a pleasant nightmare

Sorry it took so long. AO3 curse said “yeah let’s explode your computer”

Ta da~! Hope you enjoy!!!!!

Where The Merchant Was

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”

And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.

Turns out you can roll a 7 on a d6

Zuko, equally pissed: oh big deal, he was the FIRST person to ever offer to be my friend, EVER, and he never completely gave up on me no matter how much reason I gave him to, I would do ANYTHING for that kid

Aang, sobbing: I love you guys so much

Sokka: aw, Aang ❤

Zuko: we love you too ❤

Sokka, back to Zuko: anyway swords at dawn

Aang, still weeping: HOW am I supposed to CHOOSE

Katara: don't be silly, obviously you should go with Sokka

Toph: uh, what? He should go with Zuko

I am proud of you. Changing sheets is annoying and hard. I struggle with brushing. Showering requires SO MUCH ENERGY, my god. Bonus kudos if you ate a vegetable today, get those vitamines.

I don't remember anything specific about it, other than the person I asked said it was ____ jazz, and it was the most hopeful, cheerful, sunlight-as-melody thing I've ever heard. It just sounded like joy and made your body want to move. It was entirely instrumental.