#i could write short essays on how each song applies to him | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

earlywintermourning · 3 years ago

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HQ Ships I Associate With Taylor Swift Songs

this is entirely self-indulgent but i don’t care. also this will contain manga spoilers, be warned

@rudolphsboyfriend you encouraged me to do this… look at what you have commented into existence /lh

Dorothea and Kagehina: I could write an essay on why this song and this ship work, but I’ll keep it short and maybe make everything else into its own post. I see this song as mainly from Kageyama’s perspective - what really sells it on his POV is “if you ever get tired/of being known for who you know/you know you’ll always know me” is just so reminiscent of how Hinata knows so many people. This song also has the whole “friends to one watching the other from a distance while still being entirely loyal” theme that is just so incredibly Kagehina, as well as the way that the narrator describes their high school experience.

Lover and Bokuaka & Matsuhana: For Bokuaka, I mainly associate this song with them because I want them to be happy SO BADLY. But also I think that “can I go where you go?/will we always be this close” line is very Akaashi, while “swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover” is very Bokuto.

For Matsuhana, the lines that make me think of them are “i’ve loved you three summers now honey,” as they’ve known each other for three years, and “swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover/and you’ll save all your dirtiest jokes for me,” because that’s honestly SUCH a them line. (Can you tell that both of these are my favorite ships)

Enchanted and Bokuaka: The basic premise of “I was enchanted to meet you” could go for every haikyuu ship because all of them are kind of built around how the characters influence each other, but 1) Bokuaka deserves this song, 2) their whole thing is quite literally love at first sight (chapter 331) and 3) the lyrics are very Akaashi. “There I was again tonight, forcing laughter faking smiles/same old tired, lonely place/walls of insincerity/vanished when I saw your face” might just remind me of Bokuaka because I’m a sucker for rich and not very happy about rich culture!Akaashi but I also think that it applies to what we know from canon. “I’ll spend forever wondering if you knew/I was enchanted to meet you.” I think that Akaashi feels anxiety over what he means to Bokuto, and this line is kinda that. The theme of this song being love at first sight as well as wanting this person to really know you fits Bokuaka SO WELL.

Mary’s Song (Oh My My My) and Iwaoi: childhood friends to lovers!!!!! I see this song from Oikawa’s POV, with lyrics like “said you’d beat me up you were bigger than me/you never did” and “I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried” it’s just very Iwaoi yknow? If you want to add some angst, it’s Oikawa looking back on their relationship as he leaves for Argentina :)

Message In a Bottle and Tsukkiyama: Message in a bottle came out literally today so I haven’t analyzed this as much but. “And I became hypnotized by freckles and bright eyes” is so incredibly Tsukki to Yams. This song’s whole message of feeling separate from your crush but wanting to reach out just feels a lot like them, so I associate it.

Gorgeous and Sakuatsu: This song/ship association is so important to me for no reason at all but I’m going to do it justice. This song is definitely from Sakusa’s POV, from specific lyrics to the way that it’s implied that the person singing is more introverted. To start: “you should take it as a compliment/that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk” is just. Atsumu accent. Yeah. “You should think about the consequence/of your magnetic field being a little too strong” is most definitely their relationship dynamic from Sakusa’s POV, along with “You’re so cool, it makes me hate you so much.” In general, I like when this ship is portrayed with the “i want to kiss him. ew” type feeling, especially when one of them starts realizing Feelings, so “you're so gorgeous/I can't say anything to your face/'cause look at your face/and I'm so furious/at you for making me feel this way/but, what can I say?/you're gorgeous” really holds up. “Guess I’ll just stumble on home to my cats” I just think that Sakusa is a cat person. This paragraph is getting really fucking long so I’ll be quick: outside of the lyrics, the vibe of this song-music, rhythm, etc just feels very Sakuatsu to me, for some reason.

State of Grace and Kagehina: This is from Kageyama’s POV, I mean, “I never saw you coming/and I’ll never be the same” hello? This is like. The first episode and every single one after that. “You come around and the armor falls” really reminds me of how Hinata was the one who taught Kageyama that it doesn’t all rely on him; Hinata took away that “armor” of superiority. “This is the golden age of something good and right and real” is very much how these two changed the team for the better.

#i might add more songs later #these are the main glaring ones tho #im really passionate about the gorgeous/sakuatsu connection for no good reason other than I Love Them disease #haikyuu!!#hq #taylor swift #book’s quotes

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 5 years ago

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An Explanation of Why Louis and Violet are Both Terrific Love Interests [5/5]

+Why both romantic routes are not only amazing but better than other games I’ve personally played in the past.

+Why some people are idiots and get off on picking stupid fights.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

[the final season and damn near perfect love interests]

I would die for both of them and so would you

Now that I’ve spent hours talking about these different games and comparing their characters and romance plots to TFS and Louis and Violet, allow me to recap:

Louis and Violet aren’t 100% equal. We’ve all talked about how the dev’s talk more highly about Violet or how toxic Louis’ fans can be, and it’s a horse that we just keep beating to the point where the horse is just dust now.

I know, guys. I know.

Trust me, there’s a reason I don’t follow any of the developers or writers or voice actors because while sometimes they give interesting info, sometimes they say dumb things and I have to close my eyes and force down my bitch mode because

I’ve given my two cents on those topics before, but know that in comparison to other games, Louis and Violet are more equal than others and arguing about it isn’t going to solve anything, and if you put your nasty energy into something good, then it wouldn’t matter if Louis didn’t get a mini-game because then you could create one fo the community!

Not necessarily a game game but a piece of artwork, or a short story. You get what I mean.

Hell, remember when we almost didn’t even get episode 3? Or episode 4 because Telltale did dumb things?

We could’ve stopped at episode 2. We could’ve just gotten our happy little date and confession with Louis and Violet and never got their full development, their backstories, or any other content with them.

We wouldn’t have gotten Clementine’s ending.

But we did get the whole season. You get to confess and smooch them, you watch them better themselves because they care about you and want to be better for you and the rest of Ericson.

We’re lucky that we can even romance them in the first place. They didn’t have to give that to us. They didn’t even have to try as hard as they did with these two but they did.

They could’ve made the romance shitty and forceful. They could’ve made it so unbalanced that it’s laughable. They could’ve made it inconsequential, throwaway characters. They could’ve made Louis and Violet so terrible that we would end up wishing they weren’t even characters in TFS.

But they didn’t.

Louis is my favorite character out of the entire series. Yes, I dare say I love him more than Clementine or even Lee. He’s my absolute favorite.

And while I chose not to romance Violet, she’s still one of my favorite characters and I hold her on a high pedestal when it comes to romanceable characters in general.

For this next part, I’m going to talk a little bit about why I love Louis’ romance route so much in comparison to the games that I’ve talked about, but I want to mention that I understand how important Violet is, too.

She’s important because it’s amazing to see a wlw story portrayed like this with a loveable character like Violet and I can see why she and Clementine’s relationship means a lot to the community.

I’m not ignoring or disregarding her worth and meaning in the story in this next section, I’m just giving my experience and thoughts on my playthrough of the game as someone who picked Louis.

Louis is a character I’ve talked about non-stop since I started this blog.

He is so many things, and his story over the course of TFS is one of my favorites that I’ve encountered in any of these games.

From his character design and voice acting to his realistic portrayal of grief and anger at the loss of his traitorous best friend but eventual acceptance and forgiveness of it, to his insecurities hiding behind a smile and a song, to his love for Clementine whether it be romantic or platonic, down to his backstory and growth from episode 1 to 4 of having a home and people worth stepping up to protect, I love everything about him.

When I first played episode 1, I deeply hoped that I would because to start something romantic with him because how many times has a game pulled a Yosuke on me and said, “Oh, that one? Nope, you can’t have that one,” and I just accepted it in sorrow?

So, imagine my delight when it was possible in episode 2, only to learn that we probably wouldn’t get the rest of the season.

We almost didn’t get it, remember?

Then we did, and we got to finish it and I got to see the end of Louis’ role in Clementine’s story. I got to watch them end up together, even though I had to sacrifice Violet’s eyesight and complete trust in me, as well as Tenn’s life. That’s not something that I’m happy about, but damn it, I love him enough to live with it.

Louis is important to the story, and his role is anything but inconsequential, no matter what route you take. He isn’t forced on you, and he doesn’t turn into a whiney asshole you if reject him. If you reject him, the story as a whole still makes sense. Louis is fucking loveable.

And this applies to Violet, as well. All of it!

There is no stupid love triangle between them and Clementine, they’re affectionate and supportive, and they’re both loveable as fuck.

Louis and Violet are both terrific love interests for Clementine because of this.

Everything that I’ve pointed out in the past 5 goddamn posts supports this.

At the end of the day, Louis and Violet are both amazing characters in their different ways, and they’re both perfect options for Clementine. They both treat her with love and respect, they both lay down their lives for her and AJ, they’re not above calling her out on anything she does wrong but is also willing to say they’re sorry for their own mistakes. They’re complex and interesting to spend time with, and you want them to survive and be happy in the end.

And I know, I get asks about these certain topics and opinions like “Well, I just felt like this thing was unfair and here’s why” and that’s fine. There’s a difference between having a discussion about something that you think can be improved or something you didn’t like and going to someone with the intention of being an idiot and picking a fight because you get off on it.

I didn’t write this whole thing up to tell everyone to shut up, I wrote it to point some shit out because some people don’t realize how lucky we are to even have Louis and Violet in the first place! Think back to the examples and comparisons I did and think about what we COULD’VE gotten!

People are still going to pick fights about it because they’re idiots. That’s why they do it. There is no reason to be an asshole to each other just because you share different opinions, and there’s no reason to personally go after the developers and writers.

I get mad, I get annoyed, so I write five-part essays about topics that no one asked for but make me feel better to get all out.

I don’t go into inboxes or on Instagram and be a dick.

Because there’s no point. Because Louis and Violet are both great.

Have I nailed that point into your brains yet?

In conclusion:

Quit being ungrateful and enjoy the fact that Louis and Violet are as amazing as they are and that TFS was finished. Be nice and quit picking fights. Louis and Violet would both be ashamed of you for being an asshole. Use the energy you’re putting into this nonsense and put it towards something good for the community.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on Instagram and see if anything’s changed in the past 48 hours while hoping I don’t come across any more vilouis content.

#twdg louis #louis twdg #twdg violet #violet twdg #twdg clementine #clementine twdg #twdg clouis #twdg violentine #clouis #violentine #i've talked enough about this is think #tune in next week where i spend 10 parts explaining why conrad is the best character in anf #just joking #or am i #i am #it actually 10 parts of explaining why javi and conrad should've gotten together in the end

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years ago

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Influencers

I seriously started writing when I was 13, “serious” in this case meaning I submitted carefully typed reviews and articles to fanzines and short stories to magazines.

My father toyed with the idea of being a writer at some point in his life, and we had a stack of old Writer’s Digests and Jack Woodford’s How To Write For Money in the house.*

I can’t recall how many stories I wrote and mailed out, but none of them sold (my first short story sale was “Smuggler” in the November 1983 issues of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, but of course by that time I was already well established as an animation writer; I had placed a few articles and reviews in fanzines by that time).

Recently I had reason to re-read some of my own stories, and I got to wondering who my key literary influencers were.

Here, in rough chronological order, they are:

Ray Bradbury was the sci-fi writer that school boards felt comfortable with, and as a result stories like “The Pedestrian” turned up in lots of grammar school and junior high English textbooks. Well, that was like Hartz Mountain heroin to 10 year old Buzzy Boy. I voraciously read everything by Bradbury in every library I had access to. Somewhere I read his short story “Pillar Of Fire” which includes a virtual laundry list of writers of the phantasmagorical, and of course that sent me off in search of each and every one of ‘em, and that led me straight to…

H.P. Lovecraft took one look at my Southern Baptist Sunday school theology, said “How cute” and proceeded to sweep everything off the table. I have come to realize Lovecraft was a racist and a terribly, terribly flawed human being, but his cosmic horror stories (retconned by August Derleth as “The Cthulhu Mythos”) made me realize “Holy #&%@ -- I’m not even asking the right questions!”, and while Alfred Bester and Philip K. Dick and A.E. van Vogt would later expand my imagination even more, he’s the guy who shot the lock off the door.

When I started writing seriously (i.e., for actual submission of material, not just to fulfill a school assignment), I found myself typically bouncing between Bradbury and Lovecraft’s styles (the occasional Robert E. Howard and Ian Fleming pastiches excluded). Luckily for all concerned, I landed closer to the Bradbury camp than the insanely verbose and grandiloquent Lovecraft…

Ernest Hemingway cropped up on my radar through osmosis: I heard adults talking about him, read his name on gag book titles in Warner Brothers cartoons, saw the TV news report his suicide. I saw The Old Man And The Sea and For Whom The Bell Tolls on TV when I was ten or eleven, and since both were touted as based on his works, I looked them up. For Whom The Bell Tolls was the first one I read, and for a pre-adolescent boy that’s probably the perfect introduction to Hemingway. By the time I started reading voraciously, Hemingway’s modern style of writing pretty much became the norm for everyone, but he mastered that spare lean style better than anyone else.

Mark Twain first hopped into view with Boy’s Life reprinting “The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County” even though I’d seen movies based on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn before that. That short story led me to his novels, and oddly his novels led me back to his short stories and essays. Twain’s somewhat old fashioned yet naturalistic style flows so effortlessly and easily and handles asides and digressions so seamlessly that I found myself re-reading his works again and again to see how he did it.

H. Allen Smith is an unjustly forgotten American humorist from the 1930s-40s-50s. I picked up a coverless copy of his anthology Poor H. Allen Smith’s Almanac in a remainder bin in a Dollar General Store in Athens, Tennessee more out of curiosity than anything else and was delighted to find a soul mate. Smith, like Twain, was the literary equivalent of MAD Magazine, puncturing pretentious stuffed shirt shirts with pleasure. Like Twain, Smith employs a seemingly effortless style to conceal a sharp cynical sting.

Harlan Ellison came to my attention as I started reading more and more science fiction digest and fanzines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Always controversial, deliberately provocative, and relentlessly entertaining on the page or in person, Harlan demonstrated more than any other writer I encountered the fire in the belly that represents The Work. (The Work is one of those things that can’t be described, can’t be defined; as Louis Armstrong once said of jazz “If you’ve got to ask, you’ll never know.” Writers know what I’m talking about, authors think they know, but most people just go “…wha…?” when the topic comes up, which is why writers rarely talk about it in front of civilians.) Harlan’s style and élan could never be duplicated, much less equaled, but damn, he left a lot of good inspirations and insights behind, and I find myself applying them -- filtered through my own style and experience, of course. His best insight was that no matter how fantastic the story, it had to be about human emotions, or else it was just shit.

Thomas Heggen is another unjustly forgotten American writer, remembered (if at all) as the original author of the novel that became the movie Mister Roberts. The novel began life as a series of vignettes and short stories Heggen wrote and sold to New Yorker magazine during World War II and based on is actual experiences as an officer aboard U.S. Navy cargo ships. After the war he assembled, re-edited, re-wrote, and added new connecting material to turn these stories into a novel, and from there worked on the Broadway play adaptation. He died a tragic early death (accident or suicidal despair over crippling writer’s block, take your pick). Again, I was introduced to his writing through the movie based on his work, finding a reprint of the book sometime after I discovered H. Allen Smith. In contrast to Twain and Smith, Heggen’s laconic style underplayed his humor, actually heightening the absurdity of his situations by treating them so matter of factly.

Richard E. Geis is better known as the editor of Science Fiction Review in all its various permutations (originally Psychotic then Science Fiction Review then The Alien Critic then back to Science Fiction Review then Richard E. Geis then Science Fiction Review again then Taboo) and as such one of the key influencers in the legendary New Wave vs Old Stuff feud that consumed sci-fi fandom back in the 1960s and early 1970s (which is to say just at the time when I was becoming active in fandom). Geis wrote fiction -- a handful of self-published sci-fi novels and stories in an era long before self-publishing was a viable norm, and over 100 porn novels at about $500 a pop – and I must be brutally honest, none of them were good. But his genius and ability lay in his editorial and critical skills, and in his editorial writing for Science Fiction Review he demonstrated a lively and entertaining style that managed to meld coolly analytical criticism with engaging and often sly personal observations (Geis frequently employed Alter, his name for his darker, more sardonic alter ego, in a back and forth dialog to use dialectics to exposes the strengths and weaknesses of any work or proposition).

William Goldman’s screenplay of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid was published as a paperback by Bantam Books. When I saw it on the spinner rack in a small drug store in Madisonville, Tennessee, I thought it would be a novelization of an upcoming movie, but when I flipped it open I realized I was looking at an actual bona fide screenplay, and of course, I had to have it. (The kneeslapper is that Goldman never wrote in conventional screenplay format, and while his works are excellent examples of how to tell a story cinematically, they sure aren’t industry standard.) I followed his work after that, both on screen and off, and when he wrote Adventures In The Screen Trade I devoured its lessons hungrily. While I see a certain stylistic influence in my writing from Goldman, what I really learned from his was structure and form and style.

Walter Hill and David Giler took Dan O’Bannon’s already legendary unproduced script for Alien and -- no slam against O’Bannon -- transformed it from a really, really good B-monster movie story into a work of poetry. Compare and contrast the two screenplays; everything’s there in O’Bannon’s work, but Hill and Giler blew it through the roof. Their writing style -- seemingly minimalistic but in reality forcing the reader to see the movie exactly as they envisioned it -- was a revelation, and while I don’t try to ape it directly, I have used it to free me from conventional descriptions of characters, scenes, and actions to good effect.

Charles Bukowski was introduced to me by the late Gordon Kent, a friend and co-writer at Ruby-Spears Studios. I quickly became enamored of his unadorned, almost journalistic style of fiction, but his poetry is what resonated the deepest. After reading Hill and Giler’s Alien script, I looked at Bukowski’s poems with new eyes, seeing how he used a similar technique in many of his poems that they used in their screenplay. This in turn led to a greater interest and appreciation in poetry as a whole on my part, and to start applying more poetic styles in describing characters and situations, again paring verbiage to a minimum while conjuring up more vivid mental images.

Like every writer, I’ve been influenced to some degree or another by every story I’ve read, every movie I’ve seen, every song I’ve heard.

Some may complain there are too many old white guys in this grouping, and that’s a fair cop – if I was drawing up a list of writers to recommend.

But I’m not doing that. I’m telling you what influenced me, how and why.

Take it or leave it.

* If you can find any Woodford book on writing GET IT!!! He’s not the best of the best when it comes to analyzing the writer’s craft but sunuvagun he’s damn good and he lays it out flat in a take-no-prisoners style. You may not like what he has to say but man, does he ever cut through the BS.

#writing #influences #influencers #Ray Bradbury #H P Lovecraft #Ernest Hemingway #H Allen Smith #Harlan Ellison #Thomas Heggen #Richard E. Geis #William Goldman #Walter Hill #David Giler #Charles Bukowski

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imagination-of-a-melted-bitch · 7 years ago

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BTS REACTION: Their Fans Reaction To Thei S/0 Being Black

Can I plzz have a reaction with Bts? Can it be the fans reaction to me being black??

Seokjin (Jin):

Jin had met you at a fansign in your hometown on his group's 'world' tour. You had worn a pair of black high-waisted shorts and Jin's jersey. Jungkook pointed you out to him, what had really caught Jungkook's attention was your hair, it was in a bun on top of your head, curls peeking out of the lazily wrapped hair. Your eyes were coated with a coffee color, and when you smiled, Jin felt his stomach doing flips. When you got to him he had finally noticed he had been staring you at you, the hugest grin on his face.

"Hi!" You nervously giggle, waving your hand in front of Jin's face, snapping him out of the small trance he had fallen into.

"You're beautiful," Are the first words that fall from his lips,

"But am I more beautiful than you?" You joked, making him laugh as he signed the poster you laid down in front of him.

"I don't know...it's a close second." Jin winked.

It had been a year and a half since the fansign, a year since the two of you had been dating and an hour since the two of you had gone public with your relationship.

The both of you turned your phones off too scared to see what the fans would say.

"What if they hate me?" You cried, running your hands down your face, "What if they don't think we should be together because I'm not Korean? Oh my god, they're going to hate me and then they're going to stop supporting the group because you're my boyfriend!" You ran your fingers through your hair, anxiously pacing the floor of the living room. "Oh my god, I'm going to ruin BTS' career." Jin stopped your worrying, grabbing your wrist and pulling you down onto his lap.

"Okay, in the midst of your worrying I turned my phone back on, went to the group's shared account and read some of the comments and retweets. They're all saying the same thing..." Jin holds the phone up, scrolling through more of the retweets.

"Well don't leave me hanging...what'd they say?"

"They said the same thing I tell you every morning. You are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, your smile is to die for...do your pants have a mirror-oh no, no, no, not that one." You laugh, wrapping Jin's arms around your torso.

"Read some more...they make me feel happy inside." Jin rests his chin on your shoulder, before beginning to read more of the fan's comments.

Yoongi:

You and Yoongi met when he was an underground rapper. Your brother was the mc, and you had asked him to get you in. It was complicated at first, your first language not being Korean, but after talking with the people above your brother you had managed to get in. Now, Yoongi was a well-respected rapper and no one had been able to defeat him or match his pace or depth in lyrics, even in freestyles until you came along. It was impressive that you beat Min Yoongi but you were also a female and that's what impressed the crowd the most. Yoongi was impressed with your talent as well and the two of you exchanged numbers, it wasn't until his debut with BTS that you actually got together.

"I can't believe we did that," You laugh, watching the laptop screen, refreshing it every minute, laughing at the comments that kept popping up. "We actually released a song, basically confessing the last four years of our relationship the day before your four-year anniversary...what do you think your management is going to say?"

"I honestly don't care." Yoongi shrugs, wrapping his arm around your shoulders. He pulls you into his chest and rests his chin on the crown of your head.

"I do," You pout, "I don't want them to make us break up." Yoongi's grip tightens and you can hear his breath hitch. "I mean...if I comes down to choosing between me and BTS, it's BTS all the way." Yoongi pulls away and looks at you with a tensed jaw. "Don't look at me like that. Ever since I met you it's been your dream, this, to get your music out like this, to help write and produce music for the whole world to hear. I won't come between that."

Yoongi goes to say something but his phone begins to ring, "Hello?" He answers it with furrowed brows, "Yes. She is, yes, yes, yes, I understand, thank you," He hangs up the phone and begins to laugh, "That was management." He starts and you wait with bated breath, heart pounding a million miles an hour. "They've been going over the YouTube comments and the fans are loving it, he says we should see the theories." You nod along to what he's saying and make a motion for him to go on with what he was saying. "He wants us to post a picture and officially go public."

"Really?" Yoongi eagerly nods, "They like it? They like us? They support us?" Yoongi eagerly nods again.

"Well...they actually love us,"

Hoseok (Hobi/J-Hope):

You and Hoseok were introduced to each other by his sister. You were the exchange student at her college and confessed to her how much of a fan you were of BTS before knowing who she was. She told you how she was Hoseok's sister, and how he would be coming into town for a show. She had V.I.P tickets and offered to introduce you to the group, more specifically Hoseok, your bias. You've and Hoseok have been together ever since.

"Y/N are you ready?" One of the stylists asked, walking up to you to fix your hair once more. "This damn strand," She muttered before shrugging, "It doesn't even matter, you look amazing, you're due on stage in five," She gave you a smile and tapped your cheek before turning and hurrying off.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this." You nervously wrung your hands, watching them finish up the last song. Hoseok spared a smile your way, before getting back into place. You and Hoseok had been together for two years now and he wanted to go public, very public. The both of you had been talking for months on how to come out to the world and you wanted to go through their Twitter account, the millions of fans would see it but it didn't feel personal enough so Hoseok wanted to do it live, at tonight's sold-out concert.

"Okay, okay," Jungkook laughs into his mic, after they finish the dance, all of them drinking water and trying to catch their breath. You turn to the vanity mirror and look over yourself once again. You were wearing a yellow off the shoulder dress, that had a floral pattern with brown wedges to accompany it. Your hair was up into a sloppy but elegant bun, strands of hair popping out here and there. You didn't bother with a whole face of make-up and just applied a highlight to compliment the dress and a gloss. You looked beautiful and the dress looked amazing against your skin tone, you really had to hand it to the stylists. You look back at the stage to find Hoseok waving you over, the biggest smile on his face.

You take a deep breath before hurrying onto the stage and right into Hoseok's arms. Hoseok smiles and pulls you flush against his chest, planting kisses against the crown of your head. "Everyone," Hoseok turns toward the crowd and raises your joined hands. "This is my beautiful girlfriend Y/N Y/L/N, and I love her with my all," Hoseok's smile never dulls and the crowd grows quiet. "All I ask of you all is to continue to support the group and to support our relationship, Y/N, she means the world to me," There's a murmur and you nervously look at Hoseok, worried you'd ruined his whole career.

"Look guys-" Namjoon starts out but is interrupted by the crowd erupting into cheers, a repetitive cheer of your name.

"See?" Hoseok pulls you in and pushes his lips against yours, "I told you they'd love you,"

Namjoon:

You and Namjoon met by complete accident. Namjoon has this coffee shop that he goes to every morning he's at the dorm and one of those days just happened to be his lucky day, is his words. You had come in and sat down in the back of the shop as always, fingers typing away at your keyboard as you crammed for a test, all the while finishing an essay you had due that night at midnight. It was love at first sight for Namjoon, you were wearing your University's sweatshirt, a pair of leggings and slippers but you looked like a goddess. Your braids were pulled up into a high ponytail that you had sloppily pulled up, and you were stressed and it was obvious. Namjoon would order a box of donut bites and take a seat across from you. "Hi, I'm Namjoon,"

"I can't believe it's been a year already," You giggled, wrapping your arms around Namjoon's neck.

"I'm sorry we couldn't go out," Namjoon pouts, placing a succession of quick kisses to the corner of your mouth.

"I'm just glad I get to spend time with you," You smile and Namjoon laughs, "What's so funny?" He simply shrugs and turns his computer on.

"How about we go live then?" You pull away from him and furrow your brows, "Don't look at me like that! I'm serious!" He opens Vlive and his mouse hovers over the 'go live' icon. "I think it's about time the fans know about my beautiful baby girl," You shift on his lap and turn to face the computer.

"Namjoon stop!" You shoo his hand away from the mouse, "This is serious, what you're suggesting, if you go live with me then you could possibly ruin your career and everything you've worked so hard for." Namjoon rests his head on your shoulder and clicks it, the screen counting down from three. "Holy fuck-" Namjoon smiles at the camera and shyly waves, arms wrapping around your waist.

"Hey everyone," He says the phrase in every language he knows, even calling on you to help. He was waiting for the numbers to go up. "Yes, I will get to everyone's question," Namjoon looks over at you for a second, placing a quick kiss to your jaw.

"Namjoon," You pout and shift on his lap again, "I don't think-"

"This is Y/N, she is my beautiful baby girl and I love her to the moon and back and I'm tired of hiding our relationship," He gives the camera a tight-lipped smile and the comments start to flood with question marks before they begin to flood with hearts and heart eyes.

"Are those heart eyes for me?" You put a hand over your heart, actually tearing up. There's a flood of yeses and you feel like the luckiest girl in the world at the sight. "Thank you guys so much," You blow some kisses at the screen and Namjoon smiles, kissing your jaw again.

"Now...how was everyone's weekend?"

167 notes · View notes

minsugasnerd · 7 years ago

Text

Whispering Wall [1/2]

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 3,549

A/N: I previously wrote this for a writing blog I was on, but have removed it since I no longer write for that blog. I decided to repost it on my main kpop blog. It is however still dedicated to my Soul Partner Kim, I wrote this for her, to make her smile. @softkim2

The Whispering wall was a place you frequented to study, even write your papers for school. Being a college student was stressful but somehow this wall made it easy to write. You were always more focused here than anywhere else. Some say this wall was magical, some say it was just a wall full of vandalism.

Other students like you came to confess secrets, let out some stress, write love notes. Every now and then you’d find an actual conversation, replies upon replies. You found it entertaining to read these. Before starting on your astronomy essay, you took out a fine tipped sharpie and wrote on the wall.

“I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.”

You smiled to yourself. ‘Yesterday’ was your favorite Beatles song. It always brought a smile to your face, unlike your class partner Jung Hoseok. He wasn’t a total pest but he did his fair share of teasing and distracting you in class. For the most part you ignored him. You couldn’t risk getting your grade lowered over his actions.

The sound of someone approaching the wall brought you back to the present. They looked sheepishly at you before pulling out a marker of their own to write something. You looked down at your blank paper, trying to think of what to write.

Why do I love astronomy?

Your fingers hovered over the keyboard of your laptop for the slightest second before quickly moving. You had always loved astronomy; it was one of the things in your life that had a deep meaning. All that the skies had to offer were tranquil, but at the same time they could be quite scary. You loved the unknown and mysterious aspects of the galaxies and stars. You found it truly fascinating. You were on such a roll with this essay before being interrupted.

“I see my favorite classmate is working hard, as usual. You’re such a nerd.” You couldn’t help but roll your eyes. Hoseok sat down on the opposite side of the picnic table.

“Well its better than leaving everything to the last second like you do. At least I manage to show up on time and take notes.”

He laughed. “Like I said, you’re a nerd.”

Peering over your laptop to glaring at him. “I’m not a nerd for taking my studies seriously,” he deadpan looked at you.

“Y/n…”

“Whaaat?” you asked while trying to resume your essay.

“You’re a nerd.” he said once more making you irritated.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do, just leave.” you huffed.

“You’re so cute when you’re angry. But I actually did seek you out for a reason.”he claimed.

You sighed and closed your laptop. It was obvious that you weren’t going to get anything done with him sitting in front of you. “What could Jung Hoseok need from a nerd like me?” you asked putting quotations around the word nerd.

“I need you to take notes for me on Thursday. I won’t be in class." He stuck out his bottom lip and batted his eyelashes at you.

"Don’t try to act all cute. It won’t work. And why aren’t you going to be in class that day?” you quizzically eyed him.

“My best friend Yoongi is coming to town and I haven’t seen him in a year.” he seemed sad. “He’s been traveling for his music.” his eyes finally met yours. For the first time ever, you felt that this was the real Hoseok. Someone who wasn’t always so hyper and annoying.

“I suppose,” you started to say when he squeezed your hand to say thank you. “But you owe me,” you narrowed your eyes at him and took your hand from his. You gathered your laptop and notebook from the table getting ready to leave.

You turned to him one last time “Call me nerd one more time and I’m never doing anything for you ever again.” The sound of his laugh growing smaller and smaller as you walked towards your dorm.

“Thank you!” he shouted after you.

After you reached your dorm, you had managed to finish half of your essay. You stood up and stretched, flexing your fingers feeling relief from having sat in the same position for so long. The tired feeling started to seep into your bones. Well no wonder it’s late you thought to yourself as you checked the time. 11:37 pm. You slipped on a hoodie before taking your toiletries to the shared bathrooms. You brushed your teeth and washed your face before heading back to go to sleep for the night. The image of Hoseok gripping your hand and his smile played in your brain, making you grin as you drifted off to sleep.

The week passed rather quickly. You jotted down notes on Thursday’s class for Hoseok. You had finished the essay for your astronomy class, so you turned it in a few days before the deadline. You could practically hear Hoseok calling you a nerd.

You found yourself once again at the Whispering Wall this time to draw in your sketchbook. You loved taking a blank page and turning it into a piece of art. Making the various colors blend in with each other, creating the most beautiful images. You were always told you should major in art but your true love was what the skies contained.

You sharpened your pencil before letting it touch the surface of the page before you. A thought popped into your head. The Wall! You looked over to the spot you had written on; utterly shocked that someone had answered your quote.

“Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.”

You’ve never smiled that hard before as your heart soared. Someone else loved The Beatles! Finally someone your age showed the same interest in the same music as you. Finally someone with taste!

You grab a sharpie from the pile on the table when someone pulls out one of your earbuds, making you yelp. You didn’t even have to turn around; Hoseok gave himself away with his obnoxious laugh. “Hoseok I swear to-” you turned around and stopped talking. He had someone who you assumed was his friend, with him.

“Swear to what y/n?” he teased. You didn’t want to be rude in front of this stranger so you didn’t say anything back to him.

“Y/n I’d like you to meet Yoongi. My friend that I told you about.” he stated.

“The one who travels for music?” you asked looking at Yoongi. Taking in his mint colored hair, leather jacket that hung off of his frame, even the sleepy look on his face. He reminded you of your roommate; she rarely showed her emotions and always looked like she was tired.

“Yoongi I’d like you to meet y/n” he looked at his friend who smiled at you.

“Ahhh so this is the girl that yo-” Hoseok elbowed him in the side to shut him up. “I mean nice to meet you,” he shook your hand and smirked.

“Likewise Yoongi,” he smiled and tucked his hand into his pocket. “So what’re you guys up to?” you asked as you settled onto the picnic bench.

“Not much just showing him around. Probably dragging him to a party.” he replied.

“Ahhh well I hope you guys have fun.” you told them. And you meant it.

“Woah! You’re actually being nice to me?!” Hoseok exclaimed as he clutched his chest, stumbling back into Yoongi.

You groaned. “Do you always have to ruin my mood?”

“Who? Me?” he asked. “You wound me y/n.” he wiped a fake tear from the corner of his eye. You rolled your eyes at him, making Yoongi laugh at the exchange between you two.

“It was nice meeting you Yoongi.” you plugged your ear buds in and motioned for Hoseok to scram. Yoongi nodded at you before they turned to walk away. You smiled to yourself. He knew how to get under your skin. You absolutely hated it but only acted this way with him.

Your attention returned to your sketchbook. You let the music take you away. After a while a familiar face with gorgeous eyes and a set of full lips developed on the page. You hadn’t realized you were drawing Hoseok. Was it possible you were crushing on him? No. No way. You slammed your sketchbook closed trying to shake the feelings. You returned your supplies to your backpack, all except for one sharpie.

“Now I need a place to hide away. Oh, I believe in yesterday.” you wrote in your signature loopy handwriting.

The person who replied had fairly sloppy but readable handwriting. It had to belong to a guy. You contemplated who this other person could be. There were so many students on campus, the possibilities were endless. Sighing to yourself you decided to go back to your room.

You were surprised to see you roommate awake. “Wow you’re actually awake?”you didn’t mean for it to sound so sarcastic.

“I know I’m surprised myself. I got invited to a party. Wanna go? I know it’s not either of our scenes but I don’t want to go alone.” you were honestly shocked.

“But you never want to go out.” You stated.

"Yeah tell me about it. But I feel like free booze tonight.” she shrugged as you laughed. “I’m leaving in a half hour if you wanna go.”

“Well it wouldn’t hurt…” you say more to yourself than to her.

She mumbled a ‘cool’ before slipping out of the room to head down the hall for the bathroom. You looked through her wardrobe after deciding that your clothes were too boring.

By the time your roommate returned you still hadn’t decided what to wear. “Move, I got this.” she nudged you out of the way to rummage through her clothes. Meanwhile you quickly applied light make up. “Here,” she shoved a pair of high waisted denim shorts, a plain white tank top, and a flannel shirt into your arms. “It’s not a formal event. Plus it usually gets really hot at these things with all the bodies packed into a tiny space.” You quickly dressed pairing the outfit with a pair of black converse. Your roommate opted for a pair of black ripped skinny jeans and a t shirt with some obscure band on the front.

“Ready?” She asked after she laced up her boots.

“As I’ll ever be.” you replied.

You walked arm in arm with your roommate to the frat house. The faint sounds of music grew louder and louder with each step you took towards the party. Excitement coursed through your body. Even your roommate seemed excited to be there, it was such a change for her usual attitude. You liked it.

Upon approaching the front steps she dropped your arm only to grab your hand, pulling you through the entryway and through the lingering people by the door. Once inside you assessed your surroundings.

“Let’s get a drink!” your roommate shouted over the music and you gave her a thumb up. You followed her into the kitchen, only to find Hoseok and Yoongi leaning against the counters.

“Y/n? What’re you doing here?” Hoseok questioned as his eyes looked you up and down.

“My roommate invited me.” you answered as she handed you a plastic cup filled with foul smelling liquid.

“Cheers” she said as she touched her cup to yours. She downed it before you even brought it up to your lips.

“My kind of woman,” Yoongi spoke with a smirk on his face. You laughed to yourself knowing he would like her.

The four of you chatted in the kitchen for a little while before someone from your English class pulled Hoseok away. “Namjoon needs to speak to me. You good Yoongi?” he asked.

Yoongi eyed your roommate up and down while licking his lips. “Yeah I’m good Jhope.” Jhope?

You stood there and watched them shamelessly flirt in between sips of alcohol. You refilled your cup with a mixed drink and wandered off. It wasn’t long before you found a familiar face surrounded by a small group of people.

“Y/n! Come sit with me!” Seokjin exclaimed. He patted the only other empty spot on the couch. You’ve known him since your freshman year at the University.

“Hey Jin!” you said as you sat down next to him. “How are you? It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

“I’ve been good. I made the Dean’s list this year.” he beamed with pride.

“Congratulations! I’m happy for you!” you told him nudging his shoulder. “You were always the smartest one in class. With the lamest jokes!” you giggled feeling the alcohol working.

“What do you mean? My jokes are legendary! ” Jin scoffed at you while simultaneously putting his arm around your shoulders.

“I didn’t know dad jokes were funny” you retorted.

“What do you call bears with no ears?” he asked trying to hold his laughter.

You groaned at the opening of the joke. “I dunno, what?” you asked as you took a sip of your beer.

“B!” he answered laughing. It was his windshield wiping laugh that made you cackle. Not the joke.

“That was,” you paused as he looked at you. “So, so stupid!” you laughed as you swatted his knee. “I’ve got a better one.”

Jin cocked and eyebrow at you. “I don’t think so y/n, I am the king of jokes!” the people surrounding you guys laughed along with him.

“Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon?” you replied knowing he was going to find it hilarious. He shook his head and took a sip from the dark glass bottle he held. “Great food! No atmosphere!” He spat his drink out, nearly choking on it. “Oh gosh are you okay?!” you pat his back as he recovered from the coughing fit. His face was tomato red when he looked at you.

“That was a good one!” he said once he calmed down.

This game of telling jokes went on for a good hour or so when you hear Hoseok call out for you.“Y/n?” you looked up to see him looking at Jin’s arm which was still around you. “Have you seen Yoongi?”

You got up and said your goodbyes to Jin and promised to hang out again soon.

“Last I saw him; he was in the kitchen with y/rm/n. They were getting pretty cozy with each other.” he laughed. “Why is that funny?” you asked as you led him to the kitchen.

“I’ve never seen him this way. Normally he’s closed off to people” now it was your turn to laugh.

“Funny cause so is she.” you snorted. As soon as you turned the corner you both made sounds of disgust. They were all hands and lips.

“Ew guys get a room,” Hoseok spat. The two broke apart with big grins on their faces.

“You interrupted. For what?” Yoongi glared at the two of you.

“Food? I’m starving. Let’s go.” he said not caring that he was interrupting them.

Yoongi leaned back into y/rm/n and whispered something into her ear which made her scoff. “Yeah right D boy.” she replied and he smirked. “Are you ladies going to join us?” Yoongi asked.

On cue your stomach growled. “Whelp I guess that answers for me.” you said patting your stomach. You turned to Hoseok. “Where to Jhope?” both you and Yoongi snickered at that name.

“Watch it y/n” he warned, but the look on his face conveyed that he didn’t care. “Only my Soul Partner can call me that,” he said and gave Yoongi a fist bump. “How about the diner right outside of campus?”

“Food is food,” both y/rm/n and Yoongi said at once, they burst out in laughter.

“Well that’s creepy,” the sound of Hoseok’s voice saying the same thing as you made your eyes go wide. “Can we stop with all this weird shit and go?” he said amused.

The four of you left the party and went to go refuel and sober up. Two am quickly approached as you guys left the diner feeling full. You were surprised that you actually had so much in common with Hoseok. Yoongi told stories from their younger days. He wasn’t as bad as you thought, it just so happened that his hyper personality got in the way of getting to know the real him. He was actually a pretty sweet guy.

You and Hoseok walked together talking while the other two fell behind laughing and goofing around. “Is anything going on between you and that one guy from the party?” he questioned you.

“You mean Seokjin?” he nodded his head. “No. We’ve been friends since freshman year. That’s it.” you glanced at his profile. “Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering.” You noticed a smile form on his lips. You never noticed that he had dimples; dimples that you wanted to reach out and touch. “So, Yoongi leaves in a few days. Would you mind taking notes for me again?” you were approaching the university.

“Sure. But you still -” you went to say but never got to finish.

“Yeah I know I still owe you from last time. Maybe you can let me take you out on a date?” he made it sound more like a question than a statement. “I mean that’s only if you want.” he playfully tugged on the sleeve of the borrowed flannel shirt. His hand met with yours, fingers slowly intertwining with yours. The warmth of his hand sent shivers down your spine.

“A date? With Jung Hoseok? Gee I wonder why I would want to partake in that.”you felt him squeeze your hand. “But I guess. I mean you do owe me.”

“That I do,” he flashed a brighter than sunshine smile at you.

Without realizing where your feet were taking you, you both ended up at the Whispering Wall. You pulled him over to the spot you checked almost daily. “What are we doing here?” he asked as you let go of his hand.

“I wanted to see if anyone replied to what I wrote,” not bothering to look at him as you answered. “Apparently not.” you sighed. You turned around to see him eyeing you skeptically. “You see, I wrote a line from my favorite Beatles song on here. I wasn’t expecting anyone to answer, but someone did.” he nodded, urging you to go on. “They replied with the next lines. I did the same, I was hoping they would have replied by now but they haven’t.” you frowned.

“I’m sure they will soon y/n.” he said as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked towards the ground. Why is he suddenly being shy?

You opened your mouth to say something but someone beat you to it. “JHOOOOOOOOOOPE!” Yoongi startled you both. It had slipped your mind that you weren’t alone. In the lights of the lamps that dimly lit the area, you could see the hickeys that y/rm/n and Yoongi had given each other while you and Hoseok were alone.

“What do you want Yoongs?” he groaned at the loudness of his friend.

“Thank you for introducing me to her. She’s fucking amazing man.” you all laughed at his outburst. “I’m telling you she’s my soul mate. Your my soul partner but she’s my soul mate.” Yoongi claimed as he snaked an arm around y/rm/n’s waist.

You looked at each other rolling your eyes as the two of them started making out again. “I’ll walk you to your dorm room,” he offered. You took his hand in yours and led the way.

He walked you right up to your door. “Hey that reminds me, what’s your number?” you eyed him. “I mean how am I supposed to take you on a date if I don’t have your number?” he smirked.

“Valid.” You told him your number as the other two caught up with you guys.

“So I’ll see you in class on Tuesday?” he said and surprised you by giving you a hug.

“See you Tuesday Hoseok.” A squeal from y/rm/n broke you two apart. Yoongi smacked her ass. “Those two I swear,” you shook your head.

“Good night Agust Dick” she said and walked into the shared room.

“Good night Y/n,” Hoseok spoke, barely above a whisper moving closer. He kissed your cheek softly, making heat rise to that very spot.

“Good night Jhoooope,” which earned you a laugh from him. “It was nice meeting you Yoongi, ” you waved to him and he nodded in response.

You closed the door and leaned against it. Your roommate had already undressed and was mostly asleep. “See it doesn’t hurt to go out and have fun.” she said before letting out a big yawn.

“No, no it doesn’t.” you said as you got into your pajamas. Your phone buzzed as you slid beneath the blankets of your bed. It was a text from an unknown number.

“Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say. I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.” You’re not the only one with good taste in music you nerd ;)

It was Hoseok this whole time. You smiled to yourself in the dark before you drifted off to sleep.

finale >

#kpopwonderlandtag #bts #bts fanfic #bts jhope #bts jung hoseok #bts fluff #bts jhope fluff #bts jung hoseok fluff #jhope fluff #jung hoseok fluff #jhope #jung hoseok #jhope fanfic #jung hoseok fanfic #jhope scenario #jung hoseok scenario #jhope fluff scenario #jung hoseok fluff scenario #minsugasnerd

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kbreenreads · 3 years ago

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Week 10 Activity: Reading Log #3

Graphic Novel

Citation: Telgemeier, Raina (2019). Guts. Scholastic.

Summary: This autobiographical graphic novel follows Raina throughout her fifth grade year and chronicles her experience with anxiety and digestive issues. Through therapy, Raina learns mindfulness techniques to help calm her anxiety and understand her own thoughts and feelings better. Though she keeps her experiences secret from her friends throughout most of the school year, she eventually opens up to them and finds that they are quite accepting of her in the end.

Comments: This graphic novel does an amazing job at realistically depicting the experience of anxiety. There are a few points throughout where Raina’s anxiety is visualized as a swarm of words (representing everything she fears) circling around her head with a green, sickly-looking background. I found this to be a very accurate depiction of what anxiety feels like, and believe it could help young readers with anxiety realize that they are not alone in their feelings. Though the cover of Guts is simple, it perfectly depicts the content of the story in the way that it displays a drawing of an anxious and sick looking face.

Library Use: I would definitely include this title in a display for Mental Health Awareness Month in May, as it does a great job of realistically and positively depicting the experience of going to therapy as a child.

Fantasy

Citation: Dahl, Roald (1961). James and the Giant Peach. Puffin.

Summary: This story follows James, a young boy who became an orphan and was forced to live with his two cruel aunts after his parents were eaten by a rhinoceros. One day, a mysterious old man offers James green glowing crystals and states that if he eats them, unbelievable things will happen to him. James ends up accidentally losing all the crystals after he spills them near a peach tree. As a result, the tree sprouts a peach which ends up growing larger and larger. James discovers a tunnel leading into the peach and climbs inside of it, where he meets a collection of bugs who, as a result of eating the spilled crystals, have grown into the size of humans and can now talk. James befriends the bugs and together they escape James’ cruel aunts by cutting the stem to the peach and allowing it to roll away into the ocean. It is then carried away by hundreds of seagulls and eventually lands in New York City, where James and the bugs end up living successful, happy lives.

Comments: According to Vardell, “The characters of fantasy are essential for the reader’s engagement with the story. It should be possible to identify with the main character(s), even if they’re not human” (235). This definitely applies to James and the Giant Peach’s collection of insect characters - they all have very human-like personalities and become James’ family when he has none. I also liked the way it combined fantastical elements (like talking, human-size bugs) with a sense of realism. For example, the bugs still retain their normal “bug functions” and these are sometimes used as points to move the plot forward, like when the spider and silkworm create strings to attach to the seagulls that carry the peach away.

Library Use: I think this would be a really fun book to do a reader’s theater activity with, as the characters are all full of personality and would be exciting for children to play. The fantastical elements of the story would allow the children taking part in readers theater to use their imaginations throughout the activity.

Non Fiction #1

Citation: Cherry-Paul, Sonja (2021). Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You. Little Brown.

Summary: This is a middle grade adaptation of Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jayson Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. It tells the story of how racism originated in America over the past several centuries and explains how racism continues to affect America in the current day. It also discusses current antiracist movements such as Black Lives Matter, and provides strategies for young readers to identify and stop racist thoughts/feelings that they might carry themselves.

Comments: Cherry-Paul did an excellent job at adapting Reynolds and Kendi’s YA novel for a younger audience. Each chapter focuses on a specific subject, and these chapters contain visual elements such as illustrations and timelines to aid readers’ understanding. There is also a section at the end of each chapter where readers are prompted to “pause” and discuss/reflect on key ideas and themes they have learned. This book does a great job of not only explaining the complex history of racism in America in a way that is easy for young readers to understand, but also takes several opportunities to address the reader directly and has them confront and examine their own previously-held thoughts and beliefs.

Library Use: Though this book is one that middle-graders should be able to get through on their own, they will definitely get more out of it if an adult reads it alongside them and serves as a guide/discussion partner. For a library, it would make for a great book for a discussion group - the prompts at the end of each chapter can serve as prompts for the discussion and the librarian can serve as the guide/moderator.

Non Fiction #2

Citation: Kay, Katty; Shimpan, Claire; Riley, JillEllyn (2020). Living the Confidence Code: Real Girls. Real Stories. Real Confidence. HarperCollins.

Summary: This is a collection of stories from inspiring young women around the world who chronicle their successes, failures, and missions to make the world a better place. Some of the young women featured in this book include activist Greta Thurnberg and Paralympic athlete Haven Shepherd.

Comments: This collection of stories is inspiring and accessible for young readers. The format in which these stories are told switches up with each new story, keeping things fresh and interesting throughout. Some are told in interview-style, some as essays, and even some in the style of graphic novels. Along with the stories themselves, there are confidence tips included throughout for readers to apply to their own lives. At the end of the book, there are blank pages designed for the reader to write down their own story, which I thought was a nice touch.

Library Use: Since this book gives readers the option of telling their own story at the end, I think it would be fun for participants in a discussion group for this book to be able to each share their story with the rest of the group (if they feel comfortable to).

Ebook

Citation: Bogert-Spaniol, Megan (2015). 10 Little Kittens. Cantata Learning.

Summary: This interactive ebook introduces young children to baby animals and the sounds they make with a song that also has them count to 10 and back again.

Comments: This was one of the titles included in Capstone’s collection of interactive ebooks. I liked the way the first page provided a brief introduction to baby animals and prompted the reader to turn the page upon hearing the sound of a baby animal. The next pages consisted of the “10 Little Kittens” song, with each new verse introducing a new baby animal and the sound it makes. Each word on the page lights up as the narrator reads/sings it, allowing children to follow along. Though this ebook is simple in terms of its interactivity, it is useful in teaching very young children early concepts around animals, sounds, and numbers.

Library Use: This interactive ebook reminded me a lot of library story time events designed for young children, especially the song included within the book. I would feature this ebook and ones like it as part of a “story time at home” collection, so children have the opportunity to get some of the fun and educational moments these story time events provide outside of the library.

Educational App/Game/Website

Citation: checkology.org. News Literacy Zone.

Summary: This news literacy site provides interactive lessons which teach students how to separate fact from fiction when it comes to information they see in the news, on television, or on social media.

Comments: We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by information from a variety of sources. Because the majority of this information is able to reach us without being fact-checked, we are vulnerable to being swayed by misinformation. This is especially true for young people, who have grown up entirely under this kind of information landscape. This website is incredibly useful in helping students look at information from a critical perspective. It contains several lessons on topics such as InfoZones and Misinformation. I did the InfoZones lesson, which separates information into six different purposes: to inform, to persuade, to entertain, to sell, to provoke, and to document. The lesson defines each of these purposes and has students watch video clips and look at screenshots from news articles or social media sites, and then identify the purpose of each piece of information. The videos included in the lesson are fairly short, as to not risk the learner losing interest. Some of the example pieces of information cover topics that middle/high schoolers will find relevant, such as school lunch pricing issues. It is free to register for checkology and take several of the lessons, though some content is behind a paywall.

Library Use: This is definitely something I would promote as a librarian, since news literacy is a topic that I feel is incredibly important for young people to be knowledgable in these days. I would probably use it as an element of a larger news/information literacy program that focuses on teaching young people (probably late elementary-middle school age) how to fact check and identify misinformation.

#activites #readinglog

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healing-hanyou · 7 years ago

Note

Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Love Live for the ask meme

STRAP YOURSELVES IN, KIDDOS. THIS IS A FUCKING ESSAY RIGHT HERE.

Ace Attorney:

Favorite Male Character: Miles Edgeworth. Shi-Long Lang is great as well. I also have a soft spot for Klavier, Sebastian and Apollo. And, naturally, my space son, Clay Terran.

Favorite Female Character: Kay Faraday!! Props also go to Mia Fey and Trucy Wright, as well as Athena and Jinxie.

Favorite Het Ship: Farabeste (Sebastian/Kay). Cykesquill as well, but I’m very specific about how and when I like it...like, ridiculously specific. Diego/Mia is good as well. For something more ridiculous that I think would be fun, Clay and Athena could have had a great dynamic. Maybe even Clay and Jinxie, if we go out and be totally wild.

Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): Klapollo, Langworth, Nahyuta/Simon. Vera/Trucy, lady Cykesquill, Robin/Myriam and Athena/Juniper for the ladies.

Least Favorite Male Character: how to I condense the list of the bastards? Kristoph is evil, but I cannot deny he had charm as a character - he’s terrifying, but fascinating, so I cannot name him as my least favourite. I think I’ll go with either von Karma or Blaze Debeste. They’re responsible for so much misery, and they don’t have any tragic reasons for being the way they are.

Least Favorite Female Character: Ma//ya Fe//y. I know the reasons people have for liking her, and I can forgive some flaws in writing, but she simply has too many of them. I know she is a courageous girl who ultimately wishes to do good, but the way she acts, especially in the first two games... just make me go ‘hmmmm’. Honestly, my favourite games in the series are those where I don’t get to see her. Young Pearl is also very low down on the list, and she was my least favourite for a long while, but her teenage years made me soften up to her, she’s pretty great in DD.

Least Favorite Het Ship: anything that encourages abuse, like Grant/Lana? Why would you do this? Also, I’m not fond of Athena/Apollo or Juniper/Apollo. Apollo is far too gay in my eyes to ever be together with a girl. Phoenix/Maya is another one I dislike.

Least Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): same rule as above applies. Aside from those, I... don’t have many slash ships I actively dislike, surprisingly? My main one would be Wri//ght//wor//th, since, in my opinion, it’s very overhyped, and I cannot turn around in this fandom without seeing it, but even that is mostly just...annoyance.

Dirty Little Secret: I haven’t forgotten about my dumbass theory. I’m just...really fucking slow.

Headcanon(s): this will need to be answered in its own separate asks. I have headcanons for everyone. For now, though - Jinxie Tenma is a Fey.

Unpopular Opinion(s): I like Gyakuten Kenji far more than the original games. In general, games with a protag that’s not Phoenix and newer games in the series I tend to like more. Not to imply that the original trilogy was bad or anything, but... Edgeworth is far more solid as a protagonist, not only because his side was relatively unexplored, but because his investigation methods were so much more sensible. Phoenix has this ‘wing it’ approach, which works fine, until you see past it. When you see past it, the tension build-up it tries to pull fails massively, and you just get annoyed by Phoenix never thinking ahead for anything, or being oblivious. With Edgeworth, when there are moments of tension, they appear because of something genuinely unexpected, or because Edgeworth made a miscalculation (which allows character growth). Even when Edgeworth has to pull dumb or crazy shit, it feels like it makes sense, because he thinks, even when he panics. Also, Phoenix is tied down by the worst accompanying duo of Maya and Pearl all the time, while Edgeworth acquires an absolutely amazing set of sidekicks (and he not only gets fun new ones, like Kay and Lang, but there’s so much detail in his interactions with Gumshoe, Franziska and Larry as well? It was great to see the Edgeworth/Larry dynamic of the friendship). Plus, I like the Logic Chess things, the soundtrack is my favourite (how exactly COULD you even attempt to top Shi-Long Lang’s theme???), at least if we’re not counting PLvsAA as a part of this universe, and I like the visuals of it much better. In short, everybody should play these fucking games right fucking now, and storm Capcom offices so they actually port GK2 for the Western market.

A lot of the same criteria apply for the newer games, too. While DD was a comeback for Phoenix, it was a game with mixed protagonists, and it was a new Phoenix as well. Apollo probably has my second favourite supporting character crew after Edgeworth, and, at the time, his Perceive mechanic was refreshing to see after being stuck to the same gimmick for 3 games. Same with Athena. She differs dractically from both Phoenix and Apollo, and brings a new mechanic and a new set of associated people. In other words? I’m happy this series is trying new things, and exploring extra protagonists where it can. It has improved a whole bunch as a result.

Danganronpa:

Favorite Male Character: Byakuya Togami, Kiyotaka Ishimaru. Nagisa Shingetsu. Gundham Tanaka, Hajime Hinata, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko, Nagito Komaeda. Shuuichi Saihara, Ouma Kokichi, Rantarou Amami.

Favorite Female Character: Aoi Asahina, Celes, Touko Fukawa. Sonia Nevermind, Peko Pekoyama, Akane Owari, Ibuki Mioda. Angie Yonaga, Kirumi Toujou, Maki Harukawa, Tenko Chabashira.

Favorite Het Ship: Togami/Asahina, Ishimaru/Asahina, Hinata/Ibuki, Tanaka/Pekoyama (I’m especially fond of this one, also titled Soft Animals Edge Duo). Sonia/Kuzuryuu is also great, though that is a platonic ship, as I headcanon Sonia as aro.

Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): Naegi/Ishimaru, Naegi/Togami. KomaNaegi is quite pure, but a friend also got me into KomaSouda as a complimentary ship to TanaPeko. A crackship, but still a favourite is Izuru/Ryouta. And, of course, the ultimate fave - Saiouma. (A nice shoutout also goes to Oumota and Amamota). As for the ladies, Kirizono and Celesgiri, and all gay Asahina ships are good, SoniAkane & Pekobuki. In V3, Tenko is mega gay, so there’s a chance for every gay ship, however, my favourite one is Tenko/Maki. If we’re talking non-Tenko ships, Angie/Maki sounds fun.

Least Favorite Male Character: in DR1, surprisingly, none. Well, Hagakure can get on my nerves, but I like just alright all of them. In SDR2, Nidai, in my opinion, didn’t have that great of a development, so I guess him. Though I also have plenty of issues with Souda. In V3, Gon//ta Go//ku//ha//ra.

Least Favorite Female Character: All DR1 girls are good, and even if they aren’t, they’re at least interesting or entertaining. But if I have to pick, Junko, if we’re judging morality. In SDR2, Mi//kan Tsu//mi//ki and Hi//yo//ko Sai//onji,in terms of morality and/or being dicks. In terms of rather poor writing (despite having a good idea), Chi//a//ki Na//na//mi. In V3, H//i//m//i//k//o Y//u//m//e//n//o and K//a//e//d//e A//k//a//m//a//t//s//u. The final one is also my least favourite in the entirety of the series as a whole.

Least Favorite Het Ship: Jun//ko//ma//e//da. In general, any Junko ship is not very good for plenty of reasons. Na//e//gi//ri. In SDR2, Souda/Sonia (she’s clearly not comfortable with him), Nidai/Akane, Hi//na//na//mi.. Not sure if should be mentioned here, but romantic Kuzupeko? Mostly because I cannot picture it as a thing. I do, however, like them platonically, they do care about each other a whole bunch. In V3, Sa//i//ma//tsu (never make me look at it).

Least Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): Chi//hi//mon//do. Even if I do like Mondo okay, it’s not healthy. Ka//mu//ko//ma. Son//dam. Jun//ko//mi//kan? Mahiru/Peko for sure. Kiib//ou//ma, too.

And the one I guarantee I’ll receive anon hate over - Te//n//hi//mi.

Dirty Little Secret: this series somehow manages to combine the good with the ridiculous in such a way that I can accept.

Unpopular Opinion(s): I am the literal embodiment of unpopular opinions in this franchise. I think V3 is the best game of the series, and it had a brilliant twist (both the start one and the final one). I don’t really ship the most popular ships, the obvious exception being Saiouma (and, to an extent, SoniAkane? It’s a popular Akane ship, at least). I think Saihara is a far better protag choice than the other option that was presented, since the story and its structure was made to fit him. I’m the unpopular opinion and rarepair central in this fucking thing. (Please help me.)

Love Live!:

Favorite Male Character: yay for not having prominent males, which means I get to skip 2 more questions here.

Favorite Female Character: In Muse’s, my top 3 is Hanayo, Eli and Maki. In Aquors, my top 3 is You, Kanan and Dia (though Mari and Chika are also very lovable).

Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): Makipana! It’s very very cute. I also quite like HonoEli. HonoMaki is also quite nice. In Aquors, YouKanan or DiaKanan.

Least Favorite Female Character: Not unpopular by any means, but Ni//co Ya//za//wa. In terms of singing voice, Kotori. In Aquors, R//i//k//o S//a//k//u//r//a//u//c//h//i.

Least Favorite Slash Ship (both M/M and F/F): Ni//co//ma//ki??? I will never understand why people like it. In Aquors, Chi//ka//ri//ko and You//ri//ko.

Dirty Little Secret: I quite like A-RISE. Every song they’ve ever done is an absolute banger, as the youth says.

Unpopular Opinion(s): would you look at that. Another fandom where I’m the monarch of rarepairs.

#Ask meme answers #wow I sure as fuck got...spirited #apologies to all and everyone #I tried by best to slash out character and ship names I list in my disliked sections since I don't want people to see them through search #alsoo for my own safety #I know whose fans can get very aggressive so I am taking no risks #no more angsty messaes for me please #anyway cheers for asking #wanderingthroughwickford #Words spoken at me

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kmjxngins · 7 years ago

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the conservation of happiness | jongdae

q: hi, my dear! ('tis me again ❤) i love your writing and thank you for doing this!! would love a non-idol jongdae angst to fluff. if you could tie in some serenading that'd be adorable and awesome.

a: hi dear! thank you for supporting me and liking my writings asdfgh means so much to me!! i hope this scenario fits what you wanted c”: i’m sorry jongdae didn’t come in until midway, but i felt like a regular argument wasn’t gonna make it v relatable so i made it more like a progressive thing? hope you like!! rest assured jongdae has enough screentime thO

it hadn’t been a great week - it was pretty exhausting, if you had to be completely honest with yourself. while you knew that the week was going to take a toll on you, both your mental and physical state, it had far exceeded what you prepared yourself for.

monday had started off fine, you had a paper due - but you had been working on that for a month now and you were just refining some words to make your essay sound more convincing. it was imperative that you got a good grade for that essay, since it contributed to a large percentage to your final grade in the year. and you needed the grade to make the cut for a scholarship you were aiming to apply for and obtain. you pulled out your computer from your bedside table in the morning, deciding to do some last minute editing and run-throughs before you submitted the written paper. monday had started off fine, or so you thought.

it wasn’t working - your computer. the very thing that contained your precious 25-page essay, not functioning like it should’ve been. it was a brand new computer, too, having bought it with jongdae just a few months ago. you pressed and pressed and pressed on the ‘on’ button, holding it down for long periods of time or short presses, whatever you thought would work - you were desperate to get your computer to work. fully, and utterly desperate. glancing at the clock, you huffed and got out of bed, running your fingers through your hair in slight frustration. keep calm, y/n, keep calm. you repeated over and over in your head, you couldn’t let this small setback get to you, much less affect your mood and concentration.

to your relief, you did submit the essay to your professor on time. you had pulled on a large sweater, deciding to head to the library to complete it. perhaps, you thought, that since monday brought the unexpected, that tuesday was going to be better.

it wasn’t.

you were kind of frustrated, the first two days of the week bringing you to the brink of exhaustion already. you didn’t know how exactly you were going to survive the rest of the week, it started to look less and less promising.

you had dance classes on tuesday. and dance class was almost always fun and stress-relieving, not meaning to be stress-inducing. but perhaps it was the stress of an upcoming public performance that was due to happen in two weeks taking a toll on everyone involved in the performance. or maybe it was just a bad day for the rest of the team, too. it had started off as a small strain as you were stretching for warm-up, your ankle feeling more sore than other days, less stable than most practices. but you brushed it off as not being used to dancing this much, because the last time you had been involved in a production was a year ago.

to your, and everyone else’s, horror, your ankle gave way mid-practice, just as you were doing a pivot on your right foot. you were turning half-way, feeling a sudden strain run up the side of your leg. it was throbbing, more than a usual burn would from a muscle being overworked. an uncomfortable sensation ran through your body and despite your mind telling yourself not to fall during practice because there was just half a month left to the performance, your muscles screamed in protest, forcing you to drop on your side mid-song. long story short, your senior wrapped your ankle up in a bandage, and pushed you to the front of the room, forcing you to sit out of practice. and while you knew that he had good intentions, you couldn’t help but beat yourself up for being so careless.

the principle of conservation of momentum mentions that the final momentum would equal to the initial momentum without a net external force acting on a system. this worked the same for the principle of conservation of happiness, too, right? if monday and tuesday weren’t the best of days, the rest would be, right? you weren’t too sure anymore, you didn’t know what exactly to expect anymore.

wednesday passed by as monotonous as ever, but you were glad nothing out of the ordinary happened. maybe the week was starting turn for the better, or so you thought.

thursday brought you nothing but trouble. you were well aware that thursday was going to be hectic - you had majority of your classes on thursday, so your bag was heavier than usual. and while you had to hobble around to the various lecture halls, ankle still recovering from tuesday’s small accident, it was relatively smooth-sailing. you hadn’t fallen asleep in any of your classes either, which was surprising (not really, considering you had gone to sleep early the night before). but as you reached into the front pouch of your bag, you realised that it had been open the entire time you were going from class to class. reaching inside to feel for your keys, your heart fell when you registered that your keys had fallen out too. exhaling through your nose, you dug into your pocket to dial jongdae’s number.

you hadn’t done so the past few days because you knew that he was busy with his own thesis statement, as well as his outdoor performance with his batchmates that was on saturday. you didn’t exactly want to disturb him with whatever you were dealing with and the both of you had reached a stage where there wasn’t a pressing need to see each other every day. you and jongdae knew the importance of personal breathing space and respected each other. your relationship was comfortable, and jongdae was always, always the one you could go back to.

he picked up two rings later, after you had pressed your phone to your ear, wanting to hear his voice and feel just a bit more comforted with his presence - even if it was just over the speakers of your phone. “hello?” you heard a chirpy voice from the receiver. you could hear the smile in his voice, unmistakable lips curling up into a bright smile imprinted in your head. you smiled slightly at that thought. “jongdae?” you murmured, readjusting the strap of your heavy bag over your shoulder. he hummed, probing you to continue. “are you home? or is it a bad time?” you asked, sighing and stepping away from the door of your apartment. you knew it was no use to stand there, when it wasn’t going to open without the key.

“i’m home, are you okay?” he responded, to which you took a deep breath in reply, tentative and unsure. you knew that the week was important for him, for him to have a good rest and a clear mind, but at the same time, you had no where else to go, and jongdae had your extra key too. “can i come over? i know you’re busy and need to practice but i-” he cuts you off with a yes and you’re just so relieved, you didn’t know what you would’ve done. “why would my girl not be allowed over?” he teases quietly, making your lips curl up unconsciously. he seemed to always have that effect on you. you aren’t sure what it was, but he just made your day seem just so much better. it’s like he can tell how you’re feeling over the phone and you’re unbelievably thankful for someone like jongdae.

you shuffle over to his apartment, which is pretty far away, but still a walkable distance, so you decide to take a small breather and walk, admiring the green trees along the road as best as you can. your mood isn’t the greatest, and you don’t want it to affect jongdae’s too much, either.

when you knock on his door, he opens it with a flourish, thin lips curled into a smile that you love and adore so much. his eyes are shaped into crescents and he looks so, so happy that you find yourself falling and pressing yourself against his chest. your bag drops unceremoniously to the floor and your arms wrap around his waist impossibly tight. you feel his own arms wrapping around your shoulders, hand cradling your head to his chest, chin resting on the crown of your head.

you feel so safe in his embrace, warm and cozy, and you don’t let him go even as he picks your bag up from the entrance and pushes the door to his apartment close, locking it behind him and coddling you and nudging you towards the couch. you stay seated next you him, ears still pressed close to his torso, hearing his steady heartbeat through his shirt, his skin, calming yourself down and gathering your thoughts together. jongdae lets you be, carding his fingers through your hair softly, gently, keeping quiet and waiting for you to speak.

which you do, eventually. you tell him about your week, which hasn’t been at all fulfilling, nor happy. you tell him about your new theory about the conservation of happiness - he laughs at it, which makes you feel more at home. his laugh is so uniquely his, reverberating through his throat and coming out so genuine, that you can’t help but want to hear it for the rest of your life. he sounds the happiest when he’s laughing, and you figure that you want to be the source of that happiness for a long time. but he listens, shifting the both of you into a comfortable position and you’re leaning against him. you talk, and talk, and talk. you don’t know how long you’ve talked for - but you’re exhausted and relieved because you somehow don’t feel so bad about yourself anymore.

jongdae’s fingers run up and down your back soothingly and as you find yourself losing steam and trailing off, you hear him say, “wanna have a listen of the song i’m performing this saturday?” and you’re kind of shocked. you look up at him with a questioning gaze because he’s been keeping this song under wraps for a long time, not letting you hear it at all. you know that this is a pretty important song to him, because he usually shares his compositions with you and you’re always the first to hear the raw versions of his future performances and pieces for class.

“it’s supposed to be for you, anyway.” he confesses, laughing at your perplexed expression and pressing his lips to the tip of your nose. oh, you mouth in understanding and nod slowly, not expecting an impromptu singing session on jongdae’s part. jongdae just laughs and clears his throat, the first note of the unperformed song resounding through the otherwise empty apartment of his. it rings loud and clear, his voice crystal clear, like a refined diamond. he sings, and you glance at him, feeling yourself smile at his expression. his eyes are closed and he always has that look of conviction, concentration and passion for singing whenever he does - which you hope to see in yourself.

never gonna let you go, giving you my heart and soul, i’ll be right here with you for life

he sings to you, peeking one eye open at times to make eye contact, a smile creeping into his voice when he catches you staring. you hold the eye contact with him, raising your eyebrows slightly, in a friendly yet challenging manner. he laughs, pressing fingers to your side, making you feel ticklish, making a move to squirm away from him. he keeps his grip on you though, strong yet loving - you don’t know how he does it, but he always manages to make you feel better in one way or another. you know that while your week is far from over, with jongdae around, it’s nothing that can’t be overcome.

perhaps your principle of conservation of happiness isn’t wrong after all.

#kim jongdae #jongdae #chen #exo #chen scenario #chen imagine #chen fluff #chen angst #jongdae scenario #jongdae imagine #exo scenarios #exo scenario #exo imagines #exo fluff #kpop

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freshkookies97 · 7 years ago

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White Lilies

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

Rating: NC-17

Genre: Angst / Romance

Warnings: Hospitalization, mention of minor character death, mention of major character attempted suicide

Word Count: 2.6k

Prompt: BTS Writers’ July Writing Prompt - It’s a hot summer night. Person A and B are neighbors, and both have their windows open. Person A is reading when they hear Person B singing beautifully. What happens next is up to you.

Disclaimer: There is not a major character death.

Song choice: Stigma by BTS

Song © to BTS.

Gif © to the owner.

I hope you enjoy it. (:

The sweet scent of sakura blossoms floated into the room through the breeze fluttering the curtains. Cicadas and grasshoppers sang in the distance, in search of their mate beneath the radiant starlight. Unread books piled in the corners of the room beside your desk cluttered with various sketches and snippets of fictional writing. Your laptop sat amidst the chaos emitting soft, soothing music from its speakers and filling the silence. Your eyes skimmed across the pages of the book you were currently reading, sweat gathering atop your brow as the sweltering heat of summer permeated the room. The duvet beneath you crinkled around the weight of your upright form, clinging to the exposed skin of your thighs and calves. Your tank top and shorts did little in your pursuit of becoming at least a tiny bit comfortable.

At least the paper thin walls of the Japanese summer vacation home allowed the heat to dissipate through the material, decreasing the temperature of the house by a few degrees. Even still, summers were always the worst. Despite this, your family continued to vacation to Japan each scorching season. They always claimed that a change of scenery was required for the brain to regain clarity. Of course, they were right.

However, a problem arose when it became this hot.

Falling asleep in this incessant heat was nearly impossible.

Even reading wasn’t helping.

Reading has always been the most beneficial tool in attempting to fall asleep ever since you were little. Of course, reading in the daylight wouldn’t cause the same reaction, but either reading or being read to at night has always been the most relaxing. Tonight, however, had become the first night that your usual method had failed. With a huff, you snapped the book shut and allowed it to fall onto the bed with a thump. Your eyes scoured the room for another tactic when you suddenly heard a low, deep voice crooning a familiar melody. You crawled across the bed, closer to the window, closer to the source of that beautiful voice. Placing your hands on the windowsill, you leaned over the edge of your bed, your ears focused on his voice.

“Deeper, deeper, the wound just gets deeper Like pieces of glass that We can’t turn back Deeper, my chest hurts everyday The feeble you, who received Punishment for my crime”

That song, those lyrics.

It’s Taehyung!

He wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow.

You’re glad he’s here, but that song…

Where have you heard it?

The lyrics resounded in the caverns of your brain until finally, a memory surfaced, the identity of that song finally being revealed. You fell against the balls of your feet as the recollection consumed all thought, erased the reality of being in the bedroom of your favorite summer home.

It was late summer, early fall. The air began to chill and the leaves started to blend into various shades of red and yellow. Eventually, they would be found beneath someone’s shoe, the snap of their veins echoing in the biting, crisp breeze. Citizens were rarely spotted in the streets. Students’ school uniforms were modified to accommodate the chill. Shops lost business, save for the students that would dart into their stores, seeking shelter, warmth, and always, food. The only people roaming the streets would be those headed to work, school, the hospital, or to the cemetery to mourn the loss of their loved ones. It was there, at the hospital, where Taehyung could be found every day after school. It was one of the few places he would frequent. For him, it was always school, hospital, home, and repeat.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way.

No, not until his grandmother fell ill.

Taehyung became distant, only concerned with buying the prettiest flowers at the nearest florist for his most beloved family member. It was always white lilies. They were her favorite. They were always beside her bed while Taehyung clutched her frail hand, silently praying for her health to replenish. Even in sickness, her humor remained intact. Her jokes would spread a smile on his face, and sometimes, he would even laugh. However, it was always a façade. He was always smiling through the pain for her. Everything was for her.

The forced smiles would continue, until one day, while she was asleep, he was visited by her primary doctor. She had a month remaining to live. That was the day he broke. That was the day the world became grey for him. That was the day he would lose awareness of the things happening around him, even your presence beside him. When you would attempt to speak to him, emotion would be vacant from his eyes. His focus and attention were never on you.

It was always that one spot in the floor that disrupted the pattern in the tile. It was the corner of the room, where his grandmother’s dying lilies sat. It was the red bows adorning your shoes, the diamonds that would decorate them the next day. There were days, however, that he would acknowledge your existence. It wasn’t words of gratitude, though.

No, he lashed out at you. He would scream and holler, demanding to know why you were still with him, why you were visiting his grandmother at all. He wouldn’t wait for your answer. He’d continue, shouting things like “She isn’t even your family,” “You don’t belong here,” and “Just leave me the hell alone!” These outbursts would always end in tears. He’d slowly curl himself into a ball while you consoled him, enveloped him in your embrace until his tears dried. Your own tears would dot his denim jacket, saddened at the sight of your best friend, your first love, in complete and utter agony.

The torment wouldn’t end, though.

Because it wasn’t long until she suddenly passed in her sleep, two weeks later.

That day, he attempted suicide.

On the roof of the hospital, his toes surpassing the edge of the platform as tears freely streamed across his face. You pleaded and pleaded, tears brimming in your eyes, but you bit your cheek. You didn’t want your emotions to affect his decision. It had taken a while before you had finally convinced him to live, for the remainder of his family. His younger sister and brother. It had felt as though a weight had been lifted from your shoulders when he accepted your embrace. That night seemed endless as the two of you talked for hours and hours, about anything and everything. It was a relief to speak with your true best friend for the first time in months. Of course, there was a voice inside your head that told you that it wouldn’t last for long, and it was right, but you were prepared.

A year passed by agonizingly slow, but both of you survived it.

He became himself again. He smiled and laughed, and he made jokes. He even did your hair and makeup for a bet that one of his friends had made. He graduated high school and applied for college. He was actually looking forward to the future he had ahead of him. It was a beautiful experience, watching him fight through the pain and transform into the man he is today. He’s learned how to handle life’s mishaps and that is a lesson that everyone should learn. You’re proud of him, and you’re sure his grandmother is, too.

It was a couple of months after her death that “Stigma” was written.

It was 2 o’clock in the morning. You were hunched over your desk, furiously typing your psychology essay that was due in 6 hours. Your room was actually tidy for once, it always was when you were studying or doing homework. It was the only way you could actually get things done. Your eyes burned from the glare of your laptop in the dimly lit room, your back had started to ache from the arch of your spine. Your fingers and hands began to throb from the speed and duration of your typing. Classical music was quietly reverberating off the walls of your room from your laptop’s speakers, but your ears tuned it out. In fact, you were so engrossed in your essay that at first, you couldn’t even hear the phone ringing.

It took 2 more additional calls until you snapped your attention away to whisk your phone up to your ear, not bothering to check the ID. “Hello?” you impatiently greeted, splitting some of your focus to listen to the caller’s voice. Speaking of their voice, this one was oddly familiar. It was deep, manly, and sent a wave of electricity along your spine. Your scrunched features relaxed when you identified the husky, masculine voice. “Taehyung…” you accidentally whispered under your breath, in an almost seductive tone.

He cleared his throat. “I-um wrote a new song!”

“Really?”

Before you could realize what was happening, his voice changed octaves and he began his song, Stigma. As you attentively listened, tears brimmed in your eyes at the realization of who the song was dedicated to. You bit your cheek to prevent the tears from spilling as your ears focused on his soothing voice. When the last verse was sung, he questioned if you liked it and you exclaimed that you did. It’s not like you were lying. No, you did like it. In fact, you loved it. It was the subject of the song that had you sniffling.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he inquired, concern lacing his voice.

You gave him a weak excuse that night, but he didn’t pressure you for an answer. You bade him farewell, ended the call, and with a sigh, resumed the construction of your essay. Unfortunately, you didn’t finish until 4 o’clock in the morning that day, so you only got 2 hours of sleep, but at least you got it done. The next few months would pass by uneventfully. Other than the flirting you had received from Taehyung every week or so, life was otherwise silent. When college began, your availability diminished and less time was spent with the only man, and love, in your life. You missed him terribly. When you had finished your last class in the spring, you were more than excited for summer break. Finally, you’d be able to see Taehyung again. Finally, you’d have the chance to confess your feelings for him.

You hadn’t even realized you were crying until you felt the tears dot your hands folded in your lap. You chuckled at the unexpected onslaught of tears, swiping them away when you started at the sudden ringing of your phone. Rising from your bed, you strode over to your desk to read the caller ID before answering. As your eyes scanned the name across the screen, you took a deep breath, readying yourself for the incoming conversation.

“Hey, why are you crying?” he immediately asked.

You sniffled again. “Ah, it’s nothing. I’m fine… Uh, Taehyung?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Of course. Anything for my woman.”

Ah, you hoped to be soon. “Can you sing me to sleep?” you murmured, your cheeks inflaming at his term of endearment. You’ve loved him for years now. You had planned to tell him last year, on the first day of summer break, on the day you’d arrive at the summer home. However, the timing wasn’t right. His grandmother fell ill that day, and you didn’t want to be insensitive. So, you waited and waited and waited until you believed it was finally time, which you deemed to be this week. Yes, this was the week you would profess your love.

“Of course, but how would you feel if I came over and we… held each other?”

Your face immediately flushed as you stuttered an answer. “O-okay…”

He released a breath of relief. “Perfect. I’ll sneak through the back door alright? You don’t have to meet me there. I’ll come to you,” he explained, finishing the call before you could mutter your confirmation.

Your heart began to beat faster, your limbs trembling with excitement at the idea of Taehyung enveloping you in his embrace. However, when your eyes raked in the havoc that was your room, you were flown into a frenzy. You hurriedly tidied the room, gathering the papers on the desk into a pile and tossing clothes into a hamper. You realigned the books along the walls and adjusted the volume on your laptop. You readjusted the duvet on the bed and fluffed your pillows. Just as you finished and spun around on your heel to wait for him, he was already standing in the doorway. His chest heaved with each breath, as though he ran as fast as he could, even though he was just next door. His famous boxy smile stretched across his cheeks as he admired your appearance. You blushed under his gaze, reciprocating his smile as his breath continued to steady.

With a heavy sigh, he strode to where you stood and encircled his arms around your waist, your entire body crashing into his from the sheer force. You eagerly slid your arms around his neck, burying your nose into his neck and inhaling his scent. At the familiar fragrance invading your senses, your body relaxed into his as memories flashed through your mind like a movie.

Memories of the bonfires in the middle of the night, marshmallows roasting on the fire as you excitedly talked about a new book. The guitar that would accompany his deep, soulful voice later that night. The shouts of a nearby baseball game while you two stood in a classroom, surrounded by the stale scent of chalk. The open window beside you that allowed the wind to carry the faint smell of cherry blossoms into the room. It was there that you and Taehyung would share your first kiss.

He wouldn’t remember it later.

Revelling in his aroma, you took a deep breath before removing your head from his neck to gaze into his eyes. His pupils held an unrecognizable emotion, an emotion that was most likely reflected in your own, that caused exhilaration to alight through your veins. The hairs on the back of your neck stood straight as the familiar knot of desire twisted in your stomach. The darkening of his facial features had your mouth falling open and your breath hitching. An overwhelming urge to attack his lips with your own arose, but you attempted to reign it in.

Before you could process the need surfacing from his expression alone, he crashed his lips onto yours. You gasped in surprise, his strawberry taste mingling with the banana lingering on your lips. Your eyes fluttered close as you reciprocated the kiss, your fingers lacing through his hair. His grip tightened around your waist before he abruptly pulled away, his lips glistening as he breathed heavily. “Ah, sorry about that. That was unexpected, wasn’t it?” he breathlessly murmured.

“No, no, it’s fine…” you whispered, embarrassed at your answer.

Abruptly, he separated himself from your embrace and led you towards the bed. “It’s late, so let’s get you to sleep,” he explained as he laid you both on the bed before tugging you closer and tucking you under his chin. One of his hands brushed his fingers through your hair as his free arm was slung across your waist. His fingers in your hair caused you to relax into his touch as he began to sing a low, soothing melody.

The lyrics were familiar, but you were too tired to even attempt to identify their source. As he continued, what transpired merely moments before became a distant memory. The heat became tolerable from the distraction that was Taehyung’s heavenly voice and caresses. Your eyelids grew heavy, your heart steadying as his voice lulled you to sleep. You inched closer, closing the gap further as the world around you began to fade. You were willingly falling into the clutches of sleep, but before you did, you faintly heard a whisper above you.

“I love you.”

#btswritersmp #btswriters #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts v #bts taehyung

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thescholarlystrumpet · 7 years ago

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Blue-eyed Murder in a Size 5 Dress Unrated

Words:3330

Mr. Gold is a reluctant English teacher in a boring small town. 18 year old Lacey French, part loudmouth rebel and part clandestine intellectual, is his favorite student - for more than academic reasons. He tries to push away the shameful desire but, through a little playful ribbing from Lacey's best friend, Gold is about to discover the feeling is entirely too mutual.

Gratuitous student/teacher Golden Lace. Rating will undoubtedly go up if I continue it.

*** Note: Ok so this literally only exists because I told @rowofstars about a random idea I had where Ruby was teasing Lacey/Belle by singing "Hot for Teacher" in Mr. Gold's class and she said I had to write the thing. Who am I to refuse? XD

On AO3 HERE

Mr. Gold was looking over his lesson plan with a frown as the class came shuffling in. Some changes needed to be made if he was going to get this class up to the standard. This wasn't even an AP class but he taught it with a certain set of expectations. He loathed the idea of lowering them for anyone. Yet, here they were, halfway through the school year and only a handful of students seemed capable of the level of work he expected. Senior English should mean that they'd had the previous three years to learn how to write a tolerably decent essay. This year's senior class seemed to be struggling with even the most basic sentence structure. He shouldn't be so surprised by it, he reasoned. He'd only started at Storybrooke High School in the past year but he'd had the opportunity to meet the previous English teacher, Astrid. Astrid was gentle, soft spoken, and almost unbearably pleasant. No wonder the students in her care had learned almost nothing. She'd probably coddled them to death. The woman had left her teaching position to have a baby with her new husband just as Gold moved to town to be closer to his son. In the hazy heat of a Maine summer, it had seemed a fortuitous circumstance.

For some bizarre reason, Neal had settled in this tiny Godforsaken town with his fiancee, Emma, an officer on the local police force who was well on her way to being sheriff someday. Gold liked his brazen blonde soon-to-be daughter-in-law well enough. It was a relief to interact with someone who spoke her mind freely, even when they disagreed. Besides that, Emma been instrumental in encouraging a reunion between Neal and himself. Gold had a long memory for slights but a longer one still for those few who'd proven themselves to be allies.

To facilitate the growing sense of closeness with his only living kin, Gold had uprooted himself from Boston and his small real estate business there. Storybrooke was in no need of another real estate broker but Gold had led more lives than most cats and could fall back easily on any number of skill sets to survive. He’d thought of setting himself up as a lawyer but the only agency in town wasn't hiring and he didn't have the liquid capital to establish his own. To supplement income while he freed up assets (and really, if he was being honest - to keep himself busy) he applied for the teaching position.

He hadn’t taught since before Neal was born but stringing together an academically challenging lesson plan was like riding a bicycle. Easier, even, given that lesson plans didn’t wreak havoc on his bad leg.

The thing for which he had not prepared himself was the day to day fact of being surrounded by quibbling, hormonal teenagers who cared far more for the latest fashion trend than any esoteric knowledge he might try to impart. He’d made an effort, in the beginning, appealing to any sense of adventure small town kids might harbor with assignments such as Robinson Crusoe, The Time Machine, and even Around the World in 80 Days. Complacency and boredom met him at every turn.

Then again, there were one or two bright spots in the sea of adolescent mediocrity. Namely, within the shining eyes of one Lacey French, a brunette whose essays were both thoughtful and amusingly tongue in cheek. She didn’t always appear entirely attentive in class but the work she turned in was easily at a University level. Given her often slovenly appearance, he had initially been taken aback by the quality of her writing. Lacey showed up to school with her hair in a messy bun or high ponytail, wearing half the makeup section of the local drug store. Her skirts were always shy of regulation length, her tights shredded to the point where he rather wondered what purpose they even served - it couldn’t be warmth.

Gold had even googled her first few short papers to make sure they hadn’t been purchased online. Satisfied that the words were likely her own, Gold began to anticipate Lacey’s assignments with a degree of eagerness. There was a sly wickedness to her sense of humor he found secretly delightful. In the months she’d been his pupil, he found himself wishing she would actually speak more in class. The other students might learn a thing or two from her example.

Unfortunately, she stayed mostly mum during class time, save the occasional whisper session with the Lucas girl. After the bell, Lacey would sometimes linger by his desk to ask an insightful question and they would engage in the only truly stimulating discussion he usually got in this sleepy town.

Gold was starting to realize it was frankly shameful how much he enjoyed those moments. When he’d been a teen, himself, Lacey would have been exactly the type to break his heart into a million pieces - clever, brash, and oddly self-possessed for all her youth. It didn’t help that beneath that palate of cheap powder, Lacey was, in fact, stunningly beautiful. Lithe and petite, she was one of the only students who was not taller than him. Her pale, heart-shaped face was complemented by tumbling auburn curls and a pair of brilliantly blue eyes.

He reminded himself constantly to keep his distance from the girl, never allow his interest to stray beyond her intellectual offerings. It was always hardest to remember on the days she wore her flirtiest hemlines.

Lacey and her friend Ruby Lucas trailed in just as the sound of the last bell was fading. Their heads were bent together as they seemed to be exchanging heated whispers. Lacey was pink cheeked and shaking her head vehemently at something Ruby was saying as they took their seats.

Ruby laughed aloud and Gold cut his eyes toward her. The warning glance only seemed to ignite her amusement further and the tall girl covered her mouth with both hands, slumping toward her desk. Lacey muttered something terse, flinging the back of her hand toward Ruby’s arm.

“Alright, settle down. Now.” Gold commanded. The chatter in the room fell to a dull buzz that quickly bled out. “Due to the frankly abysmal work that you all turned in last week, we‘re going to spend this week doing some refresher courses on grammar.”

He picked up the pile of homework from his desk with one hand, gripping his cane with the other, and limped toward them. He always sorted the papers by their assigned seats to make it easier handing them out one-handed. As he dropped each paper on its respective owner’s desk, he launched into his prepared lecture. Halfway down the second row, someone began to hum. He glanced over his shoulder to see Lacey waving frantically in Ruby’s direction as Ruby leaned away in her chair, humming off-key.

“Ladies. Is there a problem?” he narrowed his eyes at them.

Lacey’s gaze went wide, her cheeks flushing even pinker than before. “No, Mr. Gold.”

Ruby snorted and Lacey glared her.

“No problem, here,” echoed Ruby, still looking at her friend with a wide grin.

“Let’s keep it that way, hm?” Gold exhaled loudly and returned to his lecture.

A moment later, the humming resumed, this time loud enough that Gold could take an educated guess as to the tune. Behind him, he heard a shushing noise. He ignored both, raising his voice over the two girls. The humming was soon accompanied by a drumming of fingers on desktop.

Just as Gold whirled back to admonish the perpetrator, Lacey was leaning over to grab Ruby’s arm and saying in a stage whisper, “Goddammit Rubes, fucking stop it!” Several students around the two girls began to giggle and Lacey’s hand slapped over her mouth as though she could stuff the words back in. “Shit,” she mumbled behind her fingers.

Ruby had stopped drumming and was glancing back and forth between Gold and Lacey with an expression somewhere between horror and amusement.

Gold scowled deeply at both of them. “Miss Lucas, Miss French - you'll both see me after class. If I hear another peep from either of you that is not somehow related to The Scarlet Letter, I will be sending you to visit with Principal Mills.”

Even Ruby Lucas was cowed by that ominous warning. She looked down at her desk, lips pressed tight together. Lacey looked briefly as though she might burst into tears but she rallied quickly, squaring her shoulders and meeting Gold’s eye. She gave a sharp nod.

Gold pressed his lips together to keep from smiling at her.

As the class went on, Gold found himself increasingly distracted by memory of the tune Ruby had been humming. It was a rock song about the singer having a crush on a teacher. Clearly something the girls must have been discussing prior to his class. Gold wasn't stupid or vain enough to assume himself the subject. Even if the very idea did make his blood rush in his ears.

Lacey with a crush on him. Utterly preposterous. He was more than twice her age, permanently disabled, and cantankerous as hell. No 18 year old girl in her right mind would think twice about a man like him. And rightly so.

He ran through a roster of male faculty members who might appeal to young women. The gym teacher was attractive but not nearly up to Lacey's intellectual level. Then again, not all women required such stimulation - as Gold has been dismayed to discover at Lacey's age.

David Nolan, perhaps. The vice principal was handsome, educated, and known for his imminent likability. Even Gold was rather fond of the younger man, despite his lack of desire to form attachments in this nothing of a town. There had been a pep rally lead by Nolan just before Gold’s class. He'd narrowly avoided attending by explaining the need to revise his lesson plan before standardized testing began. But the whole class would have been there and it seemed the most likely place for Lacey to have confessed to Ruby any secret desire she might harbor.

Class ended abruptly and Gold found the object of his musings waiting beside his desk with an expression of penitence that he didn't buy for a second. Ruby stood by the door, impatiently tapping the toes of one foot.

“Mr. Gold?”

He blinked at Lacey stupidly only just remembering he'd asked both girls to stay after. “Ah yes, the distraction-causing Miss Lucas and her foul mouthed friend. That will be a detention each, today after school and I'll want a half page essay from each of you - single spaced. Miss Lucas, your subject is the impact of noise pollution on the collective attention span of the teenage mind.”

Lacey snorted and covered her mouth with one hand as Ruby stared at Gold in confusion.

“Um, okay?”

Gold looked at Lacey, whose shoulders were quivering with silent laughter. She always was the only one to truly appreciate his sense of humor. He wished he didn’t enjoy making her laugh quite so much. “Miss French, your topic is the effect of semantic choices on the manner in which we are perceived.”

Lacey’s mouth twisted but her eyes still glinted with amusement. “Sounds like fun.”

Gold looked away to keep himself from smiling at her. Always ready for a challenge, that girl.

Ruby huffed and rolled her eyes. “So, can we go to lunch now or what?”

Gold leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “Perhaps I should add another afternoon for being rude to a teacher?”

Lacey stepped closer. “She didn't mean it, Mr. Gold. She's just turns into a bit- um, she-dog when she gets hungry.” Lacey looked back at her friend, who made a face at her. “What? You totally do.” Lacey inclined her head but, with her face turned away, Gold could not see her expression.

The two girls seemed to silently communicate for a moment before Ruby shrugged. “Whatever. It’s chili day. See ya’!”

Gold turned back to his lesson plan, dismissing both girls out of hand, when he realized that Lacey hadn’t followed her friend. In fact, she hadn’t moved at all, just running her fingers along the wood grain of his desk and looking at him, thoughtfully.

“You can go to lunch, now, Miss French. I hear it’s,” he gave an exaggerated grimace, “ chili day.”

Lacey laughed lightly and shifted toward him, the hand on his desk laying flat against the top. “I’m sorry about… it’s all my fault. Ruby and I were talking during the pep rally and I told her... “ Her cheeks tinged pink and she shrugged. “Well, I don’t even know if you knew the song she was singing but she was just messing with me about it.”

“Of course I knew,” Gold snapped, oddly perturbed by the returning notion that his favorite pupil might fancy the bland but undeniably charming David Nolan.

Lacey’s brows flew upwards “So, you know…?” she closed then opened her mouth, eyes shifting to the side then back to him. “You, um, know... Van Halen?”

“Well not personally but I didn't exactly hibernate through the 80s. As much is that might've been a better choice.” As an afterthought he added, “I'm more surprised that you know them.”

“Oh, I've always listened to classic rock.” Lacey shifted in her high heeled shoes, the hand not on his desk now twisting in her skirt.

Gold winced inwardly. The reminder was starkly painful but necessary. At times it became a little too easy to forget the insurmountable age gap that lay between them. Not just a gap, a chasm. A shark infested moat. He had to keep picturing it like that. Anything that would remind him that Lacey French was forbidden territory.

She was studying him now with the oddest expression, as though trying to solve a puzzle. She licked her lips. “Does that… I mean, is it a problem?”

He furrowed his brow, trying to decipher exactly what code she was speaking. “I believe it calls your tastes in music into question but otherwise…” he waved a hand in the air, dismissing the issue.

“So….” Lacey leaned one hip a little too casually against the desk. “Roth or Hagar?”

Gold delicately wrinkled his nose. “Why on Earth would I have an opinion on that?”

“Because everyone has an opinion on that,” she replied, in a tone that implied she was stating the obvious.

Gold bit back a smile. “Do you?”

“Of course. But we’re not talking about me, right now,” Lacey shook her head.

“Perhaps we ought to be talking more about your detention?” the warning was toothless as he really had no desire for her to leave, but for the sake of propriety….

Lacey blew air out through pursed lips, tilting her head to look contemplatively at him. “You're a Hagar man, aren't you?”

Gold raised an eyebrow, refusing to dignify the suggestion with an answer.

Bold as brass, Lacey reached out and patted his hand. “It’s okay. I mean, he's a bit more conservative so, that makes sense,” she mused, her eyes sparkling with mirth. “No assless chaps.”

“Language, Miss French,” he chided without conviction, holding very still as he realized her hand hadn’t moved away from where it covered his. She was standing so close he could see little flecks of silver and green in her eyes, the scent of something fruity and sweet wafting toward him. Perfume, perhaps. Or her shampoo. Some ridiculous and disgusting part of him desperately - foolishly! - wanted to turn his hand upward and entwine their fingers. Pull her closer still and see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled.

Seemingly oblivious to the torment her proximity was causing him, Lacey continued on in a false tone of shock. “What?” She batted her lashes. “ I'm not even allowed to say ass ? Even Shakespeare said ass.” She leaned even farther forward as she said the latter, so they were practically nose to nose.

Gold’s mouth went dry. He swallowed around a sudden thickness in his throat. “Well, when you've written plays for the British queen and you can say whatever you want. Until then, there are rules, Lacey.”

The corners of Lacey’s mouth curled upward, her gaze intent as she leaned in just a fraction of an inch. “Yeah but…” her expression shifted to something searching, almost wistful, “don’t you ever just wanna say fuck the rules?”

Lacey’s gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth then back, her own lips parting slightly as her smirk fell away. The fingers of the hand covering his curled inward. Gold held his breath. She was so achingly close, her gaze gone dark and heavy lidded. He could smell her lipgloss. It too, was fruity. Strawberries. She smelled like a summer banquet. Ripe fruit plump and shining in the sun, begging to be plucked and devoured. Even her breath was hot and sweet as it gusted over him.

And before his mind could register it happening, her lips were on his and she was kissing him. Worse - much, much worse, he was kissing her back. Her free hand slid into his hair, nails scratching at his scalp in a way that made him swallow a groan. The other hand stayed on his, clinging tight as his palm sweat against the desk. He could barely move, barely think, barely breathe. Stuck somewhere between exquisite fantasy come to life and the harrowing reality that this should not - could not - be happening, for a moment he was almost completely undone.

Someone outside the door laughed loudly and Gold slammed back against his chair, the front feet rocking off the ground in his haste to put space between them (without rising from his desk and embarrassing himself further). Lacey reeled away, as well, withdrawing her hand and blinking rapidly.

“Miss French…” he panted, “this is…. We can’t just… It isn’t….” he wallowed helplessly for the proper words. For a man who loved language, it certainly seemed to have deserted him now, when he needed it most.

“But… I thought.” Lacey shook her head, . “The song… I thought you knew it was about you.”

All his breath seemed to leave his body and Gold could only stare in mute wonder. About him. Not Nolan or some similarly pretty face. Lacey was, demonstrably, Hot for Teacher and he was that teacher. God help him if that didn’t make some deep and feral pride buried within him roar to life. He clutched the handles of his chair even tighter, crossing his legs in a miserably unsubtle attempt at preserving some dignity.

“I think perhaps you... “ he tried to stutter out a response but Lacey’s eyes had already flicked away as she pulled a buzzing cell phone from - oh for fuck’s sake - the top of her shirt.

“Oh! Shit, I forgot I have this stupid History project to work on.” She frowned a little, chewing on her lower lip. “Sorry to... “ one shoulder shrugged. “Aw, hell. I’m not sorry, Mr. Gold. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

The remaining rational part of his brain was screaming that he ought to reprimand her, ought to lecture her on the inappropriateness of them ever even being in the same room alone together - let along doing that - again. But that part was silenced quickly as Lacey leaned in to press her lips to his, once more.

A breath away, she murmured, “See you at detention.”

A shudder of pure desire ran the length of his spine and it was all Gold could do to keep himself from leaning forward to capture her mouth again. He found himself making a vague sound of agreement that came out more like a whimper.

With a hum of satisfaction, Lacey swept away and out the door.

Unmoving, Gold listened to the clicking of her heels fade, her gloss still sticky and sweet on his lips.

#rumbelle #golden lace #golden lace fic #rumbelle fic #student/teacher kink #rumplestiltskin x belle #belle x rumplestiltskin #belle x rumple #this is totally self indulgent #I wanted to write student x teacher for ages now and never had a good plot bunny

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suzanneshannon · 6 years ago

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HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World

Hey CSS-Tricksters! A lot of folks tweeted, emailed, commented and even courier pigeoned (OK, maybe not that) stories about their personal journeys learning web development after we published "The Great Divide" essay. One of those stories was from Tim Smith and, it was so interesting, that we invited him to share it with the broader community. So, please help us welcome him as he elaborates on his unique personal experience and how it feels to be in his shoes as a front-ender.

Hi folks, my name is Tim Smith

I have ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexia… and not to mention that I am on the Autism spectrum. This combination (apart from causing me to feel a lot of personal shame) makes coding very hard — especially learning how to code, which I am trying to do. Things get mixed up in my head and appear backwards to the point that I find it nearly impossible to focus any longer than 15-20 minutes at a time. Perhaps I will expand on this in another post. Even now as I write this, I feel pulled to rate each song on YouTube Music and attempt to correct every mistake I make. And since I keep switching “write" with “right," this becomes infuriating and discouraging, to say the least.

I do not read well, so learning from books is the least effective way for me to learn (sorry O’Reilly). Online tutorials are OK, but I tend to sell myself short by being lazy with copy and paste for the code examples. If I force myself to hand-type the examples, I get the benefit of muscle memory but drown in the words of the tutorial and eventually lose interest altogether.

Video tutorials are my ideal learning method. There’s no reading involved and no way for me to copy and paste my way out of things. Having to stop and start the videos in order to type the code is maddening, but well worth it. YouTube is a great place for video tutorials if you have the patience to wade through them… which I don’t.

I found Chris Coyier in the early 2000s. The treasure trove of articles, guides, and videos contained here on CSS-Tricks has been a major benefit for me and actually progressed my ability to learn code. Later, I found Wes Bos. He, too, has been a leading contributor to my web learning. Wes unlocked many of the things I struggled with, namely React and the new features of ES6.

Together, I’d say Chris and Wes are responsible for at least 80% of my collective front-end knowledge. (Personal aside: Chris and Wes, you two are my heroes and secret mentors.) Both Chris and Wes have a way of giving me the information that's relevant to what I'm learning in a way that is fun and entertaining as well as straightforward and precise. They don’t just present the code; they explain the why and history behind each topic. Wes is a little better at this, but the sheer number of videos Chris has created has kept me busy for years and will continue to into the future.

Simply writing code is another effective way for me to learn. I like to geek-out and setup development servers for various web languages and libraries and play around. I have learned a lot about MacOS and Linux (mostly Ubuntu) while also learning the basics of many web languages and libraries: PHP (for WordPress themes), Python, React, Vue and many others. I learned to embrace the command line and avoid GUIs when possible. Nothing against GUIs; I simply find the command line more precise (and just between you and me, way cooler to brag about to non-coders).

I still do use the command line — or at least I would if I still had a laptop or desktop to work on. I am actually writing this on an iPad Mini 2. However, I have found another great way to write and share code without the need to set up servers and complicated environments: CodePen. I joined an early beta way back when and it was love at first sight. I can now write code, share it and get feedback all in one place (here’s my profile). Every time I get a fun idea or find a fun kata, I fire up Codepen and just start coding. No tricky dev setup. There are other apps that do this but CodePen is unique because of the social aspect and the ability to easily embed code samples on forums.

So, that’s a little about me. What I want to get into is how I learn HTML and CSS because it’s probably somewhat similar to yours, but different than how you might have gone about it.

Breaking into HTML

I learned HTML in a few different ways. At first, I would look at the source code of popular web sites. In the early nineties, when I started to learn HTML many, if not most, web browsers had the ability to show the source code of a website. I saw all of the tags, how they were used and the basic structure of the sites. I was able to reverse-engineer them. I had not learned CSS at the time, so my first websites were single column and very boring.

Quick aside: Without CSS, all websites are perfectly responsive and look great on any device or screen size. We break them with CSS, then need to fix them... ponder that a bit.

Thanks to source code, I began reading articles on the web and studied constantly. I found the DreamInCode forum which serves as a forum for all code disciplines and languages — similar to StackOverflow because, like StackOverflow, the people were arrogant and rude to newbies, at least in my experience. Still, I was able to see how people approached various HTML concepts and problems and this was the springboard upon which I launched my learning adventure. I received blunt, often harsh feedback on my code examples. As hard as it is to hear hard criticism, it benefitted me as it taught me the right and — even more importantly, the wrong — way to approach and write HTML.

Like most things, writing and mastering HTML is all about trial and error. I had to create hundreds of horrible websites (if you could call them that) before it “clicked" for me. But that’s better than nothing, as we’ve all heard it said before:

Just build websites! — Chris Coyier

It was not long after that I was introduced to CSS, and then the real journey began...

Along came CSS

The easiest way for me to describe CSS is this: It’s the code that makes your HTML look nice." I had to adopt a KISS attitude as I learned CSS because I found that I was overthinking it. CSS is simple if you let it be. Let’s have a look:

See the Pen Thing by Tim Smith (@WebRuin) on CodePen.

This is about as simple as CSS is. Name your block in HTML (e.g. <div class="Tim">...</div>), then target that name in a CSS file with properties to describe the block, like colors, borders, font treatments among much, much more.

At first, I would spend all my time trying to memorize as many CSS properties as I could. I would “Alta Vista" (remember that?!) around for what sort of things others were doing with CSS and how they were doing it. This was fun and informative but only served to confuse me to no end. Trying to reverse-engineer CSS as I did with HTML only got me so far. My memory for stuff like this is poor, at best. I had to step back, take a deep breath (literally and figuratively) and find a new approach.

My thought process typically goes something like this:

Do I want the words to be black? If so, do nothing

What about the background color? The default white is boring so... give it a background color.

How big do I want the element to be? Don’t overthink this as far as measurement units go, because pixels are fine and, well, height and width seem pretty logical to me.

And so on. Simple questions with simple property names. My point is you can do some amazing things with simple CSS. It was that simplicity that made me want to learn and apply everything I found. But, at the same time, I was so overwhelmed that I almost quit web development for good. It’s an awkward conflict: the simplicity and elegance are welcoming and fun but the myriad possibilities are dizzying and impossible to retain.

What worked for me was taking an incremental approach to learn CSS. By starting small and slowly adding more as I truly learned and understood the properties. I found I could have fun and be creative at a comfortable pace without putting too much pressure on myself.

I won’t lie. I am not a designer. Given a blank canvas, I will freeze or come up with a mediocre design that’s derivative of a mish-mash of other designs I like. That said, I am great at coding a design that someone with actual design skills can put together (like this).

I fell in love with CSS for one reason: it is the perfect balance of logic and design. A lot of coding is like this. Code can be beautiful, but CSS is the bee’s knees for me!

JavaScript is hard! But I’m trying.

HTML and CSS came relatively easily to me. I stumbled a bit on CSS Grid and some of the more advanced stuff, but it just clicked for me. As I alluded to earlier, I am a visual learner. Both HTML and CSS are inherently visual languages, and they give me the instant gratification my ADD needs. Both are straightforward and commonsensical to me.

In contrast, Javascript is something I find to be very, very difficult. It is a logic-based language which would ordinarily be my cup of tea; nevertheless, I have found it challenging to “click" with. Despite a few epiphanies while learning it, JavaScript seems to elude me beyond the basics. I have completed Wes Bos’ JavaScript30 course along with many other tutorials. They make sense in the moment it’s being explained to me, but even still, when presented with a “blank canvas" so to speak, I forget most of the concepts and either write the same ol’ stuff over and over or simply give up.

Surprisingly, React came much more naturally to me. I think it has to do with its modularity and my love for blocks, LEGOs, and puzzles. I have learned it well enough that I have been able to be creative with it and have started writing an app with it: a crowd-sourced urban bathroom locator. I have written and rewritten the start of the app with various Flux libraries and backend data libraries. I invariably give up only to start again, like the famous definition of insanity. I just keep thinking I will figure it out and/or find someone to do the hard parts for me.

My roadblock with React is JavaScript, of course. That may not make sense, but remember my stance on blocks. I know React is JavaScript. To me, though, it is quite different than vanilla JavaScript. Closures, pure functions, arrow functions, let vs. const vs. var, the enormous set of built-in methods, not to mention imported libraries, classes, and of course, my nemesis, Big O (how I loath Big-O)... my head is spinning even as I write this.

I want so badly to be, at the very least, decent at Javascript so I keep trying. Hundreds of tutorials, code schools like freeCodeCamp.org, Treehouse, Khan Academy, and yes, even muscling through many books (I love JavaScript: The Good Parts).

I have no trouble learning the syntax. The hangup, I think, lays in a lack of computer science knowledge and this inability to think mathematically. Algorithms make sense in concept, but their practical application simply blows my mind.

For mental health reasons, it was necessary for me to step away from my web development career in 2005. I was able to get back into it around 2010 when I worked for a few startups, but I never truly got back in. Javascript is my Achilles heel. I was lucky to find a few jobs that were truly light on JavaScript so I could focus on HTML and CSS — the things I thought added up to front-end development — but inevitably, I was expected to write JavaScript beyond basic interface enhancements and the jobs fell apart. So I either quit or was fired.

The ongoing search for work

Looking for work in recent times has been a nightmare! We now live in a world dominated by JavaScript and it seems no one wants a front-end developer whose strengths lie in HTML, CSS with an intermediate knowledge of Javascript — especially those without a degree in Computer Science. I can’t even find a job posting for this on any major job site.

I have had the honor of interviewing with recruiters at Facebook, Google, and Apple but I could not get past the first round of phone screening. I was asked questions that I felt have little-to-nothing to do with what I understand front-end development to be. There were no questions about CSS best practices and even nothing about semantic HTML or the proper use of ARIA attributes. All they seemed to care about was Big O and efficient loops. Even interviews with smaller companies were like this. Have services like Wix and the like taken all the core front-end jobs away?

Despite all the challenges I have faced, I feel I have mastered HTML and CSS and have a baseline grasp on JavaScript. I am very proud of that. While I dream of getting a job at a large company like Facebook, Google, or Apple, I really just hope to find a role where my HTML and CSS skills will shine and I can gain real-world experience with JavaScript as a junior developer with the benefit of mentoring somewhere, like the San Francisco Bay Area where I currently live.

We all have different learning styles and paces, so don't give up before you have tried every possible way to learn what you are trying to do. And, if you come up with a new way, please share so we can all broaden our individual and collective knowledge.

I hope this article has reached at least one other developer like me! Thank you to all my predecessors. Happy coding!

The post HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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siliconwebx · 6 years ago

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HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World

Hi folks, my name is Tim Smith

So, that’s a little about me. What I want to get into is how I learn HTML and CSS because it’s probably somewhat similar to yours, but different than how you might have gone about it.

Breaking into HTML

Quick aside: Without CSS, all websites are perfectly responsive and look great on any device or screen size. We break them with CSS, then need to fix them... ponder that a bit.

Just build websites! — Chris Coyier

It was not long after that I was introduced to CSS, and then the real journey began...

Along came CSS

See the Pen Thing by Tim Smith (@WebRuin) on CodePen.

My thought process typically goes something like this:

Do I want the words to be black? If so, do nothing

What about the background color? The default white is boring so... give it a background color.

How big do I want the element to be? Don’t overthink this as far as measurement units go, because pixels are fine and, well, height and width seem pretty logical to me.

I fell in love with CSS for one reason: it is the perfect balance of logic and design. A lot of coding is like this. Code can be beautiful, but CSS is the bee’s knees for me!

JavaScript is hard! But I’m trying.

The ongoing search for work

I hope this article has reached at least one other developer like me! Thank you to all my predecessors. Happy coding!

The post HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐CSS-Tricks

#Silicon Web Design #Ahmedabad #India #Web Development #WPBeginner #Silicon URL #Web Site #Cloud Host

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telltheworld-phff · 8 years ago

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Chapter 6: You could’ve had it all

Next Monday she received an envelope addressed to her. It was delivered at her home by a man she had seen at the hotel a couple times. She opened it as soon as he left to discover it was a letter of recommendation. A very well written letter of recommendation that didn't mention her real employer's name, only the company that had hired her, but that praised all her abilities and how greatly she had done her job. Inside the envelope she also found a hand-written note that said:

"Hope it helps you. Thank you so much for all you did, the tour success' is also part of your job. Best of luck for you, Carol. -H"

She couldn't help but tear up a bit. He had sent her a letter of recommendation and a note. If she needed any proof that her work was well done, she had just gotten it. Carol was thankful for everything she had been able to experience. The last ten days were really full of learning for her. But she was feeling a bit bittersweet because she knew she wouldn't have their chats anymore. During that time they got to know each other and came close to be not friends, but colleagues. Carolina would always remember how she worked well under pressure, with very short deadlines for very big projects and how she survived it doing a great job. Their ten days together gave her a new dose of faith. Faith in herself, in her abilities and in her skills. She soon attached it to her online profiles and started again to look through the job ads while writing her essays for school.

---

Days and weeks have come and gone and she had failed other two job interviews. Obviously she didn't like she failed, but she was somewhat relieved that she didn't get those jobs. She wanted to work somewhere similar to the job she had with Harry. She wanted to have a job where she could use everything she was learning in school. She wanted to start building her career as a journalist. She always kept her profiles updated and always looked the ads in all websites she could think of. And that was how, three weeks after Harry's departure that she found an ad in her area of study and applied to it with no high hopes. Her routine shifted back to normal after Prince Harry left. She went to school in mornings or nights, she cooked meals, she spent most of her days alone at home studying and in her free time, she went out with Julia and the girls. They went to Villa a few days later and the owner, Mario, was teasing her about how the hell she knew a prince. He said that Harry had really enjoyed his time there. So did a lucky girl that was there with him that night. It was in one of those nights while she was dancing with one of her friends, in one turn of the dance that she noticed when Julia eye's widened. Soon after the song ended, Carol went back to their table and sipped in her bottle of beer. Her friends were quiet and she thought it was weird. "What happened?", she asked. "Nothing...", one of them answered. She raised an eyebrow and looked at them. "She'll find out soon enough, guys...", Mario told them. "What the fuck is happening?", Carol was getting annoyed. "He's here", Julia said and Carol's hands immediately started shaking. They didn't have to say who was there. She knew. She knew by the way her friends were looking at her. Some of them were pitying her, the others shared her anger and Julia was looking hopeless, she didn't know how to help her friend. Her heart started pounding so fast in her chest and her eyes started filling with tears. "We had just one fucking deal.", she whispered and dared to look around. And that was when she regretted it. She didn't have to look very hard to find him. He was near the bar, with some of his friends. He was happy, he was loud and he was every piece of hot as he always were. "Do you think I can leave without him seeing me?", Carol asked already grabbing her purse and finishing her beer. "If we go through the back door, sure. But we just got here. You sure you want to leave?", Julia asked looking at her friend. "I don't want to come anywhere near him, Julia. I want to leave and NOW." "OK, no need to yell. I'm just going to the bathroom and you can call for a taxi for us. I'm crashing at your place tonight.", she said and hurried through the dance floor in her way to the bathroom. Carol grabbed Julia's purse and said goodbye to the others in her table. They all understood why she was leaving that way. She looked at the bar again, just to make sure he was still there, but he wasn't. Knowing the place like she did, it was unlikely that he was headed to the exit she wanted to go. She walked hurriedly and waited for Julia near the door. She had already called for a taxi and she was hoping it would arrive soon. Just knowing she was in the same place as him was making her head dizzy and her knees were weak. "Come on, Carol. Let's go home." Julia said and startled her. They left the place and were waiting for the taxi on the sidewalk. Carol was looking around every now and then. "We had just a fucking agreement. He couldn't come here. It's my place, with my friends.", Carol said with her tears already spilling from her eyes. "I know, I know." Julia hugged her friend. They were silent for a few minutes until the smell of cigarettes surrounded them. It was his cigarettes. It was his perfume. Carol just closed her eyes further and asked for strength. She dried her tears and took a few deep breaths to calm down. She wouldn't let him know she was crying and leaving the night club she had just arrived because of him. "Hey Carol, I didn't expect you to be here tonight, babe.", that voice. That husky voice. So masculine and so strong. She wasn't ready to hear that voice again, not to be around him so fast after their fight. Her body reacted the worst way possible, it wanted to be in his arms, to feel his body against hers and to hear and feel his breath while he hugged her. "Why didn't you?", Carol said and surprised Julia. She let got of her friend and looked at him with her chin up. She was putting a strong face to not let him know how affected by his presence she really was. And there he was. With that damn half smile and that beard. With his casual clothes that hugged every muscle in his arms and shoulders and that showed her all the tattoos on his arms. "Well my little miss perfect is about to have exams at school. I thought you'd be studying, you know?", he was smoking near her and he knew how much it bothered her. "I'm not your little miss perfect, Rodrigo.", she crossed her arms and Julia started to say they should just wait for their taxi in another place. Carol just shook her head denying. "Of course you are, Carolina. You're just so fucking stubborn to accept it.", he came closer to her and she flinched a little but she didn't dare to not look at him. She didn't want him to know how she was still in love with him. "You lost your right to be anywhere near me or calling me anything but my name when you started going out with that girl. You made your bed, now lay in it.", she said and she could feel her angst raising within her. "You still thinking about it? It was a one time fling it didn't even matter. You know I love you, my Carolinda. And I have asked for your forgiveness way too many times.", he touched her arm lightly and her brain betrayed her when she shivered. She closed her eyes with his touch. She missed it. She missed being in his arms, she missed being called Carolinda. She missed that fucking smile that always got him out of trouble. She missed the way he made her feel. She missed the way he knew how to touch her body. Rodrigo was her best friend since she was fourteen. They studied together and they knew everything about each other. At least she thought she knew everything about him. He was her first. Her first kiss, her first love, her first boyfriend and it was with him, at his beach house in Maresias, where she had her first time. They had almost eight years of history. They had broken up a few times during that time. All of them happened because he wanted his space to go out with his new found friends. The first time, she was 17 and madly in love. That was the time she did everything he said. And he pretty much dictated what she should wear, who she'd go out with and etc. At the time she didn't want to protest because she was afraid he'd broke up with her if she didn't do as she was told. And out of nowhere he came to her house once and said he needed some time to think and take care of himself. That he loved her as his best friend and girlfriend but that he thought it'd be best if they parted ways. She didn't like to remember it and was very ashamed of it but she actually begged him to not leave her. She thought it was all her fault. She thought she had done something wrong and she asked where he wanted her to change so they could still be together. He didn't care about breaking her heart, he didn't care about her tears or the way she grabbed his shirt trying to not let him leave her house at the time. Carol's grades at school dropped, she gained weight, she didn't go out with her friends and she just created her own world and wouldn't let anyone in for at least six months. She cried herself to sleep for many, many nights but one day she simply decided that enough was enough. She came back to her dancing classes, she apologized to her friends and family, studied like crazy to be able to save her semester and decided to be a volunteer at a children's foster care place. It took her a couple months to discover her new normal. And she loved it. She turned 18 and started going out with her friends and was about to start dating an amazing guy when Rodrigo came back and asked for another chance. Her mom was against it, her friends were against it but she decided to try again. This time it was more of a grown up relationship. Carol set the rules. He wouldn't change who she was. Either they'd be together because he loved her, or not. The fact that she became this independent young woman in exchange to the always afraid teenager took him by surprise. He didn't like that she was reading lots of feminist works and started to empower herself. Six months in their relationship the fights started. Carol once was afraid to speak her mind and contradict him, but not now. And he didn't like it a bit. The only reason Carol didn't break up with him was: even though he was a jerk, she loved him. And the good times were way better than the bad times. And as soon as they discovered how to make their relationship work, he simply decided to go live in Dublin to study English for two years. She was willing to have a long distance relationship, but he didn't want it. He broke up with her, and was surprised that there were no tears or begging this time. She only asked if he was sure of what he wanted and left his house with a "Good luck". He was bothered, he actually wanted the begging and crying to caress his ego, and deep, deep down he also wanted to be with her. But why would he go live in another country with ties to the previous one? He wanted new experiences, new parties and new girls. And like almost everything in his life, he didn't put much thought to Carol's wishes and went to follow his own. He came back to Brazil when she was about to turn 21. She had another boyfriend, she was in college and she was pretty much a independent woman living her life. He quite expected her to be miserable for all the time they were apart and was surprised to see that she had barely missed him. That's when he started to make a space for her in his life again. He'd send her her favorite flowers and chocolates, he'd make time to pick her up from school, he'd be at the places she liked to go out with her friends and he played the card of concerned friend when she broke up with Henrique (he didn't even remembered why they had broken up, to be honest). He was there to dry hear tears when she'd have a moment of weakness and he always took her to parties until it was unavoidable for them to date again. This time Carol was expecting for the moment where he would break up with her. Not a day had gone by for the last months that she wouldn't think "this is it". At first, like always, they had the perfect relationship. Until he started to change and didn't support her with all the changes in her life. When her parents sat with her to tell her they were divorcing and she felt her world falling apart, when everything started to be more complicated for her. He wasn't there for her. And she wondered why the hell she couldn't simply let go of him. And since last year Rodrigo had become someone she didn't know anymore. He was interested in status, in showing a way of life he didn't have. He would always be surrounded by influential people and he wanted her to be like that. He made fun of her choice of major, just because he was going to law school at the best university of São Paulo. She kept up with that until the day she arrived at this place to find that he was spending his night with another woman. She still remembered the odd feeling when she saw candles and flowers in his living room, and when she walked the rose petals path to his bedroom to just open the door and see them having sex in there. She just watched for a few seconds the scene before her and slammed the door to start running to the streets. And he followed her, he apologized and she just hit him with all she had. She probably gave him a black eye and a few scratches but at least she directed the feeling of anger and betrayal at him. "Well, then, you don't have my forgiveness, Rodrigo. You made a conscious choice. You have to be a man and stick to it.", she said and gave a distance between them. Their taxi arrived and Julia got in first. Rodrigo held Carol's arms for a while and pleaded for her to stay and talk to him. "You could've had it all. But deep down you didn't want it. So have a nice and happy life, and let.me.go.", she said with clenched teeth. "Carolinda...", she could see the pleading in his eyes but she stood firm. She unhooked her arm from his hand and entered the taxi. It took her just five seconds to break down. To start crying and sobbing. Julia hugged her friend and was thankful that the driver didn't comment on it. She hugged Carol and tried to make her friend calm down. All of her crying was breaking her heart and all that Julia wanted to make sure Rodrigo was as far away from her friend as possible.

Hi, there. Thank you so much for reading my history. I appreciate all the recommendations and messages I have received. I'm trying to set a pattern for uploading. Let's see if I can post at least twice a week? For those of you who don't speak portuguese, "Carolinda" is just a pun with the name Carolina and the word "linda" that means beautiful. =)

#When you tell the world you're mine #phff #chapter: 6

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artsychica2012 · 8 years ago

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(via 11 Secrets to Writing Effective Character Description)

The characters in our stories, songs, poems, and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea, and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until we anchor them with words, they drift, bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we’ve written the first words—“Belinda Beatrice,” perhaps, or “the dark-eyed salesman in the back of the room,” or simply “the girl”—our characters begin to take form. Soon they’ll be more than mere names. They’ll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they’ll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they’ll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they’ll beat their children or embrace them. What they become, on the page, is up to us.

Here are 11 secrets to keep in mind as you breathe life into your characters through description.

1. Description that relies solely on physical attributes too often turns into what Janet Burroway calls the “all-points bulletin.”

It reads something like this: “My father is a tall, middle-aged man of average build. He has green eyes and brown hair and usually wears khakis and oxford shirts.”

This description is so mundane, it barely qualifies as an “all-points bulletin.” Can you imagine the police searching for this suspect? No identifying marks, no scars or tattoos, nothing to distinguish him. He appears as a cardboard cutout rather than as a living, breathing character. Yes, the details are accurate, but they don’t call forth vivid images. We can barely make out this character’s form; how can we be expected to remember him?

When we describe a character, factual information alone is not sufficient, no matter how accurate it might be. The details must appeal to our senses. Phrases that merely label (like tall, middle-aged, and average) bring no clear image to our minds. Since most people form their first impression of someone through visual clues, it makes sense to describe our characters using visual images. Green eyes is a beginning, but it doesn’t go far enough. Are they pale green or dark green? Even a simple adjective can strengthen a detail. If the adjective also suggests a metaphor—forest green, pea green, or emerald green—the reader not only begins to make associations (positive or negative) but also visualizes in her mind’s eye the vehicle of the metaphor—forest trees, peas, or glittering gems.

2. The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives is that adjectives encourage cliché.

It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles, clean-cut good looks, frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure that the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but also fresh. In her short story “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.”

3. Strengthen physical descriptions by making details more specific.

In my earlier “all-points bulletin” example, the description of the father’s hair might be improved with a detail such as “a military buzz-cut, prickly to the touch” or “the aging hippie’s last chance—a long ponytail striated with gray.” Either of these descriptions would paint a stronger picture than the bland phrase brown hair. In the same way, his oxford shirt could become “a white oxford button-down that he’d steam-pleated just minutes before” or “the same style of baby blue oxford he’d worn since prep school, rolled carelessly at the elbows.” These descriptions not only bring forth images, they also suggest the background and the personality of the father.

4. Select physical details carefully, choosing only those that create the strongest, most revealing impression.

One well-chosen physical trait, item of clothing, or idiosyncratic mannerism can reveal character more effectively than a dozen random images. This applies to characters in nonfiction as well as fiction. When I write about my grandmother, I usually focus on her strong, jutting chin—not only because it was her most dominant feature but also because it suggests her stubbornness and determination. When I write about Uncle Leland, I describe the wandering eye that gave him a perpetually distracted look, as if only his body was present. His spirit, it seemed, had already left on some journey he’d glimpsed peripherally, a place the rest of us were unable to see. As you describe real-life characters, zero in on distinguishing characteristics that reveal personality: gnarled, arthritic hands always busy at some task; a habit of covering her mouth each time a giggle rises up; a lopsided swagger as he makes his way to the horse barn; the scent of coconut suntan oil, cigarettes, and leather each time she sashays past your chair.

5. A character’s immediate surroundings can provide the backdrop for the sensory and significant details that shape the description of the character himself.

If your character doesn’t yet have a job, a hobby, a place to live, or a place to wander, you might need to supply these things. Once your character is situated comfortably, he may relax enough to reveal his secrets. On the other hand, you might purposely make your character uncomfortable—that is, put him in an environment where he definitely doesn’t fit, just to see how he’ll respond. Let’s say you’ve written several descriptions of an elderly woman working in the kitchen, yet she hasn’t begun to ripen into the three-dimensional character you know she could become. Try putting her at a gay bar on a Saturday night, or in a tattoo parlor, or (if you’re up for a little time travel) at Appomattox, serving her famous buttermilk biscuits to Grant and Lee.

6. In describing a character’s surroundings, you don’t have to limit yourself to a character’s present life.

Early environments shape fictional characters as well as flesh-and-blood people. In Flaubert’s description of Emma Bovary’s adolescent years in the convent, he foreshadows the woman she will become, a woman who moves through life in a romantic malaise, dreaming of faraway lands and loves. We learn about Madame Bovary through concrete, sensory descriptions of the place that formed her. In addition, Flaubert describes the book that held her attention during mass and the images that she particularly loved—a sick lamb, a pierced heart.

Living among those white-faced women with their rosaries and copper crosses, never getting away from the stuffy schoolroom atmosphere, she gradually succumbed to the mystic languor exhaled by the perfumes of the altar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers. Instead of following the Mass, she used to gaze at the azure-bordered religious drawings in her book. She loved the sick lamb, the Sacred Heart pierced with sharp arrows, and poor Jesus falling beneath His cross.

7. Characters reveal their inner lives—their preoccupations, values, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations—by the objects that fill their hands, houses, offices, cars, suitcases, grocery carts, and dreams.

In the opening scenes of the film The Big Chill, we’re introduced to the main characters by watching them unpack the bags they’ve brought for a weekend trip to a mutual friend’s funeral. One character has packed enough pills to stock a drugstore; another has packed a calculator; still another, several packages of condoms. Before a word is spoken—even before we know anyone’s name—we catch glimpses of the characters’ lives through the objects that define them.

What items would your character pack for a weekend away? What would she use for luggage? A leather valise with a gold monogram on the handle? An old accordion case with decals from every theme park she’s visited? A duffel bag? Make a list of everything your character would pack: a “Save the Whales” T-shirt; a white cotton nursing bra, size 36D; a breast pump; a Mickey Mouse alarm clock; a photograph of her husband rocking a child to sleep; a can of Mace; three Hershey bars.

8. Description doesn’t have to be direct to be effective.

Techniques abound for describing a character indirectly, for instance, through the objects that fill her world. Create a grocery list for your character—or two or three, depending on who’s coming for dinner. Show us the character’s credit card bill or the itemized deductions on her income tax forms. Let your character host a garage sale and watch her squirm while neighbors and strangers rifle through her stuff. Which items is she practically giving away? What has she overpriced, secretly hoping no one will buy it? Write your character’s Last Will and Testament. Which niece gets the Steinway? Who gets the lake cottage—the stepson or the daughter? If your main characters are divorcing, how will they divide their assets? Which one will fight hardest to keep the dog?

9. To make characters believable to readers, set them in motion.

The earlier “all-points bulletin” description of the father failed not only because the details were mundane and the prose stilted; it also suffered from lack of movement. To enlarge the description, imagine that same father in a particular setting—not just in the house but also sitting in the brown recliner. Then, because setting implies time as well as place, choose a particular time in which to place him. The time may be bound by the clock (six o’clock, sunrise, early afternoon) or bound only by the father’s personal history (after the divorce, the day he lost his job, two weeks before his sixtieth birthday).

Then set the father in motion. Again, be as specific as possible. “Reading the newspaper” is a start, but it does little more than label a generic activity. In order for readers to enter the fictional dream, the activity must be shown. Often this means breaking a large, generic activity into smaller, more particular parts: “scowling at the Dow Jones averages,” perhaps, or “skimming the used-car ads” or “wiping his ink-stained fingers on the monogrammed handkerchief.” Besides providing visual images for the reader, specific and representative actions also suggest the personality of the character, his habits and desires, and even the emotional life hidden beneath the physical details.

10. Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description.

However, we don’t need to confine our use of verbs to the actions a character performs. Well-placed verbs can sharpen almost any physical description of a character. In the following passage from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, verbs enliven the description even when the grandmother isn’t in motion.

… in the last years she continued to settle and began to shrink. Her mouth bowed forward and her brow sloped back, and her skull shone pink and speckled within a mere haze of hair, which hovered about her head like the remembered shape of an altered thing. She looked as if the nimbus of humanity were fading away and she were turning monkey. Tendrils grew from her eyebrows and coarse white hairs sprouted on her lip and chin. When she put on an old dress the bosom hung empty and the hem swept the floor. Old hats fell down over her eyes. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and her shoulder shaking.

Notice the strong verbs Robinson uses throughout the description. The mouth “bowed” forward; the brow “sloped” back; the hair “hovered,” then “sprouted”; the hem “swept” the floor; hats “fell” down over her eyes. Even when the grandmother’s body is at rest, the description pulses with activity. And when the grandmother finally does move—putting a hand over her mouth, closing her eyes, laughing until her shoulders shake—we visualize her in our mind’s eye because the actions are concrete and specific. They are what the playwright David Mamet calls “actable actions.” Opening a window is an actable action, as is slamming a door. “Coming to terms with himself” or “understanding that he’s been wrong all along” are not actable actions. This distinction between nonactable and actable actions echoes our earlier distinction between showing and telling. For the most part, a character’s movements must be rendered concretely—that is, shown—before the reader can participate in the fictional dream.

Actable actions are important elements in many fiction and nonfiction scenes that include dialogue. In some cases, actions, along with environmental clues, are even more important to character development than the words the characters speak. Writers of effective dialogue include pauses, voice inflections, repetitions, gestures, and other details to suggest the psychological and emotional subtext of a scene. Journalists and other nonfiction writers do the same. Let’s say you’ve just interviewed your cousin about his military service during the Vietnam War. You have a transcript of the interview, based on audio or video recordings, but you also took notes about what else was going on in that room. As you write, include nonverbal clues as well as your cousin’s actual words. When you asked him about his tour of duty, did he look out the window, light another cigarette, and change the subject? Was it a stormy afternoon? What song was playing on the radio? If his ancient dog was asleep on your cousin’s lap, did he stroke the dog as he spoke? When the phone rang, did your cousin ignore it or jump up to answer it, looking relieved for the interruption? Including details such as these will deepen your character description.

11. We don’t always have to use concrete, sensory details to describe our characters, and we aren’t limited to describing actable actions.

The novels of Milan Kundera use little outward description of characters or their actions. Kundera is more concerned with a character’s interior landscape, with what he calls a character’s “existential problem,” than with sensory description of person or action. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas’s body is not described at all, since the idea of body does not constitute Tomas’s internal dilemma. Teresa’s body is described in physical, concrete terms (though not with the degree of detail most novelists would employ) only because her body represents one of her existential preoccupations. For Kundera, a novel is more a meditation on ideas and the private world of the mind than a realistic depiction of characters. Reading Kundera, I always feel that I’m living inside the characters rather than watching them move, bodily, through the world.

With writers like Kundera, we learn about characters through the themes and obsessions of their inner lives, their “existential problems” as depicted primarily through dreams, visions, memories, and thoughts. Other writers probe characters’ inner lives through what characters see through their eyes. A writer who describes what a character sees also reveals, in part, a character’s inner drama. In The Madness of a Seduced Woman, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer describes a farm through the eyes of the novel’s main character, Agnes, who has just fallen in love and is anticipating her first sexual encounter, which she simultaneously longs for and fears.

… and I saw how the smooth, white curve of the snow as it lay on the ground was like the curve of a woman’s body, and I saw how the farm was like the body of a woman which lay down under the sun and under the freezing snow and perpetually and relentlessly produced uncountable swarms of living things, all born with mouths open and cries rising from them into the air, long-boned muzzles opening … as if they would swallow the world whole …

Later in the book, when Agnes’s sexual relationship has led to pregnancy, then to a life-threatening abortion, she describes the farm in quite different terms.

It was August, high summer, but there was something definite and curiously insubstantial in the air. … In the fields near me, the cattle were untroubled, their jaws grinding the last of the grass, their large, fat tongues drinking the clear brook water. But there was something in the air, a sad note the weather played upon the instrument of the bone-stretched skin. … In October, the leaves would be off the trees; the fallen leaves would be beaten flat by heavy rains and the first fall of snow. The bony ledges of the earth would begin to show, the earth’s skeleton shedding its unnecessary flesh.

By describing the farm through Agnes’s eyes, Schaeffer not only shows us Agnes’s inner landscape—her ongoing obsession with sex and pregnancy—but also demonstrates a turning point in Agnes’s view of sexuality. In the first passage, which depicts a farm in winter, Agnes sees images of beginnings and births. The earth is curved and full like a woman’s fleshy body. In the second scene, described as occurring in “high summer,” images of death prevail. Agnes’s mind jumps ahead to autumn, to dying leaves and heavy rains, a time when the earth, no longer curved in a womanly shape, is little more than a skeleton, having shed the flesh it no longer needs.

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