#forced to spend all my time doing coursework

[mindlessly-dying]

a-levels will be be the death of me

[rosegasly]

snow on the beach | i | max v.

⇢ summary: crashing into him in the middle of nowhere a day before christmas wasn’t part of your plan, but then again, spending the night with him in a car wasn’t either.

alternatively; max is the knight in shining armour no-one expected him to be. 

⇢ genre: fluff, eventual smut, sprinkles of angst along the way maybe?

⇢ pairing: max verstappen x female reader

Chapter one || masterlist ⇢ word count: 3k ⇢ a/n: let me know what you thought ♡ i write on tumblr. to no ones surprise my inspiration relies heavily on validation.

You curse for the umpteenth time, restraining yourself from swerving to avoid a particularly slippery-looking spot on the road and praying to every god and guardian angel to keep you from skidding right off the road and into the dense forest beside. Your mothers berating rings in your ear as she reams you through the phone for delaying getting the train ticket till the very last second and then failing to find any.

“Mom, I love you, but please, can we hold off this conversation until I get back?”

“You wouldn’t be driving through this terrible weather and giving your poor mother a heart attack if you had just listened when I told you to book the tickets now, would you?”

You sigh, and it’s equal parts fond and exasperated. She is right and you know you have fucked up by not buying the tickets when you should have, but being a university student, a medical one, to make matters worse, December was a busy month for you. Amidst the stress of finals, burning the midnight oil and the buzz of caffeine, there wasn’t much registered in your cognisance besides your coursework. While you recall your mother talking about the busy festive season and buying said tickets early on, much of it came in through one ear and left through the other.

Humming, you glance at the time displayed on your dashboard and cut the conversation short. Soon it would be dark and you have no desire to drive through the winter weather a day before Christmas eve and arrive back home in a body bag.

“Yes, momma, you’re right, but I really need to concentrate on driving now. I love you and I’ll call you once I am close, kay?”

She sighs through the phone and your heart melts a little inside the hollow of your chest. For all the loud and impatient she is, you know her worry comes from a place of love for you and you make a mental note to make her breakfast tomorrow to make up for it.

“Alright, I am hanging up but drive carefully and stay safe. I love you. See you soon.”

“Love you loads, see you very soon.” You end the call with an audible mwah, knowing she’ll shake her head, muttering a brat not so quietly under her breath.

Blowing through your nose, you grip the steering wheel tight, letting whatever the radio is playing fill the silence. Conscious of your driving skills, the one thing you did not want to do to close off the year is driving your ratty old car through terrible weather. Snow blanketed your surroundings, thick and white, covering the green around you into a shimmering white and if it wasn’t you driving a car that already had less drivability than most would be comfortable with, you might even have enjoyed going through the countryside, but as it stood, it took all of your concentration and a healthy dose of luck to make your way through the long stretch of slippery tarmac.

It comes out of nowhere, one moment, you are straight and the other, the grip of your rear tyres is lost and you are slipping, skidding to the other side and banging into incoming traffic. The impact isn’t as bad as it could have been since you were careful to drive slow but the sudden change of inertia still throws you off your seat, head banging against the rearview mirror before the seatbelt pulls you back into place, stinging the flesh of your chest with the force with which it sends you back, biting into the skin for hold.

A scream is caught somewhere in your chest as your vision swims, panic and shock bringing white spots ahead of you as your body grows stiff in self-defence and you wait for the world to stop moving.

The screeching of the tires is replaced by the ringing in your ears, the only thing audible through it the harsh breaths you exhale. Hands shaking you move to take them off the steering wheel and push open the door. Nausea claws at your throat, begging for a release and it’s a second too late that you realise that you still can’t control the feeling in your lower extremity as you fall onto your knees beside the opened gate of your car and heave.

Tears blur your vision, as painful retches wrack your frame but nothing comes out. You heave until your throat starts to sting, until your chest and abdomen hurt with the weight of a thousand bricks and you struggle to breathe, lack of oxygen making your head spin and suddenly you are being turned around, warmth enveloping your forearms and through hazy eyes, you see the outline of someone’s figure on their knees facing you. It takes you a moment to register the hand that is rubbing your back, and slowly things start to come back. The feeling in your arms, the cold stinging your naked skin, the burning in your abdomen, the rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins slowly abating as you try to ground yourself to reality.

“Are you okay?” It takes you a few tries to understand the words, and you nod, not yet trusting your voice. You aren’t sure if you are hurt, but you don’t see blood anywhere and while you do feel a little sore, whether from the receding adrenaline or the cold and shock, it’s nothing you can’t bear.

Fingers appear in front of your steadily clearing vision and you hiss, jerking back as pain erupts across your forehead.

“You’re hurt.”

You realise it’s a man before you see him by the deep baritone of his voice, picking up the fine gravel in his voice even through the howling winds. It’s his hand floating in your vision and when the pain stings and recedes yet again that you realise it’s his doing too. There is a furrow in his brows, thick and arched now creased in concern for you and had you not nearly died, you would have marvelled at the sea of cerulean that his eyes are.

Clearing your throat, you move to lean back, getting tired of him poking your forehead and making it sting more, “I’m fine.”

The hand on your back, unbeknownst to you, had sneaked up at some point and it’s the tug that brings you two close again and helps register its presence. The nape of your neck feels hot and you aren’t sure if it’s because of the accident or the warmth of his hand.

Or a noticeable blush.

You quickly squash that particular thought, throwing the remains in the furthest reaches of your mind.

“You’re bleeding.” His response is slow, almost condescending. As though you are stupid for thinking anything otherwise, and you bristle. Shrugging off his hold, this time with more force, you say, “I am fine.”

The effort of leaning back is a little too quick for your still recuperating body and your vision swims, your knees nearly slipping from under you until an arm snakes around your waist, holding you up.

The man sighs and his warm breath tickles the hollow of your neck, making you shiver. “Don’t be stubborn and sit still for a minute.”

You still bristle but having learned your lesson, you stay put and let him assess you. As much as it hurts your pride to have a man, a gorgeous one, treat you like an idiot, you are in no position to be harbouring any arrogance after the quite literal stunt you have pulled.

“Look at me,” he commands. Squashing the petulant urge to argue, you do, feeling slightly bashful at the blue of frozen ocean that stares back at you. Thin, warm fingers grip your chin, turning your face side to side as he inspects you and a vain and idiotic part of you curses internally for forgetting to apply anything on your lips. They are horribly chapped from the poor self-care routine (or lack thereof) finals month had forced them into.  

You take the time to inspect him back too. The beginning wisps of jealousy simmer in the pit of your stomach at how full and pink his are. A small tiny mole sits sunk under the deep of his skin on the top left edge of his upper lip and for some inane reason, you decide to focus on it instead of his nose or eyes or forehead like any other average person would.

You don’t know if it’s seconds or minutes later that he finally shifts away from you, breaking your silent staring contest with his lips, moving to stand. His one hand still grips your forearm, maybe not trusting you to topple over and off the road into the under bushes like a pinball knocked over by the slightest breeze.

“Can you stand?”

Blinking, you look up, seeing an outline of his silhouette against the backdrop of the setting sun and nod at how broad his shoulders are. Nice.

“Can you?” he repeats, and there is a hint of impatience in his voice this time.

“I don’t know; you’re the one who asked me to sit still.” You know you are being snarky while he is just being helpful in his own jackass way, but it’s still embarrassing and you don’t want to move, talk or do anything more to make your present any more real than it already is. Maybe if you continue to sit still, the sun will rise again and you can have a do-over. Pretend none of today happened and get back home with your still ratty but in one-piece car.

He doesn’t respond to your sarcasm verbally, just tilts his head and somehow, that makes you feel even more stupid.

“Stand then.”

You can’t help the distinct feeling of resemblance to that of a dog as you follow his command, bound by your own previous words and stand on shaky legs. The ends of your feet sting like a million pins and needles are being pierced through them and you stumble right back into his arms.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.” He breathes against the shell of your ear and the warmth travels from your neck, flushing your cheeks—it’s entirely too cold for how warm your face feels.

You hum, nodding to indicate you have heard him, not trusting your voice to pitch and give you away.

“Hold on to me.”

Wordlessly gripping his denim-clad forearms, you follow him to the parked car beside yours. Observing the damage to its front, it doesn’t take long to add two & two and you feel a little guilty for being snarky to the man you ultimately crashed into.

“Are you hurt?” This time it’s you asking the question you would have asked much earlier had you realised who he actually was.

You feel the movement of his head and know that he’s looking at you, but don’t turn your gaze to catch his. Partly out of guilt, partway because you realise the pull his eyes have and you don’t want to be seen gazing again.

“I am fine.” He says and you nod, accepting his answer.

Opening the passenger side door of his dark SUV, he gently pushes you forward, “Sit and face this side. You are bleeding. Wait here while I get the first aid kit.”

With another nod, you climb in, sitting sideways and pulling your feet closer to ward off some of the cold the open door was letting in. You could hear your gorgeous self-appointed nurse rummaging through the trunk and you take the time to rest your head against the head support, finally breathing a sigh of relief. The realisation that this very well could have been a fatal crash for you is starting to sink in slowly and you clench your fists, wrapping your arms protectively against your middle as the sharp of your nails dig into your skin, the pain almost cathartic, a pulsing, bleeding reminder of how alive you are.

If he had been a second later on the breaks, maybe if you were an inch off more, you wouldn’t be sitting here in a stranger’s car, and perhaps you would never be able to see your mom and listen to her berate you again for getting into yet another mess. It’s morbid and disturbing, but you are glad your mother won’t have to bury you on Christmas eve.  

Coming back around, the man passes you a bottle of what you are guessing is water, “Drink.”

“Thank you,” the soft mumble could have easily been lost in the screeching winds, but nonetheless, you extend your hand to grab the offered vessel, fingers brushing the ends of his. Uncapping, you take a gulp, and two and three until you are properly chugging the water down, glad for the way it cools your dry, scratchy throat. The abating flight or fight response having left you parched.

“Easy, you don’t want to choke right now.”

“I am studying to be a doctor,” you don’t know why you say that. You know what you sound like out loud, and you won’t blame the man for thinking you are a bitch, but you can’t help the way defensiveness cloaks you like a too tight jacket and makes you lash out lest you seem vulnerable—guilty.

“And you’re a patient right now, so play nice.” There’s a smirk dancing at the seams of his lips. Contrary to your belief and guilt of him finding you troublesome, he is amused. The shadows of the setting sun caressed his skin and brought out his features. You still haven’t been able to look at him without focusing on one focal point of his face and with every passing minute, you are discovering something new about the way he looks and you wonder if it's just purely flesh and bones or if the way he acts is influencing your view.

Rolling your eyes, you keep the facade of indifference clutched close to your heart. Unwilling to slip and let this handsome stranger in, that you had apparently almost killed, to see you at your weakest.

“Alright then doc, go ahead,” you say and the smirk teasing the edges stretches into a tiny grin.

Stepping close, he grips your chin again and you note it’s gentler this time. Wetting a swab of cotton in an antiseptic, he swipes it over your wounds, methodical, small circular movements from the inside out before discarding the cotton and starting afresh with another swab. His hands are sure, the method more precise than most people who aren’t trained to give people first-aid would know, and you wonder if he is a health professional. Your earlier admission swims to the forefront and you beg anyone up there who is listening to you for it to not be true. You won’t be able to live through that embarrassment.

He blows on your skin, the exhale soft and leaving a barely there whisper of a touch but it’s still enough to make you want to jerk back—which you would have succeeded had he not been holding onto your chin again.

“Tsk,” he is looking at you, annoyed again, and you reign in the urge to kick him in the shin.

Instead of apologising, you stay still and let him finish. He is surprisingly, unbelievably gentle with you and you struggle to figure out why. Maybe he is just scared of accidentally hurting you worse?

“This might hurt so let me know if its too much,”

“Okay,”

He is quick but meticulous as he applies some disinfectant cream that you can’t read the label of with the growing shadows, but by now, you have grown a sense of respect for the man, albeit grudgingly and trust him to not screw it up.

Coughing into your fist to clear your throat, you finally introduce yourself. The water helped soothe the dryness and your voice no longer feels like a nail against the chalkboard to your ears.

It’s a bit too late for introductions, but you two haven’t met in the most normal of circumstances, so you let yourself off the hook. If he is surprised by your willingness to be civil for maybe the first time since your ill-fated encounter, he doesn’t show it.

You catch his gaze and to none of your wonder, it pins you right where you sit, twin pools of ocean under a night sky, blue speckled with the richest of green, as he replies, “Max.”

i wrote this whole thing in one sitting and my hands fkn hurt. its also 8 flipping am goddamn u max verstappen and ur stupid cute face 

should I continue this?✿ tag list: open

[hyuckie-angel]

treasure reaction; college boyfriend

in which they love their partner and their studies (sometimes)

a/n; a lil suggestive in jihoon, yoshi, asahi and doyoung’s parts

최현석 • choi hyunsuk

the making music at 1am boyfriend

the raw talent your partner hyunsuk possesses is no joke

the way music seems to come from his fingertips

magically into the software

renders you speechless sometimes

‘come look at what i made :D’

he’ll never say it but all of his lyric inspiration is you

he’s never failed a project and he knows its because he’s got you there to write about :’)

but anyway

despite adoring his creativity, sometimes he really just has no clue 

like there’s a road in his brain but its one way and the lines are fading

if you get what i mean

it’s really late

the world is silent

you are drifting off into dreams

when out of nowhere you hear a really loud Dm chord blasting through the stereo

‘hyunsukkkkkkkk’

‘yeah? :0′

he’s cute when he’s confused so you forgive him

when he has an early class you sometimes have to get out of bed and force him away from his desk

‘but im almost don-’

‘hyunsuk it is 4am go the fuck to sleep’

sometimes he whips out the guitar at 1am, strumming a few chords and humming along

this you could never say no to

‘i wrote this one for you the other day’

lying there listening to him quietly serenade you fills you with this warm comfortableness 

so you jump out of bed to grab his face 

planting a soft kiss onto his lips

you can feel his grin even with your eyes shut

its safe to say that sleeping doesn’t play a huge part in the relationship, and you could not care any less :)

박지훈 • park jihoon

the ‘if i finish my project will you finish me? ;)’ boyfriend

lord help your soul

jihoon may look like the sweetest, most innocent guy on campus

but oh boy is that incorrect

before you were even dating he was winking at you across the classroom

or running ahead of you to open doors

and despite his wide and elated smile when you finally accepted his advances

he is a fiend

he’s like your own personal devil on your shoulder

‘surely we skip this class’ wink wink wink

you quickly figured out that the best motivation for this man is

well

the intimate kind

the ‘if you finish this project in the next hour ill let you do whatever you want tonight’ kind

he has absolutely no complaints

it was a dream come true when he realised you would reciprocate

besides

both of you would much rather spend a night having fun

than reading coursework and hating life

of course he has his sweet moments

buys you flowers

brings you chocolate when you’re sad

agrees that making a pillow fort is very important rn

cue the next 3 hours of bickering and pillow related injuries

but his tendency to get distracted

makes itself known quite often

of course you use this to your advantage

walking into the room in a tiny little skirt and an almost see through top

you get more attention than you’ve ever dreamed of

and the sex 

you don’t wanna blow up his ego

but it’s just always really, really good

your professor has started to become suspicious

sometimes both of you do fantastic work

but sometimes both your projects look rushed  (¬_¬)

‘we just spent too much time studying for our other class professor i swear’

this boy will be the death of you 

金本芳典 • kanemoto yoshinori

the always late to class boyfriend

you love this boy to the grave

but you cannot count on all your fingers and toes the amount of times he has forgotten about his classes

never once has he done it on purpose

the man just gets so distracted by anything and everything

especially you

he is no thoughts head empty only yn

‘holy fucking fuck i have class rn’

you have his schedule written down in your phone

so when you tell him you’re going to the shops and he says he’s coming

you can tell him 

‘no yoshi you have literature in 5 minutes’

cue yoshi olympic sprinting out of the house

the amount of times he comes back from class with a paper that has been graded 

‘98%... late’

its basically his brand atp

you’re no better sometimes though

if you’re making out and in the back of your mind you know he probably has class soon

but you’d much rather be here

with his hands in you hair and your heavy breaths breaking the silence

you just say nothing

yoshi doesn't care if he’s late because you guys were having sex

in fact unsurprisingly

he quite enjoys it

 as do you lmao

‘yoshi you have class’

‘stfu do you wanna have sex or not jesus’

he’s also developed a sixth sense when around his professors

if he passes by one of them on campus

he immediately leaves your side

jumping behind a bush

as you get confronted by his literature professor asking why tf he missed half an hour of class again

‘just tell them i died’ 

‘no??’

he’s never going to change, but as the wisest men say

yolo

김준규 • kim junkyu

the studies until 5am then sleeps through the class boyfriend

if theres one thing about junkyu

its that sleep >>>>> anything else

(aside from you >> ofc)

he also has this unbelievable fear of failing

so to compensate he spends hours and hours studying

into the night

you wake up sometimes and there’s 4 redbull cans scattered across the desk

and a very unconscious junkyu drooling onto his workbook

you take a photo of him

you gently shake him and wake him enough to get himself to bed

you can always tell how hard he’s working to try and pass his classes with the best marks possible

and you admire him for it

but goddamn does he need to stop staying up so late

you remember the infamous night that he stayed up super late cramming

absolutely determined to pass his exam with the highest marks possible

and then proceeded to sleep through all his alarms

you received a very tearful phone call that morning

‘can you wake me up at 6:30?’

‘junkyu its 5am that is 1 and a half hours of sleep’

‘yea??’

he lives and breaths energy drinks

cue his hands shaking to the point where both of you are like

‘maybe we should go to a doctor’  (≖_≖ )

your favourite thing to do together is nap

because he is always sleep deprived

he turns into a cuddly gremlin when you lie down together

you want to get up and use the bathroom

too bad

wait until he wants to let go

its okay though because he’s so cute

sometimes when you’re napping he unconsciously kisses your forehead and cuddles closer to you

and you have to say nothing so you don’t wake him but also die inside from love and affection

although he is clumsy

and somewhat disorganised

he’s your clumsy and disorganised, and you love him more than anything <333333

윤재혁 • yoon jaehyuk

the ‘whats the answer???’ boyfriend

you met jaehyuk in a class the two of you shared

you could tell he was an absent minded guy

he was often staring towards the front of the lecture hall

looking directly through the teacher

and taking in precisely zero information

but because you were sat next to him

and you liked to think you were a decent person

you would give him a tap on the shoulder every time you thought he was missing something important

this seemed quite mundane to you

just a girl helping out a fellow classmate  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but the butterflies that birthed in his stomach every time you leant over to help him out

made him feel crazy

so he asked you out

after getting over the initial surprise of this gorgeous man wanting to be your boyfriend

you began to notice all these little habits about him

his confused squint when he’s trying to figure something out

the way he clenches his jaw in understanding

his fiddly hands when he’s losing his attention span

and your personal favourite;

the way he leans over to ask you questions about the class

‘hey what did you get for number 1 coz i got 35 but its not even a maths question?’

he’s also so unintentionally funny

‘babe i lost 17 pens can i borrow one?’

once you snorted in amusement so loudly the teacher said bless you

which made jaehyuk loose his shit laughing

and now whenever you laugh at his expense he says bless you

so you slap him (gently)

he pokes his tongue out 

you pretend to get offended

he laughs and kisses you softly

you forgive him immediately

his attention span in class has definitely improved with you helping him

even the professor has noticed

but

he maaaay or may not be pretending to zone out sometimes

just so you’ll tap him on the shoulder and look at him with your pretty eyes and ask him if he needs anything :’)

浜田朝光 • hamada asahi

the quiet sober; crazy drunk boyfriend

when you first met your boyfriend asahi

his quiet and calm temperament had caught your attention

you’d seen him in the library, head down, brown hair falling in his eyes

and you’d realised that you needed this man

he was beautiful

so you went and talked to him

his responses were

well

limited

‘hi’

‘yeah’

‘haha’

but little did you know his heart had swelled and his palms had become clammy at the sight of you

you and your face that he thought was maybe the most gorgeous he’d ever seen

so two months later you were dating

he’d told you he didn’t drink much

he didn’t care for it

but when you were invited to his best friend jaehyuks birthday party, he told you he’d probably indulge a little

“a little” he said

by the time you got into the uber to go to the party, his cheeks were flushed 

by the time you got there, he was smiling wonkily at you like an idiot

about half an hour later and you’d totally lost him

you weren’t worried, it was a safe environment

but you were curious

so out you went to look for him

and there he was on the roof

ON THE ROOF?!?!

his hangover the next morning was his punishment for doing stupid shit you’d told him

now every time you drink

you wait for an incident ™

sometimes he just gets super horny

‘can we leave plzzz babe ;))’

and sometimes he manages things you don’t understand

‘okey we needa go coz that guys wantz to fite me idk why’

but all times, he is hungover for three days and one of his professors thinks he has an alcohol problem 

‘i’m never drinking again’ :(

김도영 • kim doyoung

the hits on you like you’re not dating boyfriend

just like jihoon

doyoung has this innocent exterior, devilish interior 

kinda vibe

he also has absolutely no shame ever

and so has this habit of constantly putting you in awkward situations 

where people think he’s harassing you

but in reality he’s just being a dickhead

‘hey bby girl you wanna come back to my place tonight?’ ;)

before you had told your best friend that you and doyoung were dating

he had come over, slung an arm around your shoulders and gone

‘hey sexy’

you had turned bright red

and your friend had looked so confused you thought she might have an aneurism

doyoung lives in a share house just off campus with three roommates; jaehyuk, jeongwoo and junkyu

the first few times you’d come over, doyoung turned off the weirdness

opting for just following you around

like a lost puppy

but when he realised his roommates didn’t pay you guys any attention

suddenly he’s backing you into walls

grabbing you from behind in the kitchen

staring at your chest almost all the time

and just being a general menace to society 

you have a really lovely and not embarrassing at all memory 

of a beautiful spring day

5:30pm

you and two friends were walking out of class

giggling at everything under the sun

when a voice echoes through the air

a voice belonging to your beloved boyfriend who’s standing 20 feet away from you with a shit eating grin on his face

‘yo yn... is that a mirror in your pocket coz i can see myself in your pants!!!!’ ;)) 

your physics professor was standing right behind him 

you’ve never seen someone go from confident to embarrassed that quickly

but even though he is your personal humiliation creator

you still let him hit

what can you say, he’s dumb but he’s hot lmaooo

渡辺春虎 • watanabe haruto

the ‘i fcking hate this class’ boyfriend

you were the year above haruto

you in your third year of studies, him in his second

you had dreamt your whole life of becoming a marine biologist

dedicating countess hours to study and achieving perfect scores

it wasn’t a secret that you loved all of your classes

now

one evening you were asked by your professor to attend a lecture and maybe help out anyone in need

and that’s when you first saw him

you thought he was cute immediately, his platinum blonde hair framing his face nicely and his glasses sliding down his nose a little

but you weren’t one for pursuing attraction

so you spent the lecture walking around and giving tips to people that asked

until haruto raised his hand as you walked by

secretly happy, you sat down next to him and asked what he needed

it was basically love at first sight for both of you

you spent the rest of the lecture sitting with him

he found you so endearing 

and you thought he was hilarious

all was going so well

until he opened his mouth and went 

‘yeah i fucking hate this class lol’

you awkwardly smiled

‘this is my favourite class’

his grin dropped dramatically

‘ah- ah i’m sorry idk why i said that’

you weren’t offended in the slightest

but his flustered reaction made you giggle

you began dating only weeks later :)

haruto’s favourite thing was to annoy the shit out of you talking about how much he dislikes the classes you love

you could be sitting in the food court

having a loving conversation

and out of nowhere he goes

‘i’m so glad im not in that class rn’

you deadpan stare at him 

if he sees you studying for the class

‘damn i was gonna stay over but not anymore i guess fuck’

so dramatic i stg

despite wanting to punch him in the jaw sometimes

he makes you laugh more than you had in years

and so you can move past the difference in interests for him

박정우 • park jeongwoo

the second-hand embarrassment boyfriend

like

confidently raises his hand and says the total wrong answer

kinda guy

trips over and sprains his ankle in the food court

kinda guy

not that you’d have it any other way

but damn sometimes you have to restrain from cringing visibly

he’s like a walking sit-com

and you are the audience

your personal favourite pass-time is forcing him to listen to his own actions retold from your perspective

as you wheeze with laughter and he sits there like  (－_－) 

he secretly loves it though

if his misfortune is enough to make you happy

he thinks you might be slightly weird

but your happiness is all that matters to him

so he can deal with it

‘im glad me falling on my ass was this amusing to you thanks heaps babe’

one day you were sitting in a class you shared 

it was business and it was boring but it was both of your favourite class because you were in <3 love <3

and jeongwoo had a question

the professor was walking around the classroom so he was waiting

and as they walked over, jeongwoo opened his mouth

and you watched practically in slow motion as he said

‘hey mum i have a question’

your eyes widened

his eyes widened

the professors eyes widened 

doyoungs eyes widened

you held back on laughing until he’d gotten the answer he needed

and then you and doyoung let loose 

‘hey mum’

‘mummy i mean mummy i mean-’

‘excuse me professor birthgiver’

‘OKAY I GET IT SHUT THE FUCK UP PLEASE’

if he ever gets insecure about anything

you look him dead in the eyes and tell him that he may be an idiot, but he’s your idiot, and thats all that matters :)

소정환 • so junghwan

the spends all his money on you boyfriend

from the beginning

junghwan had been spoiling you silly 

buying you lunches

hearing you say you liked something and immediately purchasing it

you hadn’t thought anything of it at first

assuming it was just a friendly gesture

but the smirks from all your friends told you a different story

after the two of you began dating, his bank account began suffering

you had told him countless times

he didn’t need to be doing all this

but to him, it was his way of showing you he cared

‘you like this? i buy for u bby girl’

‘junghwan no-’

he also wasn’t afraid of showing people how much he spoiled you

read: ‘one time he walked into your class whilst the teacher was talking and everybody looked at him confused and he walked to you and gave you a block of chocolate and then walked straight back out but blew you a kiss just to make sure you were sufficiently embarrassed’

you adore him for it though

no matter how much he tries to humiliate you

you also aren’t allowed to try and pay him back

if he catches you tryna pay for something

or transferring money

its on sight

‘i am a grown man and i am insulted by this behaviour’

sometimes you run to the food court to buy both of you lunch before he gets there

so that he can’t lecture you on spending money

sometimes you think he’s a bit dumb though

you once broke a pencil you’d been using in your art class

and in response junghwan had bought you 83 more

‘why are there 7 parcels at my door rn’

‘damn that shits crazy i have no idea’

despite this

you know his only intention is to be there for you and help you out

so you always thank him with a huge hug 

and only one or two insults about him being a walking wallet

[k7l4d4]

K Reviews and Rants: Miraculous Ladybug Season 5! Episode 20

And here we are, the episode where Lila does Lila things!

I'll be blunt; this episode, more than any other, illustrates the problem with Lila. Even ignoring all the instances of people being gullible lemmings at the writer's insistence when it comes to Lila, this episode shows how cliched and forced her competence as a manipulator is. Why? Because throughout this episode, despite it opening by revealing that Lila is manipulating three separate women into believing she's their daughter somehow AND making all of them believe she's famous and important... Lila spends the entire opening of the episode drawing as much attention to herself as possible, without any thought towards the possibility that her adoptive mothers will see the pictures and videos being taken of her posted online, when at least ONE OF THEM thinks she's in freaking AFRICA of all places.

This episode showed that not only is Lila not bothering to put in any effort to keep from getting caught, but she's actively making it harder for her lies to be kept by making sure people see her and notice her as much as possible, which is the last thing you want as a liar or manipulator who is keeping multiple contradictory lies running at the same time.

Oh, and Lila somehow being able to pressure a new election for Class Rep into place. Which makes no sense as I literally checked the timeline and she wasn't a student until AFTER the Elections were held, making her entire argument meant to push people into agreeing with her plan fall apart. It's not undemocratic for a person who was never eligible for an election in the first place to not get a chance to run.

Additionally, this episode just highlights how some of the reveals and retcons introduced this season just don't work. The show tries to push the narrative in this episode that Chloe is beyond helping and that Marinette's antagonism towards her is justified... when this same episode literally revealed that Chloe cheating on her coursework has been an open secret, and Marinette neglected her responsibilities as Class Rep in not reporting this to the teacher, when everyone would've backed her up on it. For an episode that had one of the very first "morals" in the series being "for evil to triumph, good has to do nothing," Marinette has apparently been doing a heaping load of nothing... and when the info finally gets out, Marinette basically throws a fit that Chloe... is being made to redo her work, just because her teacher didn't frame it as a punishment, when as an educator, Miss Bustier's focus SHOULD be that Chloe is getting an education... and the fact that she'll be apparently making up YEARS of work means it's still a punishment regardless.

I could go on... but I feel that if I do, I would be writing an entirely new review. Anyway, onto the REAL review, and as always, warning for my profanity.

Episode 20: Revelation

Okay, and the opening scene is of Lila lying to her mother about being in the Savannah. Wow, what a brilliant lie, much effort was put into being believable. Clearly a teenager with no background would be entrusted with aiding in the rescue of endangered animals from poacher traps, that isn't something that is restricted to trained professionals at all! And then we get a deaf woman coming in, who starts signing, and then Lila signs back, calls her mom, and says that the woman she was talking to was her "agent." She says they've "just been reunited," which if this is meant to imply that she's impersonating some woman's actual missing kid, or if there was a missing kid in the first place... this is utter bullshit. And I mean this is beyond the NORMAL fucking bullshit of this nonsense season, in that not only is the idea that Lila COULD EVER FOOL TWO WOMEN, LET ALONE THREE, INTO BELIEVING SHE IS HER DAUGHTER IS RIDICULOUS, HOW IN THE WORLD COULD ANY OF THIS WORK WHEN LILA'S LIES ALL INVOLVE CALLING AS MUCH ATTENTION TO HERSELF AS FUCKING POSSIBLE!? Seriously, the lie she told her "deaf mom" falls apart right from the outset because she says she's going to a "movie shoot in Mexico." Just, just how STUPID is this woman supposed to be!? If her alleged daughter is meant to be a movie star, surely she's been in films before!! It's not as if films don't get subtitles, so it's not as if she could say that this woman just hasn't seen the films because she's deaf (which is exactly the kind of tone-deaf ablest answer I'd expect from Astruc if someone asked about this)...

Yeah, I'm gonna move on before my blood pressure pops.

And we get a scene of Lila walking to an art class, smug in how famous she is with her face plastered all across Paris as the girl on the Alliance Ring... this, this alone shoots down her ability to maintain ANY OF HER LIES because we literally get a scene of her taking a selfie with a woman who she deliberately called attention to herself who recognized her!! This is the kind of thing that gets plastered across social media!! Heck, her fake moms should be plastering her across social media too, because "she's their daughter," of course they are gonna spread the image!! And then we get a scene of her using her fame to get a free bus ride, UGH!!! And then she ends up telling one of her tall tales to the people riding the bus, who are actively filming her, THIS IS FUCKING STUPID!!! PRO TENNIS!? CHARITY WORK!? THIS IS WHY HER LIES ARE SO RIDICULOUS!! SHE IS UTTERLY UNABLE TO AVOID THE SPOTLIGHT EVEN IF IT WOULD KILL HER!!! THE IDEA SHE COULD MAINTAIN ALL THESE LIES THAT INVOLVE NO ONE QUESTIONING HER OR LOOKING INTO HER IS FUCKING NONSENSE, BECAUSE SHE MAKES HERSELF AS VISIBLE AS FUCKING POSSIBLE!!! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!

And we see that the art class is being taught by Sabine (for some reason, how the fuck is she able to teach a class when she helps run a bakery??), and simultaneously tries to butter up to Sabine while bad mouthing Marinette about not taking advantage of her mother's teachings on art. Thankfully, before it can get stupider, all the Alliance Rings announce a short update... I'm feeling some anticipation and dread in equal amounts. Yup, she got replaced by Kagami, PFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!! OH man, that is fucking hilarious. A terrible idea, since this basically shatters the established brand of Lila being the face of Alliance, AND alienates one of Gabe's best operatives; granted, she had it coming by shooting her mouth off at her boss, but still, it's too little too late to cut her off.

And after a brief look of anger, Lila tries to blow it off like she just "forgot about the update." Yeah, no, they cut her off and are hanging her out to dry. PFFHAHAHAHAAA!!! It's hilarious how stupid this is. I'm feeling spiteful right now! Now she's spinning a yarn about being "tired of fame and all the superficial connections" BITCH YOU ARE FUCKING FULL OF IT!!! Like, this isn't even fucking clever!! This is a non-stop gullibility train that involves everyone taking every fucking word out of her mouth as gospel!!

Her going "You're like a mother to me" makes me feel gross inside. With how she treats her current "mothers" that isn't a compliment. Then we pop back in with Gabe, ooh, that Cataclysm damage isn't looking too good, maybe you shouldn't have literally wasted your remaining lifespan with non-stop and pointless resets? Then Nathalie, who is clearly still working for him despite no longer being on his side, what the fuck is up with that, lets him know that "someone" is at the gate. Who could it be... yeah, it's clearly Lila. I'll give her this, when she's feeling slighted, she does not waste time.

Ooh, a double-whammy of an ego train! Lila apparently has quite the high opinion of herself for being "the face of Gabriel's brand," which is completely unjustified seeing as she's a two-bit congirl who only GOT her agreement with Gabe because she lied her ass off about Marinette being "a bad influence," but while Gabe is spot on that she's only the face of his brand because of their deal, him acting as if Lila failing to keep Marinette away from Adrien is anyone's fault but his own is fucking rich, and a "media friendly pairing," AS IF YOUR SON ISN'T ALREADY REJECTING YOUR CONTROL AND HAS MADE IT CLEAR MORE THAN ONCE HE WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING WITH KAGAMI!! God fucking DAMMIT, how dense is this titanium tightwad!? Okay, he's actually aware that Kagami and Adrien being together is a facade... but the fact that he thinks he'll be able to force it into existing is stupid on so many levels.

"Such intense hate, it's almost tempting. But entrusting power in someone who hates me so much wouldn't be a good idea." AS IF YOU HAVEN'T FUCKING DONE THAT WHO KNOWS HOW MANY TIMES ALREADY!? FUCKING DAMMIT, GABE, HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU!? I'd say that he's being smart, but if this episode is the one I think it is, we all know he'll break that bullshit. Also, apparently he can sense emotions even outside of his Hawkmoth form, which is all kinds of disturbing, honestly. And we get one-hundred percent confirmation that Lila knows Gabe's true identity! ...Yeah, this is not gonna end well, at all.

Okay, it looks like Marinette and Adrien are about to learn about the Alliance update... oh boy. Here comes the fireworks. Oh, and a creepy comment from some girl about shipping Adrien and Kagami and needing to write a fanfic about them. Also, confirmation that Adrien did NOT know about the update.

Ignoring Rose's uncomfortable description of Marinette and Adrien's relationship as "the most romantic love story ever," YES, Gabe knows god damn well his son isn't dating Kagami anymore (not that it was much of a relationship to start with), he just doesn't fucking care. WHY IS THIS SOME KIND OF SHOCK!? THE DUDE HAS BEEN A COMPLETE AND UTTER ASSHOLE SINCE DAY FUCKING ONE!! I'd say I hope this makes them kick him out of the Resistance (which mysteriously has had no real relevance since its establishment), but we all know the odds of THAT happening.

Yes, Adrien, Rose is fully aware that the Avatars aren't actually you and Kagami, that doesn't mean they can't be used as a way to harass you and Marinette or feed into tabloid bullshit. Okay, it looks like we are about to get the reveal to Ms. Bustier that Sabrina has been doing Chloe's homework. And... Sabrina literally admits to making cheat sheets for Chloe upon Miss Bustier pointing out that two tests both have Sabrina's names on them... when Chloe could've just said that she had been daydreaming and put Sabrina's name on her own test. It's not as if she wouldn't have believed it!! At worst she would've just made them redo the tests!!

Seriously, WHY THE FUCK IS CHLOE JUST ADMITTING TO ALL THIS!? HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK SHE IS!? And THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY SHE AND SABRINA WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP UP THE PRETENSE OF CHLOE DOING ALL HER OWN HOMEWORK FOR LITERAL YEARS!! NO FUCKING WAY!! THAT IS NOT REASONABLE BY ANY SANE METRIC!!! THAT IS JUST STUPIDITY FUCKING SQUARED!!!! And that's not even getting into the question on how Sabrina is apparently the better student of the two, so unless she's deliberately doing the homework badly so as to fit Chloe's skill level, Chloe should be getting bumped up grades from Sabrina doing her homework. I'd comment on the cheat-sheets, but given that they are stated to be for end of the year exams, odds are she usually doesn't have cheat sheets and just doesn't bother putting in any effort at all.

And, after taking in a breath, and processing everything, Miss Bustier states that Chloe is going to need a lot of help to get caught back up... Marinette butts in. Oh boy... And she pointblank admits that literally everyone knew Chloe was cheating... and NONE OF THEM TOLD THE TEACHER!? IF EVERYONE FUCKING KNEW, MARINETTE, THEN YOU COULD'VE JUST TOLD MISS BUSTIER THIS ENTIRE FUCKING TIME!! YOU DON'T GET TO BE MAD AT CHLOE FOR "TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SABRINA" WHEN YOU HAVE APPARENTLY BEEN ENABLING HER THIS ENTIRE FUCKING TIME!!!!

Also, Marinette, this "help" is literally just going to be tutoring and forcing her to make up all the work she's fallen behind on. So getting off on an angry rant on Chloe "getting off easily," despite this basically amounting to Chloe having most of her free time taken away to catch up her grades, IS FUCKING STUPID. Also, Lila gave an evil smirk, so she's gonna do something, you can literally tell.

Wow, they are really hammering home the "Chloe is a rich idiot" button as hard as they can. This is literally fucking stupid. This, I cannot even begin to go into how low-effort this is. This isn't Chloe. This is a cardboard cutout they slapped her name on and played voice recordings to imitate speech for.

Also, it's really fucking stupid how both Chloe AND Marinette seem to think Chloe will have any choice in making up her lost work. And now Lila is butting in, acting shocked that Chloe didn't tell her about "having trouble in school." And Chloe, because of course she's that stupid, doesn't pick up on Lila's blatant attempt to pretend this is actually about Chloe struggling and not just being lazy, so she sends Chloe an email. There's also a snobby speech about school being pointless, but I am actively trying to tune it OUT.

Oooh, Lila calls out Marinette (politely, of course) about Marinette not telling the teachers about Chloe's cheating, despite clearly knowing about it... that's actually clever. "She doesn't have difficulties, only privileges," wow, they are literally having Marinette parrot Astruc's BS, and Marinette... TELLING THE TEACHER A CLASSMATE IS CHEATING IS LITERALLY YOUR FUCKING JOB AS CLASS REP, YOU ARE THE ONE IN THE WRONG HERE. Also, badmouthing the teachers, in FRONT of your teacher!? They are really showing off that Marinette's no smarter than Chloe in this. Also, Chloe saying her father would kick the teachers out of school, despite her dad not having that power.

Lila throwing doubt on Marinette not being fit to be Class Rep anymore would be good... if she weren't making it about Marinette's relationship with Adrien, instead of, you know, NOT DOING HER DUTIES AS CLASS REP WHEN IT COMES TO CHLOE DESPITE HAVING THE AUTHORITY AND ABILITY TO EXPOSE HER LONG BEFORE SHE AND ADRIEN GOT TOGETHER!!! And NOW we get the claim of Lila trying to replace Marinette as class rep. This feels like another case of the writers trying to insist "we're totally in on the joke!" despite not getting the joke at all.

If it weren't reliant on all the phony good will and trust she's generated by lying her ass off and people taking her at her word, this would actually be a good plan on Lila's part. Then she goes and tries to throw shade on the election being "undemocratic for not giving her a chance" since she didn't get a chance to run the last time  around... WHEN SHE WAS NOT EVEN A STUDENT AT THE TIME!! Seriously, Marinette, YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS!!!

"I always thought Chloe was a gifted student!" Miss Bustier... HOW BLIND ARE YOU!? CHLOE IGNORES CLASS, IS RUDE TO HER CLASSMATES, AND FREQUENTLY IGNORES WHAT THE CLASS IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!! HOW BLIND ARE YOU!?

And we see that Alya and Nino still swallow Lila's bullshit hook line and sinker. And they literally brush off Adrien sticking up for Marinette, WOW, WHAT GREAT FRIENDS THESE TWO ARE, HUH!? What a "great bestie" and "great bro" they are for their best friends!! Clearly these are two people Marinette and Adrien should trust!!

Also, them describing "saying anything to stick up for his sweetheart" and describing it as being a real couple is disgusting. Legitimately disgusting. If the writers think unconditionally backing up your partner even when they are in the wrong or lying for them is something a real couple should do, or is "sweet," that is disturbing on multiple levels.

"We can't talk about it openly, Lila is too good of a liar!" NO SHE ISN'T!!! YOU CAN LITERALLY DISPROVE MULTIPLE OF HER LIES JUST BY CALLING JAGGED STONE, WHO YOU PERSONALLY KNOW, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!!

Wow, loving how Alya and Marinette are just shutting down any possibility of Chloe ever changing, what great heroic spirits these two have, because clearly refusing to believe someone has changed or can change is heroic!

Alya trying to convince Marinette to trust her falls apart upon the fact that Alya STILL believes Lila unconditionally, despite literally now knowing that one of the very FIRST lies Lila ever told her (that she's best friends with Ladybug) is fake, BECAUSE MARINETTE, WHO IS LADYBUG, IS LITERALLY TELLING HER SHE DOESN'T TRUST LILA AT ALL!! FUCK! THIS!! NOISE!!!

Also, the juxtaposition of Alya sticking up for Lila by insisting that she's a nice girl with Lila literally describing wanting to "exterminate Marinette like the vermin that she is" is disturbing, not funny. It makes Alya come off as delusional and Lila as UTTERLY PSYCHOTIC. Describing another human being as "Vermin to be exterminated" IS DISTURBING, NOT FUNNY.

Them trying to give Sabrina a sad face over Chloe listening to Lila falls apart from the simple fact that Sabrina has always been Chloe's accomplice without any word of complaint prior to this Season.

Miss Bustier, LILA WAS NOT EVEN A STUDENT DURING THE LAST ELECTION!!! THIS IS NOT BEING FAIR, THIS IS BEING STUPID!!! SHE CAN LITERALLY COMPETE NEXT YEAR WITHOUT ANY ISSUE!! Or she could theoretically, anyway. Also, Marinette is going to bomb this election; this entire episode has done nothing but hammer home how Lila functionally rules the school when it comes to the writers bending over backwards to put things in her favor. There is no chance she WON'T win.

Also, it's disturbing how the writers are using Lila as a strawman against the idea of redemption. Specifically, as a strawman against CHLOE'S redemption. This is just plain unhealthy. Also, Chloe's reaction to Lila asking her to be her deputy makes no sense; even ignoring the context of Lila basically telling Chloe "do whatever I say if you want to get rid of Marinette," CHLOE has always been the class rep prior to Marinette, and if she's not reacting with annoyance at being the "deputy" instead of the Class Rep entirely, she should be having a smirk at regaining her "rightful power and position." But that would undermine the message that "Chloe is a lazy brat with no redeeming qualities and who is lazy."

Wait, Nino phrasing how weird it is that Chloe would willingly agree to not be the one in charge does highlight how odd this is... but COME THE FUCK ON, HOW DOES ANYONE NOT SMELL HOW SUSPICIOUS THIS FUCKING IS!? SHE'S GOT THE CREEPIEST FUCKING GRIN ON HER FACE, WHAT IS WITH THAT!? Also, the fact that Alya's immediate reaction is that Chloe's an impostor instead of this being a set-up is eye-roll inducing. Marinette literally having a meltdown and rabidly angry at her desk (she is LITERALLY vibrating on screen) over Lila's lies really goes to show why people don't believe her; heck, if Lila weren't such a transparently bad liar, I'd be hard pressed to believe her myself! Granted, it took about five seasons for her to get to this point, but you get the picture, right?

Wow, the insistence that it's because of Marinette's love life that she couldn't "fix Chloe" is kinda hilarious, since that's arguably accurate. The show has sacrificed EVERYTHING on the altar of pushing Marinette's obsession with getting with Adrien above all else. So in a meta way, it WAS because of Marinette's love life that Chloe never got "fixed"! Of course, that's under the assumption they would've let Chloe change to begin with.

Seriously, Chloe's smile in this is DISTURBING. It looks wrong on every level, and NO ON SHOULD BE DUMB ENOUGH NOT TO REALIZE HOW FAKE IT IS!! Seriously, does NO ONE think that maybe she's just playing along to spite Marinette!? NO ONE!? And it all gets brushed aside in favor of Lila's lies about how "trustworthy" she is, and her "humanitarian work." This episode's moral feels like it boils down to "trust no one because no one can be trusted."

Her saying she's gone into conflict zones is an immediate red flag, literally no ethical humanitarian organization would EVER have someone her age actually near a conflict zone, and her bringing this up in regards to redeeming Chloe feels like it's a stealth attempt at an insult.

And now we get Marinette's speech, talking about how they hoped Chloe would become a better person, and saying how Ladybug, Miss Bustier, and basically the class reached out to her. Right off the bat, this is wrong. Oh sure, they TECHNICALLY reached out to her... and going by this show's track record, that "reaching out" amounted to a single gesture of basic decency and then leaving Chloe to her toxic homelife without ever actually addressing ANY OF HER PROBLEMS. Heck, Adrien in particular is the worst example in that he literally extracted a promise from her to be better, and then did FUCKING NOTHING WITH IT for literal months, only bothering to use it when she'd already decided "Fine, if you want me to be bad, then I'll be bad." FUCK THIS BULLSHIT.

When did they reach out to her? HOW did they reach out to her!? Seriously, this entire fucking sequence just feels like them insisting that "everyone already gave her a chance, never mind when it happened, she squandered it and that's all there is to it!!" The fact that they literally had Chloe NOD HER HEAD IN AGREEMENT to Marinette's cruel description of her really hammers home that Chloe is just a strawman at this point. It's really funny how Marinette describes helping Chloe as "wasting her energy in vein," when it's very obvious to anyone who has seen the show that she's done basically NOTHING when it comes to redeeming Chloe, and as stated earlier, literally has been neglecting her duties by enabling Chloe's bad behavior.

Also, her description of "I'd rather help the majority who are nice rather than help the one difficult person who needs it most" is really disgusting. And then we get Lila withdrawing her candidacy from the Election SHE insisted on having. This is literally a blatant attempt at manipulating the votes by artificially generating sympathy. The fact that she's putting words in Marinette's mouth (calling Lila an idiot, which she never did), it's honestly hard to take Lila's manipulations seriously when they have weird sketchy sounding music on. Instead of making this feel like a dangerous moment of Lila turning the class to her side by acting like a wounded gazelle, it feels like it just highlights how thick the class is when it comes to Lila's character.

This, ALL of this, would make so much more sense and be workable, if they hadn't also shown, however unintentionally, that Lila's lies are a house of cards propped up by luck and the gullibility of her audience. The fact that the people who literally watched Marinette's speech, which didn't include the word "idiot" even once, are taking Lila's crocodile tears at face value is stupid beyond words.

Miss Bustier is honestly being a good teacher in this episode; her insisting that Marinette go after Lila is spot on in this case, as while it would be best if Miss Bustier went herself, class is still going on, and as Class Rep, Marinette IS obligated to provide some degree of support for Lila, even someone she dislikes, when the entire reason she's even in this situation (ignoring Lila's idiotic lies and blatant manipulations) is because she shirked her responsibilities as Class Rep by letting Chloe's actions continue rather then reporting them as she should. It's telling that the show is framing Miss Bustier as being a reasonable, if slightly naive, authority figure as being in the wrong here.

Oh, now we see Lila stashing her phone in the locker, camera pointed out. THAT probably doesn't mean anything! (Sarcasm)

Oooh, now we see Monarch spitting on his own promise NOT to give powers to someone who deeply hates him, who didn't see THAT coming!? For real, he's SHOWN that he can sense WHO is feeling certain emotions at a given time, so he should know damn well that this is Lila, and she would ABSOLUTELY turn those powers against him the second she gets the chance! What is this moron thinking!? Seriously, he KNOWS she hates him, and FELT her hatred TOWARDS him earlier, WHY THE FUCK DOES HE THINK THAT SHE WON'T GO AFTER HIM, JUST BECAUSE HE'S NOT THE IMMEDIATE SOURCE OF HIS RAGE THIS TIME!?

Also, why the fuck did he describe her emotion as "despair?" He can literally sense emotions, and KNOWS that what she's feeling is hatred. Also, the powerset he gave "Hoaxer" is literally just making her figurative ability to make people believe whatever she says, no matter how contrived or stupid, literal. It's idiotic.

I'm confused on when exactly he gave her the power to teleport. Also, the fact that Marinette literally walked in and she decided that using her powers to turn people against Marinette and attack her FOR her really shows how stupid she is.

Seeing as this entire "fight" is just gonna be Lila brainwashing people (not gonna comment on why Mylene and Ivan weren't affected, since them being "no tech" has never been hinted at before EVER), I'm gonna skip to the end of it for the sake of my sanity.

Okay, I'll add one thing, Hoaxer using her powers to brainwash Nathalie into sending her all the dirt she has on Gabe without letting him know is actually clever. It's the ONE THING I'll give her.

Alright, I'm at the end of the episode, and Lila fakes "rejecting an Akuma," which at least in her case makes more sense then the numerous other times it's happened, as she accepted it willingly to start with. And now, here at the end, we get Adrien telling Marinette he was wrong to give Lila a chance, which wouldn't be a problem... if it weren't for the fact that Marinette NEVER gave Lila a chance and routinely tried to call her on her lies, this feels like another meanspirited "Bad people never change, they just stay bad meanies!!" rant.

And they make it about Adriennette, again, of course. It's "funny" how they put a superficial coat of paint over the show's flaws by trying to reframe the character's actions rather then, you know, LET THEM HAVE JUST PLAIN FUCKED UP. Even this is more them acting as if Adrien did a lot to help Lila and Chloe... when literally all he did was stand to the side and, AT MOST, put in a lukewarm effort to get Chloe to shape up that he never followed up on. It's pathetic. AND ANOTHER CASE OF ASTRUC USING MARINETTE TO PARROT HIS OWN BIASED AS FUCK TALKING POINTS, HOW ORIGINAL!!! Because NO, "the good you see in others is just a reflection of your own" is cynical BS spouted by narcissists and egotists who don't wanna admit to being in the wrong or having fucked things up with their personal relationships by making the other person out to be the sole fucking bad guy.

And of course they gave Lila the unanimous vote, because why the hell not. And it ends with Marinette shutting down Alya congratulating her for giving Lila a chance by spelling out that she was just letting Lila have her way so she has a better shot at exposing her lies, and Lila retrieving the email Nathalie sent her. And with that, I'm done with this episode, and it's time for me to grab dinner for tonight. I hope you enjoyed seeing me lose my shit over this. It was actually fun to just vent on how stupid this episode was!

[shrekgogurt]

My brain has not been very kind to me recently so I have not had the chance to write much aside from half-heartedly dragging myself through my writing heavy coursework. I have been so exhausted and anxious and honestly quite sad that even imagining little stories in my head takes too much energy. In short, things are not great over in my swamp.

Nevertheless, here are precisely six new sentences from chapter three of Escape to Space (Simon’s POV):

His face steels into nothingness again. Why does he keep doing that? What is going on inside his head? He’s locked down like a jewelry safe, designed not to easily open. I try the Niamh trick—investigating his eyes—but they’re impenetrable. I would hate to play him at poker.

Self-Indulgent Rant & Tags under the cut:

For real though…my self-talk has been atrocious. I’ve convinced myself everyone in my life secretly hates me and that I’m bad at all my crafts. I may in fact be in my Wayward Son era which is pitiful because I mean…I didn’t kill my dad or lose my magic. But…do I ever want to get out of bed????? No, that shit is cozy!!!!! And I know it’s me self-sabotaging. And I know deep down I’m capable of all the things and I’m not totally unloveable. However, I can’t bring myself to believe it enough to kickstart the inertia which drives me CRAZY. Like girl, why aren’t you doing your work when you could just…do your work??????????? Why don’t you believe people want to actually spend time with you when they’re spending time with you????????????? What’s! Not! Clicking!? I guess…you know what they say… I Shouldn’t Ghost My Therapist

Thank for the tags today and this past week @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @martsonmars @fatalfangirl @captain-aralias @technetiumai @larkral @palimpsessed @ileadacharmedlife @thewholelemon @basiltonbutliketheherb @artsyunderstudy @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @onepintobean @ivelovedhimthroughworse @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @aristocratic-otter @confused-bi-queer + a bonus @raenestee simply because I adore you. I’m sorry if I don’t know some of y’all well and forced you to wade through my whining.

[duck-in-a-spaceship]

It took me a while, but the next chapter of Pages Dog-Eared, Margins Filled is indeed up. This is the second to last one, and hopefully it's worth the wait!

Chapter text below the cut

The music fell over Neil in waves, notes washing over him, sweeping away the outside world in their tides. He imagined the ocean dancing with itself, two watery figures in moonlight that illuminated them from the inside out. He didn’t actually know any dances, at least not the kind he imagined the two figures doing, but that didn’t really matter, he found, because the music took the steps for him, helped his dancers find their feet.

Then the bell rang, chiming out through all of Welton, and a wave crashed over Neil’s dancers.

He heard the gentle shuffling around him, and figured his classmates were all pulling off their blindfolds, starting to gather their things, but Neil stayed right where he was. Keating stopped the music, fully severing the daydream but… Neil didn’t want to leave quite yet.

“That’s it for today boys,” Keating told them, and Neil listened as everyone began to rise to their feet, collecting their things, chatting amongst themselves as they headed out the door. He didn’t need to watch, didn’t need to do anything, really. Just listen.

The shuffling receded, footsteps carrying themselves away, and finally the clamor in the hallway was muffled as (Neil figured) the last person let the door close behind them.

Suddenly, it was just Neil left. Well, Neil and Keating, he assumed. That was all he could do, afterall, assume, and that was kind of nice too. No need to be right, no way to be wrong, because he had no way of knowing what the truth was. He could just guess, and go from there.

Neil heard Keating settle on the desk in front of him, and he slowly took off the blindfold, let its darkness fall away.

“Decided to take a little nap there?” Keating asked.

Neil smiled, chuckled a little at the joke. “No sir,” he assured. “I was paying attention. I just, uh, wasn’t ready to go to my next class yet, I guess.”

“Well, from some of the time I’ve had to spend interacting with my fellow colleagues, I can’t say I blame you, Mr. Perry.” He winked there, and Neil grinned widely. “But, I don’t think I’d be the best teacher if I encouraged truancy, so I should suggest you get to class.”

Neil fiddled with the edges of his blindfold, tapping his energy out on the side of the desk. “Well, what if we had to talk about something for class?” he asked. “That would be okay, right? You could give me a note or something for Dr. Hager?”

Keating raised an eyebrow, seemingly considering his offer. Neil raised his eyebrows in return (he didn’t think he could get just one up) and Keating chuckled. “I suppose I could let you be a little late, if you do need to discuss your coursework, of course.”

Neil nodded eagerly. “Actually, I have been wanting to ask you if you have any poetry recommendations?”

Keating looked at him with a sort of surprised expression, before smiling wryly. “How interesting,” he remarked casually. “Mr. Anderson had the same question for me not even a week ago.”

Warmth flushed up Neil’s neck, all the way to his cheeks. He felt like he’d been caught making out with Todd in a closet, which was ridiculous, he knew, because all he’d actually done was ask a similar question as his classmate. But when he looked at Keating’s knowing smile, he wasn’t really sure if there was a difference.

“Well uh… I mean-” he forced an awkward sort of laugh, trying, somehow, to act calm, to hide the fact that he potentially had a crush on Todd Anderson that could dwarf certain suns. “What did you tell him?”

“I believe I recommended ‘ The Road Not Taken’ by our dear friend Robert Frost. I don’t suppose you would know if he took me up on that recommendation, would you?”

Keating gave him a knowing sort of look, but it didn’t elicit the flash of panic Neil would have expected. He had a crush on Todd Anderson, Keating was apparently right onto him and… and that was probably okay.

“Yeah he… he did.” Neil remembered watching Todd as he delivered his poem, the way he seemed to get lost in the words, coming back to earth only after the final stanza had drawn to a close. Neil wasn’t sure where Todd went when he read, and it felt rude to just ask, like something too personal. He imagined it was something like what he felt, sitting there with his blindfold on, listening to classical music. “He did a really good job with it, obviously.” Neil broke into a smile at the ‘obviously’, knowing it was really something that could have gone unsaid, and they both would have known it anyway. He still wanted to say it.

“Well I’m glad to hear it.” Keating slapped Neil’s desk, which made him jump a little, and then rose to his feet. “Hopefully we can find something just as effective for you.”

“Hopefully, Captain,” Neil agreed, watching silently as Keating scanned his bookshelves, pulling a large, leather-bound collection free.

“You’re a man of Shakespeare, Neil, is that right?” Keating asked, already flipped through the pages.

“Absolutely,” Neil agreed excitedly, peering up slightly to try and gain a glimpse as to what exactly Keating was looking at, a task that very immediately proved itself pointless.

“Well then, I’m sure you’ll be aware of, if not familiar, with some of his sonnets.”

Neil nodded. “Uh, aware of, maybe not familiar,” he admitted, and Keating smiled as he set the book down in front of Neil, opened to a specific page.

“Well then, let’s see if we can fix that.” Keating tapped his finger upon the page. “Sonnet 18, might be one you’ve heard of.”

Neil scanned the page for only a moment, but it was enough for his eyes to catch the very first line ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’. He looked up at Keating, who had that same knowing smile, that sort of twinkle in his eye, and Neil nodded. He folded over the corner of the page, and closed the book, taking it with him as he stood.

“Thank you, O Captain, My Captain.”

“You’re quite welcome, my good Puck.”

+++

“Are you excited?” Neil asked, as he walked by Todd’s side, as the forest swallowed them both whole.

“Yeah, course I am.” Todd said the words like they were obvious, and Neil found himself surprised because they kind of were, because Todd had shed whatever walls he seemed so keen to hide behind all the time, and was smiling at him broadly. “I might be more excited if I knew what I was looking forward to, though.”

Neil laughed. “Well that would just ruin the surprise, now wouldn’t it?”

“Doesn’t have to be a surprise. If you’d ever asked, I’d tell you what I was reading.”

“Okay then, what are you reading?”

Todd huffed, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. (A horrible idea, really, they needed those for balance out here, and Todd was always tripping over himself when they traveled through the woods.) “Well I’m not telling you now , if you won’t tell me yours.”

“See! Then we’re even, and you don’t get to complain.”

“You’re going first, though.”

“Alright, sure,” Neil said very seriously, nodding along in agreement. “I’ll go first, read the opening statements, and then you’ll read your poem…” He trailed off, waving one hand through the air as he described his plans, to look over his shoulder at Todd, who was glaring at him and clearly trying, very hard, to hide his amusement.

“You’re a jerk.”

Neil laughed, but Todd went on before he got the chance to respond. “Fine, I’ll go first, but mine’s short anyway, it’ll be over before you know it.”

“I’ll be sure to savor it,” Neil assured him. They were nearing the cave, then, able to watch as it suddenly appeared into view, right under their feet.

“Uh thanks,” Todd muttered, traveling down the path, worn familiar by their own steps.

“Also, don’t think I didn’t notice your clue! There’s only so many short poems out there!”

Todd laughed, ducking into the cave ahead of Neil. “You’re not going to guess it!”

“Maybe I will!” Neil followed him, down, and suddenly they were face to face. Neil froze, and Todd did too, staring at him with slightly wider than usual eyes.

“What do you think?” Todd asked quietly, and Neil found himself suddenly very, very unsure if they were still talking about poetry.

He leaned in slightly, and didn’t know how to feel when Todd didn’t lean back, when he stayed right where he was. “Whitman,” he finally said.

Todd laughed, broke the tension, the moment… broke something as he stepped away, found a spot to get settled in the cave. “That’s just your default guess then, huh?”

“You like him!” Neil said defensively, finding his own spot to get settled and pulling out the opening notes. He’d been getting lax on reading them as of late, but they’d made it in his little improvised agenda for the night, so he felt that they were a needed inclusion. “Am I right?”

Todd shook his head, sitting down on one of the rocks around the cave. “No more hints.”

Neil laughed. “Alright then, fine. You just know I’d figure it out.”

Todd only graced that statement with an eyeroll, which Neil smiled at. Then he took out the old, tattered book that Keating had left on his desk, opened it to the first page, and began to read.

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately-”

The words were nearly cemented in Neil’s head at that point, etched there like a river slowly carving its way into a mountain. They felt comfortably familiar on his tongue, like old friends. He thought the repetition might strip their meaning at some point, like saying ‘spaghetti’ or ‘lamppost’ over and over again, until they just sounded like strange collections of sounds. But the excerpt held the same weight the fifteenth time he read it out as it had the first, and when he finished, they both let the silence hang in the air for a moment.

Neil was the one not to break the silence, but maybe carefully pull it back, like a curtain. He cleared his throat. “You’re up.”

Todd nodded, and they switched spots; Todd standing as Neil sat down, eager to listen. He realized that Todd didn’t have a book with him this time, or anything really, he just stood tall and looked right at Neil.

“This is O me! O life! By… well, Walt Whitman.”

Neil grinned, pleased at his own correct guess, but decided he could save the gloating for another time, as Todd began–

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of it all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Neil found himself mouthing along to the final lines. Keating referenced them enough that their whole class probably knew at least the final section, and Neil in particular had made sure to etch them in his memory, in his very soul. Hearing them from Todd himself was somehow transformative. Neil couldn’t quite describe it, but he wasn’t sure he felt the need to, either.

Todd finished his reading, and a slow silence descended on top of them. There were no pages to put away, no books to slam shut, just the two of them, staring at each other, quiet.

“So I was right,” Neil announced proudly, interrupting that slow, distant quiet. “Whitman,” he added, teeth cutting through the ‘t’.

Todd rolled his eyes, sat down across from Neil in the cave. “Alright, yeah, but it's not like it was that hard to guess.” He broke eye contact with Neil, started twisting his fingers around the edge of his jacket sleeve, fidgeting. “Besides, it’s a good poem.”

Neil smiled. “You’re right, it is. That was one of the first ones Keating introduced us to, right?”

“Yeah,” Todd chuckled, still fidgeting with his sleeves. “Yeah, right at the beginning of the year, back when we all thought he was crazy or something.”

“I’m not sure I’ve changed my mind on that one. I think it’s good he’s a little nuts, don’t you? Makes him the best teacher we have.”

Todd hummed in agreement. “Yeah, maybe.” He nodded at the book in Neil’s hands, gesturing to it with one lazily flopping hand. “Come on though, it’s your turn. No stalling.”

Neil laughed as he rose to his feet, flipping through the pages of his book. “Hey, I wasn’t stalling! I was just making conversation.” He found the right one, page dog-eared, margins filled, annotated and well-read. His stomach flipped as his eyes found the first line, and he wondered if maybe he was stalling a little after all.

“Are you ready?” he asked Todd.

“Of course.”

Of course. Neil nodded, reminded himself that he could do this, that he was an actor, that it was his calling to give performances just like this one, to pour his entire heart into them just like this one. So he cleared his throat quietly, and began-

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The words fell from Neil’s lips like honey in some parts, in others they tumbled forth like autumn leaves. He couldn’t tell if time seemed to speed up or slow down as he gave his performance. Maybe time just kind of broke a little in general, and part of Neil would always be stuck in that moment, in that sonnet. It didn’t seem like such a bad moment to be caught in.

Neil shut the book, looked over its spine at Todd, who was sitting on the floor of the cave, who was looking up at him, wide-eyed, too-still. “What’d you think?” he asked after a moment, shrugging the silence off his shoulders.

“Neil, that was amazing. You- you did good. Really good.” And Todd looked up at him like he really meant it, still wide-eyed, maybe a bit more fidgety, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket, blond hair swaying in the dim light. Neil wondered if that was how he looked, when he watched Todd read his poetry.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said, grinning. “I chose it for you, you know.”

“That- it was a good choice. Shakespeare.”

“Oh yeah, probably pretty predictable though, huh? Bet you could’ve guessed it, if you tried.”

Todd nodded down at his hands; he watched them as they trailed over the stitching on his coat, as they curled the fabric over itself and rolled it between their fingers. “Why that one, specifically?” He looked up at Neil, suddenly too-still. Eyes narrow.

Neil swallowed down the fluttering in his stomach, the sudden, frantic question of- ‘Am I really doing this?’ Instead, he replaced it with the reverberating chorus of ‘Carpe diem. Seize the day.’

“I chose it for you,” he said, again, looking down at Todd. In the firelight of regular dead poets meetings, his eyes would flash and shine, hair golden. But here, the cave was dark, illuminated by a dying flashlight they’ve stuck in the corner. Here, Todd’s eyes were something deep and dark, something he could fall into. Here, their hair was the same shade of brown.

Neil cleared his throat. “I think that you’re all those things, Todd. I’ve thought it since- I don’t know- I’ve thought it since we met? Since we started the club? Since you read me your first poem? I don’t know when I realized it, but once I did I couldn’t just… you were everywhere Todd. I couldn’t ignore it. Like the sun.” The words were tumbling out of him, and Neil took a shaky breath, tried to reorient himself in the cave, with the flashlight, with those eyes and that hair.

“And god sometimes I feel like… like a flare or something. Like something that’ll burn bright and then just- just tear itself up. Go out. But I see you, and I can’t imagine you ever burning up, just shining on until the end of the universe. And I think that’s why…” Neil’s voice shook, despite his best efforts, despite all his actor training. There was no script, just words, thoughts, emotions, too much for him to carry without wavering. Carpe diem. “And shit, Todd, I think that’s part of the reason why I’m a little bit in love with you.”

Neil finished his confession with a weak laugh, with a shaky smile smothering over his hesitance. Todd didn’t return the gesture, the laugh, the smile, he just looked up at Neil with something so genuine Neil wasn’t sure what to do with it. He gripped the book in his hands, and hoped he didn’t break it.

“You don’t have to say anything, right now. Or ever, I guess, I just-”

“Wait, Neil, I-” Todd cut him off with a rushed sort of franticness, like he knew he had to say something , even if he wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. Neil shut up.

Todd rose to his feet, and suddenly they were right in front of each other, too close for the beams of the flashlight to hit their faces, shading each other from its glare. “Do you want to know why I chose my poem?” Todd asked, softly.

“Why?” Neil matched his tone without even thinking about it, which was good, because otherwise he might be tempted to shout over the wild beating of his heart in his chest. They were so close . 

“Because I want to live life to the fullest and because… because I know what I want my verse to say.”

And when Todd leaned forward, Neil matched him without thinking about it.

The kiss was quiet and brief and maybe, when they both looked back on it privately, they’d call it awkward– they didn’t know what to do with their hands, were a little too scared when they didn’t need to be. But in the moment, it felt like the sun was shining right on Neil’s chest, right into it, where it never got to go, and it felt wonderful.

Todd pulled away first, both of their eyes fluttering open.

“That was a good verse,” Neil said softly, and Todd laughed, turning his head down and away from him, golden hair flashing in the cave.

“Yeah, I thought so too.”

[satohqbanana]

I'm Looking Forward to That

Summary: Gracie crams away her last essay for the year: self-reflective essay about her goals and expectations for the incoming year. Luckily, Ireus and Des help her untangle her thoughts and feelings for the future.

Notes: A post-Arcanium:Magia story. The only spoilers I have are Des' identity (which isn't really too relevant in the bigger picture (for now)), Help Ewe’s real identity (which isn’t really a big deal either (for now)) and the establishment of Gracie, Ireus, and Des' friendship/dynamics. Enjoy! -- The sun forced its light through the mass of clouds above Kaleidopolis. Paper wishes, glass lanterns, and downy flags waved in the cold, misty air. Through the streets, one could find warm sweets, spicy soup, and aromatic roasts wherever they looked. And in the middle of the city, right before its prestigious academy, the Great Pyre roared, bathing its surroundings blue. Truly, the new year was about to replace the old. With the obvious being so visible, people ran about to and fro, rushing to fulfill the last of their pending commitments. It was bad luck to leave unfinished business for the new year, after all.

Heartwood Academy was no different. Shouts reverberated through its halls as students, teachers, and staff accomplished report after report, turned in paper after paper, and signed document after document. Ever an early bird, Des completed her requirements and paid incurred debts to prioritize taking on the last of her part-time job shifts for the year. And ever a diligent student, Ireus responsibly submitted everything a week before their respective deadest deadlines, in preparation for the stack of victims of fireworks, alcohol, and food poisoning he and his mother would welcome in the mid of merrymaking. Lucky for them, really. They now had extra time to work or to leisurely spend as they wished. Unfortunately, the proclaimed leader of their clique, poor clumsy Gracie, was way, way behind. Maybe she took too many breaks; maybe she didn't prepare enough before the deadlines came; maybe she miscalculated her schedule. Despite her own efforts to finish all her deliverables, she still found herself short of time. Thankfully, even if her friends did not believe all her maybe's, they volunteered to provide a bit of assistance in managing her to-do list, including caring for Charles. Miraculously, she settled her dues one by one, even if some were considered late and deductions were applied to her grade. Gracie was thankful nonetheless to have finished them. Today, one day before New Year's Eve, she sat in the comfort of her bed before her last task: a self-reflective essay about her goals and expectations for the new year. The privacy of her dorm room encouraged her to simply write what she wanted, but her friends, who sat around her, wrote off her work as unacceptable. "Grace, you can't tell Mistress J you hate doing the reflection!" scolded Ireus. "She's only going to make you do more of it!" Grace huffed. "If you're only going to complain about what I'm doing, then don't say you're helping me! You're of no help at all!" "And if you're only going to complain about the coursework, you better talk to her directly! Besides, where's the part where you tell her what you want to do for the new year?!" "Oh, fine, fine! You win! I'm wrong, it's all wrong, and this isn't working!" Once again, Gracie crushed the paper into a ball, threw it to her bin, and terribly missed. Des, who sat on the floor, carefully placed the ball on top of its companions -- Why, oh, why did Mistress Jewel have to make them do such a corny little paper? Even Miss Yara, the academy's student coordinator, was such a kind and helpful ewe: she required basically nothing of them! Gracie curled into a ball and hid under her thick blanket. What a terrible way to end her year. "Oh, Gracie," Ireus asked, "Don't you have any plans for the future? Like, anything at all?" "My only plan is to finish school. When I finish school, I'll return to Prisma. Once I return to Prisma, I'll study about politics and governance." Gracie sighed. "I'm still its Crown Princess after all." "And we're the lucky plebs you got lumped with." Gracie peeked out her ball and glared. She would've knocked Ireus with a blast of a Fyreball, but as he was seated on her desk, she settled for throwing her quillpen at him. He dodged, and her quillpen almost fell on top of poor Charles. The rat squeaked and fled into Des' hands. Gracie bit her lip. "Oops, sorry!" With gentle eyes, though, Des suggested, "Want a snack break?" Gracie took a deep breath with the intent to turn the offer down, but she paused. It wouldn't hurt to eat; besides, she had until tomorrow to pass this last paper. "Okay." Jumping off her bed and tossing her blanket aside, she declared, "To the caf!" The three students got on their feet, slipped their jackets onto their arms, and wrapped their capes over their shoulders. Charles avoided Gracie's hands and preferred to stay comfortable on Des' shoulder (rightfully so after that little blunder). Des and Ireus went ahead to put their shoes on and wait for the elevator, and once they were all out the room, Gracie locked her door. The elevator arrived. Gracie almost tripped over her unzipped boots as she hurriedly tottered over. Good thing Ireus caught her! "Thank you, thank you; I'm so sorry!" Gracie giggled as she planted her feet stable on the floor. As the elevator brought them down, Gracie reached into her purse and flashed a big iridescent coin at her friends. Ireus lifted his wallet, but Des' hand stopped him. "It's better if we use that to pay for all our items altogether, then Ireus and I can just pay you the price of our own orders," she reasoned. How smart! Both Gracie and Ireus placed their money away in agreement. When the elevator reached the ground floor, the three stepped into the cafeteria. As per school policy, the cafeteria stayed open for the holidays to accommodate the few students who stayed in the dormitory. Fortunately this year, VarEaties was the one stall that operated for the year end, and VarEaties happened to be their current favorite food provider. The group placed their orders and Gracie paid the total sum. Des quickly did the math and the three exchanged dull and dark coins back and forth. They then chose a table and made themselves comfortable in their seats. "So, guys -- ahem, children!" Gracie asked, mimicking Mistress' Jewel's tone, "Would you kindly share with me your goals and expectations for this coming year?" "Research Lab." "More work and more money." Gracie forced a laugh as the two glared at each other. Why were they like this? Des furrowed her brows as she growled and gestured towards Ireus. Against Gracie's assumptions, that somehow translated to Ireus taking his turn first. "As I said, Research Lab," he repeated. "Kind of like your goal for the next few years of your life." "That sounds... boring?" Gracie grimaced. For the supposedly most fun part of their studies, Ireus picked the drabbest choice. Research Lab meant studying with a focus on studying and more studying - similar to an extension of their actual academic work thus far!

"I know, but it's actually more exciting since it's about the big unknowns and what-if's." "I thought you'd be into Community Lab. Helping people, being a leader, doing charity work; that kind of stuff?"

"Yeah, but Community Lab also requires a lot of patience and you know I have none of that. Besides, Research Lab is all about the theories, and my parents are big on theories. It'd be amazing if I could also do a back and forth with them." "Knowing your parents, I think that'd be chaotic." "I don't plan on telling them about the ideas they feel strongly against, if that's what you're thinking about?" Ireus grinned. "I know what tickles them and what turns them into public orators." They roared in laughter. Adults were so weird; so serious about the things they believed in. Their order bell rang, and Ireus volunteered to fetch it for them. When he left, Gracie leaned towards Des. "And you? Which lab are you choosing?" Des shrugged and Charles slid onto the table. "Dunno. Never really thought about it." "Well, right now, let's think of it right now, then? Scouting Lab. You get sent around the world in pursuit of potential students, investigating brewing pools of magic, and retrieving artifacts." "Uh... no?" "Err, how about Security Lab? You work on new spells, items, and technologies to improve defenses?" "That sounds more like an Ireus thing to me. Without the invention part." "Fun Lab? The aesthetic and leisurely--" "Shadows consume me; no!" "...A-Archivist Lab? You preserve historical texts and relics?" "I don't think so." "...then, none?" Ireus arrived with a tray of food. He passed the glazed assorted fruit salad to Gracie and Charles, and set the flavorful chicken rice cakes over his place and Des'. "Probably no lab for me," Des proclaimed. To which Ireus promptly replied, "Aww, but I have love for you?" "Oh, shut up, you." Nonetheless, Des grinned and Ireus yelped. She must've kicked him on the leg. Gracie only shook her head as she muttered a joking, "Dis-ghost-ing." When Ireus recomposed himself on his seat, he looked at Des. "Jokes aside, is this about labs?" "Yeah." "You're gonna end up doing Admin Lab." Which was not a real lab, but it was the only other kind of work students could take towards the end of their curricula. "Where you'll organize all our documents; see our grades before they're released; work with numbers and papers and all that boring office work!" Des only shrugged. Then again, she was pretty good at all sorts of mundane tasks; she’d probably do well with the Admin Lab. Gracie only had a single bite of her salad when Ireus asked, "Is yours Community?" "Hm?" "You going for Community Lab?" Gracie slowed her chewing in thought. Leading more people than she was (supposedly) with her little clique, huh? Then again, that was supposed to be her work as Crown Princess (minus the magic part)! She swallowed and nodded. "You know? You know what? Why not? I think that'd be helpful for me later on." "There you go. You got one item in your reflection!" "Hooray!" Gracie high-fived Ireus and immediately chowed down a few more bites before the discussion could continue. Fortunately for her, Ireus turned to Des again and elbowed her. "Dessy, are your life priorities really all about the work and the money?" The mountain softened. "Yes and no." "Yes, because that's your focus now, and no, because...?" "...because I... after building my savings, I... plan to marry." Ireus spit water over Charles and Gracie almost choked. Now that was a very far-off dream to consider, but then again, Des loved to prepare for the many what-if's of the future; things neither Ireus and Gracie would ever think of in their current state. "Aim high, dream high, so high!" Gracie managed to say when her throat recovered from the fit of coughs. "Even I only ever dream of having a boyfriend, but you, you on the other hand..." Des rolled her eyes and her voice dropped to a whisper. "First and foremost: I need to have my legal name changed! I am certainly not planning to live on as 'Duke Desmond' forever, and I do not want the Emerald Kingdom to know that I - the real 'me' - still exists!" Though, in her anticipation for the negative outcomes of the future, Des decided to adopt an identity she wasn't exactly comfortable with. A stupid mistake, even stupid by Gracie's decidedly "bad" standards when it came to decisions. Kaleidopolis was situated right in the middle of the Chromatic Mountains, the center of magic poisoning in Orbis. Those lame alchemists and nonbelievers from the Emerald Kingdom would never dare explore that area in pursuit of a tall and lanky girl named 'Leirades Vertigris'! Gracie massaged her throat as she goaded on, "And? And...?" "Secondly, I simply want to be a wife and eventually a mother. Is it that bad?" Gracie's imagination adorned Des in white flowers and a dress... but a baby? Uh, no? "No! No, I don't really think so. I think that makes you really... mature! D-don't you think so, Ireus?" Gracie tried to smile, but she had to bite down her laughter when she turned to Ireus. His cheeks were pink, and he was trying very hard to keep his eyes on Charles, who he was still trying to dry with his handkerchief. Poor guy! "I-re-us?" Gracie called again. She glanced at Des, and she swore the other girl held her breath in anticipation. "...I, uh... that's a very big commitment to make! You're very brave, ha ha ha! But I reckon it's also important to, you know, look at the now, and remember you're still a kid, we're all still kids..." Ireus carefully lifted his gaze and Gracie followed it. Des didn't look pleased, but she wasn't disappointed either. Oh, what to do when the other two in your clique of four began stealth-arguing? "Er, you've gotta have to, you know, allot more time for leisure as a kid!" Ireus nervously laughed. "Uh, how about vacations? Surely the idea of being stuck here in Kaleidopolis for the rest of your life is, you know, not very nice?" Des relaxed. "Well, I was thinking of a vacation..." And to save Ireus from the fate she plunged him in, Gracie immediately piped, "Lovely! How about a snowy, icy trip to the Damasqus Network? I heard the lights show in Rust Island is particularly fantastic! I'm sure Ireus can tour you, me, and Charles around his father's home..." Expectedly, Des frowned. She was surely thinking of her own vacation as a trip for two. Nonetheless, she entertained Gracie's line of thought. "...sorry, Grace. I was thinking of a non-snowy scenario." "R-right... how about the Iridescent Islands, then?" "I prefer it to be somewhere not near the Emerald Kingdom; thanks." Then Des' eyes brightened. "Oh, how about Prisma? You can tour us!" Gracie clapped. An even better idea! "Yes, yes! Why not? A sunny private northern beach with all the rainbows you can see, and unlimited servings of my favorite roast pheasant. And trips to the library, and the garden, and, and... oh, you're a treasure, Des! This is the most wonderful plan we'd ever agreed on!" "...I do want to bring up that we can't go in the smack middle of the year and risk nasty sunburns," Ireus reminded. "Really? But Psychedelfis is the Land of the Sun!" "Yes, I can tolerate some sun as its native inhabitant, Your Grace, but in the middle of the dry season, I do burn quite a bit easily, thanks to my vampire blood!" "Oh, too bad! I'll only take Des with me, then." Gracie crossed her arms and held her head high. Ireus protested, but she didn't mind; she managed to make Des laugh anyway. Besides, she was going to add this to her reflection as one of the things she wanted to do for the next year. "Fine, I'll--" Ireus groaned. "I'll tell my mom. We'll figure something out. We're going to Prisma for the dry season break." "Nice!" “Thought you’d say so.” Gracie giggled with Des. They returned to eating, and for a while, they enjoyed some peace, with some occasional squeaks from Charles. "...speaking of relationships," Ireus started, and Gracie flinched when he put his hand on her shoulder. "You. The charcutier or the shopkeep?" Gracie's heart threatened to exit her chest as she glared at Ireus. "I, I-- wha-- how dare you!" He spoke of her favorites from the boys she’d been flirting with lately! How’d he know?! "Oh, G, I didn’t know your face could have bright and rich colors!" "M-my face...! Well, your face earlier was the prettiest pink you could be!" "Don't bring the past into this. We're all about the future, remember?" Gracie stomped on Ireus' foot under the table. Across her, Des continued snickering. Oh, well; Gracie deserved this! "I remember you said your charcutier is quite the, ahem, eye candy," Des not-so-helpfully supplied, "But the salesman was not just eye candy; he's also the apple of your heart." "Oh, you, you... you...!" "You know, we should use their names. Igen or Mervin?" Gracie held her warm face in her hands as her friends double-teamed against her. What kind of hole had she dug herself into?! There was no way she was going to put this in her reflection! "Hey, Dessy, haven't you worked with them for a while now?" Ireus chuckled. "Surely, they must be responsible young men. But, in your opinion, who's better, and why?" "Based on Grace's desire to visit the snows of the south, I'll go with Mervin." Ugh! Truthfully, Gracie thought of husbands as a matter the palace advisors would worry about. While she was away from their watchful guidance, she took the opportunity to explore relationships by flirting with the local men, who she believed she'd eventually forget anyway. In the first place, she always thought of that romance thing as something from the books, and an ephemeral experience in the height of one's youth - not a part of her future responsibilities as eventual Queen; no reason to care about it too much.

Besides, a loving, fulfilling relationship in a political engagement was possible: look at her own parents; they like each other a lot! Though now that her friends were listing all the list of green flags for a possible relationship of her own choice, and now that they did call her attention to her affections for that Mervin guy... Maybe she could have a different future from the one she always thought she'd have? Gracie released a long, long sigh and moaned, "I wish I was Charles! Charles doesn't have to worry about things like this!" Charles looked up from her fruits and squealed. Though still alert, she was becoming less agile. Rats had short lives as animals; one day Gracie too would have to say goodbye to her. "Are you gonna put this in your reflection?"

“Are you going to put Mervin in your reflection?”

Her friends’ questions brought Gracie back a jovial mood, and she vehemently opposed the idea. She would rather write about her wishes for the longevity of Charles' life, thank you! They finished their meals and deposited their used plates and utensils to the return tray. That was a nice snack break! On the elevator ride back, Ireus asked, "So, got all the stuff you need for your reflection?" Gracie beamed. "I think so! I think I'll be able to fill the minimum one-page requirement!"

“Awesome.”

Once she turned around, Ireus and Des continued bickering about that marriage thing, and all Gracie could do was politely shake her head or giggle along as she carefully held Charles in her hands. The elevator stopped, and when the door opened, Des raced with Ireus to Gracie's room. Unfortunately for Ireus, Des' limbs were much longer, so she won. As she lagged behind, Gracie gazed at her friends in joy and hope. For the next year, I wish we can still be all together! "Uh-oh, I just remembered I promised Mervin a shift this afternoon!" Des exclaimed. "Grace, do you mind if I leave now?" "Not at all. I'm all good-good." "Alright then." Ireus decided, "I'll take this as a cue to leave, myself. After all, I am nothing without my dear Dessymond." Des elbowed him and turned back to Gracie. "Thanks, Grace. I'll tell your boyfriend you said hi." "Don't call him my boyfriend!" Gracie unlocked the door with a click, then something in her head clicked. Huh... why not? "Actually, actually? This year, I think I'm going to ask him out." Ireus and Des shared approving nods. Before them, Gracie felt like a child being encouraged into the unknown by her busybody parents - not that she minded. Their presence helped her figure out what to put in her reflection, after all!

“Do tell us if you need support for that.”

“I will.”

With the door opened, Ireus and Des quickly grabbed their bags and waved goodbye to Gracie, off to finish their own commitments for the day. As for Gracie, she took her quillpen to get that last paper done. When she finally sorted her thoughts and finished her task, it was already rather dark and noisy outside. Oh, well, she'd just submit this tomorrow before lunchtime! With Charles on her side, a thick blanket over her back, and a mug of warm honey citrus in her hand, Gracie observed Kaleidopolis from her dormitory window. The Great Pyre glowed ever as bright and beautiful; pyrebugs adorned the sky like sparkling stars peeking in the cloudy night.  Jolly songs, fun stories, and happy cheers drifted from every house. People crossed the streets to and fro, happily partaking in the night bazaar or the year end carnival. It was a rowdy affair, but to Gracie, this was blissful peace. Gracie spotted her friends and their respective families enjoying a round of skewers. This year, it seemed that Doctor Kaine was staying with his wife Doctor Aria, while Mistress Jewel and her husband Jack were hosting their relatives, Gem and Rhine. While her own family were miles away from her, seeing her friends enjoy their precious moments with the people they loved made Gracie too feel as if she herself had family by her side. "Gracie!" Ireus' loud voice echoed towards her window. Gracie laughed as she watched Des not-so-gently shove Ireus for the unwelcome noise. "What - do - you - want?" Gracie yelled back. "Would you like to join us for New Year's Eve tomorrooow?!" Why not?! Enthusiastically, Gracie nodded. "Yes!" The dark night covered Kaleidopolis in a haze of soothing cold air. Glass lanterns shone brightly through the mist as paper wishes and downy flags fluttered about. People shared sweets, roasts, and soup over songs, stories, and cheers. The Great Pyre roared, kept lit in celebration of the previous year that graced the city and in welcome of the new era that was to come. Farewells to the past were made and promises for the future were forged. With reinvigorated hopes, Kaleidopolis eagerly awaited to embrace the beautiful dawn of a new year.

[beckleyblog]

Week 14 Blog Post

Over the course of the semester, I have learned a lot. With his being my last semester in college, I wanted to dive more into my coursework more than ever before. This class made that easy. I have thoroughly enjoyed this class and look forward to it every week. From the topics of emerging tech to learning about the professors life and entrepreneurial journey, I’ve found great value in this class.

The classes about emerging technology were extremely informational for me. While some of the tech I had heard of before and others not, with each deep dive I learned more about the function of them and how they could be beneficial in the future and for my career. The discussion about artificial intelligence technology was one that I really found value in. I had heard about it before, but never in the detail we talked about in class. The applications are endless, with what artificial intelligence has to offer. In the future I hope to stay informed about this topic and hopefully get to experiment with it in my future career.

Another aspect I learned from class is the talks from the professor about his entrepreneurial journey. Having multiple classes taught from entrepreneurs, I had heard from many different professors. In those classes, it was simply something they would address but then move on with the curriculum. In this class, we spend a couple classes just going through his journey and what he has learned throughout his life and career. I really valued his perspective and learned a lot from those talks. Something specific that stuck with me is to just jump into whatever I believe in. Instead of being cautious, dive into the project and get momentum going. People respect the idea and passion behind a person, more than getting everything right first time around. There will be failures but you have to learn from them.

Finally, one of the others things I really learned from is the digital ad assignment. This assignment forced me to get a feel on what it’s like to do digital ads on the internet. I looked into Tik Tok ads, LinkedIn sponsored posts, and Google ads. I was able to explore more into how the business side of these platforms work and how to do well on them. With being a marketing major, these are important practices that I should have already explored. I really am grateful for this assignment. 

Overall, I really have learned a lot from this class. From the topics we discussed, the real life experience lectures, and the assignments we did, I am grateful for it all. I am really glad I had this class right before I graduated, because it made me excited and confident for what is to come after. I hope I can use what I learned after I graduate, and continue to expand my knowledge in the years coming up. 

[ditttiii]

snow on the beach | i | max v.

⇢ summary: crashing into him in the middle of nowhere a day before christmas wasn’t part of your plan, but then again, spending the night with him in a car wasn’t either.

alternatively; max is the knight in shining armour no-one expected him to be. 

⇢ genre: fluff, eventual smut, sprinkles of angst along the way maybe? slow burn.

⇢ pairing: max verstappen x female reader

Chapter one || masterlist 

⇢ word count: 3k

⇢ a/n: hello hi! all my f1 fics have been moved onto my sideacc @rosegasly​ and all further updates for it will be posted there. ​

drop by my ask box and let me know what you thought ♡ 

You curse for the umpteenth time, restraining yourself from swerving to avoid a particularly slippery-looking spot on the road and praying to every god and guardian angel to keep you from skidding right off the road and into the dense forest beside. Your mothers berating rings in your ear as she reams you through the phone for delaying getting the train ticket till the very last second and then failing to find any.

“Mom, I love you, but please, can we hold off this conversation until I get back?”

“You wouldn’t be driving through this terrible weather and giving your poor mother a heart attack if you had just listened when I told you to book the tickets now, would you?”

You sigh, and it’s equal parts fond and exasperated. She is right and you know you have fucked up by not buying the tickets when you should have, but being a university student, a medical one, to make matters worse, December was a busy month for you. Amidst the stress of finals, burning the midnight oil and the buzz of caffeine, there wasn’t much registered in your cognisance besides your coursework. While you recall your mother talking about the busy festive season and buying said tickets early on, much of it came in through one ear and left through the other.

Humming, you glance at the time displayed on your dashboard and cut the conversation short. Soon it would be dark and you have no desire to drive through the winter weather a day before Christmas eve and arrive back home in a body bag.

“Yes, momma, you’re right, but I really need to concentrate on driving now. I love you and I’ll call you once I am close, kay?”

She sighs through the phone and your heart melts a little inside the hollow of your chest. For all the loud and impatient she is, you know her worry comes from a place of love for you and you make a mental note to make her breakfast tomorrow to make up for it.

“Alright, I am hanging up but drive carefully and stay safe. I love you. See you soon.”

“Love you loads, see you very soon.” You end the call with an audible mwah, knowing she’ll shake her head, muttering a brat not so quietly under her breath.

Blowing through your nose, you grip the steering wheel tight, letting whatever the radio is playing fill the silence. Conscious of your driving skills, the one thing you did not want to do to close off the year is driving your ratty old car through terrible weather. Snow blanketed your surroundings, thick and white, covering the green around you into a shimmering white and if it wasn’t you driving a car that already had less drivability than most would be comfortable with, you might even have enjoyed going through the countryside, but as it stood, it took all of your concentration and a healthy dose of luck to make your way through the long stretch of slippery tarmac.

It comes out of nowhere, one moment, you are straight and the other, the grip of your rear tyres is lost and you are slipping, skidding to the other side and banging into incoming traffic. The impact isn’t as bad as it could have been since you were careful to drive slow but the sudden change of inertia still throws you off your seat, head banging against the rearview mirror before the seatbelt pulls you back into place, stinging the flesh of your chest with the force with which it sends you back, biting into the skin for hold.

A scream is caught somewhere in your chest as your vision swims, panic and shock bringing white spots ahead of you as your body grows stiff in self-defence and you wait for the world to stop moving.

The screeching of the tires is replaced by the ringing in your ears, the only thing audible through it the harsh breaths you exhale. Hands shaking you move to take them off the steering wheel and push open the door. Nausea claws at your throat, begging for a release and it’s a second too late that you realise that you still can’t control the feeling in your lower extremity as you fall onto your knees beside the opened gate of your car and heave.

Tears blur your vision, as painful retches wrack your frame but nothing comes out. You heave until your throat starts to sting, until your chest and abdomen hurt with the weight of a thousand bricks and you struggle to breathe, lack of oxygen making your head spin and suddenly you are being turned around, warmth enveloping your forearms and through hazy eyes, you see the outline of someone’s figure on their knees facing you. It takes you a moment to register the hand that is rubbing your back, and slowly things start to come back. The feeling in your arms, the cold stinging your naked skin, the burning in your abdomen, the rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins slowly abating as you try to ground yourself to reality.

“Are you okay?” It takes you a few tries to understand the words, and you nod, not yet trusting your voice. You aren’t sure if you are hurt, but you don’t see blood anywhere and while you do feel a little sore, whether from the receding adrenaline or the cold and shock, it’s nothing you can’t bear.

Fingers appear in front of your steadily clearing vision and you hiss, jerking back as pain erupts across your forehead.

“You’re hurt.”

You realise it’s a man before you see him by the deep baritone of his voice, picking up the fine gravel in his voice even through the howling winds. It’s his hand floating in your vision and when the pain stings and recedes yet again that you realise it’s his doing too. There is a furrow in his brows, thick and arched now creased in concern for you and had you not nearly died, you would have marvelled at the sea of cerulean that his eyes are.

Clearing your throat, you move to lean back, getting tired of him poking your forehead and making it sting more, “I’m fine.”

The hand on your back, unbeknownst to you, had sneaked up at some point and it’s the tug that brings you two close again and helps register its presence. The nape of your neck feels hot and you aren’t sure if it’s because of the accident or the warmth of his hand.

Or a noticeable blush.

You quickly squash that particular thought, throwing the remains in the furthest reaches of your mind.

“You’re bleeding.” His response is slow, almost condescending. As though you are stupid for thinking anything otherwise, and you bristle. Shrugging off his hold, this time with more force, you say, “I am fine.”

The effort of leaning back is a little too quick for your still recuperating body and your vision swims, your knees nearly slipping from under you until an arm snakes around your waist, holding you up.

The man sighs and his warm breath tickles the hollow of your neck, making you shiver. “Don’t be stubborn and sit still for a minute.”

You still bristle but having learned your lesson, you stay put and let him assess you. As much as it hurts your pride to have a man, a gorgeous one, treat you like an idiot, you are in no position to be harbouring any arrogance after the quite literal stunt you have pulled.

“Look at me,” he commands. Squashing the petulant urge to argue, you do, feeling slightly bashful at the blue of frozen ocean that stares back at you. Thin, warm fingers grip your chin, turning your face side to side as he inspects you and a vain and idiotic part of you curses internally for forgetting to apply anything on your lips. They are horribly chapped from the poor self-care routine (or lack thereof) finals month had forced them into.  

You take the time to inspect him back too. The beginning wisps of jealousy simmer in the pit of your stomach at how full and pink his are. A small tiny mole sits sunk under the deep of his skin on the top left edge of his upper lip and for some inane reason, you decide to focus on it instead of his nose or eyes or forehead like any other average person would.

You don’t know if it’s seconds or minutes later that he finally shifts away from you, breaking your silent staring contest with his lips, moving to stand. His one hand still grips your forearm, maybe not trusting you to topple over and off the road into the under bushes like a pinball knocked over by the slightest breeze.

“Can you stand?”

Blinking, you look up, seeing an outline of his silhouette against the backdrop of the setting sun and nod at how broad his shoulders are. Nice.

“Can you?” he repeats, and there is a hint of impatience in his voice this time.

“I don’t know; you’re the one who asked me to sit still.” You know you are being snarky while he is just being helpful in his own jackass way, but it’s still embarrassing and you don’t want to move, talk or do anything more to make your present any more real than it already is. Maybe if you continue to sit still, the sun will rise again and you can have a do-over. Pretend none of today happened and get back home with your still ratty but in one-piece car.

He doesn’t respond to your sarcasm verbally, just tilts his head and somehow, that makes you feel even more stupid.

“Stand then.”

You can’t help the distinct feeling of resemblance to that of a dog as you follow his command, bound by your own previous words and stand on shaky legs. The ends of your feet sting like a million pins and needles are being pierced through them and you stumble right back into his arms.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.” He breathes against the shell of your ear and the warmth travels from your neck, flushing your cheeks—it’s entirely too cold for how warm your face feels.

You hum, nodding to indicate you have heard him, not trusting your voice to pitch and give you away.

“Hold on to me.”

Wordlessly gripping his denim-clad forearms, you follow him to the parked car beside yours. Observing the damage to its front, it doesn’t take long to add two & two and you feel a little guilty for being snarky to the man you ultimately crashed into.

“Are you hurt?” This time it’s you asking the question you would have asked much earlier had you realised who he actually was.

You feel the movement of his head and know that he’s looking at you, but don’t turn your gaze to catch his. Partly out of guilt, partway because you realise the pull his eyes have and you don’t want to be seen gazing again.

“I am fine.” He says and you nod, accepting his answer.

Opening the passenger side door of his dark SUV, he gently pushes you forward, “Sit and face this side. You are bleeding. Wait here while I get the first aid kit.”

With another nod, you climb in, sitting sideways and pulling your feet closer to ward off some of the cold the open door was letting in. You could hear your gorgeous self-appointed nurse rummaging through the trunk and you take the time to rest your head against the head support, finally breathing a sigh of relief. The realisation that this very well could have been a fatal crash for you is starting to sink in slowly and you clench your fists, wrapping your arms protectively against your middle as the sharp of your nails dig into your skin, the pain almost cathartic, a pulsing, bleeding reminder of how alive you are.

If he had been a second later on the breaks, maybe if you were an inch off more, you wouldn’t be sitting here in a stranger’s car, and perhaps you would never be able to see your mom and listen to her berate you again for getting into yet another mess. It’s morbid and disturbing, but you are glad your mother won’t have to bury you on Christmas eve.  

Coming back around, the man passes you a bottle of what you are guessing is water, “Drink.”

“Thank you,” the soft mumble could have easily been lost in the screeching winds, but nonetheless, you extend your hand to grab the offered vessel, fingers brushing the ends of his. Uncapping, you take a gulp, and two and three until you are properly chugging the water down, glad for the way it cools your dry, scratchy throat. The abating flight or fight response having left you parched.

“Easy, you don’t want to choke right now.”

“I am studying to be a doctor,” you don’t know why you say that. You know what you sound like out loud, and you won’t blame the man for thinking you are a bitch, but you can’t help the way defensiveness cloaks you like a too tight jacket and makes you lash out lest you seem vulnerable—guilty.

“And you’re a patient right now, so play nice.” There’s a smirk dancing at the seams of his lips. Contrary to your belief and guilt of him finding you troublesome, he is amused. The shadows of the setting sun caressed his skin and brought out his features. You still haven’t been able to look at him without focusing on one focal point of his face and with every passing minute, you are discovering something new about the way he looks and you wonder if it's just purely flesh and bones or if the way he acts is influencing your view.

Rolling your eyes, you keep the facade of indifference clutched close to your heart. Unwilling to slip and let this handsome stranger in, that you had apparently almost killed, to see you at your weakest.

“Alright then doc, go ahead,” you say and the smirk teasing the edges stretches into a tiny grin.

Stepping close, he grips your chin again and you note it’s gentler this time. Wetting a swab of cotton in an antiseptic, he swipes it over your wounds, methodical, small circular movements from the inside out before discarding the cotton and starting afresh with another swab. His hands are sure, the method more precise than most people who aren’t trained to give people first-aid would know, and you wonder if he is a health professional. Your earlier admission swims to the forefront and you beg anyone up there who is listening to you for it to not be true. You won’t be able to live through that embarrassment.

He blows on your skin, the exhale soft and leaving a barely there whisper of a touch but it’s still enough to make you want to jerk back—which you would have succeeded had he not been holding onto your chin again.

“Tsk,” he is looking at you, annoyed again, and you reign in the urge to kick him in the shin.

Instead of apologising, you stay still and let him finish. He is surprisingly, unbelievably gentle with you and you struggle to figure out why. Maybe he is just scared of accidentally hurting you worse?

“This might hurt so let me know if its too much,”

“Okay,”

He is quick but meticulous as he applies some disinfectant cream that you can’t read the label of with the growing shadows, but by now, you have grown a sense of respect for the man, albeit grudgingly and trust him to not screw it up.

Coughing into your fist to clear your throat, you finally introduce yourself. The water helped soothe the dryness and your voice no longer feels like a nail against the chalkboard to your ears.

It’s a bit too late for introductions, but you two haven’t met in the most normal of circumstances, so you let yourself off the hook. If he is surprised by your willingness to be civil for maybe the first time since your ill-fated encounter, he doesn’t show it.

You catch his gaze and to none of your wonder, it pins you right where you sit, twin pools of ocean under a night sky, blue speckled with the richest of green, as he replies, “Max.”

i wrote this whole thing in one sitting and my hands fkn hurt. its also 8 flippin am goddamn u max verstappen and ur stupid cute face 

till next time! ✿

[of-foolish-and-wise]

a uni survival guide: tips from a phd

if there's one thing i know about, it's college. i've done it, i've taught it, i've lived and breathed it. these tips are for first years in particular, but honestly for everybody. i think it's so important for people to have balanced lives in these years -- academics are not everything. you know what didn't help me in the real world when i was afraid i wouldn't live through it? my fancy college note-taking format. you know what did help me? the friends i made there who i knew would get on a plane and fly across the country in a matter of hours if i told them i needed them.

academic

- figure out where class is held ahead of time: don't be that kid who's late on day one, i beg of you

- use the writing center: especially for basic grammatical editing, which a lot of professors don't have time to mark on papers

- speak up in class: talking through ideas helps you work through them, and asking questions about something you don't understand can open up great lines of conversation

- find a regular schedule that works for you and stick to it: my college schedule was morning free time, class, lunch, class, practice, homework. that consistency was a life-saver

- keep a planner: it's so important to have a central place to track deadlines, assignments, and engagements

- annotate your reading: when you're stressing about a paper topic, being able to go back to what you've highlighted and written in the margins is a life-saver

- color-code your coursework: i use the same color highlighter, pen, and notebook for any given class. it's super helpful

- if you can't focus while studying with friends, don't: i reserved group studying for days when i didn't have important work because i can't be in a room with other people without talking to them. if your school has one, the quiet floor of the library is your best friend

- treat yourself to a "fun" class: art was always my place to just sit back and chill, a way to end the night all zen in the darkroom instead of conjugating russian verbs in a fluorescent-lit cinderblock prison. for you, it could be gym, it could be pottery, it could be some random course about, like, the history of cooking or something -- explore!

- profs are people too: don't be too nervous around them. also, know that if you're struggling -- even b/c of something in your personal life -- you can admit it, and they'll almost always understand why you missed a deadline or bombed a test

- go to office hours: it's the only way to get to know professors in big courses, and it's so helpful for both your grades and learning how to navigate relationships with authority figures

social

- don't let academia keep you from your friends: it's a case-by-case basis, but sometimes it's okay to let the reading slide and spend time with friends. i graduated seven years ago and my college group text still talks every day. that's so much more important to me than the fact that i never finished brideshead revisited

- joining a club is one of the best ways to make friends: i played ultimate frisbee through college and it was the source of so many lasting relationships, as well as the way i met all my local friends when i was abroad

- say yes to things you don't know if you'll like: you'll surprise yourself. me? turns out i love drinking games. and theme parties. and skinny dipping. and rock climbing

- don't be that person who looks down on their peers for partying: honestly? that person kind of sucks. you don't have to party if you don't want to, but actually, a lot of those people are super nice and also good at school -- don't just write them off!

- show up for your friends: go to their games, their concerts, their art shows, their standup nights. show them that what matters to them matters to you, too

- set aside a night to do a group activity with others: whether your vibe is wednesday night trivia, a weekly "terrible movie" showing, or a get-high-and-watch-nature-documentaries-type thing, these are great ways to liven up the week and de-stress

- this is a great time to figure out who from high school really matters to you: you don't have to force relationships that were built mostly on convenience if there are friends at uni with whom you click more. people you became friends with purely based on the coincidence of where your parents lived do not have to be your forever friends. they can be! but they don't have to be

personal

- don't expect too much of yourself: a 4.0 is not the end-all, be-all. if your family or somebody tells you it is, tell them to call me, and i will personally talk some sense into them

- take advantage of university support services: mental health counseling, free yoga classes, multi-cultural societies, etc

- drink water: please, please don't get kidney stones in the middle of the semester, says the girl who got kidney stones in the middle of the semester

- let yourself take breaks: if you need to lie to a professor and say you're sick when really you're just feeling down and you need to sit in bed and watch a movie, that's totally valid

- don't freak about individual assignments: my students come to me freaking over a B+ and i tell them, honey, no job interviewer is ever going to ask you about your second paper from communications 101. i wish i'd known that

- go see speakers if there's someone interesting coming to campus: these talks are always cooler than you expect. i'll never get over the fact that i didn't go see anita hill when she came to my undergrad

- do your laundry on the same night every week: i can't explain why this is so helpful but it really is

- keep up on the news and the memes: read the school paper, the school blog, the memes page -- college politics and inside jokes are fun and convoluted and fascinating

- set the groundwork for long-term self-care: all of the above is really just to say -- university isn't just for learning about the french revolution, it's also about learning how to balance, how to handle failure, how to ask for help, how to make a salad that doesn't totally suck, etc

[antiquatedplumbobs]

~an excerpt from Violet Sewell’s private journal~

Summer, 1905

It is all gone. We were too late to try to save the orchard, the pests had already infested the trees, Hamish had no choice but to chop them all down. The fields are empty and the orchard is just stumps at this point. Hamish is heartbroken, this was everything that he had worked for and it’s all been wiped out in one bad season. My heart hurts for him.

The pests not only ravaged our farm, many of our neighbors are in the same situation. Hs parent’s farm was also decimated and they were forced to chop their orchard as well. His father has taken this exceedingly hard, he looks as if has aged ten years over night, I hate to say it, but he looks an old man now.

I am worried about what we will do next, we have some money saved and a small amount coming in from the dairy cows. I have been selling eggs and cheese to help us along. Hamish seems directionless, he has been spending more time down at the pub with his brother, Elias. He hasn’t sown the summer crops yet, and even if we did, who knows if they would be enough to get us through without the orchard. A new planting of fruit trees would require another several years to reach maturity.

I’ve been quite busy with the running of the house, I’ve been preserving as much as I can get my hands on: custards, condiments, some jam from strawberries Freddy found for me in the back pasture. I don’t know what the next year will hold and I want to stockpile as much as possible.

Any hopes we might have had about sending Willy to high school are impossible now, we could never afford the fees. He doesn’t seem very disappointed, he’s always been more interested in the animals and seems happy to be able to spend his days with them.

Ever since Freddy heard the news about Willy be unable to attend school he’s thrown himself into his own coursework. He always has his nose in a book or is outside examining things. I’m quite proud of his curiosity, I do hope that we can do right by him. I comfort myself that Willy was never that interested in education, but I know Freddy longs to learn more.

I hope that we figure something out soon, I don’t know how much more of not knowing I can take. I feel more exhausted than I have in a long time, and for the first time I feel alone in this. Hamish won’t talk to me; he has shut down since the last tree fell. I barely recognize him anymore, I need my husband back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

next / previous / first

[alhaitham-shrine]

if you are comfortable with cyno or childe then may i ask for cyno/childe bc i think it's funny (also bonus points if they're roommates/gym buddies/partner project partners/whatever scenario forces them together)

chicyno

[i see, you are also a creature of taste!! I couldn’t decide whether to make this gay or keep it platonic so I leave it up to you to decide ^^]

roommate applications at the Akademiya are…. stupid, in Cyno’s opinion.

The Akademiya sprawls on a slope overlooking the Visshudha Fields, but if Cyno stands on the furthermost balcony and pushes up on the banister until he’s on the tips of his toes he can see-- distantly, like a mirage wavering in the heat-- the sand dunes that denote the existence of his home. Even now, three years into his studies, Cyno finds it hard to ignore the heavy knot of homesickness that settles uneasily in his stomach, harder still when he knows he’s about to be forced to spend the next year with yet another poor unfortunate foreigner. It’s by some cruel twist of fate that Cyno always ends up with roommates who speak entirely different languages to him, and not even Alhaitham’s monotone tutoring had helped him in any way.

No matter, Cyno thinks, turning away from the balcony and returning in the direction of the dormitories. I have weathered far worse. I can survive once more.

---

Cyno cannot, in fact, survive once more.

He pushes open the door to his suite, bag dropped haphazardly at his feet, only for his eyes to land on the last person he had expected to be lounging so comfortably in the living room. Childe Tartaglia, of all people, a rather infamous exchange student known for the chaos that follows him with every step. He exudes an air of impropriety, from his sharp smile that digs into his cheeks, to the way his eyes-- dull, like sea glass or stillwater-- glint inhumanly in the low light of the living room.

Childe, though an exchange student from the frozen forests of Snezhnaya, was well-versed in the language of Sumeru, though he oddly spoke it with the accent of someone who might be from Liyue. He definitely didn’t look like he was from Liyue… Mondstadt maybe, but the easy sunburn along his nose spoke of far less resistance to the sun.

“Cyno!” Childe chirps, smiling like a cat. “What a fun twist to the story, wouldn’t you say?”

Cyno just stares unblinking for several seconds too long, very aware of the role he plays as the canary, before promptly bending down to pick up his bag and breezing through the living room to lock himself in the privacy of his room.

---

When the moon's shadow shattered, hordes of beasts emerged from the deepest depths of the abyss and devoured living creatures by the thousands. Of those she created, none could escape their destined annihilation. The goodness, peace, and wisdom she had bestowed — all perished before this pure malice without exception. Under that sneering waning moon, the black tide of decay surged--

A mop of unkempt red hair pops up in Cyno’s peripheral vision, the tightening of his hand at the spine of the novel the only telltale sign of his sudden discomfort. “Ooh, are you doing some light reading or is this coursework?”

Cyno slowly closes “The Folio of Foliage”, closing his eyes briefly against the tide of unkind words that rise to the tip of his tongue. The words themselves almost sound like Dehya-- perhaps he’s spending too much time around her. “I didn’t know you were coming home so early. You’re usually out late.”

Childe just hums, one hand grasping the back of the couch as he leaps over it to settle clumsily at Cyno’s side. The shorter boy feels the muscles along his shoulders tense, and he forces himself to remain still as Childe adjusts to a comfortable position. “I got stood up, so I decided to cut my losses and come back. Goddess help me, the women of Sumeru are just as, if not more fickle than those in Liyue.”

Cyno traces a finger along the cover of his book. “You’re not from Liyue, are you?”

“No, Snezhnaya born and raised, but I--” Childe pauses, and Cyno looks up through his bangs to find Childe frowning briefly at his hands. They’re long hands, those of an archer maybe, with red knuckles and finely shaped nails. Cyno blinks and looks away just as Childe turns back to him. “I studied there, before coming here.”

“That’s a long time to be studying abroad. Do you not miss your home?”

“Do you?”

Cyno thinks of the endless expanse of sand, and the warm embrace of a never ending sun. “My home is not so far away as yours is. And I’m sure you miss the cold. We don’t have that here.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Childe laughs, throwing one arm along the back of the couch, too close to where Cyno’s head rests. “After so much time in Liyue, though, I’d like to think I’ve acclimated to the sunny weather. I definitely don’t think I’d fare very well in the desert.”

Cyno smiles, ducking his head further. “I imagine you’d turn as red as a zaytun peach. If you thought Sumeran women were hard to please before, the desert would not be your wingman.”

There’s a brief moment of silence that hits Cyno like a sumpter beast straight to the chest, and he recalls Alhaitham once telling him that what he considers jokes, sometimes become unfunny in the time it takes to travel from mind to mouth. He turns toward Childe with every intention of apologizing, only to find Childe already looking at him with a stunned sort of smile on his face. It still cuts across his cheeks like a suture, but the deep crescent dimples it leaves look softer than usual.

“And here I thought you were as rigid as stone, mahamatra.”

Cyno winces, feeling his ears burn. “My personality is not always a reflection of my prefect title, Childe.”

“Ajax.”

“What?”

Childe just grins, and his hand brushes Cyno’s shoulder as he pushes himself back to his feet. “I’m gonna make pierogies out of boredom. If you decide to run to your room again, mahamatra, I’ll leave some for you.”

And with that he walks around the couch and toward their shared kitchen, and Cyno…

Cyno enjoys pierogies very much, actually. He enjoys more the way Childe, once seated beside him once more, throws that same arm across the back of the couch, fingers occasionally dancing along Cyno’s shoulder.

[blu-joons]

You’re A Stressed Medical Student ~ BTS Reaction

Jin:

He knew the signs like the back of his hand to when you’d had a bad day. As you laid out on the sofa, moments after coming through the front door, Jin was far from oblivious as to how your day had gone and how tired you were.

“You need to look after yourself,” he sighed, taking a seat beside the sofa, pressing his hand against your forehead. “You’re no good training to diagnose people when you can’t even diagnose yourself properly.”

“I’m fine,” you protested, but his head firmly shook back at you, brushing the hair out of your face. “It’s just been a bit of a long day; I don’t need to diagnose myself with anything. I’m tired, that’s all there is to this.”

His head shook, refusing to let it drop so quickly, “if you’re not going to diagnose yourself, then I will. I diagnose you as a stressed out somebody who needs to start taking more rests and listening to their body a little more.”

“It’s nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t fix for me.”

He leaned forwards, pressing a kiss against the side of your face, “you’ve been like this for weeks, it’s not just tonight. Please, get some sleep, and then when you wake up, I’m going to start your recovery and destressing you properly.”

“You really are adorable sometimes Jin, thank you.”

Yoongi:

The end of term was always a stressful period for you, which Yoongi had come to learn all too well. As he watched you flick through yet another book to try and find the piece of information you were looking for, a sigh soon followed.

“How long have you got until this one is due?” He asked you, walking across the room to hover over your desk. “I’ve not seen you do anything else today but stick with your head inside of a book, you’re going to go crazy.”

“The exam is in two days,” you pointed out to him, “which means I have no choice but to constantly read. There’s so many terms that I still have to try and remember, they could ask me anything, and what if I don’t know the answer?”

A gentle sigh came from Yoongi this time around, resting his hands against your shoulders, “it’s impossible that you won’t know the answer. You’re just doubting yourself; you always get like this before any exams.”

“There’s just so much importance placed on the medicine exam.”

His head nodded, having listened to you vent about the pressures of this exam specifically many times before. “I know, but that doesn’t stop me being confident that you’ll smash it, and in two days, you won’t have to worry.”

“I think I need some of your confidence and I’ll be alright.”

Hoseok:

Seeing you in the same position that you were when he left for the studio that morning broke Hobi’s heart. The pile of books you had had grown, as had the stressed expression that was etched across your face.

“Have you moved?” He frowned, quickly muttering an apology when he noticed you jump at the sudden sound of his voice. “Y/N, I get that you want to work hard, but at what cost are you working yourself to the ground?”

“If you’re going to come over here and try and convince me to take a break, then save your breath,” you sighed, not even tearing your eyes away from the case study book that you were reading through to acknowledge Hobi.”

That didn’t stop him walking across to you, “I’m not going to try and convince you to take a break,” he spoke up, instantly filling you with relief. “I’m not going to give you any other choice but to take a break right now and look at something else.”

“You can’t force me; this is a really important chapter to read.”

His hands wrapped around your waist, “it can wait,” he mumbled, scooping you up and throwing you over his shoulder, ignoring your screams to put you down until he reached the kitchen. “There, now you can take a break.”

“I hate you for doing this, you’ll regret making me move.”

Namjoon:

As Namjoon shook his head yet again as you failed to give the right answer to the question that he gave you, you were ready to throw in the towel. Your test was tomorrow, a big one, and nothing seemed to fall into place.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he warned as you slammed your hand down on your desk in frustration, “I’m sure that you know all of this stuff. Your brain is just trying to put you off because you’re so close to the test now.”

“My brain knows nothing,” you vented, resting your forehead down against the table, “this medical exam is huge, it’s a massive part of my grade. If I fail it, then I might as well kiss goodbye to any plans of a career in the profession.”

He moved himself across, draping his arm across the length of your back, “you’re not going to fail it,” he assured you, squeezing your frame gently. “You’ll walk into that exam hall and ace it tomorrow; I’ve got every faith in you.”

“How can you possibly be so confident that will happen?”

Your head turned up to look across at him. “Because I know you,” he simply stated, “I’ve watched you work your butt off for years to get here, and I know there’s no way that you’re going to end up giving up now.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see how tomorrow goes.”

Jimin:

The several papers that were before you only confused Jimin more. He watched on in admiration at how hard you worked yourself, despite many of the terms and references making absolutely no sense to him.

“Such a brainiac,” you heard him mutter under his breath as he flicked through one of the books you’d picked up. His comment was harmless, but in your tired and stressed state, it was taken in the complete opposite.

“I would give up being such a brainiac if it meant being able to live a much less stressful life like you,” you responded before you had time to think. Jimin’s brows knitted together, surprised by your sudden outburst.

His shock, however, didn’t stop him from understanding that your words came from an exhausted place. “I know it’s hard,” he whispered, standing beside you, “but this will all be worth it when you graduate.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to be so abrupt.”

His lips pressed against your cheek, “I guess I can let you off considering how snowed under you are. Just remember that I’m here to support you though, I’m not here to make you feel worse or add to your stress, I hope you know that.”

“Of course, I do, I couldn’t do this without you Chim.”

Taehyung:

You were convinced when you walked through the door that you’d find Taehyung tucked up in bed, however, you were wrong. After yet another late night in the library, he was still wide awake, waiting for you to arrive.

“I never thought you’d come home,” he joked as he spotted you walk into the living room. “You really shouldn’t be working so late; it’s not going to do you any favours working until the early hours of the morning.”

“I got what I needed to do done though,” you frowned, taking a seat beside him. “It just feels like there’s one thing after the other right now, especially with placement. How do they ever expect us to get anything done?”

He sighed softly, resting his hand against your lap, “you’re making me proud, but you have to make sure you take breaks. I know there’s a lot of pressure on your shoulders, but rests are just as important as the work you’re doing.”

“If I took breaks, I’d end up sleeping at the library Tae.”

His head shook instantly, “I would personally make sure that that didn’t happen. It’s tough right now, but it’s going to be worth it. Now, shall we get you to bed, you at least need some sleep before you start again tomorrow.”

“That’s the best suggestion you’ve made this week.”

Jungkook:

The moment the door slammed shut as you walked in, it was a warning sign to Jungkook as to what was to come. The way you curled into his side as soon as you spotted him was the only other hint he needed to understand.

“That bad?” He questioned, running his arm up and down the length of your back, feeling your hands grip tightly around his frame. “Let’s just try and forget about school for a little while, how does that sound to you?”

“I’ve got to finish off what I didn’t get done today,” you argued, trying to walk away from Jungkook, but he continued to hold you tightly. “My coursework needs completing from the shift that I put in at the hospital.”

His hand cupped the side of your face, bringing your eyes up to meet his. “That can wait, but it’s going to get you a massive failure if you start writing in your current state. Give yourself some time to catch your breath, and spend some time with me?”

“Do you really think that I’m going to fail my coursework?”

His head shook with a gentle chuckle, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that you’re not going to be able to write it to your full capabilities when you’re as tired as you are. You want to get the best grades possible, don’t you?”

“Of course. I guess you make a lot of sense after all.”

---

Masterlist

[whentherewerebicycles]

I’m reading this and am enjoying it a lot. it’s interesting to think about the areas of my life where I was given an unusually high degree of autonomy vs. those where my parents did a lot of things for me / didn’t trust me with autonomy (or were unwilling to let me suffer logical consequences). in public school I spent a lot of time basically doing independent self-designed coursework in the humanities from fourth grade onwards—obviously I had a teacher who was checking on me periodically, but between the gifted program + having a few teachers who regularly let me skip the in class work and do my own thing in a separate room, I had a huge degree of latitude over what I studied and how I studied it. and then it was like, having demonstrated that I could handle it, people just gave me even more freedom in high school, where I was allowed to do all kinds of independent study courses or design my own assignments in regular classes. apart from paying for an SAT class, my parents were also totally hands off with the college process and I m did all my own research, made my own plan, and wrote all my own stuff without any of the ‘coaching’ I think kids are pushed towards these days. and when I needed to take a year off in the middle of college they were worried about it but supportive and didn’t force me to keep going, and that year turned out to be hugely important both as necessary time to decompress & as a year that sent me in the direction of a PhD instead of some other career path. I feel like when it came to academics adults provided guidance when necessary but largely left it to me to make decisions about what I wanted/cared about, and trusted that those decisions would be thoughtful and well-researched.

but then lol the other side of my life is like... my ongoing struggles with keeping my house in any kind of order, my lack of conscientiousness and my disorganization (I slowly improve at this but it is such a struggle for me), my struggles to do things like meet deadlines or pay bills on time (queen of the late fees sigh), my inability to prioritize basic life maintenance tasks, my ability to totally ignore a slowly deteriorating environment until it’s like, Really Really Bad, etc. and I can 100% see the roots of those issues in my childhood, where my mom would write notes for me to excuse me for being late to school (thus reinforcing that there weren’t real consequences for not doing things on time), or would drive up to school to bring me homework I’d forgotten, or would let me wriggle out of commitments I’d made because I had some academics-related excuse, or would stay up late helping me finish some science project I’d procrastinated on too long, etc etc.

all of those gestures 100000% came from a place of love and a place of like, not wanting me to make mistakes that might jeopardize my Bright Future in any way. and also I think they all got folded into my family’s extremely well-established narrative for me, which is that I am the Absentminded Professor who is very booksmart but completely lacks common sense or the ability to handle small daily tasks! idk basically I think what happened was I just strongly internalized the idea that if I dilly dally long enough someone else will pick up the slack eventually, or like, if I put off paying that bill long enlightened somebody will eventually find my credit card and my login info and do it for me. I mean now I’m older and got to spend my 20s suffering the logical consequences of my actions, so I’ve slowly gotten better at some of those things. but it’s definitely something I’ve had to learn and am still having to learn in ways that are frustrating to be dealing with in my early 30s. I often have felt like I’m curiously lopsided in that regard—very ahead in some areas, and very behind or very ‘young for my age’ in other areas, especially anything to do with practical life management stuff. and I feel like this book is giving me a framework for thinking about why that is, and maybe how I can continue to work to bring myself up to speed in certain areas. also I am just learning things for parenting my own kids! though as I ‘fix’ things in my own parenting history, I can’t wait to see what other currently unforeseeable mistakes I will make as a parent that my children will one day be journaling about in their early 30s (‘my mom did X and that’s why I’m like this!!’) 😂

[deniigi]

sorry to bother again but i am a freshman in college and i am v stressed

how did you get through it and how do I make myself not want to drop every single class i’m in every semester

how does one take more than 5 classes at a time

i am in midterm hell and i am Scared™️

oh you mean, ‘Matt, please do your actual literal job on main?’ Because this is sort of my actual literal job, friend. So don’t worry. I’ve got you.

So first thing’s first, when planning future semesters:

I would recommend against taking more than 5 classes at a time. Mathematically, it is not great for you. If you have to take more than 5, plan on doing 1-2 to during summer school. You won’t be behind. You’re fine. I swear.

Example for future class planning: For every class, look at the number of units/credits it is. That is around the number of hours that you’re gonna spend in that class a week. Now multiply that by 2. That’s about the number of hours total you’re gonna spend on that class in a week (both in class and doing homework).

That means that a 3 unit/credit class = 6 hours of work per week.

You have five of those classes. That means that you’re doing around 30hrs of school work a week. If you have six of those classes, you’re practically working a fulltime job with little to no pay and benefits.

End story: Do not take more than 5 classes a semester if you can help it.

If you can, don’t take more than 4 classes in your major per semester, either. You will die. Use electives and general education classes as your fourth or fifth class to lighten your load and give yourself something that you enjoy and know you can pass for sure. That will give you some breathing room and will help you maintain your GPA.

Coping with Overload now:

At this point in the semester, it’s a little late to be dropping classes, so what you’re going to do instead is to schedule the fuck out of your time.

You need to pick and stick to set dates/times for completing coursework and midterm projects for the next week or two. People do this in different ways, but generally speaking, people will assign projects/homework to certain days.

Example: Monday is Chemistry homework night because assignments are due on Wednesday. You only work on Chemistry on Monday. You finish the assignment and turn it in.

Tuesday is English homework day because assignments are papers and take 3 days to complete due to requiring 3 different steps: research, outlining, and writing. You do the whole researching process on Tuesday and do a basic outline. You will fill out the outline a little more on Wednesday and will then write the whole paper on Thursday so that you can turn it in then, before the Friday deadline.

On Wednesday, after you’re satisfied with your English outline, you will set that aside because Wednesdays are Math days. You will do the Math homework and/or study for 2-3 hours until your brain feels like soup. Then you will stop, do something relaxing for 30min, and then decide if you need to do more studying. If you do, repeat the study + self-care process. Go to sleep at a reasonable hour (before 2am if possible)

Do the same thing for your other 2 classes, assigning each a day and a specific task or set of tasks to complete on each day. Don’t give yourself more than 3 tasks per class/study session, because that’s how you get overwhelmed and into an anxiety spiral.

Apply self-care (breaks, snacks, drinks, music) liberally while doing assignments.

Other tips: figure out how you study.

If you study best in a group, grab some folks from your class and form a study group. If you are in STEM especially, it is expected that you will form study groups. This is how studying happens in STEM, medical, and law fields. It is nigh impossible to do all that labor on your own. Yes, I am serious. Make a study group, even if that’s you and 1 other person.

If you can find a study guide, take it to study group or block out an hour or two and do the whole thing. If you don’t have a study guide, make one yourself out of your homework/assignments and test yourself with flashcards or writing out definitions and forcing yourself to explain the different parts of cycles you learned in class.

If you are in a humanities/liberal arts major, you need to figure out if you study best by reviewing your notes, by re-listening to the lectures, by explaining concepts to others, or by writing it all out as if it was an essay.

If you need to write an essay and are stuck with where to start, reach out for help from a tutor if your school has one, or just start by doing 15 minutes of brainstorming to figure out what you feel about the topic and what evidence/ideas would work to answer it. Pick apart the prompt to see what it is truly asking you to do, write out the components of the prompt separately on a separate page and start answering those question as if they were short answers.

Then when you’ve got that, you can start noting bits of evidence to add to support your points and BAM, just like that, you’ve got an outline. Write a thesis statement at the top that addresses the Who, What, Why and How You’re Going to Prove it of your essay and you’re ready to go.

Example thesis statement: “The world represented in Oh God, How do I Study by Matt Deniigiq includes references to time management, course planning, and big-picture thinking to emphasize the broader theme that this one shit semester is not going to destroy student’s lives. This is evident in the droll humor used throughout the piece and the fact that the author keeps halting in paragraphs to answer emails from frazzled students.”

**yes, your thesis can be 2 sentences long. It’s allowed, I promise.

Know that these 5 classes will not end your life.

Honestly, like, speaking as someone who does this for a living, at public schools anything higher than a C is grand. It’s not usually required for you to list your GPA on job apps later on (I’ve never been asked). No one actually cares about your GPA in social situations.

As long as my students have higher than Cs in their classes and they aren’t like, nursing students, I’m cool with their progress, so give yourself a break if you can.

Also know that getting a low grade in 1 class as a freshmen doesn’t actually fuck up your GPA as bad as you think it will. Like, there’s a lot of complicated shit around this that I could go into, but generally speaking, if you fail one class (and I mean FAIL-fail it. Fs and D-s. None of this ‘UwU I got a C so I failed’), then by the time you’re a junior or a senior, if you haven’t failed additional shit, that F/D- is barely going to shift your GPA.

Like, we’re talking .1 shifts around then. Maybe a .3 shift if you’re at the end of your sophomore year. That’s the diff between a 2.5 and a 2.4. Or a 3.3 and a 3.0. You can make that up almost entirely by taking another round of classes and getting As and Bs (again, the mechanics are complicated, so you’re just gonna have to take my word here).

So yeah, shoot for Cs or higher and know that these classes aren’t the end-all be-alls of your lives.

(For context, if I get a student with a 3.0 or higher, I’m fucking ELATED. I’m not even joking. Y’all will be fine.) 

--

Start with these tips and get back to me if you want something more specific. I do this all day, every day.

[leviathan-dee]

Okay how about a drabble where Vergil motivates his female s/o who is struggling to do her assignments? Can be sfw or nsfw depending on the suitability of the topic and I may or may not having this motivation problem 😂

Aii!! I’m so sorry this took so long 😓 Tbh, I saw nsfw and took this as an opportunity to get my simp train going. So here goes, a lil bit of...

°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· 𝓢𝓹𝓲𝓬𝓮 °°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.·

Motivational Lessons

Vergil x Fem!Reader (NSFW)

Word Count: 1,613

Fumbling on an assignment that was due in less than a week was admittedly not how you wanted to spend your days off. You were surrounded by countless closed study books, dried out pens from their disuse, and an empty word document, a cursor blinking quizzically at your inactivity. It’s been almost three agonizing hours since you began your search for a drop of motivation. Alas, no such luck. Even the cup of tea that your partner brewed at the beginning of your session remained unmoved, the condensation on the mug dripping down to pool onto the blank papers.

You sighed, inadvertently drawing Vergil’s attention.

“You are troubled.” Without lifting his gaze from his beloved hardcover of poetry, he spoke, the comment blending between lines of a question and a statement. You sighed once more, carding your fingers through your hair.

“What gave you that idea?” Your slight burst of annoyance felt like whacking the hornet’s nest, however Vergil’s reply was more gentle and soft spoken than before.

“The lack of movement for the duration of your coursework. What gives, my sweet?”

“I just can’t get into the mindset. I think I’m too stressed with all that is going on.”

Snapping his book shut, he uncrossed his legs and tilted forward, directing his attention now completely to you. The pose he assumed was akin to a cat, ready to pounce on its prey. Perhaps you were imagining it, but the sudden mischievous glint in his eyes unnerved you just as much as his predatory pose.

“Perhaps you are in need of encouragement?”

“I’ll bite. What do you have in mind?” You swallowed thickly, anticipation building like a steady flow of water. Only time will tell if you would regret your words.

“Let me demonstrate.” Moving with a feline grace, his arm swayed in the opposite direction, guiding you to stand from your seat. Once you obeyed, he propped himself upon the cushioned surface, his stern expression morphing into a minuscule smirk.

“Sit,” he presented you his lap by patting his thigh, “you are tense. A prime reason as to why you simply cannot get anything done.”

With an incredulous expression, you gawked at the sudden change in his demeanour. Admittedly, it was a bad idea to disobey the devil, knowing your previous experiences containing punishments of the euphoric kind. You planted yourself comfortably upon his leg, feeling his arms securely tighten around your waist. His palms were warmer than usual. In fact, you noted that his gloves were off. Strange...

“Now focus on your assignment. Need I encourage you, I know exactly what to do.” The growl that rolled off his tongue caused a shiver to travel through every fiber of your being. A wickedness entirely indescribable churned deep within his gaze. It wasn’t often you experienced that; Vergil knew to reserve this part of him for special occasions.

Apparently, this was one such occasion.

The cursor continued blinking, it’s manner now seeming wary. You stared at it, wondering what words might flow from your already exhausted mind. There were so many jumbled thoughts. Some from the carnal closeness between you and your beloved, and very few were of the coursework itself. Vergil propped his chin upon your shoulder, breathing down your neck. Was this a warning? Or encouragement?

“Need I promote your thoughts? Or is your mind elsewhere?” As you expected, it was neither. This was a promise; an invitation. For both of your benefits.

You could feel a smirk ghost his lips, as his hands continued to rest on your waist possessively, their grip tightening to an almost uncomfortable pressure. Unsure of whether to begin your coursework, or to let fate take its course, your fingertips started their sluggish crawl across the keyboard. Vergil seemed to ease his grip, instead shifting to your right thigh, resting his warm palm on top of the plump surface. This made you suck in a breath between your teeth which only Vergil would notice. No matter how much you wanted him to simply have his way, this was a good opportunity to finish what you’ve started studying-wise.

… 

After two paragraphs of constant erasing and rewriting, you sighed, irked at your own scattered mind. Evidently, Vergil watched your entire tirade at the keyboard. It was almost as interesting as a tumultuous nineteenth century drama. Every few words, he hummed in approval, reading and checking your text. However, your gusto seemed to slow to an almost complete stop. You could feel his mischievous smile once again grace his visage.

Bringing his palm up to cradle your chin from behind, he directed your vision behind you, his own smoldering gaze melting you from the inside.

“Is that it? You’re giving up, my sweet?”

“No, I just need a break-” You were cut off by a feathery caress at your loin, promoting whatever feverish thoughts that waited on the cusp of your mind. Instinctually, you leaned into the touch like a starved animal. Vergil seemed to enjoy your reaction, knowing full well that only his fingertips can encourage such a visceral response from your body.

“A break, you say? Let me assist you,” he purred in your ear, heated breath only intensifying the sensation of his digits running circles achingly close to your clothed core.

You couldn’t withhold your lewd mewls, letting them cascade out of your lungs as Vergil’s teeth began sinking into your bare shoulder, followed by promises of ecstasy in the form of trailing kisses upon your skin. His hands teased at your waistband, slipping beneath the fabric to find his goal. Your own fingers searched for purchase, not to lose yourself entirely to this hedonism. They found their way to the blue devil’s hair behind you, and encouraged his tongue to trek along the flesh of your shoulder.

A maelstrom of pleasure spread through you as Vergil’s hand began lavishing your folds with longing strokes. The sheer playful movements of his digits were teasing, daring you to release your tension all over them, there and then. It was almost shameful how easily he could elicit such a reaction from your body. How he forced these noises from you, the pressures of assignment life fading away into nothingness.

Approving hums vibrated within Vergil’s chest, resonating against your back, provoking the throbs deep in your core. You moaned in turn, giving him the greenlight to plunge into your heat with two digits. Admittedly, you were now certain this was his plan all along, usually wearing fingerless gloves even outside of combat. Besides, he seemed too eager to get you in this state.

That sneaky devil.

Nevertheless, that motion was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Your walls tensed instinctually around his fingers as they shamelessly pumped in and out. Vergil knew exactly the spot to caress, seeing how your frame arched itself to accommodate his own. God, he loved seeing you in this state; At his mercy.

“Y/N. You will finish this assignment, as I will finish you. Is that clear?” The sovereign tone with which Vergil spoke alone could send you spiralling over the edge. You nodded eagerly, desperate to release the tide of pleasure rocking against your swollen walls.

Observing your lethargic demeanor, and your eyes glazed over with depravity, the devil decided to send you into paroxysms of pleasure by focusing two hands on your heat. With one swirling your bud, and the other continuing its rhythmic movements inside you, his smug visage in the now blacked out screensaver of the monitor observed your near undone state.

“How are you feeling? Relaxed yet? Encouraged to do your studies? I won’t have you failing. Not in this state.” To your surprise, Vergil's smirk never faltered. His tongue continued to play upon your shoulder and neck as you encouraged his efforts with your incoherent cries.

“Vergil-'' Your fragmented moans, and the bucking of your hips against his working hands only prompted him to intensify his tirade. He left you kicking helplessly, trying to find an object to perch against with your legs, and swing your hips in any direction if only to lessen the overstimulation. Blank papers landed to the ground, and pencils and pens alike tumbled from the force of your pleasured kicks against the furniture. Even the untouched tea spluttered all over the desk, staining amber upon the surface of the paper beneath. But you didn't have a care in the world; right now your focus was on the endless waves of gratification you were bestowed upon by the blue devil.

All of your previous worries seemed to melt away. Even the stress of creeping deadlines and sleepless nights dissipated into a mere sliver of a memory. Your rippling muscles beneath Vergil's hands eased, his own limbs holding you in place as you fell limp from exhaustion on his lap. With a tender trail of kisses along your neck, and the last one behind your ear, he hummed and coiled his arms around your waist to pull you into a warm hug. You hummed in return.

"Was that encouragement enough? Or do I have to resume this motivational lesson?" Vergil purred in your ear, a hint of playfulness meandering in his voice.

"Hmm, I am still feeling a bit tense." You rolled your shoulders to accentuate your 'discomfort', expecting Vergil to react accordingly. And react he did, his immense strength scooping you into his arms from behind, your body weighing a feather on his frame. With proud steps and a teasing expression, he marched towards your bedroom, a saccharine smirk dancing on his lips.

"I was hoping you'd say that. You'll be writing books once I'm done with you, my sweet."