#best books for molecular biologists

[scichores]

Top 5 Molecular Biology Books Every Molecular Biologist Should Read

#molecularBiology #top5books #booksforlife #knowledgeispower #learn #readingchallenge

Photo by Polina Zimmerman on Pexels.com If you are a molecular biologist looking to expand your knowledge and gain insights from the best in the field, reading books written by renowned authors can be incredibly valuable. In this article, we have compiled a list of the top 5 molecular biology books that every molecular biologist should read. These books cover a wide range of topics, from the…

[missstratford]

Café Playlist

Loki x reader

warnings: none, (angst if you squint)

Sipping lightly on his coffee, Loki frowned. This was probably his 26th visit to the café, and it was his first time receiving this odd piece of paper. Odd because it contained a list, of what seemed to be songs. It hadn’t been too long since Loki had been sentenced off to Midgard by Odin to accompany his brother and pay the repercussions for his actions by helping the Avengers. The idea, which turned into a royal order, disgusted him, yet he figured out a way to live above his principles and ‘do good for once’ in Odin’s words. The Avengers, first hostile, had quickly warmed up to him to his horror, and worst of all had decided to include him in their many shenanigans. On one such escapade from the group, he had stumbled upon this café. He was starving at that point and had no interest to sit with the Avengers for Shawarma third time that month. On finding this rather aesthetically appealing setup, Loki made his way in and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a book café. As he sat down to order, the lady, who seemed to run this place said it was closed for lunch, but upon being threatened pestered by him, she relented and served him some glazed donuts and pies. Mid bite to his raspberry pie, the door to the café swung open and he saw you. You entered completely flushed, hair wet and a tad messy, wrinkled clothes implied you had just taken a ride to get here, and yet, Loki choked on his pie. He seemed glad that he did because your smile from seeing the other woman morphed to surprise seeing Loki to worry when started choking all in a second. You rushed towards him with a glass of water demanding, “Are you alright?” and he wanted to say No, no because all of a sudden, his heart was hammering in his chest and he didn’t know why. Was the pie? Was it you? He quickly recovered, finished the pie, paid the bill, and left. He didn’t sleep that night. He first thought you were a witch, someone who had spelled him to keep thinking about you, then he realized it was his own brain’s torture and relented.

In the following days, his visits to the café became rather frequent, and he happened to learn a lot about you. He realized the lady who ran this place was your aunt, and you were a molecular biologist who worked here part-time because it calmed you. He knew you had an affinity for music, books, and art. All this he learned from observing and listening as he did best. He never had spoken to you, the idea terrified him for some reason, not that he’d admit it. That’s when he’d begun to find the ‘playlist’ as the spider-man told him. He walked into the café, to his usual table, with a book in his hand, and found a playlist coinciding with the themes of the book. He tried to find the source of it and failed. Today he walked in without a book, but the playlist still lay. Loki had enough, he was going to find out who was behind this. He stayed, for hours until it was closing time, all through observing you, not-so-subtly. When the last customer, apart from him left, you turned to him, your aunt walking away to tally the bills. “uh-we are closed for the da-“you began, “who keeps leaving this at my table every day?” Loki snapped, internally cringing at his rudeness. “Do you not like it?” you asked, your eyes widened and immediately catching yourself you said, “um, I mean, I’ll check the CCTV and let you kno-“ “Why?” Loki interrupted you again, “Sorry?” “Why do you keep leaving me these?” “I didn’t d-“ “Answer the question y/n” he sighed standing up. That was the first time he had said your name, he liked it. Liked the way his tongue rolled when he said it, the way your breath shallowed when he said it. “I noticed the books you were reading and” you waved your hand, “I thought a playlist would go quite well with them, speaking from experience. Did you like them?” You added, a gentle smile lifting your lips. His heart sputtered and he looked away from your face, “It might have helped my reading process quite a bit.” He said softly, his eyes returning to yours, “Good to know.” You peered at him. “thank you.” He whispered. “you see I have my collection of books, I could show you the-“, “I have more important things to do.” He bit back. You shut your mouth, surprised by his sudden change of mood. Without so much a look, Loki left, walking through the bustling streets, making his way to the tower. He hated himself, he wanted, so badly, to say yes, to spend the day, the week, hell the entire year with you, but he held back. He didn’t want to hurt another person, you were so pure in his eyes, he a frost giant, with so much turmoil from his father couldn’t possibly spend his time with you. He didn’t go to the café the next day, or the day after. He couldn’t bring himself to look at you because he knew that nothing would stop him from making you his if he did.

He hated Thor so much he was considering stabbing him now, all of Odin’s orders be damned. Why had gone so far to share his current scenario with his brother, he would never know. Thor had dragged him out of his room and back to his café demanding that he talk to her like Thor did with Jane ( a lie, Loki knew). But here he was, standing in front of you, gaping like a goldfish that Stark owned. Then you spoke, angels sang and Loki said the stupidest thing he could say, “You will hate me if you knew me.” His heart broke as he said those words and it broke even further as he saw your face turn into an angry frown. But nothing prepared him for what you said next. “Who are you to decide that?” “Wha-“ “Who are you to decide that I would hate you, Mr. Loki?” “i-“, “I have known you, how much ever I could from afar, for the past 2 months, and guess what?” “What?” Loki asked, too stunned at your fierceness. “I seem to like you. Thank you very much. Another thing for you to know about me Mr. Loki,” you walked closer to him, he gulped. “Is that I hate it when anyone disrespects what I like. So, don’t you dare speak another word about yourself that might ignite my wrath, you won’t like it.” You were inches away from him now, his breath falling on your lips. Loki believed you. He believed every word and before he could lean in and kiss you senseless for being so passionate and fierce and everything that he adored, “Sorry darling we need him for a bit, another alien invasion.” Tony Stark entered and dragged him away to the street of screaming people. But Loki couldn’t move, not after you shouted as Iron Man dragged him, “I LOVE YOU LOKI LAUFEYSON, AND YOU CAN’T DO SHIT TO STOP IT!” with radiance on your face like never before. Loki smiled, completely dazed, a humungous grin that didn’t leave his as he went to save New York for you, for him, for you both.

[niuniente]

I've had an NDE before from drowning and let me tell you, I am 99% sure my brain was trying to comfort me in my dying moments. I lived, obviously. But I VERY MUCH disagree with you on the whole 'doctors being considered quacks' for it thing. During my recovery I was sent to a support group and one of the people there tried to convince me that the tings I saw were real and I had some sort of ethereal experience. Whereas my doctor told me about the chemical shifts in my brain and explained to the best of his ability why I might have seen what I saw. The doctor admitted that it is a newer field of study, and that not too much is known yet, but he assured me I wasn't alone and that if I felt concerned that he would be there to make sure I was okay. All that person at the support group did was re-traumatize me and give me a mental breakdown. I would rather trust my doctor, who instead of mocking me or calling it nonsense, spoke about it to other doctors who had seen similar things happen with their patients. Please, don't use NDE's an an excuse to discredit doctors or molecular biologists. Because that REALLY sounds like what you are doing what with bringing up the whole 'dark ages' thing.

You are free to have your opinion and view of your experience. After all, it is yours. Who am I to say that it was false?

The same way, I am free to have my views, not based on one person's experience only but thousands of experiences. Thousands of studies. I didn't come up with this just one day like BLING! This is it!

I don't like that the notion that science and "non-scientific" experiences should rule each others out but let's be real; if you tell a scientist, a doctor included, that I had an NDE (like for example, the famous Eben Alexander, who is a neurosurgeon himself, too), 95% of doctors will say "That's bollocks. Our current scientific understanding of this phenomena is X". It's dangerous to think that we already know it all. Science should always be open and hungry to know more, to study more, to go beyond what is already known. Of course, doctors doing their daily jobs are doing their daily jobs and that's good! They do what they can with the technology and understanding we've got at the moment, exactly the same way as doctors in 1823, 1532, 323BC and in 3023. If you somehow understood that as a message against doctors, well, too bad.

If we keep scientific and currently unknown scientific things which we can't understand at the moment separated, it takes longer to study different things and learn to understand them - and also, of course, to rule out things, too. All scientific fields are full of dogmas you shouldn't try to break of question. That's how it has always been and probably always will be. It doesn't mean that the scientific field COULD NOT do good while they are full of these dogmas. That's Christian fundamental belief system where only absolute good or absolute evil exists - and that doesn't work in real life.

IF you, or anyone else, wishes to learn more about NDEs, International Association of Near-Death Experiences IANDS has been studying this phenomena for decades, and it is the world's most reliable source, including scientific studies and help for scientists.

If the physical part of NDE and how brain makes it (most likely brain does have something to do with it, after all, we're psycho-physical beings), the best case is the neurosurgeon Eben Alexander's experience. He knows what he talks about, also as a doctor specialized in brains. He was in such bad condition that there shouldn't have been any experiences, no imagination, not comfort from the brain (based on our current knowledge, that is) and yet, he had such a long, vivid, strong and profound experience that he wrote a book of it.

Here's also Eben Alexander's own speech in an event about his experience, would it interest someone:

Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon's Journey through the Afterlife (not the only one, of course, but detailed and nice)

As a final notion: Please, always keep your experiences as yours but respect others', too. Not everything is always about US and what WE have gone through and what WE believe in. The same way as I can't (and won't) rule out your experience as yours and what it means to you, as I have no right to do it, you can't rule out other peoples' different NDEs just because you personally don't believe in them. (The same way as you can't, for example, dismiss someone having an abusive mother just because your mother adored and loved you). Give them the same respect as you want to be given to you.

[litcityblues]

'Project Hail Mary' --A Review

I've read everything Andy Weir has written so far, so it was inevitable that I was going to get around to Project Hail Mary eventually. I have seen on the interwebs that people had mixed reactions to his second book, Artemis, but I enjoyed that one- but, I can understand how people might view this one as 'a return to form' for Weir- as we're back to a protagonist versus a big huge science problem, defying the odds etc, which worked so well for him with The Martian.

The book opens with an astronaut waking up with no memory of anything. He's weak and doesn't know why and has to piece together what has happened to him and who his identity is. Gradually, the pieces begin to come back together. He's Ryland Grace, a teacher, and former molecular biologist and he's on a mission to save Earth.

You see, in the near future, scientists begin to observe that the sun is dimming and that threatens a catastrophic ice age to end all life on Earth in about three decades or so. ESA administrator Eva Straff is given unlimited legal authority to tackle the problem.

Quickly, the world's scientists (including Ryland) figure out what's going on: there's a molecule eating the sun- it's a single-celled organism and uses carbon dioxide to reproduce (hence its fascination with Venus) and eats electromagnetic radiation and uses radiant energy to move. It's very bad news for Earth, but they figure out some more things: the molecule (named 'astrophage') can be used as rocket fuel and it's been eating other nearby stars- except for one: Tau Ceti.

So, a mission is launched. Project Hail Mary, to go to Tau Ceti and figure out why that star is resistant to the astrophage. Problem is, it's a one-way mission because they don't have enough astrophage for a return trip, and, even though Staff orders the release of mass amounts of methane from Antarctica to buy humanity some time and reduce global cooling, the threat of famine and war will still remain for the duration of the 26-year mission.

How does Ryland get sent on the mission? Well, to avoid the psychological problems of a four-year time dilated trip to Tau Ceti for astronauts that aren't coming back, they find the best people with coma-resistant genes and decide to put their astronauts in a coma. When an astrophage related explosion takes out one of the crew just prior to launch and with no time to find a replacement, Straff forces Ryland to go and when he refuses rather cold-bloodedly gives him an amnesia-inducing drug and puts him in a coma prior to launch. (That's why he wakes up with amnesia.)

But once at Tau Ceti, Grace gets to work solving the problem- but not before making contact with an alien ship and an alien engineer on board. Turns out, Earth isn't the only star with astrophage problems and the Eridians sent a crew to find out the same thing. After learning how to communicate they get to work solving the problem which eventually they do but one last crisis leaves Grace with an impossible choice to make with the fate of two worlds in the balance.

Overall: Weir excels at protagonist versus world-shattering, titanic problem using the power of science and Project Hail Mary, like The Martian sciences the shit out of the problem and the results are pretty awesome. This is the hardest of science fiction and in terms of an extinction-level event, a sun-eating molecule is a novel concept that feels refreshing.

I snagged this one off Audible and the narration by Ray Porter is top-notch the audio version actually adds an extra dimension to the book, as the aliens from Eridani speak in musical tones. I don't know how Weir managed to translate that to the page, but in the audio form, it comes across beautifully.

If I have a nit to pick, it's a relatively minor one-- while it's necessary for the advancement of the plot, Ryland spends almost, but not quite too much time figuring out how to communicate with his alien counterpart. It teeters on the age of 'digression' territory in parts, but I can understand why it was necessary for the plot- it just slowed things down for a bit.

Like The Martian, I'm sure on the page, this one was impossible to put down and I never wanted to hit the pause button on the audio version either. Weir is excellent at hard science fiction and his writing is taut, doesn't waste time, and doesn't get bogged down in complex world-building or digressions. In short, it's brilliant, compulsively readable, exciting, and might be headed to a big screen near you. My Grade: **** out of *****

[evoldir]

Fwd: Other: ProteinFolding.and.Recessivity

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Other: ProteinFolding.and.Recessivity > Date: 16 August 2022 at 07:23:22 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > dear and reputable dears of the evoldir dir, > > it's been ~21 years since I shared with evoldir a few lines describing > (for the first time?) the molecular mechanism for "genetic" > recessivity at the protein-folding level (i.e., for all proteins, not > only enzymes). > > the email (minus typos plus some readability edits) is further below. > > and here's the machine-gun version: > 1) misfolded proteins tend to be toxic, > 2) the cell refolds/degrades them, > 3) most aa-replacement mutations misfold proteins, > therefore > 3) mutated proteins are refolded/degraded too, > 4) (3) makes mutated coding regions recessive and WT ones dominant, > regardless of encoded protein (at most hemi-dosage effects). > further, > A) most misfolded proteins are caused by peptide-chemistry accidents > so that recessivity is a side effect of the machinery that clears > accidentally misfolded proteins. > B) molecular accidents affect RNAs too (rRNAs) and thus rogue RNAs > must be a major challenge too. > C) homozygous recessives should behave like gene knockouts. > > in 2010, while browsing nick barton's "evolution" CSH text book, i > learned that some researchers had weakened a major chaperone activity > in an organism and many recessive mutations became "symptomatic". > > this showed that chaperones are sufficient for genomewide recessivity, > as my 2001 email proposed. > > I shared my 2001 email with barton and he agreed with my mechanism and > interpretation, [etc]. > > this month by chance i googled "recessivity and molecular chaperones" > and the only hit was my researchgate "re-pre-publication" of the 2001 > email. > > this is too bad, because it shows that for 20+ years most students and > researchers worldwide have been denied a chance to learn about the > mechanism (only a few dozen people heard it from me after 2001). > > i am nearing retirement and i doubt i may ever get to formally publish > the mechanism. > > in all sincerity, i never thought i deserved a formal publication for > it, since coming up with the mechanism took no effort on my side > beyond sitting at susan lindquist's seminar (and at hundreds of > others, ruining so my "productivity" and career) while scribbling and > sending those lines to evoldir required only a few minutes. > > furthermore i thought then and still do now that the mechanism is too > illuminating and important for it to be invidiously sociologically > claimed by a single person. > > so i'd like to kindly ask you to start sharing with as many people as > possible, including non-biologists but especially your students, the > (20+year-old) news about the protein-metabolically and > molecular-mechanically straightforward basis of "genetic" recessivity, > whenever you get a chance and even w/o making my name. > > thank you very much > > best > > m > > ==========Subject: recessivity and "variation capacitors" > From: marcos antezana

[nanowrimo]

Continuing Writing After Camp NaNoWriMo

We know summer camp has been over for a while now. The fun we had at Camp NaNoWriMo is replaced with school deadlines and work. Fortunately, NaNo Guest Erica D reminds us to tap into the nostalgia and have fun writing.

When I think of summer, a wave of nostalgia washes over me. Memories of going to the beach with my family, the feel of the sand in my toes, the smell of funnel cake on the boardwalk, and the thought that this should last forever. But what really stuck with me was the time I spent reading and writing during my summer vacations. My love of books blossomed over those warm months, and over time, my love of writing grew as well. 

For me, Camp NaNoWriMo embodies these memories of summer and offers an opportunity to revisit those months I spent writing. Participating in their Camp challenge encouraged better writing habits and persistence in my craft. But now that Camp NaNoWriMo is over, what should we write about? I think it would be a great time to revisit our summer experiences. It could even become a story one day!

Writing prompt: Revisit your time during Camp NaNoWriMo, or your best summer or camp experience, and write about it.

Some tips for getting started:

Reminisce – Take a moment to reflect on your best summer or camp experience, whether it be an actual trip or your participation in the Camp NaNoWriMo writing challenge. Think back to everything you did and how you felt. Try answering some of these questions:

Write about YOU! – Try writing your story in the first person (this can be changed later if you would like to use it in one of your novels). Treat this like a journal entry or an autobiography. Remember that writing about yourself, and not just your story characters, is important too. 

Visit your Writer’s Tackle Box – It would not be a true writer’s camping experience if you did not open your “Writer’s Tackle Box”. This will have the tools you need to “survive” the wild unknown of where writing can take us!

Don’t forget to write for FUN! – What is most important is to have fun while writing. Writing does not have to be a chore. It can be a casual expression of yourself. Free-writing can help to clear the mind, provide practice, and get the creativity flowing. During this writing exercise, you can be vague, be descriptive…be whatever you want! Just as long as you enjoy the time spent writing. And remember the fun you had, much like during your summer experience.

Erica is a lover of retro fiction, and is developing a blog where she revisits beloved books from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. She has several writing projects underway, and is currently working on three novels in her favorite genres of fantasy, horror, and fan fiction. As a full-time Molecular Biologist, she aspires to merge her two passions of science and writing into a career in published authorship. When not writing, Erica loves going for runs, enjoying the fall weather, and decorating for Halloween (it’s never too early!).

Top Photo by Scott Goodwill on Unsplash  

[pinkhairedlily]

Great Expectations

Chapter 4 of The Spring He Came Back | 4 of 12

Hinamori found herself spacing out in the middle of chores for about a month now. She would be cooking miso soup, and her mind would trail to their conversation on the hill. She would halt in front of the daffodil meadow on the way back from the market and reminisce in the midst of stalks yet to flower, counting down to the third month. She also stopped going to the library because of a growing resentment. If she didn’t bring Hitsugaya there, he wouldn’t have found the book, and he wouldn’t have left. She wondered if she had the right to feel this way, to feel like she lost a friend or a family.

The money from Hitsugaya’s generous allowance came in every end of the month through an academy representative. Baba’s refusals fell on deaf ears, but Hinamori knew she was grateful for the financial support.

True to his promise, Hitsugaya sneaked out of the academy on his third month and met Hinamori on the meadow. He saw her black tendrils flowing with the yellow petals. “Oy, Hinamori.” For a time, it would seem that the gears were running in normal shifts.

This went on for the next three years. Hinamori was given glimpses of his newfound life – of an increasing circle of friends that consisted of a noisy Rangiku, stubborn Rukia, and glutton on steroids Renji. For every encounter, their childhood memories and laidback banter on the yellow field were being replaced by tales of his experiments and model construction with Dr. Kuchiki, the culture shock to the life of the brightest, and the cutthroat competition in academia. For every encounter, he seemed more and more different, but he never let these get the best of him. After all, his silver hair was still shaped like a broomstick, and he still challenged her to watermelon eating contests.

Their meetings stopped when he had to participate in an overseas internship in Karakura. Monthly letters replaced his physical presence until there were none. Exasperated because of her growing loneliness, Baba assured her it was the natural course of things.

“As we grow older Momo, we form a lot of bonds. Some becomes the foundation of our nature and identity while others are circles at certain phases of our lives.” Baba gave her a cup of black tea with a dash of honey, her favorite brew. “There comes a point we grow out of those circles and seek the next set of bonds. The rarest of all, those bonds that accompany you forever.”

“I thought we were his family, Baba.” There was a burning feeling behind Hinamori’s eyes, and she felt a headache forming.

Baba stared at her wistfully and tucked a loose tendril behind her grandchild’s ear. “If you’re so adamant to keep those bonds, why won’t you walk beside him?”

Hinamori shook her head vehemently and slapped her palms on the table. “Baba! I will never leave you. Please stop saying that!” Some of her black tea spilled. “Besides, the academy is invitation-only, remember?”

“Momo my dearest and only, I’m almost 70. I’ve lived a good, full life so far, and I want you to live like that as well. I don’t want you shackled by your past or be burdened by taking care of me. The world is bigger than this town,” Baba chuckled to herself as she took a sip of her tea. “Besides, I have reliable neighbors who will take care of me. We have a telephone now so we can always communicate. Wondrous technology. Oh but you have to teach me.”

“Baba, stop it. The academy is not accepting low-tier students like me.”

“Oh Momo. Just throw it out there and the world will right itself.”

Baba’s wisdom never failed. When Hinamori became 15 years old, the academy opened its gates to the common folk. The complaints about accessibility and inequality probably got to the administration. Investments in the town kept pouring in, demand for residential space was increasing, the clamor to enter the academy regardless of social status eventually gained traction. While the invitation and referral arrangements still existed, the opportunities leveled through general admissions. Well, not quite. The examinations were grueling, and the interviews were tricky to answer. They asked outright for research proposals and the field of specialization one was interested in. On top of her head, Hinamori stated her concentration on terrestrial ecology. Actually, she just wanted to create perennial daffodils so their meadow would be yellow all year round, no matter the season.

Hinamori passed the screening. General admission passers were granted wider freedom but lesser privilege. They were not restricted to stay in the dorms and had normal class schedules that didn’t involve laboratory and experiments on weekends. On the downside, they were provided lesser amount of allowance (good for family of three) which Hinamori was still thankful for. They weren’t also allowed to venture into the buildings of the core members. From her initial grant, she bought a bicycle to make her trips faster and quicker across opposite end of the town. It was an unstable feeling, landing on shifting grounds, but soon enough, she found her balance.

I’m in. I’m inside the academy’s gates. It was an exhilarating feeling of great expectations and humble beginnings.

Only 100 students were admitted in the winter. Amid the flurry of post-inauguration activities, Hinamori saw the familiar silver hair sticking out like sore thumb in the middle of the crowd.

He’s not supposed to be here. He was accompanied by three people trailing behind at a safe distance. She presumed they were the three Rs – Rangiku, Rukia, Renji. On Hitsugaya’s arms was a bouquet. “Oy, Momo.”

Her cheeks were flushed red. She wished she wore her hair loose instead of a bun because it had started to snow. “Broomstick Shirou-chan.” Was he taller when she last saw him? Silly, he was gone for two years.

“I just got back from my internship in time for your inauguration.” He handed her the bouquet of bright yellow daffodils, fully blooming in winter. “Congratulations.”

“Oh, I’m still taller than you,” Hinamori blurted out. “Oops. It was supposed to be a personal observation.”

“You know what, give me back the bouquet.”

“But it’s true! You probably still have the same height!”

“Momo, give me the bouquet back.”

“Won’t.” They both laughed it off, unaware of stealing glances from his company.

“Oooh is she the one you’re always writing letters to, Hitsugaya?” the blond-haired girl asked. “How sweet! Childhood sweethearts!”

“Shut up, Rangiku!”

“Oh no, we’re truly not-“ Hinamori started, but she was immediately cut off.

“Childhood sweethearts?!” the red-haired one yelled. “You mean to tell me this was fate? Wow, I’m so jealous.”

“I’m literally right here, Abarai.” The black-haired kid who was almost the same height as Hitsugaya was probably the least intense of the group. “I’m Kuchiki Rukia, by the way.”

Well, her surname certainly is, Hinamori thought. “I’m Hinamori Momo, Shirou-chan’s childhood friend.”

“Shirou-chan?!” They collectively egged him on, laughing at his clear embarrassment.

“Momo, stop using that nickname!”

Hinamori inhaled the clear scent of pine and camphor trees, reminding her of Baba cozy with her stacked fireplace and of stored jams in their pantry. She can’t wait to tell her Hitsugaya’s back. With the mended symbol of their bond on the crook of her arm, she entered the new phase of her life. Shifting grounds and great expectations.

-------

“Please greet Dr. Sousuke Aizen. He’s one of the foremost molecular biologists outside of Soul, and we are privileged to have him teach here. He will be your professor for biology. Keep in mind that you are arranged by your specialization, and he will be your mentor until you graduate in the academy,” Dr. Unohana, the academy director, announced to a class of fifteen.

Hinamori already outlined ten distinct thesis proposals in her first week. She made headstart on her readings too, already halfway on their given references for the year. If she was going to reunite fully with her friend, she needed to be a core member, and she will work hard for it.

Then, the name finally registered in her mind. Sousuke Aizen. The author of the most recent book she borrowed from the library which was also her inspiration for her thesis topics. She was engrossed with his theories, his writing style, and argumentations that she borrowed all his related books. If she was a radiologist, he was her Marie Curie. Sousuke Aizen was her teacher.

He had a magnetic presence, demanding all eyes on him. It was difficult not to notice him with his broad figure and soft tussle of dark brown hair. If eyes could smile, then he had those, albeit hidden behind square-shaped spectacles. His authoritative stance and the emanating kind disposition were confusing and difficult to compromise.

What an interesting person. Hinamori thought herself perceptive of people’s personalities based on her first impressions with them. That wasn’t successful with Hitsugaya though.

“So, should we start, or would you like me to immediately dismiss?”

It also perked up her interest that he was comfortable enough to teach without a lesson plan in hand or books. He would just talk conversationally with his students and still cover a multitude of topics. He wasn’t the stiff professor that Dr. Kuchiki was. Her classmates would seek him out after classes, asking him to join their group dinners. When she attended once, he noticed she wasn’t talking.

“Hinamori, are you still uncomfortable with your new learning setting?” Dr. Aizen asked. He gestured to refill her now empty teacup, and she obliged him with a nod. “I’ve heard you mostly got your knowledge from reading. Impressive.”

She blushed at the compliment. “I try to do my best, Dr. Aizen.”

He placed his cheek on his hand and stared at her. “You know, I also came from a rural area. Made it hard for me to mingle with the central town brats.”

Brats. She laughed at this sudden connection. “I’m also trying on that area, Sir. I made friends, but they’re on the other side of building.” Was it safe to share that?

“Oh, you have friends from the core Soul group? Fascinating. That means you’re really interesting Hinamori.” He smiled at her, tapping the empty tea pot. “You can talk to me anytime. My office is open for any concerns, academic or otherwise. I want you to know I can be on your friend list.”

The fact that he related to her situation made her happy. A renowned professor with the same roots as her still managed to get to the top. She felt seen. By the end of the semester, Hinamori volunteered to be his research assistant.

NEXT CHAPTER | 5 OF 12 | WANTING VALIDATIONS

[full-coverage]

(super)natural Bottle Blonde

The weirder the natural remedy, the more mess it creates in your shared bathroom with your roommate, the better it works, right? Historically speaking, Cleopatra submerged her legendary bosoms in sour donkey milk before driving Julius Caesar, a man normally guided by flawless strategic instincts, crazy. Sylvester Stallone and my grandmother are both unafraid of cracking a raw egg over something that’s not a hot skillet, albeit for different reasons; my grandmother uses it as a hair mask. I won’t ask what the strangest “organic” topical fix you’ve ever used is, because I think I would rather not know. Instead, I would like to travel from the land of failed home experiments into the world of science, where researchers draw inspiration from nature in a methodical, reasoned way. 

Dr. Claudia Battistella and Prof. Nathan Gianneschi are two chemists who don’t reach for the vegetable crisper and a blender when they want to see what kind of tricks Mother Nature has in store for us. Actually, they’re more used to working with tidy synthetic molecules. Claudia joined Nathan’s lab at Northwestern University to study how polymers, or chains of molecules, can be used to deliver drugs in the body for cancer treatment applications. Only recently did she start working with a polymer naturally occurring in our body, which she describes as a “disaster” — elsewhere it is characterized as being “enigmatic” and “mysterious” by science journalists who evidently have a much more leisurely relationship with it. I myself am fascinated by the idea that molecules can have some kind of personality. Imagine, your second-grade best friend Jimmy’s rabbit didn’t have much in the way of vibes, and here is something which can be represented by several sticks and letters on paper, frustrating and fascinating people at the same time.

So can you guess which molecule I’m talking about? Fine, the dead giveaway would be that it is the pigment in our skin and eyes. But melanin doesn’t just sit on top of us like icing on a cookie: it’s swimming around inside us, where it has all kinds of important functions. Moreover, we aren’t the only organism that produces melanin — far from it. 

But before we get to the full spectrum of what melanin can do, let’s find out what use for it Claudia came up with. “What can I do to get closer to this material?” she pondered in Nathan’s lab after seeing her colleagues experiment with its myriad of applications. The answer came when she was discussing the problem of hair graying and losing melanin with age and sun exposure with a friend. In a stroke of optimism characteristic of only advanced scientists and toddlers who have just dislodged an expensive ceramic from a high place, she thought, “well, can we just put it back?”

It turns out that indeed we can. Pigments and dyes in nature “stick like crazy,” says Nathan. “That’s why your hair color is permanent.” The Gianneschi lab developed a series of hair dyes based on Claudia’s idea to use synthetic melanin, from blonde to black to red. In addition to being nifty, by being based on a building block already present in our body, the formula avoids use of a molecule called PPD widely present in permanent hair dyes which causes allergies in some people and is a known carcinogen. 

But having grown up spending more time in the manga section of my local bookstore than with YA books, I’m more interested in crazy hair colors than those with names like “Spiced Amber” and “Chestnut Brown.” If scientists are spending time in a lab formulating hair dye, the result better be something that only a Final Fantasy character designer could come up with. Luckily, the Gianneschi lab researchers had kind of the same idea. 

“Some of the most beautiful things, like throat feathers especially in certain types of hummingbirds, are super reflective. Materials that are that reflective are driven by melanin, which is a black particle… it doesn’t have any color like that, it’s a huge light sink,” Nathan explains. In other words, dark melanin granules, which look like poppy seeds under a microscope, also make some of the most fantastical colors in nature. How is this possible? To find out, physicists were put to the task, which spells trouble for everyone in terms of finding an easy answer to the question. They studied peacock feathers, which are made of basically the same materials that our hair is, and discovered that they were arranged in such precise and regular structures that they bend light to create basically a rave on a subatomic level that we see as the peacock’s pimped-out pattern. This phenomenon is known as structural coloration.

When I asked Nathan if this would be possible on human hair, he admitted that he thinks it would be theoretically possible, but difficult: “We don’t know enough about how to organize the particles in hair. I’m a bit concerned over whether or not we’d ever pull it off.” To set up the molecular light maze that results in a rainbow of shifting colors, they would need very stringent control over the underlying substrate. On top of that, melanin isn’t soluble in water, which means for chemists that studying it in the first place is like trying to recognize a friend without prescription glasses, making everything that much more difficult. “But that would be awesome, right? If you have a permanent hair color that could be iridescent. People would buy that, for sure. But I don’t know how to do that.”

Still, there’s hope for those of us who want to rock a look “inspired by nature” in the most outlandish way possible: Nathan said that he’s working on incorporating his and Claudia’s work with melanin into cosmetic production. Smooth surfaces like eyelids make for a much better canvas for playing with light than hair. During our conversation, he shows me a favorite Instagram account of his, the Gourmet Biologist, who gently pinches tiny tropical hummingbirds and holds them up to the camera to demonstrate how they make peacocks look “like some pedestrian thing.” So while geniuses like Prof. Gianneschi and Dr. Battistella do the hard work, I’m going to scroll through these amazing feats of coloration in nature and put together my next concert look in my head. 🦚

[tomasorban]

FRACTAL DHARMATA & UNIVERSAL HYPER-INTELLIGENCE

Our rediscovery of the accurate 3D Dharmata geometry is based on the novel Timewave discovery of Novelty Theory, visionarily rediscovered by ontologist Terrence McKenna, initially in the 1970s.

The Timewaves’ typological morphology has been acredited by UCLA scientist and mathematician, professor Ralf Abrahams (A Chronology Of Time), as the fractal symmetry of the ontological morphology of time itself.

The Timewave verified to be an accurate cartography of time’s temporal wave architecture within the atomic clock observation measurements made by Los Alamos Laboritory physicist, Dr. Sheliak. The temporal behavior within the scale of the ATOMIC clocks, behaved accordingly to the Timewave-1 graph topology…

Thus, Puharich’s assertion to the ATOM’s nucleus MM force within the proton, to be following fractal electric/magnetic charge, which he also relates to the Mandlebrot set — is clearly here highlighted for the very first time. Especially when we understand the relation between the Timewave, Dharmata, and the mandlebrot fractal, as follows…

This leads us to our findings… By tracing the complete Timewave graph into 3D computer animation software; replicating the design 180° in mirror symmetry; and then rotating this into 3 dimensions, the beautiful and remarkable precise morphology of the Dharmata was resurrected from the catacombs of antiquity. Dharmata’s shape is traced by the Mandlebrot fractal symmetry outline.

Before Leonardo Da Vinci’s version of this mandelbrot fractal design within his Leicester Codex, he was preceeded by several hundred years in the remarkable labour undertaken by Monk Udo of Achen, who spent 9 years calculating the accurate Mandlebrot set which he called Divinitas (“Godhead”), rather than using Abacus, he utlised the Vedic mathematics of ‘algorythm’ calculations that utilised the Vedic arabic numerals (based on Brahmi-script), (The forgotten genius of Udo von Aachen", Schipke, R.J. and Eberhardt, A., Harvard Journal of Historical Mathematics, 32, 3 (March 1999), pp 34-77), which itself is derived from Vedic mathematics. He depicted it as the star of Bethlehem.

The Timewave, also appears to be the accurate morphology of the full permutation of the DNA genom (by the implication of Dr. Martin Schönberger’s accademically impeccable I-Ching and The Genetic Code: The Hidden Key To Life). Thereby, the fractal MM fields of the hadronic force in the proton, through 8hz electrolysis of water, producing the amino acids and full proteins in the very same fractal symmetry as itself… which itself is the complete permutation of the DNA code, is extraordinary…

That is: proteins “Made in the Image of its Creator,” the organising 27D Hadron through its MM fractal symmetry… and which turns out to be the symmetrical geometry of the full permutation of the DNA codon language.

Thereby, giving a fractal (self-similar, self-organising, self-reflective/conscious), hyper-topology of the All-One Macro nature of the hadron’s hyperdimensional unified hypercharacteristics... The hadronic mechanic’s Macro Irreversible Hyper-Organisation of all life.

Thereby: the hyper-morphology of indivisible wholeness that is all-one Hyper-Intelligence — HTI: Hyper-Temporal/Hyper-Terrestrial Intelligence.

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF LIFE

Thus, some initial major decipherments of the Universal Language orchestrated by the Hadronic-Intelligence Hyper-Organisation of Life, have been decrypted, self-embedded and axiomatic within the very cipher codes of life itself, and within the very heart fields of proto-matter (proton-matter proper).

Hereby, we have identification of the fractal Universal Language composed of a hadronic hyper-semantics that has seamless axiomatic similitude in its linguistics between the fractal design of the code of life and the fractal geometry of the MM force comprising the alphabet of all the periodic elements that composit the universe…

Same fractal semantics as the DNA life code and the organising fractal force in the heart of all the periodic elements that built the universe… And the application of one (the fractal MM within the proton), upon the element water (by 8hz electrolysis), produces living complex amino acid chained proteins that grow according to the fractal Dharmata/Mandlebrot image/symmetry, that is the characteristics of the MM proto-force in the atomic heart; and which is also the fractal image of the entire ontological morphology of the DNA code, itself a composite of amino acids…

Talk about Self-Organisation, Self-Reflection, Self-Similarity… The same, self-similar, universal All-One Mind-Heart — the indivisible unity between the, so called, inanimate and the animate (such a consequence is also objectively established by hadronic hyper-mathematics. Arbitary connections have been eliminated, illusive assumptions vacuumed into nonexistence)

The human genome is some 3.6 billion DNA letters in length, whilst one single X-chromosome is a macro-DNA molecule some 160 million DNA letters in length. Dr Robert Pollack relates that the DNA:

“Is also a form of text, and that therefore it is best understood by analytical ways of thinking commonly applied to other forms of text, for example, books.”

— R. Pollack A Crisis In Scientific Moral, Nature, 385,1997. pp 674

One cannot analyse a text like a book, if one presupposes that there was no intelligence behind writing it. The very fact that the DNA turns out to be an intricate language, written in complex grammer, reveals an intelligence that has a far more holographically integrated hyper-semantics than our present use of languages.

The DNA resonating crystal is an intelligently ordered linguistics with a holographic laser resonation communication continuum, as molecular biologist Dr. Frank-Kamenetskii relates:

“The DNA crystal is aperiodic, since the sequence of base pairs is as irregular as the sequence of letters in a coherent text.”

—M. D. Frank-Kamenetskii Unveiling The DNA. New York, VCH Publishers, 1993. Pp 31

Or as noted biologist Sir Charles Dobbs had relayed:

“The whole of the protein in the human body is replaced in roughly 160 days… When one contrasts the great complexity of the protein molecule with the fact that millions of these substences are constantly being built up and disintegrated in the human body, and moreover rebuilt to precisely the same structure, one cannot help but speculate about the controlling mechanism.”

—Sir Charles Dobbs, quoted in Dr. Harold Saxton Burr’s, The Fields Of Life (Ballantine, New York, 1973).

Thus, to find the same fractal self-similarity in the DNA code’s permutations as that of the organising force within the protons from the hadron omegon, should seriously transcend the primitive assumption of zero intelligence behind the DNA life book.

The fractal self-similarity thus of DNA, time, the proton’s hadronic magnetic monopole force, and the fractal growth of life exposed to the 8hz ELF field of this fractal force, demonstrates a post modern fax simile of the Veda’s, “man made in the Image of the Original Model of Manu,” and the Biblical, “Man made in the Image and the Similitude of God.”

Puharich’s observation of the fractal ‘mandlebrot’ geometry arising from the Magnetic Monopole force within the proton, in the 8hz electrolysis of water, and his above mentioning of this being the fractal electric and magnetic charge within each of the 3 quarks that compose the proton of the atomic nucleus, now has some astounding and surprising cross-verifications…

That is: the Timewave fractal form discovered by McKenna, vindicated by Temporal Chronologer Dr. Ambraham, and observed to be the actual nature of the fractal geometry of time within the atomic clocks, by Dr. Sheliak.

However, clarity descends only when our novel discovery of the Dharmata 3D symmetry of the Timewave was renderred, and the Dharmata is beautifully outlined by the Mandlebrot set.

The Vedic description of the Dharmata (which also means “the universal law of divine love”), and taken forwards all the way into Sanskrit/Buddhist art and cosmology, is also utilised as the geometry of time, the Dharma Maha Kala (“Law of Omni-Time”).

Java, Indonesia, Meru temple with 72 Dharmata Stupa’s upon the AUM Sri Yantra, 27 line geometry. With 432 Buddhas. Charting the 27 Lunar mansions

Forinstance, the 72 Stupas placed on Mt. Meru, in Java, Indonesia, is a prime example. Not only the outline of the Dharmata, but the fact that there are 72 of them on this version of the Meruprastara mountain (the sum of each row of bricks that build the Meruprastara pyramid equates to the sum number sequence that 8hz established upon itself within water… 8, 16, 32, 64 etc… Meru AKA the Sri Yantra, or the Sierpinski pyramid of modern mathematics).

These 72 Dharmata/Stupas are arranged on the Meru pyramid (itself acting as chronomonitor of the 27 lunar mansions through which the Moon passes in one lunar year), in such a manner as to mark the 1° of precession shift of our planet within the 12 zodiac houses — 72 years per degree, 360 x 72 for the complete zodiac wheel (nevermind the axiomatic 27/72).

Meru Prastara Vedic Pyramid Altar & Chonomoniter

[rkiverse]

otoñal - 3 | jjk

previous → Chapter 3 → next  

Pairing | Jeon Jungkook x Reader

Genre | fluff, angst + professor!jungkook, college!au, and very strong e2l!au

Warnings | for future chapters, there will be explicit language, lots of bantering, and lots of pining :-)

Summary | Of all the women Jeon Jungkook can have, he goes for the ones he can’t. And so when he’s faced with an arranged marriage, his best buddies come to the rescue with a proposition that leaves him with no choice but to go with. Little did he know, said ‘proposition’ has something to do with a student he doesn’t get along with quite well.

→ to get into the mood of this series, i highly suggest listening to this!

Word Count | 1.9k+ words

“Blind date? Are you sure this will help me?”

Jungkook looks at Namjoon through the mirror while he’s buttoning up his shirt. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t take much of Namjoon’s energy for Jungkook to take up his offer. And so here they were, in Jungkook’s freakishly large bedroom, getting ready for his blind date. 

To Namjoon, it was amusing to see Jungkook get ready for his date. He’d often wonder how the twenty-three year old had lived his youth, but from his young age, he knew that those years were probably spent studying and doing research. 

“I guess we’ll have to see,” Namjoon replies. “My friend had told me that you’ll love her.”

“Great. I hate wasting time.” Namjoon snorts. “What? Why are you laughing at me?”

“Listen, kid. Science and love are two completely different things. You may hate wasting time because all your life you’ve been doing research and finding discoveries. There’s no time to waste in the science field.” Namjoon explains. “But love… love is different. Love takes time.”

“What are you? Cupid?” Jungkook teases. 

“This is your first date ever, isn’t it?” The smirk on Jungkook’s face immediately vanishes and Namjoon can’t help but burst out into loud laughter. He glances at his wrist watch before straightening up his posture. “We should get going or else you’ll be running late.”

As they head downstairs to put on their shoes, Namjoon can’t help but gawk at the chandelier hanging right above him. When Jungkook had told him that his parents were running the country’s top business, he didn’t believe him. But from Jungkook’s large bedroom to the endless chandeliers scattered around the mansion, Namjoon could only conclude that Jungkook’s definitely richer than he thinks.

“Namjoon?” He snaps out of his trance. 

Jungkook smiles. “Wouldn’t want to be late, would we?”

“He’ll be here soon, so freshen up in a couple of minutes.”

You roll your eyes at Hoseok. Hoseok looks quite anxious, you note. “Why do you look so nervous? Are you the one going on a blind date?”

“R-Right. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.” He laughs to shake it all off, but his look of anxiousness only returns a couple of seconds later. You chuckle. “Stop laughing at me.”

“Was I laughing at you?”

“You were.” Hoseok pouts. 

The blind date was set to happen at a family restaurant. The atmosphere was nice and cosy, where the lights were a bit dimmer than usual and the restaurant was run by a family itself. To set the mood, Hoseok had booked a table near the fireplace. 

“You know, I briefly met your date a couple of weeks ago.” Hoseok begins. “He’s… pretty handsome. I hope it works out with the both of you. I think you’re his ideal type.”

You scoff. “Ideal type? You think I’m his ideal type?”

“His friend had told me that if he were to find someone to match him up with, it would be someone who loves to eat, studies hard, and is passionate about what they do. You’ll love him.” Hoseok replies, before grinning. “I think it’s time for me to go. Your date is here, he’s in the parking lot.”

“He is?” You blurt out, somehow growing nervous. Hoseok’s already up on his feet, ready to leave, but you can’t help but grab his hand. “He’s here already?”

“Yeah, are you nervous?” Hoseok asks you and you nod your head. “Don’t worry about it. If things don’t go well, then we can put it all behind us.”

“You say that like it’s the easiest thing to do.”

“Because I’m not the one going on a blind date.” He sticks his tongue out at you and you glare at him.

“Leave before I pull your hair off your scalp.”

“I’m leaving! Enjoy.” He grins.

Your eyes follow Hoseok as he heads out of the restaurant. Once Hoseok’s out of sight, you slowly sit back down in your seat. Minutes later, the door opens and suddenly, your eyes pop out in surprise. In walks in Professor Jeon, and out of sheer panic, you cover your face with your hands. At this point in time, you wish you could just let the table eat you up and throw you out into a different universe. You take a quick peek through your fingers, and you see Professor Jeon looking around the restaurant as if he’s looking for someone. 

But then you think to yourself, he’s not here for you, right? You shake your head. From all the occurrences and encounters you’ve had with Professor Jeon, you’re not quite sure what to expect anymore. 

Suddenly, your thoughts are cut short when you hear someone clear their throat. You gulp nervously, slowly uncovering your face with your hands. At first, your eyes are set to look down at a pair of leather shoes and as they slowly trail up, you say a silent prayer. But before you could even look up to see who it is―

“Class president?” You grimace.

You clear your throat, looking up to see Professor Jeon standing right in front of you. “P-Professor Jeon, nice to see you here.”

“Nice to see you here, class president.” He flashes you a small smile before pointing at the empty chair across from you. “Sorry, but I think you’re sitting at the wrong table.”

“M-Me?” You stutter. 

He nods. “Are you sure you didn’t get your reservations mixed up?”

“Ah, no, my friend reserved this table for my blind date and I―” You shake your head but before you could finish your sentence, you clamp your mouth shut. Professor Jeon stares at you for a moment before it dawns on him.

It was all starting to make sense. 

Professor Jeon chuckles while you let out a groan. He decides to sit in the chair across from you. Your face was heating up due to embarrassment, and out of instinct, you grab a couple of breadsticks and start shoving them in your mouth. 

“Let’s just have dinner together for the sake of our friends, alright?” He insists, and you look at him with terror. “Besides, I’m getting quite hungry.”

As Professor Jeon calls out for a waiter, you grab another breadstick to shove into your mouth. You weren’t quite sure how you were feeling. You feel embarrassed because you did not expect Professor Jeon to be your blind date, and now you have to spend the whole evening with him. What were you supposed to talk about during dinner? Were you under dressed? But you also feel angry, specifically at Hoseok, because you knew that he had set this up himself all for a good grade in his class. 

“Class president?” You snap out of your trance.

“Hm?” You hum in reply.

“I’ve ordered steak for you since you’ve been zoning out,” he says. “Is that alright with you?”

You nod. “It’s alright with me, Professor Jeon.”

He looks at you for a moment, before grabbing a napkin. He hands it over to you and you look at him questioningly. He points at your mouth, “you have some bread crumbs.”

“A-Ah,” you say sheepishly, taking the napkin and wiping your mouth.

“You don’t need to call me Professor Jeon.” He insists. “We’re not at school anyways, right?”

“I―”

“Call me Jungkook instead.” He interrupts you. “And stop looking so stiff, do I make you that nervous?”

You scoff, and the first thing that Jungkook notices is how you loosen up. “You? Make me nervous? Unbelievable.”

Once your dinner has been placed onto the table, you mumble a soft ‘thank you!’ to the waiter. Jungkook watches you as you grab your knife and fork, stabbing the steak with your fork. A smile starts to spread across his lips when he hears you mutter underneath your breath.

You stab the steak with your fork and vigorously cut a bite-sized piece. You mutter to yourself, “just wait until I see you, Hoseok, I will surely kill you for this.”

“What was that?” Jungkook questions.

You force a smile. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“So, class president―”

“Did you just call me class president?” You cut him off. “Are we on school grounds?”

Jungkook clamps his mouth shut. You purse your lips into a tight line. “No, we aren’t, ma’am.”

“Is this how you treat all of your dates? Call them class president?” You ask and he shakes his head. “Yeah, exactly what I thought.”

Jungkook looks at you amusedly. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well, first of all, my name is ____.” You squint your eyes at him. He smiles. “I’m a physics major, unfortunately your student―”

“Unfortunately?”

You nod your head. “And before my father passed away, he asked me to try and explore immunology, see if I like it. And so I did.”

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. You wave it off.

“Tell me about yourself.” You shove a forkful of mashed potatoes into your mouth. He can’t help but chuckle at how you look right now, how you look at him with curiosity and a mouth full of food.

“My name is Jungkook. I’m a biologist. I love molecular and cell biology. I teach immunology and fortunately I am your professor―”

You grin. “Fortunately?”

He smiles. “I’ve also published three research papers throughout my undergrad, which is why I graduated so early.” 

“That explains so much,” you mumble. “That day where I spilled coffee all over your shirt, remember that day?”

“How could I forget that day?”

“Anyways,” you roll your eyes. “I initially thought you were an exchange student because you look really young.”

“I’m only twenty-three,” he notes.

“Twenty-three?!” You blurt out. “Wow, I guess the girls in my class would be dying to be in my position right now.”

He leans back in his seat, raising an eyebrow at you. “What makes you say that?”

Your eyes slightly widen. “Do you not notice?”

He looks at you confusedly. “Notice what?”

“All the girls in class all sit near the front of the auditorium because they want to get a good view of you!” You explain. “Sometimes the earliest they’ll file in is forty-five minutes before the lecture because if they come late, all the seats near the front would be taken.”

“Interesting,” he says with much thought. “I barely noticed.”

“Well, at least now you know.” You shrug your shoulders, taking a quick sip of water. 

He purses his lips into a tight line before uttering, “but if you’re always earlier than your classmates, why do you always sit in the back?”

You manage to eat everything on your plate, and you lean against the chair, rubbing at your belly. Jungkook had finished his meal as well, finishing his glass of water. 

“Professor Jeon,” you mumble. “Before we leave, can I just ask you something?”

“What?”

“Can we just leave this all behind us? This was clearly just a set up made by my friend―”

“By Hoseok, right?” He cuts you off, and you nod your head. “Don’t worry, I figured everything out ever since I saw you sitting here.”

You frown. “Sorry, Professor Jeon. I swear, I will kill him by the time I see him tomorrow in class.”

“If I were to be quite honest with you, I took out my own time for this blind date. I could’ve been doing research instead, but you’ve made it very entertaining.” He smiles. “Thanks for staying and having dinner with me.”

“Oh, this? This was nothing,” you wave it off. “Besides, I was pretty hungry and that steak we just had? Delicious.”

“But you did say that you were going to get revenge, right?” He asks. 

“You bet. I’ll rip Hoseok’s hair off his scalp tomorrow.” You say it as if it was nothing to you.

“Well, I think I know just what he needs.”

You eye him suspiciously, and he clasps his hands together. You slowly lean in, a mischievous grin spreading across your lips. 

“What do you have in mind?”

author’s note | this was long overdue but here it is! i hope you liked it! send me your feedback and comments here!

[angelbabylu]

Man or Beast // LH

pairing: witch!oc x vampire!luke

word count: 7.5k

warnings: smut, fluff, magical stuff, angst if you squint 

notes: so last week i posted something wicked, an introduction to this universe where 5sos are vampires. as stated in my note for that fic, the idea comes from this book series. whereas that fic dealt with a lot of witch lore, this will deal with vampire lore. basically digging into luke’s family and backstory and such. this has the barest of allusions to dracula. i hope you enjoy! 

title: from this dracula quote: “[S]omething dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.”

Part 1: Something Wicked

-- 

The first year in front of her had turned bright red in embarrassment. They were in the greenhouse discussing the life cycle of plants and how magic could be used to speed up that process. Margo, the TA for this freshman herbology class, had grown quite used to her students being intimidated by her. Especially those like the young witch in front of her who’s magic had gone haywire and caused several plants in the vicinity to die. The good news was that Margo was somewhat of a prodigy when it came to herbology. It was one of the few things she could do without incantations.

She ran her hands over the flowering plants as she spoke to the girl. “Like with all magic, it is about manipulating something on a molecular level. With raw power, all you have to do is send your magic into the universe and manipulate it to do your bidding. Like creating water.” Margo whispered a quick spell that had an orb of water forming between her fingertips. She tossed it into the air, and it disappeared into steam.

“Or,” Margo continued, “telekinesis.” After a wink from Margo, the large, round, wire-rimmed glasses that the first year wore wiggled up and down on her face.

“The water and your glasses are both inanimate objects, so I only had to worry about manipulating them to my own will. With plants, you can’t just shove energy at it and hope for the best as they have a will of their own. Listen to the plant and learn what it wants. If you just try to bend it to your will, it will resist, which could lead to. . . ” Margo trailed off.

The young witch had already experienced the consequences of such actions. “This takes a level of practiced magical manipulation.” As if in a show of agreement, the plants began to come back alive around her, sprouting flowers as red as the witch’s face had turned earlier.

Margo was so engulfed in trying to teach her young student how to control horticultural magic, she didn’t notice the slight prickling in her thumb.

She missed the whispering and giggling too. It was not until the young witch interrupted her with a small, yet constrained smile and said, shyly, “Miss Crowley, I think your boyfriend is here,” that she looked up and out towards the doorway. Sure enough, leaning against the door frame to the greenhouse was Luke, arms crossed, a smile on his face.

Margo pursed her lips in mild annoyance, hands coming to rest on her hips. Luke knew that when he showed up to her lectures, it distracted the class. Most vampires didn’t hang out with the Horticultural Magic students–they tended to prefer biological sciences, history, literature, and other such pursuits. And, vampires were also the least prevalent of the magical beings. Chances were many of the first years had never seen a vampire before meeting Luke.

Some of the bolder witches had already made their way over to him, taking his attention away from Margo.

“I suppose class is over?” asked the young witch Margo had been helping. She looked at her students whose focus was no longer on the plants in front of them, but on the tall, looming vampire in the doorway.

“I suppose,” Margo said solemnly.

She went to the front of the greenhouse and called out for attention. “Class dismissed. Please remember that I expect all of you to be able to draw the life cycle of an angiosperm by next Tuesday! There will be a quiz.”

As always, there was a collective groan throughout the room. Margo ignored it as she went to about packing her things. Luke stayed at the door for a couple of seconds saying goodbye to the few students that were friendly with him before walking over to her. When she had rammed all that could fit in the small laptop bag, she slung it over her shoulder, picking up the spellbook and the biology textbook she couldn’t quite fit.

Reaching out, Luke stole the books and a kiss. “Good afternoon, mon cœur,” he said, his native language rolling smoothly off his tongue. “I take it you had a good class.”

Margo refused to smile at him, no matter how charming he was.

When she didn’t return his smile, he turned indignant. “What did I do?” He asked, voice raising an octave.

“Half my class is like in love with you. Every time you show up, they forget I exist.”

Luke laughed at her revelation, placing one arm around her and ushering her out of the greenhouse. “Half your class is in love with you,” he shot back. “That girl you were talking to when I walked in? She has such a huge crush on you, I could hear her heart hammering from halfway down the hall.”

“What?” Margo’s mouth hung open. “No way. Poor thing. It’s too bad for her that I don’t date my students.”

“And that you’re dating me,” Luke reminded, squeezing her shoulder possessively.

Margo laughed; she had known that would get a reaction out of him.

They walked in relative silence, basking in the golden hue of the late afternoon sun. Glancing up at Luke, she watched as the light brushed against his angular features, causing the contours of his face to seem more prominent. She remembered the days she thought vampires would burn in the sunlight. Turns out that, while they preferred nighttime, the sun did little more than irritate their sensitive eyes. Growing up in her small town in Massachusetts, she didn’t have much contact with other supernatural creatures that weren’t witches. It was part of the reason she loved the University of the Arcana as much as she did. The different kinds of people she got to meet were refreshing.

Luke’s Tesla was parked a few feet outside the Horticultural Sciences Complex. The research lab where he mapped the vampire genome and studied evolutionary biology was just a few blocks from Margo’s greenhouse. Their evening routine used to include enjoying a leisurely 5-minute stroll from said greenhouse to the biology complexes. Recently, however, that had not been the case.  

“Why’s your car here?” She asked, despite already knowing the answer.

“I went to a few theology seminars today,” Luke said in response.

Along with being an evolutionary biologist, Luke was getting a degree in the history of theism, and, when he was feeling particularly nostalgic, he also attended classes on Romantic-era literature. The thing about vampires was that they had all the time in the world, so getting two or three degrees at once was nothing to them. It didn’t escape her notice, however, that he had been attending these classes more frequently.

Margo tramped down her budding need for confrontation and asked instead, “Do we have any plans for tonight?” In the privacy of Luke’s car, she kicked off her trainers and took her hair from its top knot. Saying goodbye to the day, she relaxed back into to cool leather of the interior, facing Luke only once her legs were tucked firmly underneath her.

Splitting his attention expertly between her and the road, Luke asked, “Would the house be mad if I stole you away for one more night?”

Her house, or rather the Gamma Nu Sorority House, had a habit of misbehaving when it was feeling cheated. Once, a few weeks before, she had spent 6 blissful days sleeping on Luke’s memory foam mattress only to return home to find her room missing. After hours of begging and cajoling, there was still no sign of her scratched up wooden door. Finally, it had taken her promising not to spend more than three days at a time at Luke’s for the house to re-materialize the room in its former spot.

“We’ve got one more day,” Margo informed him, thinking about their Game of Thrones marathon that had lasted two nights in a row. “I can’t watch Game of Thrones tonight though. Your girl’s gotta study.”

“I could cook while you study?” Luke suggested. “Then, we can do dinner and go to bed early.”

“Good food and an early bedtime?” Margo released an exaggerated moan. “Talk dirty to me.”

:: ::

It was 9 PM when Luke entered the study that, over months of dating, had become more hers than his. He was holding a pasta dish, two glasses of wine, and some freshly baked bread. Margo was more excited to see the food than she was to see him.

Luke’s diet consisted mostly of blood, animal’s or hers, and wine. Since becoming a vampire, he had lost his taste for human food, but not his love of the culinary arts. Dating her gave him an excuse to get back into the kitchen where he liked to get experimental with his dishes.

She closed the potions textbook in front of her and held her hand out for the plate as soon as he got close enough. “Carbs!” she cried happily. “You do love me.”

He chuckled and kissed her before handing her the plate. Leaning against the edge of the desk, he watched intently as she took the first bite.

“Any good?” Luke’s culinary inventions didn’t often leave her wanting, and this time was no different. The fork had no sooner left her mouth than she was groaning.

Laughing, Luke said, “I’ll take that as an affirmative.” Perched on the desk, he sipped wine casually and gave her a moment to savor her food. Then, he asked, “How’s potions going?”

“It’s kicking my ass,” was her grumble of a reply. “There are hundreds of potion bases, and I have to memorize them all by next Friday.”

“Do you want me to quiz you while you eat?” He was already reaching for the book she had set aside earlier.

Grabbing his hand, Margo stopped him. “If I see or hear anything about potions for the next 12 hours I might actually die.”

“At least we haven’t resorted to dramatics,” he retorted dryly. After he studied her for a minute, then announced, “Alright, finish eating and meet me in the bathroom.”

Reluctance must have shown on her face because he exclaimed, “Oh my god, just do it!” Then, he disappeared through the office door.

Fifteen minutes later, Margo left the study for the bathroom, which she found with its door slightly ajar, soothing piano music drifting out. She pushed inside to reveal a prepared bath and a few candles burning, tossing soft light off the porcelain of the tub. A small speaker sat on the counter, the source of the sounds that had drawn her in earlier. Luke was noticeably absent.

He appeared behind her in the next second, a couple of large towels in hand. “Ah, there you are.” He said nonchalantly, as if unaware of how romantic this simple gesture was in her eyes. He had seen how strung out she was and had known exactly what she needed. “C’mon, get in the tub.”

Margo was eager to follow his order, but first, she leaned over the stack of towels to press a chaste kiss to Luke’s lips. “You’re getting in with me, right?” She asked while unbuttoning the powder blue shirt she’d been wearing for over 14 hours then.

“If you want me to.”

Margo scoffed, then moved to unclasp her bra. Next went her pants and underwear. While wrapping her hair up into a bun atop her head, she slunk into the tub. She didn’t recline against the porcelain back just yet, leaving space for Luke. He was still standing by the doorway where he had been intently watching her movements.

“You coming?” She asked impatiently.

Those words snapped him out of whatever reverie her naked form had pulled him into. Shaking his head, he deposited the towels next to the tub, then undressed and slotted himself behind her. She relaxed, at last, leaning against the broad span of his chest.

“Thank you so much for doing this for me,” she whispered. Luke’s response was to place three small kisses on the route from her shoulder to her neck. She melted even further into his arms. “Who are we listening to?”

Luke, being as old as he was, preferred classical music to her top 40 pop. Having only taken a recorder class in elementary school, Margo knowledge of music was limited. Luke was determined to change that. Every chance he got, he played his favorite songs for her.

“Chopin,” was his answer, mouth still grazing the skin of her throat. “Nocturne Number 2 in E-Flat Major.”

“Did you know him?” She couldn’t help the slight hitch in her voice when he nibbled gently on the skin of her throat.

“We may have met once or twice.” In Luke terms, that was a yes. In 1795, the vampire who sired him had been wealthy with connections all around the globe. This meant that, for the first hundred years after his rebirth, Luke easily became acquaintances with any one of interest. As little as Margo knew about history, she enjoyed hearing the stories of past historical figures.

But tonight, Luke wasn’t interested in telling her a story. “Luke,” she whined as his bites got rougher, and his hand trailed down past her belly button.

“Is that a ‘Luke, please continue’ or a ‘Luke, stop.’” He asked, pausing all motions.

“It’s an ‘I can’t promise I won’t fall asleep immediately after I come,’” she retorted. A yawn slipped from her in that exact moment as if to prove her point.

“That’s okay.” This time he bit her ear. “You coming is all that matters anyhow.”

Unhindered, his hand slipped between her thighs. It started out gentle, with two fingers pushing against her clit. Almost reluctantly, she pushed her hips up to greet them. Then, as he started to explore her folds a bit more, she ground up against him in earnest. The hand that wasn’t toying with her folds squeezed gently on her breast and toyed with her nipple. She gripped his bicep in response.

Then, he slipped one finger inside her, sinusoidally dipping in and out, setting her whole body alight.

He another added another. Margo’s hips ground against him as she searched for more leverage. When he touched something inside her that filled her with ecstasy and the ravenous need for more, she cried out, and threw one leg over the side of the tub, displacing water in the process.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, God. Luke.” The cries of pleasure rang out throughout the room.

Luke began to finger her in earnest then, index and middle finger slipping in and out of her. He kissed up and down her neck until he was taken by the heat of the moment too. The hand that had been toying with her nipples slid down to her stomach, holding her flush against him as he rocked up against her. His dick was obviously hard between their slick bodies.

It wasn’t until he growled, low and guttural, that she realized just how far gone he was. He rearranged her, so she was seated fully on his lap, dick now positioned between her cheeks. All the tiredness was swept from her mind as she ground down against it.

Then, raising off his lap a bit and reaching back, she wrapped a hand around him. It was an awkward angle, but she made it work. Pumping him a few times made his hips go wild as he bucked uncontrollably.

She said, “I’m gonna–“

The words didn’t quite get out, lost in the haze of lust that made it impossible to think straight. Margo lined herself up with him and sank down. They weren’t going to last very long. The water in the bathtub continued to splash to the floors as one of Luke’s arms wrapped around her body, holding her slave to his motions. He had her pressed up against his chest, fucking up into her and toying with her clit. It was slippery and messy, and Luke had to reposition himself a few times, but neither made any attempts to stave off their lust so they could move to a bed. 

Chopin could barely be heard over his growls, her cries of pleasure, and the distinct sound of water sloshing over the edges of the tub. His lips continued their path up and down her neck, bites deeper than before. They were painful, but in a way that made her toes curl.

She knew what he wanted before he said anything. “Please, can I–” He began, but cut himself off and threw his head back, fighting an instinct.

They weren’t face to face, and with the way they were moving, inches from orgasm, neither would want to take a moment to reposition. So, he would have to bite her neck. It was of no consequence to her; it was nothing she couldn’t hide without makeup.

Without really thinking about, Margo responded to his silent plea. “Yes,” she gasped out. “God, yes.”

The next second, she felt the sharp pain of the skin of her neck being pierced, followed immediately by intense euphoria. She buried one hand in his hair, holding him there; the other went down to encourage his motions as he continued to rub against her clit. They came, one right after the other, their hips stuttering to a halt.

“Fuck,” Luke grunted when he pulled away from her neck, head falling against the plaster wall behind them with a thud. As always, it took him a few minutes to get his wits about him after drinking her blood. Margo took that time to pull off of him and catch her breath.

Later, when they were both tucked underneath Luke’s black silk sheets, Luke ran his fingers gently over the deep teeth marks on her neck. Another lore Luke had taught her: Vampires didn’t have retractable fangs, but their teeth were more than sharp enough to pierce skin.

She had marks, like the ones now on her neck, almost ingrained in the skin of her chest. That is where he most often drank from her, as was the vampiric custom when it came to lovers.

“I shouldn’t have done this.” He said, fingers still tracing the indents of his teeth.

Margo couldn’t figure out why he sounded so pained. The healing properties of his saliva would ensure it didn’t leave a mark. Unless he bit her there again, after a day or two of covering it with makeup, neither of them would remember it even existed.

“It’s fine. No one’s going to see it.” Margo insisted.

Luke didn’t respond.

Margo fell asleep with his thumb still tracing the outline of the marks.

:: ::

She woke up to a sharp prickling in her thumb. Shooting to a seated position, she looked at her hands, disoriented and confused by the sudden onslaught of pain. Luke, who had been awake in bed next to her, sat up as well.

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice noticeably laden with worry.

Margo shook her head.

“Something is looking for me.” She tried to shake the drowsiness from her mind. Her senses were dulled by it. Whenever a powerful creature came looking for her, a small prickling would alert her to their intent. But this was more powerful than anything she had ever experienced before.

“Three somethings,” she continued as she began to make sense of what she was feeling. “They’re big, and they’re powerful. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.”

She saw the exact moment understanding dawned on Luke. He sniffed the air once, then muttered, “Shit.” He was out of bed and at the door to the room in a blink.

“What’s happening?” She asked frantically, trying to figure out what she might have missed. There was some information Luke’s supernatural senses had picked up that hers could not provide. In moments like these, she envied how he was preternaturally attuned to his senses. 

“If I asked you to stay in the room, would you?” He asked.

But, she was already getting out of bed and slipping into her slippers and his robe. Even rushing through these motions, she was no match for vampire speeds. By the time reached the front door, Luke was standing there blocking the way of three large, imposing vampires she had never seen before.

They were all dressed in all black. One stood in front of all the rest, his dyed red hair slicked back. He wore a t-shirt tucked into jeans with a leather jacket thrown over it. Margo could see he wore two rings on each hand and his nails were painted black. The man on the left looked much more laid back. His black jeans were distressed, and he wore an ACDC t-shirt. While Luke traded jabs in French with the frontman, this one simply stood back with an easy smile on his face. Finally, there was the man with a slightly deeper skin tone than the others leaning against the door frame. His arms were crossed and the fabric of the plain black t-shirt he wore struggled to cover the entirety of his bicep. If this was some kind of vampire shakedown, he was definitely the muscle.

The frontman noticed her first. He scoffed in disgust and began gesturing to her as they spoke. The other two remained relatively quiet but did spare her a few wary glances. What little French she knew was unhelpful, as they spoke too fast for her to catch any words.

She attempted patience first, trying not to look too indignant as they conversed about her as if she wasn’t there. But that was one of her pet peeves, and, to her displeasure, the conversation did not seem to be letting up any time soon.

Next, she tried speaking up, but not even Luke turned his head at her, “Excuse me.” If anything, they seemed to talk louder. She began reciting the spell before she could think better of it.

Their mouths snapped shut the next instant, and all was quiet for a moment. When they realized something magical was preventing them from speaking, all eyes turned to her. Luke’s baby blues looked more frustrated than she had ever seen them. She released him from the spell.

“What’s going on?” She asked, now that his attention was back on her.

For a moment, he glanced between her and the three men standing at the door. Then, he said, “Let’s go inside.”

:: ::

Ashton, Michael, and Calum.

Those were their names, respectively.

It wasn’t a vampire shakedown; it was a family reunion. They relocated into the uncomfortable chairs Luke had purchased for his dining room in hopes of dissuading guests from overstaying their welcome. It was still relatively early in the morning, so Margo made herself tea. The other four vampires had wine.

She knew a bit about Luke’s brothers from the stories about France and the French revolution that Luke liked to tell. From what she knew, Ashton was the leader of their little clan. He was the one who had sired Luke in the first place. It explained why at some angles they looked similar, when he replaced all the blood in Luke’s body with his own, some of Luke’s features changed.

Ashton had an assuming presence that seemed almost too large for Luke’s dining room. Were Margo more mild-mannered, she might have retreated to the background to let the vampires talk. But that was not her.

“You don’t like witches?” Margo presumed aloud once she was seated across the table from Ashton with her tea. She still hadn’t made sense of the argument at the door. Her witches senses did not lie, they had shown up at Luke’s looking for her. When they found her, it obviously became a point of contention.

Ashton scoffed with a hint of condescension. “Please. We are not prejudiced.”

“Do not scoff at me,” Margo shot back. “Not when you refuse to tell me why you’re here. Looking for me might I add.”

The one in the distressed jeans, Michael, grinned at her and whistled low. “Oh, she’s feisty. Finally, someone that’s a match for Ashton.”

Ashton did not dignify that with a response. Instead, to Margo, he bared his teeth and hissed, “This is not about you, it is about Luke. You need to stay out of it.”

“Well, come on now, Ashton.” Calum, like Luke, had decided to remain standing while the other two vampires sat. Well, Michael lounged, and Ashton perched as if poised to jump off the edge of his seat. From his position behind Ashton, Calum placed a large hand on his shoulder. “It’s a little about her. Luke should decide if he wants to tell her or not.”

At that, every eye turned to look at Luke. He was looming over Margo protectively, but not in a way that suggested he expected his family members to attack. He was obviously not afraid for her safety. It was rather like he wanted her out of the conversation more than anything else.

For what seemed like a full minute, Margo believed Luke wouldn’t share this secret. She feared that months of sharing everything with each other had culminated to this one moment, this one Big Thing that she wasn’t allowed to know.

Thankfully, he sighed and sunk into a seat next to her. “My brothers think you and I have mated.”

Admittedly, Margo’s knowledge of vampire mating was basal. She knew, of course, that Luke had every intention of mating her. You’re it for me, he had told her a few months before. It had terrified her, but she couldn’t deny that her feelings for him, their feelings for each other, ran deep. To her knowledge, however, they hadn’t taken that step yet. Even if they had, she wasn’t sure that was something they needed to discuss with his brothers.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” Margo began slowly, keeping her eyes leveled with Ashton’s. “But isn’t whether or not we’ve mated between the two of us?”

“No,” Ashton replied with a bitter chuckle. “No matter what you and my idealistic brother like to think. This is a matter for a clan. Luke cannot handle taking his mate by himself.”

Seeing the look of confusion on Margo’s face, Michael took pity on her and began to explain. “Luke is still very young. He has only witnessed one vampire mating in his lifetime, and even then he wasn’t privy to our procedures. Mating when you aren’t familiar with the methods–well that could have dangerous consequences.”

Michael’s eyes drifted pointedly towards her neck where Luke’s bite marks from the previous night were on full display. With the excitement of the morning, she had forgotten to cover them. She slapped a hand over them; then, her color deepened in embarrassment.

She turned to Luke, expecting him to respond, but he was lost somewhere deep in his own thoughts. When he didn’t, she spoke for him. “It was an accident,” She insisted, even though she had a feeling she didn’t quite understand the repercussions of Luke biting her neck.

Michael leaned forward, voice dripping with a dangerous edge. “When it comes to predators, darling, one small accident is all it takes to kill you.”

Finally, Luke spoke, words coming out in a snarl. “I would never kill her.” Shock and anger registered on his face. He was obviously taken aback by Michael’s suggestion.

“Not purposely,” Michael amended. “But your carelessness could get her killed nonetheless.”

“It’s a good thing then that Margo and I aren’t mating.” Luke snarled. He was out of his chair in an instant, glaring down at his brothers.

“Luke–“ this time it was Calum popping in with an argument.

Luke cut him off. “I’m fine, Calum. Now, if you guys want to do something other than have this conversation while you’re in town, let me know. If not, I’ll see the next time I’m at home.”

Michael threw his hands up in frustration. “This is what you get for siring a vampire amid the French Revolution, Ashton,” he grumbled. But he made no more protest as he walked towards the door.

Calum turned to follow him.

Ashton was the last to leave. “I just want you to be safe,” he said, eyeing Margo. What she had mistaken for disgust earlier was now clearly weariness and reluctance. It was as if he wanted to trust her, but was afraid to.

Luke gripped her shoulder and squeezed. “I am more than capable of taking care of myself. As is Margo.”

They held eye contact for a minute, having a silent conversation Margo couldn’t follow. Finally, Ashton conceded and followed his brothers out of the house.

:: ::

It happened in herbology.

That morning, Margo had woken up in her own bed feeling a little dizzy and disoriented. These spells had been happening more frequently, but she chalked it up to stress and dismissed it. She should have told Luke, but he was prone to worrying over the smallest of things. Plus, it had only been a week and a half since his brothers had shown up at his door unannounced, and, no matter how “good” he claimed to be doing, she could still see something bothered him.

So, she didn’t think twice about chugging her weight in tea and going to work. The dizziness plagued her throughout the day. Two hours into her three-hour herbology lab, she was standing in front of the class explaining how gymnosperms grew and reproduced. It was imperative for her students to understand plant life on a cellular level if they were ever to successfully manipulate plant growth.

The funny thing was - she felt it coming on. She felt herself grow dizzier and heard her words begin to slur. She chose to fight through it. Then, one minute she was talking about fertilization and pollen cones, the next, her feet give way below her, and the world went dark.

. . . . . .

When she opened her eyes the first time, the world was hazy. She clearly made out an IV drip bag and an oddly familiar man standing at the edge of her bed. His arms were crossed, and he looked like he was there as some sort of protection detail. Margo had the distinct feeling he was there for her. Whether it was to protect her from someone or to protect someone from her, she did not know.

“Hey. Look who’s awake,” came an oddly chipper voice from somewhere outside of her line of sight. Margo almost turned to search for it, but there was a pressure on her left hand. She turned to that instead.

Luke. He was staring at her with worry in his baby blues, gripping her hand tightly.

“What,” she opened her mouth to ask what had happened. Then, a cool hand she knew had to be vampiric brushed her curls from her face and shushed her.

“Try to sleep if you can,” it said. “We'll explain everything later.”

She knew that voice, much like she knew the man standing at the edge of her bed. Before she could search her mind for their identity, something pulled her under, and the world went black again.

. . . . . .

The next time she came to, the man was still at her bedside, arms crossed, watching her intently. Her brain felt less foggy this time, and she instantly recognized the man as, “Calum.”

With the tiniest of motions, Calum quirked his lips upwards in the ghost of a smirk. She wondered if he was comfortable standing ramrod straight like that. He looked like he hadn’t moved since she last opened her eyes.

It took him snickering for her to realize she had said that last thought aloud. “I like this position.” He said. “I’ve got clear eyes on everything in the room.”

“Not the door,” Margo pointed out obviously, gesturing to the large door looming behind him. That was what it took for Margo to realize that, despite the drip IV, she was not in a hospital room. This was someone’s house.

Calum shrugged. “That’s what Mikey’s for.”

She noticed Michael then, sitting in a loveseat underneath a large window. It was nighttime, and heavy blackout curtains were pushed aside to reveal what looked like deep woods. He had a Nintendo DS in his hand and was obviously more focused on the game than the other two people in the room.

“Don’t let Calum fool you,” he said, fingers still moving furiously on the buttons of the game. “I do not give a rats ass about security and espionage. At least, not as much Calum and Ashton do.”

He said all this without ever looking up from the small device in her hand.

“Espionage?” She croaked out.

Michael nodded, blissfully unaware of Calum’s glare. “Calum’s the family spy.”

Margo eyed Calum. When she had first seen him, she had believed him to be the muscle of the group. The way he exuded danger made Michael’s words seem less like a joke–as if Calum really was some vampire spy. She didn’t have time to think on this, however, because the dark mahogany door swung open to reveal Luke with Ashton flanking him.

Luke rushed immediately to her side. She didn’t miss how haggard he looked. Briefly, she wondered how long she had been in this bed. However long that was had obviously taken a toll on Luke. Vampires, as far as she knew, did not get tired, but there were unmistakable bags under his eyes, and his pale skin seemed lighter under the harsh overhead lights. She reached out to him, and he knelt at her bedside and slotted his hand into hers.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked as his thumb gently rubbed circles on the back of her hand.

“I could ask you the same thing.” She tried to shit up, but a palm came to rest on her shoulder, stopping her. “Don’t try to do too much too quickly,” Ashton warned, gently pushing her back down.

She obeyed, hoping that it would make them more agreeable with what she was about to ask next. The question had been on her mind since she awoke the first time. She had to know, “What happened?”

She remembered feeling dizzy in her herbology class, but not much else.

Furtive glances were exchanged around the room as everyone, even Michael, turned their attention to Luke. Luke’s focus was on her. He looked as if those were the last words he’d wanted to hear from her. The longer everyone took to acknowledge her question, the more she wondered if she should have waited. Perhaps this was something Luke was uncomfortable talking about around his brothers.

She slipped her hand out of his so she could brush his hair out of his face.

“It’s okay.” Despite how weak her voice was, she tried to convey all the love she had for him in those two words. Whatever it was, they would work through it.

He leaned into her palm. “You tell her Calum,” He eventually said, shifting all attention to the 6 ft vampire looming over her.

Calum uncrossed his arms and braced them against the foot of the bed. Dark brown eyes told her the story would be emotionally exhausting.

“I came to UoA a month ago to visit Luke.”

Margo’s brow furrowed. She hadn’t heard anything about this visit.

“He didn’t know I was coming. I got into town then tracked his scent.”

“It’s a kink of his,” Michael interrupted with an easy grin. He had abandoned his DS in favor of paying attention to the story. With everyone in the room on the wrong side of somber, she welcomed his quips. “He likes to pop up out of nowhere and scare the holy hell out of people.”

Calum ignored him and continued on. “I followed his scent straight to the Gamma Nu house. When I got there, I assumed that perhaps he was just inside with some witch. We’re all aware of Luke’s. . .”

He trailed off as if afraid of offending her, and she laughed. “Propensity to be a hoe?” She finished for him. When she had first met Luke, he was slipping out of her housemate's room with no shirt on. She was no stranger to his promiscuous behavior.

Calum smiled, amused at her choice of words. “Propensity to be a hoe yes. But, when I listened in, he didn’t seem to be anywhere inside. Instead, I found you. You were sitting at your desk buried in some book about potions and muttering to yourself. I watched you for hours trying to figure out how Luke’s scent was so intermingled with yours. I couldn’t find where your scent ended, and his began. I knew, of course, but I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t think Luke would be stupid enough to take a mate without contacting one of us first.”

At that, he shot a look at Luke. Luke grimaced, ashamed. Margo ran her hand through his hair again in a gesture of assurance, then looked to Calum to continue.

Ashton did instead. He was still at her shoulder, looking down at her as he spoke, “Margo, what do you know about vampire mating?”

“I know that it’s instigated with a mark, like the one on my chest.” The hand that was not in Luke’s hair came up to rest on her chest, touching the mark through her shirt. “That’s the physical aspect of it. There is a mental and emotional aspect to it as well.” Margo trailed off. She didn’t know much about said mental and emotional aspects. She figured Luke would explain those to her when they decided to take the next step.

Michael spoke next, now at the edge of his seat. She remembered Luke’s mention of his bond with someone named Crystal. Perhaps he was their resident expert on bonding. “This is how a bond works. If a vampire has the intention of mating someone, and that person has the intention of accepting said bond, when he bites that person, he’ll be able to feel the bond form from inside him. If he lets it, the bond will wash over both parties like a wave. Then, it is up to the bitten to accept the bond. This act deepens the mental and emotional connection of a couple. In rare instances, the couple will be compatible enough to hear each other's thoughts and feel each other’s emotions. Even when they aren’t as compatible, these bonds are nearly impossible to break. That’s why bonds can never be between strangers and can never be nonconsensual. It’s kind of like your magic in the way that it senses what both parties want, and creates that for them.”

“Luke,” Calum picked up, “has wanted to mate you for a very long time now. And judging by the way his biology is behaving, I’m guessing you wanted to mate him as well. Yet, every time he bit you and that bond began forming, he would suppress it.”

Margo glanced over to Luke, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Which ended up confusing his biology.” Calum continued. “Driving him to want to be near you, to be in you, to bite you, to complete the bond by any means necessary. It’s why he was drinking from you every time you had sex. It’s why you fainted. He took too much blood too quickly, and your system couldn’t handle it. Instances like this are rare, and usually lead to obsessive behavior on the part of the vampire.”

“But Luke wasn’t obsessive,” Margo pointed out. She had dated wizards more obsessive than him.

“Not where you could see,” Calum said.

Luke dropped his forehead to the bed, perhaps to avoid feeling the eyes on him. He was ashamed of whatever Calum had to say next.

“I followed you both for days before calling in Ashton and Michael as reinforcement. On the nights you spent apart, Luke spent them standing outside your window. He started making up theology classes because he didn’t want you to know he had spent your entire TA period sitting in a car outside of the greenhouse, straining to hear your heartbeat. Worst of all, he stopped hunting and started getting all his blood from you.”

“What?” Margo croaked out. Luke looked up then, and she couldn’t miss the welling of tears in his eyes.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” He said solemnly. “We have only been dating for what, almost a  year now? It is way too early for us to mate. I was hoping that if I ignored it, maybe it would go away.”

“The bond can be suppressed, Luke. But not as long as you keep drinking from her.” Ashton grumbled. Then, with a pointed look at Margo, he added, “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Luke answered for her. “She’s young. She hasn’t even finished her degree yet. I can’t just shackle her to me forever.”

“Let her speak, Luke,” Calum ordered.

With every eye on Margo, she wasn’t sure what to say. Luke was the love of her life, and she wanted more than anything to be mated to him. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t make a difference if it happened that moment or in a year when she had her degree.

You are but mortal woman. Time is now to be dreaded - since once he put that mark upon your throat.

She bitterly remembered the words of Bram Stoker. Time moved differently for her and Luke, she had always known that. Where she wanted to rush, he took his time. This was no different.

She tried to remind herself that, as Luke said, it was forever. Repeated exposure to his venom through a mating mark would expose her to super-powered vampiric proteins, probiotics, and antibodies that would stop her aging and make her impossible to kill. She wouldn’t be a vampire per se, but something else. A hybrid between what she was now and what he was. These were rare, she knew, as vampires and witches were not used to coming together for more than politics and sex. Perhaps an extra year of normalcy was what it would take to give Luke the peace of mind about changing her.

“It’s fine,” she finally said. “We can wait.”

She brought her hand down to where Luke’s rested on the bed and squeezed gently. “What about Luke, though? What’s going to happen if we don’t bond?”

“Nothing,” responded Calum with an easy shrug. “So long as he starts hunting again and stops drinking from you.”

“Like forever?” Margo asked, then blush at how dejected she sounded.

Michael laughed, but said, “Until he’s ready to mate you, yeah.”

That made her stomach sink. It was fine. As much as she liked the biting, she could go a year without it. “Is that going to be hard for you?” She relayed the question to Luke this time.

“It’s fine. The boys will take me hunting. It will help.”

“How long are you guys staying?” As she asked this question, Margo took note of how the air in the room lightened. Ashton left her side to stand by Michael’s loveseat under the window, Michael picked up his game, and Calum’s shoulders relaxed just a little. (She was beginning to think that relaxed shoulders were all she would get from him.)

Ashton answered her question, still staring out into the darkness outside the window. “Not sure. I’ve accepted a position teaching classic Greek literature, so quite a while I think.”

“What?” Margo asked, surprised. Ashton didn’t look like the scholarly type. “Are you qualified to teach that?”

Ashton scoffed in response. “I sure hope so. I was there.”

Margo’s mouth dropped. “Wait, how old-”

Luke cut her off. “Don’t ask a vampire how old they are, babe. They’re not fond of that.”

Margo gave Luke a look that let him know she would definitely be asking that question again, but she would at least do Ashton the courtesy of asking at a later date.

She was almost all caught up now, but there was one question still on her mind.

“Where am I?”

All four vampires laughed.

“Oh!” exclaimed Calum, remembering that he left out that little detail. “It’s our house. It’s in the woods behind UoA. Hospitals kind of cause sensory overload for vampires, so when you fainted, health services allowed Ashton to bring you here.”

“What, just like that?” asked Margo, confused.

“Well, Ashton has a medical degree, so it’s not like you weren’t in good hands.”

Of course. Vampires were fond of their multiple degrees.

“So y’all thought ‘lemme buy a house, so we don’t have to go to a hospital.”

Calum snickered at that, but Ashton was the one who answered. “I’ve owned this house for years. Since a little after the school was built. I thought it would be nice to have if I ever decided to come and get another degree. For all intents and purposes, it belongs to the clan now.”

“It belongs to you too,” Michael added. “You’re family now, whether you like it or not.”

Margo matched his grin. Raised in a household that was always just her and her mother, she dreamed of having a big family. As far as family went, Calum, Ashton, and Michael seemed more than perfect.

--

end notes: i can’t believe how obsessed i am with this series lmao! i’ve already started writing part 3!! anyway, i hope you like cal, mikey & ashton in this one. let me know what you think! 

tag list: @5sosnsfw / @bloodmoonashton / @lukescaboose / @5sex-of-summa / @deviantnines / @halcyonnhood / @gh0st-0f-y0u-95 / @aspiringwildfire / @cal-pal-cuddles / @sweetcherrymike / @hereforlukescruff / @softforcal / @ohhmuke / @fratcalum / @calumamongmen / @ashtonandcalslefthand / @asht0ns-world / @colorful-queen-of-the-roses / @heavenlydrarry / @slowlyelectronictragedy / @myemptywallets / @pagesuponstpages / @fallfrxmgrace / @thefireisgone / @michaelorwhat / @dammitbands / @sugarcoated-pain / @sublimehood / @cal-puddies / @singt0mecalum / @irwinkitten / @myloverboyash / @pinkbubbles-and-bigtroubles

[ipritam25me-blog]

12 POWERFUL BRAIN HACKS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Tired of your day to day life problems?

wanted to deal will the properly?

Wanted to how your brain reacts towards problems?

Here 12 Powerful hacks of brain that would be helpful for you to get out of your problems.  A well research  Book by John Medina a Developmental Molecular Biologist and Research Consultant.

According to his research the roots of our all the problem is the way that our brain thinks and deals with problems.This books is one of the best seller book of New York times.

Here i have a points for you.  

So after his work he come to conclusion and write a scientific book that based on a 12 Rules of brain that we can understand our brain,how it deals with problems  

and

Program our mind to deal with problems.

follow the link 

https://www.wordsofblogger.xyz/2020/07/12-powerful-rules-of-brain-by-john.html#more

Because we don't understand it fully  how our brain works we do to dumplings  and this can be only solved if   this problem can only be solved if we know our brain.If you know the secret our brain acts towards  problem .

In his book he stated 12 brain rules so we can solve our problems and way that our brain deals with problems of our lifestyle.These rules are based on scientific principles so if you follow this rules we can solve our problem of life and we can increase our brain functions.

Our ability to read  understand increased by 10% whatever you are businessman job worker student  or teacher this 12 rules will definitely change your life and increase your performance to next level.

And increase your behavior and your performance in your daily life and it will  make  your life  easier day to day life and this rules will definitely make you smarter then any other surrounding you.

OK then let's start to know this 12 rules of our brain that will

increase our brain function and  Endeavor performance.

Read full article on given link

https://www.wordsofblogger.xyz/2020/07/12-powerful-rules-of-brain-by-john.html#more

https://www.wordsofblogger.xyz/2020/07/12-powerful-rules-of-brain-by-john.html#more

[virovac]

Biology events for ATOM contest

To my fellows struggling for contest entries (I’m already working on mine)

Note probably best to use inspiration and avoid real life figures too much

1950:  Full-scale release of myxomatosis for control of the Australian rabbit population

1951:  August 1 – Around 9 o'clock AM Pacific Time Zone, the San Benedicto rock wren goes extinct as its island home is smothered in a massive volcanic eruption.

September 20 – Publication of the paper on the Hershey–Chase experiment showing conclusively that DNA, not protein, is the genetic material of bacteriophages.

1952 – American developmental biologists Robert Briggs and Thomas King cloned the first vertebrate by transplanting nuclei from leopard frogs embryos into enucleated eggs. More differentiated cells were the less able they are to direct development in the enucleated egg.

Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.

1956-1957:  The Africanized honey bee was first introduced to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production, but 26 swarms escaped quarantine in 1957.

1956 Wesley K. Whitten reports developing eight-cell mouse ova to blastocyst stage in vitro

1957 -artificial hybrid species of brine shrimp that would become known as “sea monkeys” began being marketed in 1957. )Note that the guy involved in their marketing, and many other scam ads in comic books, apparently had ties to the Arayan Brotherhood)

1958 – John Gurdon used nuclear transplantation to clone an African Clawed Frog; first cloning of a vertebrate using a nucleus from a fully differentiated adult cell.

Anne McLaren, with John D. Biggers, reports the first mammals, a litter of mice, grown from embryos developed in vitro and transferred to a surrogate mother.

1959

August 8 – Min Chueh Chang reports the first mammals, a litter of rabbits, grown from ova having undergone in-vitro fertilisation and transferred to a surrogate mother

1960

March 5 – British marine biologist Sir Alister Hardy announces his aquatic ape hypothesis, theorizing that swimming and diving for food exerted a strong evolutionary effect partly responsible for the divergence in the common descent of humans and other great apes

July – Robert Burns Woodward publishes his successful total synthesis of chlorophyll.

July 14 – English primatologist Jane Goodall arrives at what will become Gombe Stream National Park in Tanganyika to begin her groundbreaking behavioral study of chimpanzees in the wild.

1962

The first nude mouse strain is discovered by Dr. N. R. Grist at Ruchill Hospital's Brownlee virology laboratory in Glasgow.

The Neuroscience Research Program (NRP) is established by Francis O. Schmitt et al.

1963

Geneticist J. B. S. Haldane coins the word "clone".

Molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and physical chemist Linus Pauling introduce the term paleogenetics

Sydney Brenner proposes the use of Caenorhabditis elegans [a free living, transparent nematode) as a model organism for the investigation primarily of neural development in animals

1964

February 4 – Trofim Lysenko is removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union and Lysenkoist theories subjected to criticism as pseudoscience

The Parma wallaby, thought for around 70 years to be extinct, is rediscovered on Kawau Island (near Auckland)

The "brain-eating amoeba" Naegleria fowleri is detected for the first time.

1966

The first live specimen of a mountain pygmy possum (Burramys parvus), Australia's only truly hibernating marsupial, previously known only from the fossil record, is discovered.

German entomologist Willi Hennig's Phylogenetic Systematics is published in English, advancing the study of cladistics

Lynn Margulis proposed the endosymbiotic theory, that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. Richard Dawkins called the theory "one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology."

1967

Chimpanzee Washoe begins to learn American Sign Language.

Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson publish The Theory of Island Biogeography.

@tyrantisterror

[sciencenewsforstudents]

DNA is the glamour molecule of the genetics world. Its instructions are credited with defining appearance, personality and health. And the proteins that result from DNA’s directives get credit for doing most of the work in our cells. RNA, if mentioned at all, is considered a mere messenger, a go-between — easy to ignore. Until now.

RNAs, composed of strings of genetic letters called nucleotides, are best known for ferrying instructions from the genes in our DNA to ribosomes, the machines in cells that build proteins. But in the last decade or so, researchers have realized just how much more RNAs can do — how much they control, even. In particular, scientists are finding RNAs that influence health and disease yet have nothing to do with being messengers.

The sheer number and variety of noncoding RNAs, those that don’t ferry protein-building instructions, give some clues to their importance. So far, researchers have cataloged more than 25,000 genes with instructions for noncoding RNAs in the human genome, or genetic instruction book (SN: 10/13/18, p. 5). That’s more than the estimated 21,000 or so genes that code for proteins.

Those protein-coding genes make up less than 2 percent of the DNA in the human genome. Most of the rest of the genome is copied into noncoding RNAs, and the vast majority of those haven’t been characterized yet, says Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We can’t keep studying just two volumes of the book of life. We really need to study them all.”

Scientists no longer see the RNAs that aren’t envoys between DNA and ribosomes as worthless junk. “I believe there are hundreds, if not thousands, of noncoding RNAs that have a function,” says Harvard University molecular biologist Jeannie Lee. She and other scientists are beginning to learn what these formerly ignored molecules do. It turns out that they are involved in every step of gene activity, from turning genes on and off to tweaking final protein products. Those revelations were unthinkable 20 years ago.

Back in the 1990s, Lee says, scientists thought only proteins could turn genes on and off. Finding that RNAs were in charge “was a very odd concept.”

Here are five examples among the many noncoding RNAs that are now recognized as movers and shakers in the human body, for good and ill.

[evoldir]

Fwd: Other: ProteinFolding.and.Recessivity

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Other: ProteinFolding.and.Recessivity > Date: 16 August 2022 at 07:23:22 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > dear and reputable dears of the evoldir dir, > > it's been ~21 years since I shared with evoldir a few lines describing > (for the first time?) the molecular mechanism for "genetic" > recessivity at the protein-folding level (i.e., for all proteins, not > only enzymes). > > the email (minus typos plus some readability edits) is further below. > > and here's the machine-gun version: > 1) misfolded proteins tend to be toxic, > 2) the cell refolds/degrades them, > 3) most aa-replacement mutations misfold proteins, > therefore > 3) mutated proteins are refolded/degraded too, > 4) (3) makes mutated coding regions recessive and WT ones dominant, > regardless of encoded protein (at most hemi-dosage effects). > further, > A) most misfolded proteins are caused by peptide-chemistry accidents > so that recessivity is a side effect of the machinery that clears > accidentally misfolded proteins. > B) molecular accidents affect RNAs too (rRNAs) and thus rogue RNAs > must be a major challenge too. > C) homozygous recessives should behave like gene knockouts. > > in 2010, while browsing nick barton's "evolution" CSH text book, i > learned that some researchers had weakened a major chaperone activity > in an organism and many recessive mutations became "symptomatic". > > this showed that chaperones are sufficient for genomewide recessivity, > as my 2001 email proposed. > > I shared my 2001 email with barton and he agreed with my mechanism and > interpretation, [etc]. > > this month by chance i googled "recessivity and molecular chaperones" > and the only hit was my researchgate "re-pre-publication" of the 2001 > email. > > this is too bad, because it shows that for 20+ years most students and > researchers worldwide have been denied a chance to learn about the > mechanism (only a few dozen people heard it from me after 2001). > > i am nearing retirement and i doubt i may ever get to formally publish > the mechanism. > > in all sincerity, i never thought i deserved a formal publication for > it, since coming up with the mechanism took no effort on my side > beyond sitting at susan lindquist's seminar (and at hundreds of > others, ruining so my "productivity" and career) while scribbling and > sending those lines to evoldir required only a few minutes. > > furthermore i thought then and still do now that the mechanism is too > illuminating and important for it to be invidiously sociologically > claimed by a single person. > > so i'd like to kindly ask you to start sharing with as many people as > possible, including non-biologists but especially your students, the > (20+year-old) news about the protein-metabolically and > molecular-mechanically straightforward basis of "genetic" recessivity, > whenever you get a chance and even w/o making my name. > > thank you very much > > best > > m > > ==========Subject: recessivity and "variation capacitors" > From: marcos antezana

[remussims]

57 facts

Thanks @pw-creations for tagging me <3

57 (random) facts about me under the cut

I’m male.

I turned 28 in August.

I’m a huge cat lover. My fav breeds are siam, oriental shorthair, oriental longhair and balinese.

I’m molecular biologist, currently in my 1st year of PhD. My topic is the regulation of plant heat stress response by alternative pre-mRNA splicing (particularly the involvement of SR proteins).

I’m very sensitive to heat, anything above 22°C is too hot for me. 

Obviously I hate summer.

I used to be a photographer: I x I x I x I x I x I x I x I x I x I x I x I

I love having long nails and I also love them on others.

I dressed in black before I knew that goth was a thing.

I love white chocolate and coconut.

My favourite non-sweet food is salmon, avocado, sushi, broccoli and spinach.

My favourite songs are these: I x I x I x I

My sims Virgillius and Remus are main characters from a book that I wrote during my childhood. 2009 or 2010 my hard drive broke and I lost everything. I didn’t give it another try but I used the characters in role plays etc.

As number 13 indicates, I used to write when I was younger.

A publisher agreed to publish a manga that I was working on when I was ~16 years old, but I was too much of a perfectionist to ever finalize it. I honestly think it was good to not go for it as it would have been very very cringey. I wasn’t that good.

During my childhood, I was eager to find dead animals in the streets to dissect them.

I have a thing for sharp pointy teeth and claws.

I have a thing for monstrous creatures.

I add so much milk to my coffe that it should be called coffee-flavoured milk instead. 

I have a driver’s licence but I didn’t drive for many years as I walk to work every morning.

I used to have fancy hair colours in the past (either black and white or black and blue/turquoise/green/red/violet). Now I’m bald tough.

I don’t like children.

I’m definitely not boyfriend-material and quite unromantic. 

I’m taken nevertheless.

I have a high IQ which peaks in logical and numerical thinking but I struggle with spatial imagination big time.

My native language is German. I’m somewhat fluent in English and I also know French and Latin (enough to understand and form simple sentences but definitely not enough for big discussions).

Back in school I took advanced courses in mathematics and physics, but changed to arts and biology later.

In between 11th and 12th grade I stayed awake for 5 days (4 nights) to learn for school and it messed up my sleep cycle so much that I had to stay home and repeat the whole semester. Guys, do yourself a favor and sleep properly. 

I have a big scar on my leg that happened under mysterious circumstances and I will never know what happened exactly. 

I tried to teach myself how to play the violin and it was awful for everyone involved.

I took classical singing lessons for half a year and while I did make some progress it was basically a waste of money in the end.

I’m socially awkward.

I’m misanthropist. I’m still friendly most of the time.

I played every the sims game and enjoyed the sims 3 the most. 

I have a thing for cat love bites. 

I was introduced to computers when I was 8.

I am a huge fan of dance dance revolution and even won a couple of contests in the past.

I enjoy pretty much every rhythm game except for those that includes actual dancing. Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution are my favs!

The better you get to know me, the weirder I get.

I lost 7 kg during the past 4 weeks. 25 to go. 

Morrowind was the best game I ever played and I’m sure it had a huge impact on my art stuff. 

I have 2 sisters and a dead twin brother (no, his name was not Romulus)

My great uncle is a catholic priest.

I’m agnostic but I’m leaning more towards atheism. 

I like aristocrat goth fashion.

My eye colour is grey usually but sometimes it appears blue or dark green for whatever reason. 

I find joy in organizing things.

I most likely have a list for everything.

If you can’t tell by now: I’m a pedantic perfectionist.

When I was a kid, doctor’s predicted that I would be 2 m (6′7′’) when I’m fully grown up. Sadly I stopped growing at 1.76 m (5′9′’)  D: 

Bad luck is chasing me.

My favourite colour is dark teal.

I relax by being (pseudo-)productive (e.g. creating cc, sorting sims stuff, writing lists. It’s productive in a way but it doesn’t really serve any useful purpose)

I’m bisexual kinda, more interested in men but hardly interested in human beings in general.

I’m not part of any fandom, neither am I a fan of any celebrities nor any series. There are some series I enjoyed though. The terror was a really nice one. The whole atmosphere was just great. 

I don’t like sports 

I work for a food analysis and marketing company in my free time where I analyse the outcome of tastings. I don’t enjoy it though.

I tag: @wolfi-sama, @quecksilberrose (don’t do this tag now though <_<), @lunanelfeah, @hitohari-sims, @l0unacutex