#(or any semester tbh but that was an entirely different problem)

[wantonlywindswept]

Skybird abandoned sequel ficlet

for @lucdarling <3

So Skybird is a fic I wrote many many many years ago, back when fandoms were still on Livejournal and we had writing kinkmemes (which were honestly only like 50% kink/smut tbh) where you could post story ideas and invite people to write something on that idea. I had been on an Inception kick and was current up to like, 2.5ish? seasons of White Collar, and found this prompt:

Arthur and Eames adopt a kid and raise that kid into Neal Caffrey.

Thus began a descent into a fevered writing fugue that involved far too many hours of researching art and resulted in 30k words of fic written in the space of a month.

This is a snippet of what had been the vague idea of a start of a sequel to that fic. Looking back at it, it’s actually a surprisingly coherent/self-contained little story intro, so I don’t mind posting it. Unedited b/c I cannot be bothered, please have pity and remember that this was written *checks* thirteen years ago jesus god i am so fucking old

---

They tricked him the first time.

Neal came to his senses by way of a hand slapping across his face, jolting him out of a bleary haze. He squinted up through the gloom of the—basement? cellar? something underground, at the very least—into angry brown eyes that stared out from two cut holes in a ski mask.

Neal resisted the urge to groan.

Amateurs. And even worse: clichéd amateurs.

“What do you know?” demanded the blurry figure. Male, middle-aged, hint of a foreign accent covered up by years of playing at New York posh. Unfortunately, the question held no ground with Neal, not without context. He could think of a hundred—a thousand, really—things that he knew, locations and names and numbers and faces and plots and conspiracies, all of which he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to talk about.

So he collected that information and buried it away, pushing it into the furthest reaches of his mind as he affected a serious expression.

“The earth revolves around the sun,” he replied, nodding decisively.

The punch to the mouth was hard and disorienting, but disappointingly predictable. It also made Neal realize he was sitting tied to a chair as it tipped dangerously beneath him.

“What do you know?” the man gritted, grabbing a handful of Neal’s hair and yanking his head back, pressure put on the exposed line of his throat. Neal let out a huff of exasperation.

“It would help if I knew what you wanted, wouldn’t it?”

The man scoffed and dropped his head.

“You know what we want.”

“I really don’t,” Neal replied mildly. He craned his neck around as the sudden whir of power tools echoed through the stone room, trying to catch a glimpse of the noise. He knew that noise. He knew it like he knew New York, like he knew the feel of lockpicks in the dark. That was the sound of a drill, and it was going through a Class TXTL-60 grade safe.

“Robbery?” Neal asked, perking up instantly. “Where are we? Some old bank vault? An old heiress’ abandoned wealth?” He waggled his eyebrows. “I’m going to go with the heiress.”

“Shut up,” the man snarled, and this time the punch sent Neal toppling back onto the floor, the chair and all his pressure on it landing atop his bound arms. His head smacked against the floor and he bit his lip against the pain, the room spinning and a low rumbling in his ears.

“What is that?” a new voice asked. Also male and younger, maybe twenties, rough and unpolished. He walked upside-down into Neal’s line of sight, wearing the same boring black outfit that every small-time thug had grown attached to ever since Hollywood decided to buy stocks in ski masks.

“This wasn’t in the plan,” Middle Age snapped, because apparently Neal wasn’t the only one hearing things. The younger man just spread his hands as the noise grew louder, looking around the room in a decidedly nervous fashion.

“Don’t look at me, I had nothing to do with this,” Twitchy declared. Middle Age snarled and stalked over to Neal, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him up, chair and all.

“What have you done?”

“Bees,” Neal replied at once, a little groggily. “Thousands of honey bees migrating—”

And then the far wall smashed in because there was a bulldozer driving through it, and at the wheel of the bulldozer was Arthur.

“Huh,” Neal said blankly, even as he was dropped back down. The chair stayed blessedly upright this time as both Middle Age and Twitchy grabbed for their guns. Arthur leapt out of the bulldozer in a smooth motion that was almost inhumanly graceful, a pistol in each hand and a murderous look on his face.

Two shots took out Middle Age and Twitchy. A third, aimed at a point Neal couldn’t see, stopped the sound of drilling.

“Pѐre,” Neal sighed as Arthur strode toward him, relief warring with embarrassment in his chest. But when he looked up he saw the guns still in Arthur’s hands, and a look on his face that sent a shiver down Neal’s spine.

The look on his face was wrong. It was all wrong. His eyes were cold and his face was a blank mask and he wasn’t Neal’s father. He was something else, something inhuman and wrong and bad and he wasn’t Arthur.

“No—” Neal struggled to scoot back, to break free, to do anything to escape the implacable force moving toward him. But all he could do was stare, helplessly, as the not-Arthur came to a stop in front of him. He squeezed his eyes shut as one of the guns rose, turning his face determinedly away.

“Wake up, Neal.”

Neal’s eyes snapped open in understanding just as the bullet entered his skull.

[fairuzfan]

Something I can't figure out about IU from a lot of conflicting information, is whether or not the school as a whole, like faculty and student body, supports Palestine. I don't understand, is it mainly an administrative problem, or is it something common with faculty/students and basically an issue to the core of the school? You've mentioned having friends who go to IU, would you be able to ask them for their opinions on this? Totally understand if not, I'd just like to hear from someone who's been there for more than a superficial tour. IU was one of the universities I've been looking at for school in the future, but if they're going to support a genocide I obviously don't want to give them thousands of tuition dollars.

This is a more complicated question than you'd think because there are multiple IU campuses across the state and each one kind of has a different vibe from what my friends tell me. I'm talking mostly about IU Bloomington, which is the main campus, but there are like 5 different campuses across Indiana.

It depends on what you're studying tbh, like I heard the business school has a huge racism problem from both students and faculty. From what I understand these days, the leadership is overwhelmingly zionist so like the president and the board of trustees and stuff. The president actually took back her initial statement on "the conflict in the middle east" (not naming any specifics) to focus solely on "Jewish Students" (in other words, emphasizing that Israel represents all jews) and didnt mention palestinians at all. Like she went out of her way to be zionist and IU Hillel all pressured her to do this, as mentioned in the article. There are a bunch of students who are Israeli zionists. Actually, the article talks about how IU students went to the kibbutz near Gaza for a tour a couple semesters ago, which to me is absolutely disgusting that a university would fund a trip to the area around a concentration camp.

Also on the IU woman's basketball team there's an Israeli student who apparently cheered on the carnage of Gaza on her social media and I don't think there's been much reprimanding of her.

At the same time, I've heard it's mostly a leadership issue. The student council I believe released some sort of statement about Gaza that was Pro-Palestine and I've seen some professors publish things in newspapers calling the entire thing ridiculous and racist. So it depends.

I will say that if you're basing your educational career off of which universities support Palestine or not, you will have a very hard time finding a school. So you'll have to do some cost-benefit analysis of what you're able to handle.

[heretherebedork]

Everybody's making fun that Nick again eavesdropped on Boston's hookup, but isn't it so interesting that Nick actually didn't back away even after knowing what Boston was doing in the bathroom. He interrupted them, almost grounding Boston from his meaningless escapades, forcefully reminding him of things that matter. The way Nick completely ignored the third person in the background, staring at Boston the whole time (and he was the one apologizing) when Boston could barely even meet his eyes. Nick was the one, being vulnerable and yet I think it was his honesty (and courage) that pushed Boston out of his superficial shell, and down on his knees, leaving him broken, open, and raw. For a man who has hated drama (read feelings) all this life, he is actually going to be very dramatic about discovering his own feelings. Nick fell first but Boston's falling harder.

I'm just gonna take a step back here to point out that Boston has been clear this entire time that he isn't looking for anything deeper or longterm and that it's not a bad thing to want to have casual sex.

There is no reason to be calling Boston superficial and to refer to him as broken, open and raw as if before this he was some kind of feelingless manipulation machine.

Boston froze his heart to protect himself knowing that he won't be around the people he knows right now for long, knowing that he's likely to be sent away from Thailand after every semester if he doesn't live up to his father's expectations.

Yes, Nick actually acted better this episode. I mean that in an amused sense because he still did follow Boston to a hook up in order to talk to him. But that's all he did. He wanted to put his cards on the table and finally, actually, apologize.

Which was very important. Before that moment, he never fully or openly apologized to Boston without the context being about winning him back or staying in his life. All of those apologies were to gain something, forgiveness and Boston back where he was in his life.

This apology was just an apology. It was Nick admitting that what he did was so beyond the pale that sometimes things can't be forgiven and that's okay.

And, yes, that changed how Boston looked at what was happening in that moment because he does care about Nick. But, you know what? He also cares about his other friends. He rushed up to check on Ray and looked worried. He stopped talking when Top asked him to stop. He didn't deliberately cause any trouble at the party.

Boston has his own moral code and it might look different but that doesn't mean we have to sit here and turn him into this huge villain for being a young adult who knows all his connections are likely to be severed soon enough in the future that letting them get deep just means they'll hurt more.

I do look forward to Boston's journey from here. But Nick also a journey that he started better because he has a friend like Sand who listens and pushes him and gives him good advice and doesn't judge him. I mean, admittedly, Sand also created all of Nick's problems by sharing the sex tape but Nick kind of made his own problems with that one tbh.

Nick stopped to talk to Boston in the bathroom not just because he had the moment to do it but because in a way Boston was trapped there. Leaving that conversation would be nearly impossible even with the hook up right there because once he answered and Nick started talking there was no pause for him to pull away.

I just... this isn't Boston versus Nick. Nick isn't better than Boston and Boston isn't better than Nick. They're both just messy young adults with different issues and different backgrounds who found themselves falling together in fucked up ways and are now falling apart in fucked up ways.

Boston's heart is melting and that scares him because he knows it's going to hurt because none of this can last. And Nick knows that Boston isn't going to be sticking around and that's why he stopped caring.

I admit that I read most of Boston looking away from Nick in that scene (especially before the line about his friends) was him just being bored of Nick trying to get back to his side. Because especially after Atom tried to push him into a relationship he didn't want again he was very, very done with people assuming that he has to want something more.

But then Nick didn't assume that. For the first time, Nick didn't refer to Boston in terms of a relationship but in terms of himself and that's what mattered.

Nick sees Boston as a whole person. It's the same thing with Sand and Ray. Only when someone realizes that they are truly wholly seen can they realize the parts of themselves they've tries to hide and tried to darken until they vanished into shallows.

Boston has never been superficial the way you describe because he made a perfectly moral choice to enjoy casual sex without deeper connections. Nick is the only one that he accepted more from and he was burned by that real hard so now he's twice as shy...

Until he realized that Nick genuinely saw him.

And that changed things.

[bedlamsbard]

Hello (almost doctor?!) bard! Hope the tail end of the school year is going okay. I have a plot choices question about Of Home Near, which I just binge read and totally fell in love with. What lead to your choice to leave Bucky and Sam unsnapped? It was done so naturally and it felt like it fit in the narrative so well I had to blink and remind myself that it was canon divergent.

Thank you! I'm into summer semester now, which had darn well better be my last semester.

I don't remember exactly when I decided that Bucky and Sam weren't going to be snapped -- I think Bucky, Sam, and Yelena are the big three that don't get snapped in Home but do get snapped in canon. Part of it is the randomness factor; Steve and Natasha don't get snapped in canon, but in Home they're not even there to be snapped, which changes the number of people who can possibly get snapped. *handwave* So that's the internal logic of why Bucky, Sam, and Yelena are still around in Home but not in canon. (Horizon, which is also an IW AU, has similar internal logic for why characters who are snapped in canon don't get snapped in that fic: the divergence means that there are different people around and in theory the Snap is ~random. Which is also the reason that there are different people snapped/unsnapped in Home, Horizon, and canon -- i.e., Thor gets snapped in Horizon/Yonder but is still around in Home, Alexei is snapped in Home but is still around in Horizon.)

For Bucky and Sam specifically, I don't remember when I made that decision but I think it was very, very early on, possibly even before I started writing. Part of it is just so Steve's life isn't so god damn miserable; the Snap is bad enough as it is. But it's also to balance out the characters in the 1945 timeline: Bucky isn't there in 1945 even though the rest of the Howlies and SSR are, but he is there in 2018. There was never going to be a 1945 Bucky/Winter Soldier in this story. That was never an option; that empty space always had to be there. There was a lot of speculation in the comments right up until Chapter 13 about when the Winter Soldier would appear and it was making me pretty unhinged, since from my POV it could not be more clear that this was not a Save Bucky fic. He was always, always going to be the ghost in the room in 1945.

I knew that Steve and Natasha were always going to make it back to 2018, though the earliest I think I started saying so was in July 2023, since I do talk a lot about my WIPs and I was trying to stay vague about the outcome until then.

To some extent Sam and Bucky survive the Snap for the comedy factor after the return to 2018; it wouldn't have quite the same effect with any of the canonical survivors. Though you'll note the actual reunion goes differently than this! Also yeah the ENTIRE reason that Tony is there in the 2018 sequence is for the comedy factor. That is also the entire reason the Howard/Steve kiss actually made it into the story. I do stuff because I think it's funny and then I add the emotions in once I actually start writing.

I also thought Bucky and Steve having reverse experiences in 1945 and 2018 was funny, tbh. Steve's got the "I would like to not be brainwashed by the USSR" problem and Bucky is speedrunning Steve's usual Avengers problems.

More seriously, part of Bucky and Sam's survival is just so that Steve's team is there in 2018 as well as in 1945 in a way that they really aren't in canon, since the Avengers seem to fall apart after the Endgame prologue -- it's part of the reason Clint shows up at the compound (which he doesn't do in canon). Yelena (and to some extent Clint) is there to balance that out for Natasha, as well as to provide a mirror for the 21st century Red Room vs. the mid-century Department X.

There is another, more practical reason, which is: seeing Bucky in 2018 is an instant "oh SHIT" for the 1945 gang. As soon as he turns up in the time window, that's a clue that there was weird stuff going on that Steve's only began to touch on. And it's also to give Bucky closure on leaving the Howlies and the SSR -- he was ripped away from them as much as Steve was, but I feel like I never see that touched on in the fandom, so he gets some of it back.

This is more about Bucky than it is about Sam; part of that is because I didn't want to snap one and not the other and because Bucky's the one who's more relevant to this particular part of Steve's narrative, the reasoning is more about him than about Sam. But like -- that's Steve's team. They have to be there in 2018, just like the Howlies are there in 1945.

(I do think that because I didn't snap anyone in Home who didn't also get snapped in canon that there are too many Avengers survivors, especially because I have Clint and Yelena show up at the compound, but I also didn't want to snap anyone who survived canonically. And it ended up being most of Team Cap, minus Wanda, so it does end up feeling unbalanced, but I didn't want to kill anyone else off.)

[nerves-nebula]

what made your first year of college so much worse than the second?

godddd where do i even start. Complaining goes under the cut cuz it’s too damn long.

8 hour studios 3 times a week that start at 8 AM and only break for lunch. one of the professors expected us to stand the entire time we were drawing and only sit when we went on break. plus homework for those studios, because each studio was a different foundational class. and on the days when you dont have those studios you got other foundational classes like art history and literature or something. you've got homework for all of these classes too and tests and everything.

and each studio being a different class is a huge issue and really frustrating as well. the classes are drawing, design and, like, basically a 3D class, right? where you use power tools and carve stuff and all that. But imagine you go to this school for painting or to make clothes, then the three foundational classes might just really bore and frustrate you. because you don't really feel like they're helping you gain any skills in your preferred major.

so you have all these artistic kids who want to do their best, being forced to do things they hate and being told it's to make us "more well rounded." (which dont get me wrong i understand, but that doesnt make it suck any less)

so all the art you make is painful to create, and you don't even like the result. but we knew what we signed up for, and the point is to last past first year so you can get into your major. thats the point for me, at least. so you just get what you can done, but i cant imagine what I would've done if i'd fallen behind even once.

And then my own personal hell- being in a new place and not knowing what to do or who to talk to or how to communicate ! So i was constantly stressed out in like a social way. idk if i vented about this here but i fell over in a fit of anxiety and hyperventilation in class multiple times first year. I straight up fell over at least twice and i had crying fits multiple times (with varying degrees of how quiet I was being, sometimes they don't even notice :D)

I was incredibly emotionally isolated and cried myself to sleep like every night. my only social interactions were at work because I'm very bad at socializing properly and making friends in class, and i was always too tired to go to any events. LUCKY for me I met a really cool friend while doing some student work and it was really nice and chill.

ANYWAY BACK TO THE STRESS. to give an example of the situation: our first homework for drawing class was to make this big ink master copy of a van gogh sketch, and it didn't have to be perfect, or even GOOD tbh, but regardless it took forever. and i spilled my ink on it which nearly led to a breakdown but instead i just laughed cause otherwise I'd go insane. the amount of podcasts and audiobooks i burned through that year just to keep myself sane was mind-numbing. i listened to, no joke, ALL of Well There's Your Problem, and i went back and listened to a lot of them more than once.

i was really lucky though, cause some other students had first projects that were like "bring in 50 drawings by next class" or "make a chair out of only cardboard that you can sit on without it collapsing" or something. and i never had a teacher that bad.

actually, my second semester design professor was really REALLY chill. He let me sleep in class if i finished the work so I spent a few hours in his class just chilling and sleeping fitfully (as in I was so stressed i would gasp and mutter myself awake, which really alarmed my classmates but i never got close enough to them to explain myself soooo they prolly just think something is wrong with me. which it is! oh well)

i can only speak for myself but i was basically working any moment i wasn't sleeping, eating, shitting, or showering. somehow other people made time to befriend each other and hang out and like, go to parties??? i dont know how. Frankly I don't even remember how i did what i did either, specifically I reached out to my college's mental health services and got on some medication for anxiety. I also somehow managed to write an essay for our student published thingy about how I wanted to kms and felt unsupported by mental health professionals lmao.

I have NO IDEA how i did any of that because this year i kept falling asleep for five hours in the middle of the day. my theory is that I got more done because I physically HAD TO STAY AWAKE. I COULD NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO FAIL.

I was so stressed out the first year that I often couldn't sleep without hugging my giant elephant stuffed animal or using it as a comforting weight on top of me. one morning i woke up hyperventilating and went to go cut a huge role of paper at like 6 AM because i was so worried about forgetting to cut the paper before i left before class at 8 AM.

so yeah, my theory is that since second year wasn't that insanely stressful, all those hours i spent eking out any artistic joy possible (making owl house comics, writing that essay, and painting my clothing) just to make sure i didn't kms were replaced instead with me just falling asleep at inopportune times, because I wasn't as scared that I wouldn't have time for my work.

OH MY GOD AND FIRST YEAR I GOT PUT IN TWO CONSECUTIVE GROUP PROJECTS WITH THIS ABSOLUTE MONSTER- but that could be its entire own post. suffice it to say that he had been reported multiple times for various things and one of my classmates recognized who i was talking about just from me vaguely complaining about how much i hated him.

anyway im sure there's even more that i forgot about but to be honest i think i've explained enough.

[studyblr-perhaps]

I noticed mathy looking notes in your post earlier. I've just returned to school after a 10 year break and I've never been particularly good at math. I'm taking a remote double time math course over the summer semester that starts in a few weeks and I'm a bit nervous as I've never taken math remotely. Do you have any pro-tips? :)

Hello! Tbh I don't think I'm the best person to ask for tips related to math, considering I barely just pass all my math courses. But I haven't failed any so yes. Disclaimer: I don't really know what remote learning is, but I'll assume it's similar to either the online classes we took during covid, or pre-recorded classes which we can watch later on. So my tips will be considering these two scenarios.

First of all, I think it depends on what course you're taking. Is it a specific course, like linear algebra, geometry, calculus, or any of the sort. If it is, I'd advise you brush up on the basics of those once (i.e. trigonometry and stuff for geometry, limits and all for calculus etc). Although I am sure your teacher will definitely go over the basics, most of the times the difficulty in solving maths lies in not being able to understand the basics.

If your math course is a non-specific course, whenever they start a new topic, they'll probably provide some basic info. Same as above, always understand that first. A lot many times in maths, I have come to realize, you can solve a lot of questions by knowing just basics, and not formulae.

Second, Solve questions. This is something I myself don't do often (thus the barely passing marks) and karma has bit my ass a lot many times for this. Maths is a skill, and you can only hone it by doing as much problems as you can. Now, don't overwork yourself and stress over all questions, sometimes some just don't solve no matter what you try.

You don't need to do every question in your practice problem sets, just to the most varied one. That is, if two questions have a similar approach for an answer and you know how to get to the solution after doing one, don't do the other. You can save that time and brain space for a different question which has a slightly different approach. Warning: some questions look solvable but then you sometimes get stuck on it halfway, be careful while judging which questions you know and can skip.

Third, make notes. It seems basic enough but I don't just mean the lecture notes. Make a separate sheet of just formulae or theorems which you require. You can use that sheet when you're solving practice questions. As you keep solving, you'll realize after a while you wouldn't need that formulae sheet at all. And if your examinations allow cheat sheet, you've already made one!

Fourth, google. Don't know the question, google the entire question word for word. Don't know a concept, google it. Can use chatgpt? Use it. Be honest when you're practicing, but when you can't understand or solve a question, be honest and just google it. 8/10 times the answer (or related similar question's answer) will always be there.

On the same note, youtube has some really good teachers. I do not know what level course you're taking, but Khan Academy and Organic Chemistry Tutor's videos has helped me way into two years of college. You can try these channels, or you can try other ones you find and like, too!

Lastly, find past questions. This is an occupational disease (if you can call it that) which has been ingrained into me after high school and the ridiculous amount of college entrance exams I had to give. Also Asian. Definitely also because I'm Asian. Questions which come in the exam are barely anything which you use practical knowledge for. I have done many many projects with my friends and none of us have ever used maths in the way we use and write in exams. Exam taking is a skill (I am bad at it) and it measures how good you are at taking an exam than how good you are at the subject. Sadly they do in the end judge us based on scores, so past year's question papers is absolutely necessary! A lot of times the questions are similar (my quantum mechanics midsem was the exact same as the previous batch's only the values were different. Same question, same concept, same approach to solution.) This will definitely give you an upper hand at solving exam questions.

And that's it! That's all I can think of right now. But please remember, learning is unique to each individual. What works for me may not work for you. Always, tweak and twist and experiment on what works best for you, and go with that. Sometimes it's exhausting, and it's okay if you spend an entire day binging a show (definitely not speaking from experience, nope). Just know that the next day, you'll pick up your pen and continue on your journey with maths!

TL;DR: brush up on basics, practice questions, use google and youtube to it's fullest, get past year exam papers, take rests and don't feel guilty, it's alright sometimes.

With that being said, thank you for the ask! I hope your course goes amazing and you have a wonderful time with it!!!!!!

Happy learning!

[clonerightsagenda]

Heya! I’ve worked circulation in my college library for about three years now, and am thinking of going for an mls or mlis—you seem to have a non-public facing job with time for podcasts and writing (which I would really appreciate), would u mind talking about what you specialized in at grad school? Or other advice (sorry for anon, don’t have a tumblr but remembered u from the homestuck rewrite). I’m an english makor and don’t have a lot of experience with texh, but would be willing to learn.

Hi! You remember me from my TLC days, huh? Welcome back.

First, I must admit I work an entirely public-facing job. I listen to podcasts while doing chores at home because otherwise I'd be forced to be alone with my thoughts. However, there are plenty of less-public facing jobs in LIS! Those could include:

Technical services - think cataloging, ILL, database/electronic resource management. If you're very detail oriented and love splitting hairs, cataloging may be for you. E-resource management is big right now, although it involves as much communicating with vendors as tech skills. (I spent two weeks trying to get ahold of ProQuest this semester...while trying to pay them, no less.) Depending on the posting, you may not need an MLIS for some of these positions.

Remote librarian - You'll see a lot of remote reference gigs, but these are often part time. A few are full time, though, so if you don't mind doing live chat or virtual help, that's a good option! I dream of being a FT remote librarian tbh. Most of the FT jobs I see are for special libraries - hospitals, legal firms, businesses - where most of your job would be managing company knowledge bases and providing information upon request.

Archives & museums - While these jobs still require work with the public, you'll often spend more time behind the scenes processing materials.

UX librarian or systems librarian - Much more tech focused. Think interfaces, web design, forcing all your different products to play nice with the link resolver, etc.

I didn't have a firm specialty in grad school - I took two courses in our archival concentration as it was getting established but graduated before the third one. I did angle toward academic over public librarianship and made sure to take a class on pedagogy. My overall tips regarding getting an MLIS are:

See if your job will pay for it. Sometimes they will! Grad school isn't cheap and librarians don't make loads so you don't want to take out loans if you don't have to. If you *do*, librarians qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program but that's a mess rn.

Keep a library job while taking classes if possible. Tbh I learned way more on the job than in class. Library school helps steep you in professional theory and values, but it doesn't always give you many hard skills.

Acquire hard skills if you can. Take classes that let you do practical projects. If there's *any* possibility you might take a job in academia or public librarianship where you'll be teaching classes, giving workshops, etc., I highly encourage you to take a pedagogy class. It's good to learn a bit about teaching and get over your jitters about presenting to a crowd.

Get comfortable with tech; no way around that one. If you're not having to master new tech to do your job you're going to be helping patrons figure out *their* technology. You don't have to be a whiz - I could never get the hang of programming and don't know much about command lines - but be ready to roll up your sleeves and try troubleshooting. Googling 'how do I do xyz' is, shockingly, not a universal skill and will get you far. I have become a master of weird workarounds because none of the tech at my college works.

When writing personal statements to get into a library school program, do not lead with how much you like to read. That's not what librarians do. Librarianship is a service profession - think helping people, solving problems, being flexible, etc. All key characteristics you should highlight in applications for programs and for jobs. Having past customer service experience will help you too.

If you can get an assistantship that will cover program costs while giving you experience, go for it. My assistantship was hands down the most informative part of my library school experience *and* I don't have student loans.

That's what comes to mind right away, but feel free to ask me follow up questions about anything you're curious about!

[leclerced]

wait omg all of you are so so nice! im on the verge of ugly crying from this. my school only requires up to college algebra and im good at algebra so i will be aiming to take that next semester. i took precalculus last year and genuinely cried every day when i did homework so i know if i can avoid it, i am. i also used a lot of photomath and felt like i was learning to a test rather than understanding the material so i know i would have to retake that class from hell if i did end up becoming a doctor. my school has a really good nursing program that can get me to multiple places and my credits will transfer easy. plus, i live in minnesota (horrible ik) and according to some of the nurses ive spoken to, we are in dire need of them. plus i have many nurses close to my stepmother so i have help. genuinely love tumblr for this love im feeling and receiving 🤍🤍

-🦎

im so sorry u hate math ): i was a math nerd tbh to the point that when i took precal, my avg was like 103 the entire year. i will say, you should look into different methods of solving problems, there’s not always one way to the solution and it could just be the method they’re using. there’s tons of good youtube channels you can find that will show different ways of solving equations and problems and you can prob find some ways that work for you!! also maybe look into tutoring or ask some friends or family for help if you know any math whizzes, maybe one of the nurses your stepmother knows could help or give some advice on materials that could help.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

[dinosaurtsukki]

BSD x university au hc’s | pt. 1

hi i am an absolute slut for university au’s in case you couldn’t tell so i just had to write some for my first BSD post. also this is going to be slightly ooc because i am a crackhead

check out pt. 2 here

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

Atsushi Nakajima:

he’s definitely the kind of guy who still had no idea what he’d take up in university even after he was accepted 

either wants to not major in anything at all or just major in everything because he’s also scared that he’ll eventually not like what he’s majoring in

so for his first two years you’d probably find him jumping around different classes 

also he still calls the professors ‘teacher ____’ like a high school student and everyone laughs but thinks its cute

eventually, because of his *cough cough* traumatic childhood he decided he wanted to help children by becoming a guidance counselor

he ends up taking Child Psychology and bOY does he love it so much

well he actually just loves all of his classes because Learning is Fun

although because of his *cough cough* traumatic childhood he’s the one in class that people are all like 👀👀

atsushi: *talking about children’s responses to fear and emotional abuse by talking about his own emotional abuse*

the professor, under their breath: wait, do you need help?? 

i can definitely see atsushi as a Roommate of the Year kind of guy. he’s just so polite and tidy with his room. also he’d definitely be the type to take care of plants inside the dorm room and put them on the windowsill

in terms of extracurricular activities, he’s definitely a sporty type of person so i can see him joining a varsity (something like Frisbee because he likes things that go whoooosh) but he’d probably join a student org that does stuff like community outreach

because of all this, he is a Very Busy Boy but his friends do manage to drag him out to parties once in a while

although atsushi would probably sit in a corner and drink only one beer for the entire night 

he’s notorious for helping drunk people though. most of the time he’ll be putting blankets on people and making them drink water

if he knew how to drive he’d definitely be the designated driver

Akiko Yosano:

omg i’m so excited for this i love yosano so much 

she’s the friend who’s just effortlessly awesome all around and a fricking MED STUDENT to top it all off

she gets a bit too excited when it’s dissection time but it’s alright she has good intentions 

probably the only one in your class who doesn’t go and throw up whenever a cadaver is being used (actually do they still use cadavers i have absolutely no idea)

she also interns at the local hospital as part of her degree program but OMG yosano will not stop telling disgusting stories about the patients she’s had

everyone: *eating lunch peacefully in the dining hall*

yosano: so i pulled a guy’s toe out of a meat grinder this morning

everyone: sHUT UP

for some reason she still has a social life despite being a med student and it’s one of the mysteries of life i guess

yosano LOVES going out clubbing on friday nights. if you have the fortune of being her roommate, be prepared for make-overs and being dragged with her out to the city

she’s such a social butterfly like at every bar you go to, the bartender knows her name and her regular order. she’d probably end the night befriending a couple more people

also she’s amazing at karaoke i kid you not

as for extracurricular life, i don’t think yosano’s the type to join an org that’s related to her major cause like ‘what’s the point?’

instead, she’d probably go wherever her friends are because to her, she’ll enjoy any activity as long as she’s with people she loves

but when it comes to her own interests, i can definitely see yosano as someone who loves the outdoors, especially hiking after having to be cooped up inside clinics

it just makes her love and appreciate the value of life more

Kunikida Doppo:

ok, i KNOW he was a math teacher before he joined the ADA bUT i can’t help but think of him as a political science major ??

i can definitely imagine kunikida as someone who’d want to become a lawyer someday and would take political science as a pre-law

he does like the idea of following in the footsteps of great men but omg kunikida would absolutely hate the exclusivity of white, male political theorists

he is such a good student except for when his professor has some sketchy values then kunikida will !! fight him !! every !! chance !! he gets !!

raises his hand constantly to contradict his professor if they even tRY to defend thomas hobbes and authoritarianism

but other than that he’s probably the most diligent student out there. kunikida genuinely enjoys doing the readings for class and writing essays

also has such a balanced schedule that he can make time for anything and everything

except for when his friends dazai drag him out to parties and get a social life

despite how rigid he is, kunikida has absolutely no problem helping out others with learning. he often holds study sessions in his dorm room or in the library before exams

he also likes to volunteer in tutorial centers because he’s just like that

OH OH some of his ‘students’ suggested that he make crash-course type videos for political science and it took some convincing but eventually kunikida decided to go for it

he’s not the most tech savvy or photogenic person so it took some time for him to get used to things but after seeing all the comments from people who benefited from it, he decided to continue with his crash course videos

whether or not he’s the best or worst roommate is completely up to you. if you like someone who’ll basically micromanage your life from your daily schedule to your study habits, you’ll absolutely love him

he doesn’t like to go out for parties that much but he will if his friends convince him enough (kunikida’s an utter lightweight when it comes to drinking though)

Osamu Dazai: 

i genuinely have a hard time thinking about what this guy’s major would be and tbh even his friends have been wondering what dazai’s major was for TWO YEARS

that’s because he keeps taking the most random ass classes like Basic Pottery or Intro to Molecular Biology in the same semester

idk how he even plans to graduate at this point

although to be honest, i can definitely see him as a philosophy major despite the fact that i LOATHE every male classmate i’ve had who’s a philosophy major (idk they’re always so condescending)

i feel like dazai’s just taking that because it’s somewhat challenging for him but to him, university life is just more of crazy experiences rather than learning

and oh my god has he gotten up to the weirdest shit

the number of times he had to climb gates or sleep on benches at three a.m. is too many to count

dazai also loves volunteering for random things like people’s thesis projects (once, he offered to be a snake venom tester to a bio student and they told him that was illegal) or even being the school’s mascot in games

also he and kunikida probably met each other in freshman year at an intro to philosophy class and oh my god did dazai get on his nerves

what’s worse was that they had to work on a group project together and dazai was MIA most of the time and it drove kunikida crazy

that is until dazai showed up last minute to pull an all-nighter with him for their paper and kunikida just couldn’t help but be impressed by dazai’s ~~intellect~~

they don’t exactly get along but they do have some mutual respect for each other enough to work on projects well

omg if dazai ends up being your roommate I WISH YOU LUCK 

the first time you walked into your room dazai was microwaving a metal bowl and you had to run to stop it in time

also he has a tendency to wear his headphones and sing his favorite double suicide song out loud 

kunikida please come pick him up

Edogawa Ranpo:

i love this one man so much i swear to god 

ranpo is definitely the kind of person who just didn’t like school so when college applications came around he was just like ‘why bother though ???’

his friends did convince him by saying that he wouldn’t have to do subjects he wouldn’t like and just focus on his major (this is a lie btw)

is it a surprise that ranpo would choose forensic science ?? NO

he thinks its cool that he can learn about something he’s already super good at and it just gets him really pumped up to show off how good he is

LOVES getting praised by his classmates and professors

ranpo probably thinks lectures are boring as hell so sometimes he just,,, doesn’t,,, come,,, to class

if attendance IS required you can bet he’s bringing snacks and game consoles with him and sitting WAAAAY in the back of the room

Mukbang at a Lecture Hall with Edogawa Ranpo

his classmates think its cute that he puts on glasses before doing exams or answering his prof’s questions as a way to hype himself up

everyone calls him ‘The Greatest Detective’ and ranpo LOVES IT

despite that, he’s not too overly social he just likes being with his close group of friends UwU

he’s also someone you can drag around to places like the fair or an aquarium, but he’s not into clubbing or drinking for that matter

he DOES enjoy seeing his friends get drunk and mess with them though

ranpo isn’t into joining student organizations BUT he gets scouted a lot by detective agencies and he likes interning for them

i’m saying detective agencies because police are gross

ranpo did end up joining a baking club with the assumption that he would just be EATING the cake and not BAKING the cake

yeah he was just there for less than half a semester

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

taglist (check out my post for details on being part of my taglist): @waitforitillwritemywayout @tpwkatsumu @laure-chan​

[interstellix]

k k gonna rant about my friend/classmate real quick bc i want ppl to know how precious this girl is

lil backstory is that we've actually known each other since we were 3. we didn't end up in the same class/friend group until 2nd grade though, separated in the friend group during 8th grade bc of some issues but they weren't between me and her so we could still talk casually, stayed in the same class until high school but attended the same one and had occasional corridor talks. i heard pretty much nothing from her during the two years after grad until i, from a mutual friend, last summer found out that me and her were coincidentally about to study the same major at the same time!! made me a bit relieved bc it was nice that i'd know at least someone @ uni but i was lowkey anxious too, like worried that maybe she wouldn't act like we already knew each other but two days before semester start she messaged me asking if i wanted a drive to uni. ever since then we've been together and even ended up in a small friend group with two (i think soon three!) other girls from our class :') overall we're not best friends, not even among each other's closest friends, rarely hang out outside uni but we get along really well and neither of us are particularly bothered by what happened during middle school 'lil' backstory my ass

so last wednesday i broke The Fuck down around the same time as lab class started and good lord i hated it '<3' i couldn't really talk at that point but somehow, SOMEHOW IDG HOW ok i really don't, but somehow she knew immediately that i was either having a panic attack or that i was anxious thinking (and probably looking) that i was about to have a seizure (she asked if i'd taken my medicine that morning which i did so she figured out that it was the former). in the end she took me to a different room and talked me through it as if the things she said didn't make me cry more lmao. one of the things she did was reassuring me that i don't have to be embarrassed about it, that things like that happen. since this was during class she went back to the lab after a while, also to give me time to calm down but she kept coming back every now and then to ask how i was doing that alone made me want to cry even more because we get along well but we're not close to the point where we talk about our problems together. the wildest thing though is that she asked if this tends to happen and i've never really talked about it but that was the first time i've admitted to someone irl that it does indeed tend to happen. i've been thinking about this daily since last week, idk i just find it weird that she's far from my closest friends but i didn't have any issues admitting it to her

we haven't brought the entire thing up ever since then, literally none of it, feels like we've mutually made a silent agreement to not do that lol. but today i had an exam which i couldn't attend for various reasons and never came around to letting my friends i wouldn't come either but like :( a little while ago i checked my messages and saw that she had sent me smth at noon, nearly sobbed when i opened it because she was asking how i was doing, obv because i never showed up to the exam (and with a lidol heart emoji too this girl rarely ever sends heart emojis)

tbh idk what it is i'm trying to get @ with this haha, i'm just :( really happy that, not only that we're fairly good friends, but also that we're not friends the same way as before. like from the rest of the group back then, it's just me and her this time. sometimes we talk about past stories abt e/o but that's more for the shits and giggles to share with the rest, other than that it's just a really comforting friendship that isn't based on the friendship we previously had

anyway moral of the story she's an entire blessing i hope she aces the exam from today <333

[hshouse]

Here are my tips, from a straight A college student that is now in graduate school:

1) Your Calendar

a) Go to your calendar (I recommend google calendar!!) and create a calendar for each of your classes (I use a C on the front for Classes so they all stick togehter)

b) Label each of the weeks on Sunday (create an all day event), so you can have week 1, week 2 etc (I have 16 weeks on the semester)

c) Go to your syllabus/assignments and fish out any due dates and create full day events for things you have to hand in (so in the calendar of idk Psychology, create an event on the day you have a midterm)

d) Add all your classes on the calendar as events so you can know when to schedule other things around class. 

2) Your To-do Lists

a) So now create to-do lists for each of the weeks. I have used Reminders from Apple, Google Keep and now I use One Note. You can do this anywhere tbh. So create a To Do list that looks like this (this one is on Google Keep)

b) This will take a while (maybe like 2h). But if you do this for every week you will have a complete picture of your entire semester. Every week you can know if it is a busy week or not.

c) Now for using this! You are gonna work one week in advance. So if you are in week 3, during Monday-Sunday of that week you will be doing work for week 4. Of course sometimes that is not possible (if you get a last minute assignment etc) but 99% of the time you can do it. This will require the first week you establish this that you do 2 weeks worth of work but it is worth it I promise.

d) make sure to cross out what is done so you don’t get lost.

3) In Class Notes/Studying

a) You can use a lot of different tools. I like OneNote and Google Drive. Google Drive is simpler to use so maybe start with that. Create different folders for each of the classes.

b) For class notes I recommend taking notes before class on your readings/assignments in black and notes in class in red so after you know which things were your thoughts and what things were specifically said by the professor.

c) For studying for exams, I recommend doing outlines which is just you compiling your notes into an organized summary and then reading that thing a thousand times. Of course if you have problem sets make sure you can do them upside down.

d) You should make your own study materials. If you have access to other people’s materials, great! Definitely use them. But the process of making them is what will make you remember the material, don’t skip that. 

e) Make sure you are putting down everything for readings and textbooks into your notes. When you are studying it is much harder to go back and fish out information from old readings. Think of it like this: if it is not written down in your notes, it is lost.

f) I like to highlight the textbook, do the entire reading and then come back and read through my highlights only and write down my notes on it. 

g) if you can’t explain it to your mom/bff/neighbor, you don’t understand it yet.

Good luck on this semester!!!

[mistresseast]

can you explain in more detail why you think the PT weren't good friends for akiren? i'm not asking out of hate or to start drama, i just never interpreted things that way and i'm genuinely curious. i don't think them being brainwashed by maruki makes them "bad friends", but i don't know if that's what you meant either. i'd love to read a proper explanation on this that isn't just people arguing in the notes of that post.

Hi! Yeah, I know the ~discourse~ climate is pretty touchy and not a good place to exchange ideas, so I’ll do my best to put my thoughts on this matter into words. 

Settle in, bc this one is long.

I’ll start off by saying I don’t dislike the PT, nor do I think they’re bad people, and honestly I think they love Joker a lot! Ryuji calling Akira after his fake death and talking about how his ideas on what makes a hero have changed because of Akira genuinely makes me emotional, along with dozens of other scenes with the thieves! They’re good kids who could be really good friends to Akira but that’s not what’s shown in the game. I don’t think it’s controversial to say Akira’s relationships with all of his friends are transactional. That’s kind of the point, all of his confidants arise out of deals, give and take, and in the metanarrative of the game, that’s how it works. You as the player help these characters solve their problems, and through ranking their confidants up, you get access to more gameplay perks. So it’s pretty even!! But like,,Akira, the character, isn’t the player. There’s no in-story mechanic by which he can cash in friendship points for being-good-at-killing-things prizes. Yes, he uses those abilities to not die in the metaverse, but there is no literal, in-universe way to explain how hanging out with someone translates to [insert gameplay perk here]. So you have to look at what is physically happening in the story. Akira hangs out with the PT, stands there while they have drama with another irrelevant character, and then one way or another their problems get solved and they swear to be Akira’s blood brother or whatever. Akira is a crutch for these characters, and they say multiple times that they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without him. So all of their shit gets handled and Akira gets?? Like actually gets?? What? Inquiries about his well-being? Offers to help him? Questions about his life, his interests? No,,,not really,, But he gets access to a super powerful persona!! Yay!!! Bc everyone knows he’s just a little shadow-killing machine, right? And even the relationships he does get something tangible (as in separate from the mechanics of the game) out of, like Kawakami’s, are built on the notion that if Akira stops providing for whatever reason, the relationship will end. So essentially, Akira is under the pressure of filling whatever role his friends need him in for however long at any time, and he’s been led to believe that if he stops or fails, he will stop receiving any reciprocal care and acceptance.

(And I know this is all gameplay stuff, I know it has to be like this to codify the complicated process of human relationships, I know all of that, I’m just trying to find a deeper layer bc that’s what I do.)

This whole thing comes into pretty clear focus for me during the third semester when you visit everyone in the false reality. Everyone is happy to see him, of course, but they’re clearly wrapped up in their own happiness. Which is understandable, again, I’m not saying the PT need to be attached to Akira to be good friends, but it all still feels off to me.

If they know Joker, then they’d know it’s weird that he just shows up and starts asking these pointed questions while they’re in the middle of something. All of their other interactions with him have been led by them. Yeah, Joker approaches them bc the player has decided to hang out with them, but the other character always chooses the activity and leads the discussion. Akira showing up out of nowhere and asking them to “remember” and “move on” and whatnot should be raising some major red flags. And it clearly does, since their memories do start to return, but they’re all too scared of losing their happiness that they nope out of the conversation as soon as possible, without stopping to consider why Joker might be trying to reach out to them like that. They’re his friends; they should know he wouldn’t just be trying to hurt them or make them unhappy. After all, their entire relationship with him up til that point has been exclusively about Joker trying to help them. This doesn’t make the PT bad people, running away is a totally natural reaction in that situation. They’re just kids, and their minds have been manipulated to a point, but it’s not like they don’t remember Joker or the way they’ve grown since meeting him. In fact many of them mention how much they’ve matured recently, but they never actually relate that back to Akira, despite him being the primary driving force behind most of their personal arcs, even though they definitely remember him. Translation vagueness or deliberate nod to the idea that the PT don’t actually credit Akira with all the hard work he did after their initial lip service? Hmmm. Anyway, their failure to recognize that Joker is struggling just demonstrates to me what was set up all throughout their confidant links, that their relationships are transactional and that they don’t necessarily consider Joker and his individual needs outside of what he provides for them. And when they no longer need him bc that hole has been filled, he simply doesn’t occupy the same place of importance in their lives. 

Makoto’s flashback in particular stood out to me, bc it was from a moment where she was specifically talking about feeling like she finally found a place to belong with the Phantom Thieves (and by extension, with Joker), but then she desperately tries to brush it off. Obviously that sense of belonging wasn’t meaningful enough to her for her to want it back. And I’m not blaming her, of course, any teenager would choose to have their father back over being in a vigilante group lmao, I just thought it was telling that the devs decided to show us a scene that was originally meant to be heartwarming as an example of the harsh reality Makoto wants to forget. All of the flashbacks are from defining moments for the thieves, but that one specifically got me like *thinking emoji*

So his friends are hesitant, despite the fact that they must know something is wrong. It’s understandable, they all stand to lose a lot if someone messes with the status quo. I genuinely don’t think I would react any differently. But there is someone who reacts differently and against his own self-interest. It’s Goro, the one who has arguably the most to lose, who doesn’t turn away from Akira. He seeks Akira out and teams up with him to uncover what’s really going on, even though he has every reason to believe that prodding too deep will literally mean the end of his life. He forces Akira and himself to face the truth because he knows anything else would just be an insult to what they’ve suffered so far. He’s the only one who never flinches, and that, more than any of his friends’ come-to-jesusing (which Akira still has to initiate) is what Akira needs in that situation. For the first time (outside of the brief instances in the tutorial levels), we see a situation where Akira is actually the dependent one, the one who needs help, who needs support. And the only one who has ever provided that, unconditionally, without demanding anything in return, is Goro. I could go into how Goro’s confidant blows all of the others out of the water in terms of building both himself AND Akira as characters, but it’s been said already and by smarter people than me. But basically, despite competition being a core theme of their relationship, Goro is the only character who is portrayed as Akira’s equal. Their contests are all in the name of improving not just Goro, but Akira too. Goro is the only character who expresses an interest in Akira’s inner life and development, and as such he knows Akira better than anyone else. So when Maruki tries to trap them all in a gilded birdcage, Goro won’t stand for it and he knows Akira won’t stand for it either. That’s why he’s so betrayed if you choose to accept the dreamworld. You’re negating the basis of your entire relationship with him and going against your own principles. Out of every character in the game, the one who knows Akira best and refuses to abandon him even when that could mean his own death is Goro Akechi.

I want to reiterate: I do not hate or even dislike the PT!! And tbh I don’t really think they “abandoned” Akira. That post, imo, is supposed to be kind of hyperbolic. Unless it’s referring to how many of them literally sprint away when he comes to talk to them lol. I look at it more like a commentary on how thoughtlessly the PT act as soon as their wishes are granted. I know it’s set up linearly for story purposes, but isn’t it kind of sad how no one checks up on Akira in the week he’s going around talking to people? Especially after he’s been acting so comparatively weird? It’s not unusual that they might be caught up in other stuff, but while you’re going around and visiting everyone, you don’t get a single text or call from ANY of the thieves, for a whole week!! Goro even comments on it directly with his pointed little “I’m sure you’re just as close as you were before” comment. God, he’s such a bitch. Ultimately, the PT do get their acts together, and it’s partially out of the realization that Akira is struggling alone against something and needs their help, which I love and appreciate. I think they are good friends who want to support Akira, but they can’t understand him past the role they’ve placed him in, and until they do, they’ll never be able to be what he needs. Akira loves his friends and knows he can rely on them in most ways, but those relationships will always be dogged by the pervasive fear that he must constantly earn the right to have the relationship at all. What he needs MOST is someone he doesn’t have to perform for, and from what we see in the game, none of the thieves fit that bill. Except Goro. 

I know this was long and rambly and probably pretty disjointed but I wanted to be as thorough as possible and all of my thoughts just sort of gushed out. Obviously ymmv about all of this depending on how you interpret the game, but this is what I arrived at thanks to my analysis so this is what I have for you! Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[sweetcheol]

college boyfriend!sehun

—genre: fluff

—au: college, friends to lovers

—pairing: oh sehun x reader

—song to listen to while reading: fall again — klang

—word count: 2.2k

—warning(s): mentions of sex, sehunnie being the best boyfriend ever, choking on chips ??? (but it’s nothing bad, i promise)

sehun was your netflix binging partner before he was even your friend

okay ... he was your netflix binging partner before you even knew his name

you guys were in an ethics class together

and it was one of those common classes everyone in uni had to take no matter their major, so it was like 60 of you in a huge ass classroom

so you resorted to the only alternative to keeping you awake during 2 hour long, powerpoint based, boring lectures: 

yoy got the best out of your netflix subscription plan

god bless airpods bc you could just hide them with your hair and nobody ever noticed anything

except for sehun

who conveniently sat one seat to the left on the row above you

so he had the perfect view to your laptop screen

and had watched the whole fifth season of peaky blinders with you

of course he never told you bc that... that would have been kind of weird

so he just kept to himself and tried his best to keep on being your anonymous netflix partner

he had even started to buy himself some snacks to munch on during class and was truly living his best life

until you finished peaky blinders ... and were about to start watching crash landing on you

sehun just ... sehun loved that show, okay?

so when he saw the intro pop on your laptop he started choking on his shrimp chips, creating a commotion

like ... even the professor stopped talking and asked him if he was okay, causing everyone to turn around and face him

red-faced, choking him

even you, who had paused the show and turned around in your seat so quickly he thought you’d cracked your neck

and in that moment, sehun did the only thing he could think of

which in that case meant bolting straight out of the classroom coughing like a madman

and just like the concerned netflix partner classmate you were, you had walked out right after him

“yah! don’t run, let me help you!”

and tbh ... sehun had never expected to turn around and come face to face with you, holding a bottle of water for him to sip on

that alone helped him stop coughing

he reluctantly accepted the water while turning beet red in the face

so the two of you sat down on a set of stairs that were near the classroom while sehun drank his water

he was trying his best to zone you out, eyes set on the floor and only focusing on the bottle in his hand

bc that had been ... embarrassing, to say the least

and he had asked you, in the smallest voice possible to please wait until class was over to pick ur things up bc he didn’t wanna go in and then interrupt the lecture again

so you granted him his wish

and when people started piling out of the classroom, you were like well

and sehun didn’t even say anything to u before he walked back inside, took his backpack with him and walked away

so you were like ???? as you stashed your laptop in ur bag and walked back to your dorm

you didn’t see him the next class

and since the room was so big you were like wtf did he sit someplace else

you couldn’t even watch your show in peace that day bc ... what had you even done to him

the lesson after that ... you were resigned

whatever was his problem you wouldn’t mind

but then someone placed a blue thunder gatorade on your desk with a hot pink post it pasted on the cap

“spare airpod ???”

and sehun was sat on the chair next to yours, drinking from his own gatorade bottle while he waited for your response

so you fished the earbuds from your bag and extended your hand, one of them resting on your palm

sehun took it

and the two of you watched the third episode of the show together

the two of u didn’t speak much though

he’d muttered a soft “thank you” when returning the airpod when class was done and that was it

but then he sat next to you the following lesson

and the next one

and the next one

a couple of weeks after that he started giving you bags of chips and cookies alongside the gatorade

until you had finished a couple of dramas

... and the semester

the two of you were quite bummed the last day of classes

bc neither of you had seen the other one in any other classes so you were sure you weren’t in the same major

and sehun had only said “it was very nice meeting you” after the last class was over

and that was it

or u thought

until half-way through the summer, you had finally found enough willpower to clean your backpack

and had found a cute little note on the bottom of it

from none other but your cute, tall classmate

“maybe we could hang out and actually talk sometime?” alongside his phone number

and at first you were like oh a month has gone by, he won’t remember me

but then you wrote a simple “hey, it’s (y/n) from ethics”

and sehun almost ... choked once again when he read it

bc he though you just weren’t going to text him at all

and so the two of you started talking

he was very funny and easy-going, so you became friends pretty fast

you texted all through-out the summer

and ofc sehun told chanyeol, his best friend and roomate, about it

which prompted chanyeol to tease him 24/7 abt how he should just ask you out

and sehun was like “it’s not like that”

but everyone could see it was like that

so sehun was like ... okay i might

and he was like “so i was thinking ... maybe we could go to the movies”

and you were like !!!!!! red code !!!!!! alert !!!!!! oh my gOD 

bc you had been like ... crushing on him ever since the chip incident

and answered him like “yeah that’d be nice” 

a few days after you went to the movies

and were both a mess at first but the date actually turned out pretty well bc you went for dinner afterwards and everything ran out pretty smoothly

sehun was like OOOOOOH YEAH I’M UR BOYFRIEND NOW ... right after he walked you to your door

but you weren’t complaining bc you liked him a lot too

SO NOW

onto the relationship

ngl you are like low-key done with him the week after you start dating bc he is ... a little shit

like if he feels he isn’t getting enough attention he’ll go like “(y/n) that’s so unfaiiiiiiiiir”

but then he’ll start playing around with vivi and you’re standing there like okAY

and if you tell him he’ll get all sassy and go like “i knEW u just can’t live without me”

but then when you spend enough time with vivi and he starts running to you instead of sehun ... he goes like “wAIT (y/n) he’s MY son wtf”

but inside he’s like “that’s OUR son oh my god” 

gets low-key jealous of all the lead actors of the dramas you watch together

like suddenly you’ll turn around and he’s pouting 

but he forgets about it halfway through the episode

even though you two aren’t in the same class anymore he likes studying together

and is always buying snacks for your study dates

he’ll study for like 15 min and then will start pouting bc he wants kisses

wears a lot of hoodies and sweatpants but will also clean up somedays bc he wants to look nice for you

will very subtly leave his hoodies at your dorm

he thinks it’s romantiquè

and you’re very grateful for it bc he’s very tall and thus his hoodies are very cozy

you kinda want to kill him sometimes but he’s definitely the kind of guy that calls you at three am just because he wants to talk to you“i just wanted to hear your voice”

and he’s just laying in his bed smiling like a fool while you tell him about your day

you both end up constantly falling asleep over the phone but neither of you mind

and then chanyeol enters the apartment and sees him passed out on the couch with his phone in hand and your name on his screen 

it’s safe to say sehun’s not going to live it down

i don’t think he’d be a big fan of pda

so in public, you kinda only hold hands

he might give you a little kiss from time to time but that’s pretty much it

oh but in private ... he can’t keep his hands off you

and your butt

he gives the best hugs ever??? and it doesn’t help that he loves hugging you

forehead kisses

so so so many forehead kisses

definitely takes advantage of his height

for that, and for placing stuff on high places so that he has to help you on getting them down

lowkey touches your butt when he’s doing it

okay but when you’re ... doing the do

sehun’s a switch

i feel like he’d either be such a whiny sub or a very ... whiny dom (but he’d still be very soft ngl) 

(i mean he’s the spoiled maknae for a reason)

favorite thing ever is when you ride him and he can just hold your hips really tight and guide your movements so they can match his

moans so fucking loud you’re sure your entire floor can hear the two of you

i’m not sure he’d be a very kinky lover

like i feel he’d be pretty vanilla

but i mean ... he dances ... his hips can ... do things

so it’s not like it’s anything bad, you know ????

a huge fan of hickeys

but on more ... private places

like he’ll never leave one on your neck

but your chest is a completely different story

bc he doesn’t leave them so that people can see them

he leaves them so he can see them and remind himself that you’re his

that you chose him

that was really sappy

he’s a dance major

and he’s always asking you to go with him to practices

both bc he loves being with you and bc he likes it when you watch him dance

he’s a tease and we all know it

he’d run his hands over his hair and smirk all the time bc he knows you’re looking at him

sometimes he even takes off his shirt and acts like it’s just bc of the heat

and you blush so hard and he’s just like 😌

but also when he has a show or presentation or something

he gets so so so so nervous

but then he spots you in the crowd and just smile a bit bc you’re there, supporting him, and that’s all that matters

his phone background is this selfie the two of you with face masks on

you had your hair up in a bun and both of you were lounging in sweats

you had been playing around with snapchat filters and accidentally took the sweetest photo ever

so he asked you to send it to him

and he set it up as both his lock screen and his home screen

yours is a mirror selfie you took when you were watching him practice

you were taking a photo and when sehun noticed he came to give you a kiss on the cheek

and it was the sweetest thing ever

he literally sends you each and every selfie he takes

and sometimes goes like “hey does this look okay?”

and sometimes it’s more like “your boyfriend is so hot wth”

and just as he takes so many selfies so he can send them to you

he also likes taking photos with you

literally everywhere you two go

he either takes a selfie or asks someone to take a picture of you

and everyone he asks always thinks you’re the most adorable couple ever

bc the love you two have for each other is like so obviously there

and he gets so soft whenever people tell him that

even when it’s chanyeol who says it

truth is chanyeol loves you because of how happy you make sehun

he once told you when you got back home from a club

and like ... you were kinda, slightly, a little bit drunk

and hearing him say that only made you feel like you were walking on clouds even more

bc if anyone asked you to describe just how happy sehun made you ... you were sure you weren’t going to find enough words to describe the feeling

even though he usually is like hell yeah i’m a cool bf

he gets really sappy at night (and when’s drunk) 

and goes on and on about how much he loves you and he’s happy he found you

bc you always get that look in your eyes that make his heart melt

bc he’s the sweetest boyfriend ever

and it doesn’t help that he’s my ult bias bc i reallyyyyyyyy wanna date college!boyfriend sehun ��

[akari-hope]

-pulls up a chair and sits down- Tell me what you love about Persona.

mal ily thank you for enabling me-

for me, what makes persona stand out so much from other games is two things - the aesthetics, and the characters.

i really don't need to explain the first one. anyone who's taken one look at a persona game can tell you how slick the style of it is. each game has really dynamic visuals, some of the sleekest ui i've ever seen, and just really neat designs for both characters and personas/shadows. and that's not even touching on the obvious to anyone who's played one of these games, which is the ost. everyone thinks persona soundtracks slap and they're right, because they DO. not just any series can make a rhythm game spinoff using its own soundtracks. i mean i literally didn't KNOW persona until p3d and p5d came out. i played those FIRST. a rhythm game spinoff got me into the series. that certainly says something about the strength of the osts.

the second one is pretty obvious too. an rpg does live and die by its story, and characters are a vital part of that. esp in a relatively slow-paced game like persona, where you spend a lot of time with characters, you do kinda have to like them a fair bit, or at the very least find them interesting. and don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of things i wish atlus did differently with some of these characters. but they do something else that i think is really great. they give you a base chatacter, and just enough details to get your mind wandering. the nature of the games means you really don't get to explore any one person TOO deeply (or at least not as deeply as I'd like lol). it's hard to balance out a huge main cast of dynamic characters so i don't entirely fault atlus for this. but it also means you have all these threads to explore on your own. naoto from p4 springs to mind as a character that has some fascinating leads that are never fully extrapolated in canon (the transgenderism of it all...). and hell, the p5 animation was basically a test run for expanding on akechi's character, and p5r's reworked confidant and third semester is almost ENTIRELY dedicated to this, so atlus even agrees that he wasn't executed as well as he could've been in the original game. even the protags, which yes are all meant to be some form of self-projection, have enough established personality and quirks to make them interesting to explore deeper too (especially p3's minato and p5's akiren imo). and tbh i really like that in a piece of media. i like some room for interpretation, some freedom to take the text and dissect it a bit.

this is just a really quick note, but another thing that makes persona great is the fact that by making the main characters all have some sort of disconnect/problem with authority/society or otherwise making them sort of outcasts, every persona game comes with lgbt and neurodivergent coding for the entire cast, free of charge. i don't have to project anything, the headcanons write themselves-

in conclusion persona is by no means flawless and i can and will pick apart those flaws for days, but man when it does things right they're REALLY right.

[jungleuniversity]

How I Improved My MCAT Score (509 -> 518)

Hi Everyone! I got back my new MCAT scores awhile ago, but I thought I’d write a post about how I achieved my score, with hope that it could potentially help another student. I know that while I was studying, a lot of the advice I saw on the internet was overwhelming and made me feel that my level of studying would always be inferior to what others were doing. The vast array of available courses, practice tests, and other services available certainly did not help either, as there is no reasonable way to complete every single resource that exists. In this post, I’ll go through a timeline of my basic study plan and explain which resources I used and why I think they are worth using. 

Stage 1 - Kaplan 7 book set and other content resources

I had trouble coming up with a time frame for how long it should take to go through the Kaplan set, which is why I simply called this part the “first stage.” Many guides I have read online mention strictly separated “content review” and “practice exam” phases of studying. Personally, that would never have worked out for me because I would have gotten anxious every time I got a question wrong during the exam phase. Instead, I spent about 3-4 months simply reading and taking notes out of the books, and then doing a mixed exam and content review stage. I used each book in the following ways, especially the second time I studied: 

Biochemistry - For the first half of the book I took detailed notes as if I were learning from an ordinary biochemistry textbook for a class. For the second half, I eased on the notes and started drawing out the different pathways. I think I wrote down the Electron Transport Chain pathway 10-15 times and the Citric acid cycle path about 50 times. I did not draw the shapes of compounds, but I won’t tell you not to do that either. 

Biology -  Same as the Biochem book. I did spend extra time on “high yield content” that's more difficult to memorize, such as actin/tropomyosin activity in muscle. 

Physics - I cannot stress what I am about to say enough. The absolute most important things to know from this book are the units. If you are truly stuck on a physics (or often chemistry) question, there is a very good chance you can use dimensional analysis to force your way to the right answer in a relatively brief amount of time. If nothing else, PLEASE learn the units behind every concept. 

Chemistry - Use the advice from physics, but I also took pretty heavy notes, especially in the first half, since there’s a lot of content that, despite being easier than biochemistry in my opinion, are foundational and will cause problems if you skip it. 

Behavioral Sciences - This was the section that brought down my first attempt score. I found that the premed95 anki deck that’s in circulation was helpful, but it made me incredibly lazy in studying to the point where I would pretend to be productive, while just looking at slides. I was desperate not to repeat my mistakes, so I brute forced my way through the Kaplan book this time instead. I didn’t take notes the way I did for other subjects - instead I hand wrote every single bolded word and definition in a notebook, organized by chapters. This took about a week and I did not study any other subject during this time. I don’t know if I would recommend this method for Behavioral Sciences for everyone, but the truth is that after I did this, my practice section scores went from 124 to 128-130. One thing to keep in mind though, the last few sections of the Physics/Math book are absolutely critical to the Behavioral Sciences section as they are the only resource within the Kaplan set which explain the research methodologies for both Psychology and Sociology. 

Organic Chemistry - I took sparse notes on this book. I think it's the least useful out of the 7 book set, and I often had to look to the internet and old organic chemistry class notes to clarify mechanisms and pathways. Nevertheless, make flashcards or write down reactions such as the Aldol condensation, which more likely than not will show up at some point. 

CARS - Skip this book. In my opinion, there are better ways to study this section. Most importantly, use the CARS question packs from AAMC. 

Stage 2 - CARS, Mixed Content Review and Practice Exams (2-3 weeks)

This is around when I started taking CARS much more seriously, so I would recommend starting earlier. I mainly focused on using the two AAMC question packs, although the KhanAcademy passages were also useful. The first question pack was definitely a bit more difficult and you might feel discouraged after going through half of it. However, I promise it does get better. Part of the change is that as you read explanations for why you get questions wrong, your skill will begin to improve. The other part is that the second half of the question pack, as well as most of the second question pack are more closely aligned with the difficulty level of the actual test. 

This was also when I began taking NextStep full length exams. (Insert surprised Pikachu face) My first score was a 501. Definitely not expected at the time, but it was a necessary wakeup call to understand where my content gaps were. 

After each exam I took from this point on, I would take the rest of the day off after taking the exam. Just relax, after taking a 7 hour exam, you deserve it tbh. The next day, go over the entire exam, question by question and take notes where you need to. I wrote very brief 1-line notes for questions I got right and understood, and more detailed notes for all incorrect questions as well as correct questions that I did not fully understand. This is important for two reasons: First, this allows you to know exactly where your content gaps are and understand how you can improve applying the concepts that you already know. Second, there’s only so many different things they can ask you on the MCAT. It might sound endless, but there are a finite number of concepts and you are bound to see very similar questions on future practice tests and also on the real MCAT. In my experience, writing down the explanation for the correct answers on missed questions ensured that I never get a similar question incorrectly in the future. Overall, next-step exams were alright, but their content felt incredibly low-yield. Now, studying low yield concepts is extremely important, but it's obviously detrimental if that's all you study. 

For the next month, I would alternate between taking next-step and AAMC full lengths, with breaks in between to review my content gaps. My highest Nextstep exam was a 512, but I tended to score around 507-508. My aamc exams, in order, were 519, 517, and 515. The downward trend was concerning, but I was honestly happy since all of those scores were higher than my target at the time, 513. Also, I falsely began to think that NextStep exams were extremely deflated. (They are, but not nearly to the extent that you might think.)

Finally, the day before my first exam: I couldn’t sleep at all, and I went against common advice of not studying on this day. As for exam day, just trust yourself and the studying you have done. My main advice beyond what anyone else will tell you is to keep a close eye on the clock. Several people who tested with me lost up to 5 minutes on CARS because they forgot to take into account the time during their lunch break. Not every test center will have digital clocks, and the one I went to only had a tiny analog clock near the area they check you in. When I asked a proctor for the time, he just laughed. So make sure you look at the clock and remember the time when your break starts. 

My score on the first exam turned out to be a 509. Not necessarily a bad score at all, but this score was much lower than what I was aiming for. It was disappointing, mainly due to the time I put into studying, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. My behavioral sciences section severely pulled my score down, and there were a few content areas that I truly was not prepared for. I felt bad about it for about a week, and afterwards started studying again. 

Stage 3: Final Preparations 

Initially, I found it relatively difficult to study during the semester. One of my friends recommended I use UWorld questions to effectively use my time. This resource definitely helped me out when I felt like I simply did not have enough time to finish studying. They provide you with 1500 or so questions, categorized by section and sub categorized by topic. You can choose how many questions or passages you want to do in one sitting, and if you want it timed or not. After you finish, they provide you with personalized statistics for the session, as well as explanations for each question, which are saved and can be viewed at any time. Alongside simply rereading the Kaplan books, this is the best way to reinforce content knowledge. 

The final resource I used were the Altius exams. I purchased a pack of 5 on a whim because 1) I ran out of practice tests and 2) someone on reddit said these were severely under-appreciated. Well, that gamble paid off because I believe these exams are about as close as you can get to the AAMC full lengths, BUT they give you much more detailed explanations, and are just a little bit more difficult, so you actually end up feeling like the AAMC practice exams are a bit smoother and easier to pace yourself on. After purchasing, I had one month to take all five, as well as the then-recently-released AAMC FL #4. Altius exams were great, and honestly, my only “complaint” was that CARS felt a little bit too difficult to be as useful as it could be. I also studied Behavioral Sciences and Biochemistry the way I described in Part 1, since I felt like I underperformed on those sections. 

When second exam day approached, I forced myself to get a full night of sleep this, and it absolutely paid off. I was noticeably more aware during this test than my previous attempt, and corrected myself before making a bunch of silly errors. 

A month later, I found out I got a 518, which was higher than my original goal. 

Tl;dr: 

Studying for the mcat is expensive, and it can be hard to find advice on which resources are useful. 

In my opinion, only: Altius exams are amazing. UWorld is a great resource for content gaps and reinforcement, especially when you have sharp time constraints. Kaplan books are awesome for content review, but it should be fine if you buy an older edition (I used 2015).