? So inseparable is the internal visual field from the external—they are in most respects the same—that their movements feel alike. If I close my eyes and activate a memory of the visual field, I can scan it with no eye movement at all—unless I move them beneath my eyelids!—but I move exactly like in normal vision. Can’t I do this with my eyes open? It is as if we can use vision as a basis for an internal map, then use its images to navigate the external. All of this pointing to a self that is equally engaged with the internal and external and ingeniously confused about the difference between the two.

On the one hand, it may be that imagination is simply impressive—we can generate viewpoints if we try; but perhaps a way to scan an external visual field without moving our eyes is to imagine our movement—centering points or even envisioning approaches from other angles. This would seem to generate a cascade of new images taken from various perspectives. But I doubt we need these images in normal vision: there is no one in us to see them. If we have this imaginative ability, it may benefit from the way in which we construct vision in the first place. The map may not be made of conscious frames, or points of view; it may be made of potentials—that is, for merging imagined, incomplete contact with direct contact to create a visibility more elaborated than front-facing surfaces would allow. It suggests that the head-on point of view represented in perspectival painting may not actually exist for us because we always know more than a single perspective would indicate. ‘Direct’ would lose meaning, as would ‘imagined’, if there was no way to see an exclusively front-facing perspective in the first place.

A photograph of a scene depicted by Paul Cézanne.

We know the far side of the cup without any light touching our eyes. What is imagination when it does not provide a complete image, when it gives us the back of the cup anyway?

(Excerpt from _____ Mtn. Journals)

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-An-example-of-a-scene-depicted-by-Paul-Cezanne-Millstone-and-Cistern-under-Trees-La_fig7_263285829

*Update 4/5/20*

Shortly after posting, I saw a brief 15-minute lecture by Berkeley professor Alva Noë that very closely follows these questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhk9MkTkSPA

Also, the section referring to imagined, incomplete contacts was edited shortly after posting. This was particularly difficult to make clear, especially to myself. I also deleted the last line about Cézanne, which I realized was misleading.

[fairycosmos]

Hello! I have never really spoke to anyone about this and you're really good with advice so how can I get less embarrassed about having relationships and kissing/being intimate? id love to be in a relationship with someone and be able to kiss someone without nearly crying because i feel like I'm not good enough or I'll be bad, it holds me back and i've never properly kissed someone, i do get physical feelings for people too but i cant act on them bc my crippling body image issues, idk what to do

duuude i relate to this a lot, and it’s one of the worst things to go through so i’m really sorry you’re dealing with it. it sounds like you have a lot of issues with yourself and those should take priority over finding a relationship for now,  bc being happy with yourself plays an integral role in your overall well being. self confidence issues are really common and they can be helped, though. don’t think you’re always going to feel this way about yourself, you’ll grow and mature and your stance on things will definitely change. this is a v temporary problem, but i totally get why it’s having such a big impact on your life. keep in mind that just bc you see yourself a certain way doesn’t mean other people also see you like that. we tend to focus on the negatives in ourselves way more than the positives, while other people are more likely to notice the positives as opposed to the negatives. it’s all about perception and learning to see yourself as more than what others think of you. 

i’m not a professional, but i’d suggest speaking with one about this bc they can give you a more informed opinion, plus they can give you options such as therapy, medication, or just general advice and techniques. they can also find the root cause of the problem, they can find out why you don’t like yourself, which is a really important step forward. it takes a lot to learn to like yourself, but it can be done, and things will be so much better once you start making the conscious effort to do so. because you really do deserve to live a carefree life, you don’t deserve to feel this anxiety regarding the way you look. i get that it’s difficult. i know what it’s like to look in the mirror and see a million ‘flaws’, so maybe you could set yourself a goal to say something nice about your reflection every time you see it. little things like that can make a big difference. i know that it’s kind of frustrating, and that it takes a lot of time and effort for what sometimes feels like a lost cause, but at the end of the day if you reach out to someone and if you start to build yourself up, then you will see improvement. just breathe, trust that things are going to be okay. once you find the right person you won’t feel self conscious at all, and if you do then they’ll know how to handle it. ultimately, it’s up to you how you deal with this. i wish i knew you irl so i could be of more help, but it generally comes down to this: do you want things to change, or do you want things to stay the same? once you’ve made that decision then act on it when you feel ready. remember, it’s okay to take things at your own pace and it’s okay to not have everything figured out yet. it’ll happen when it happens, and you’re going to be alright. if you think talking to someone will help, and if it’s an option for you, then by all means go for it. you’d be surprised at how many people you know feel like this, and it’s probably the people you’d least expect. you’re certainly not alone, and things are going to get better in the long run. i hope you’re okay love. message me if you ever need to talk.