#i would take screenshots but my laptop's a bit weird and it's easier to make gifs also the captions were too long etc etc

[twelvsbian]

fun fact i am obsessed with him

[ridiculousn3sswrites]

Lost in Translation

*Lafayette x Reader

*Request: “ @thefluffypancake asked: ‘Hey could you do a Lafayette x reader where she’s learning French and she try’s to ask him out on a date but accidentally asks something else. If not, it’s okay! Have a great day! 💞💞’”

*Warnings: Language, my own personal issues with French as a language. Let me know if I missed anything!

*A/N: This request is so old and I’m so sorry for that. Also I kinda changed the request a bit to reader saying she wants to kiss Laf because that word-for-word translation is off and you’ll see in the fic.

Tip Jar

**********

French was definitely a made up, ridiculous language. While - as your friends always felt the need to point out - every language was made up, French was even more made up than anything else. And yet here you were, trying to learn French on your own just so you could ask out the Frenchie in your friend group. It was a stupid idea in hindsight, but you thought it’d be cute to just surprise him by talking to him and then asking him out in French. Turns out it was a lot harder than you thought it would be. When your initial plan didn’t work out, you could always count on your friends to fuck up in a way that would make things somewhat better. 

Apparently, John never got the memo to not tell Alexander you’d asked him for help with French, and Alexander never got the memo that you learning French was supposed to be a secret. He definitely didn’t get the memo to never bring it up in front of Laf (even though you were pretty sure you’d told John you were trying to learn to impress Laf), so he did exactly that when all of you were hanging out. You had just got back to the table, coffee in hand when Alexander opened his stupid mouth. “Hey, how’s learning French going?”

“I mean, that’s one way to greet me I guess,” you said, trying to ignore the heat rushing to your face. Nope, the best course of action would just be to avoid the conversation. “Like, I haven’t even sat down yet.”

“Wait, you’re trying to learn French?” Laf asked, looking at you in excitement. You could already feel your resolve weakening.

“I mean, I’m trying but it’s not working out so great. Turns out that Duolingo owl only cares about Spanish,” you tried joking, taking the empty seat next to him.

“Dude, you asked me for help,” John spoke up, like that would make the situation any better. It wasn’t your fault that French was an utterly ridiculous language. What language even needs that many vowels? 

“Not my fault you’re a shit teacher,” you shot back, deadpan but completely joking. Even though John looked offended, you knew he wouldn’t hold it against you. After all, you were his ride back home. It took John a second to bounce back.

“Nah, you’re just a shit student.”

“I mean, my grades aren’t gonna argue with you there,” you laughed, the tension finally easing up some. You were still gonna strangle Alexander later, but for now things were fine. For all of five seconds.

“Why didn’t you ask me for help?” Laf asked, stealing your coffee and taking a sip. You were quick to take it back from him, trying to think of an excuse that wouldn’t give away your true intentions. However, now that you thought about it, just asking him to help you learn French probably would’ve been the easiest course of action. Have lessons with him a couple times a week for a few weeks, ask him how you ask someone out in French, and then bam! hit him with the question. Why do I always make things more difficult than they need to be?

“I… actually, I don’t know. Do you think you could help me out?” You tried to ignore the impressed look John was giving you. Sometimes you hated the fact he was your best friend.

“Yeah, of course! I’m offended you went to him first,” Lafayette said, stealing another drink of your coffee.

“Dude, buy your own!”

“But yours tastes so much better,” he teased.

“Gross, can you guys get a room or something?” Hercules spoke up. “Actually, don’t. I forgot I share a room with Laf for a second.”

“And you just made it worse than it had to be,” Angelica muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Anyways, when are you free? It’ll be fun helping you learn,” Laf said, turning his attention back to you. “Just send me your schedule and we can set it up!”

“Yeah, sure thing,” you agreed after a second, trying not to seem too eager. You and Laf rarely hung out on your own, normally having at least one of your other friends there with you. You couldn’t remember the last time the two of you had been alone, let alone you not being awkward when it was just the two of you. You texted him a screenshot of your schedule, your heart already racing at the thought of getting closer to him. You could handle hanging out with him with other people, but alone was a whole different story.

“Great! This’ll be fun!” His bright smile was enough to take your breath away, easing your worries somewhat.

“Yeah, I can’t wait.”

“Okay, so back to me,” John redirected the conversation, making a face at the look you were giving Laf. You couldn’t help but laugh at his obvious attempt, gladly letting him talk about whatever project he was working on now. No, you needed to figure out how you were going to handle this.

**********

Considering it was the middle of the semester, it was difficult to find a time to meet up with Laf that worked for the both of you. You both had papers, midterms, and group projects to work on, but you were finally able to find some time to have a little French session. The first few sessions were accidental, happening when Laf happened to find you in one of the 24-hour libraries, way too late for anything to actually stick in your mind. You found yourself only focusing on the way he spoke French, which was way too attractive to be fair.

After you had a few more impromptu sessions, you were finally able to actually set something up with Lafayette. For once, the both of you had a Friday afternoon free, so you’d be able to see him when you didn’t look absolutely destroyed by assignments and projects. It was still early on into your changed plan, but you figured now was as good a time as any to make your move. You managed to convince John to leave the apartment for a few hours at least, not that he made it easy on you. With his incessant teasing, sometimes you wondered why you chose him to be your best friend and roommate. 

Once John was finally out of the apartment, all you had to do was set things up. You set out some snacks, not really knowing how to host other than offering people food, had some study materials set out because the two of you were going to work on some other assignments before you started with the French lessons. Things didn’t have to be perfect, but you were determined to make it as close as possible. You had a note on your phone for what you wanted to ‘ask’ Laf about, and you were ready. The only thing you needed was for Laf to show up.

As you waited for Laf to make his appearance, you decided to get some reading done for class. Well, you tried to. You couldn’t help you constant fidgeting, switching between tabs as though there would be a different internet on each one, checking your phone and scrolling through Twitter - you really had no idea how you were supposed to pretend that you were going to study when he got here. You knew it would be super obvious that your mind wasn’t 100% on your work. Before you could think about it any longer, there was a knock on your door. Holding yourself back, you waited a minute before getting up to answer it.

“Hey,” you said with a smile, acting like you hadn’t just been fretting over how you were going to get through this.

“Hey! You ready to study?” Laf asked, tugging on his backpack strap as if to prove he brought his work with him.

“Yeah! I’m set up at the table if you wanna just head over there.” You silently cursed how non-human that sounded. As soon as the two of you sat down, though, things got easier. Even as the two of you worked, you kept a small conversation going, making jokes about things you’d just read or were working on, telling stories about class. For the first time in a while, things were going just like they were when the two of you hung out with the group. Lafayette made it really easy for you to like him.

After a couple hours of the two of you working on your own things, Lafayette closed his laptop, getting your full attention. Laf leaned forward like he was about to let you in on some giant secret. “Are you ready to learn some French now?”

“Yeah, I wanna know what you, Alex, and John are saying whenever you go into French,” you teased.

“Non, that’s a secret,” Lafayette laughed, looking away. “Alright, let’s start.”

The session started out much like your impromptu sessions: Lafayette would say a common word or phrase in French, he’d ask you what you thought it meant, he’d tell you what it actually meant, and then you’d repeat it to him. He’d fix any mispronunciations, and you’d keep going until you got it right. This would go on for as many phrases or whatever until one of you decided to take a break. It was a nice little process and was definitely helping things stick in your mind more than when you tried learning on your own or with John.

You were the first one to call for a break, your heart pounding as you tried to figure out how you were going to do this. You wanted to ask him out soon, not willing to let yourself chicken out at the last second, especially since you knew John would talk so much shit if he found out you kicked him out and didn’t even ask Laf out. As you were in the kitchen, filling up your water bottle as an excuse, you tried to calm yourself. The worst that could happen would be things getting weird between the two of you, the best was the two of you would get together, so that meant reality would be somewhere in the middle. You took a deep breath before making your way back to the table.

“Ready to start again?” Laf asked, looking up from his phone.

“Yeah, I actually had something I wanted to ask you.” You took your seat next to him, grabbing your phone to double check what you had translated earlier.

“Go ahead.”

“So, uh,” you paused for a second, gathering the last bit of courage you needed. “Right, uh, what does je veux te baiser mean? Because, uh, je veux te baiser.”

Immediately, Lafayette looked away, drinking his water so he didn’t have to answer you. You could just tell something was wrong and felt your face heat up as you just looked down at your hands. When Lafayette finally spoke, you felt your heart drop. “I… I don’t think you know what you just said.”

You looked up, eyes wide. You knew French was tricky, but there was no way you messed up something that simple, right? You tried not to appear too flustered, but you knew it was a losing battle. “Wait, what did I say then?”

“I think I know what you were trying to say, but you didn’t say it.”

“So what did I say?”

“Okay, so direct translation was that, but what you said was, uh, you uh wanttofuckme,” he rushed out the last part, and it took you a second to process what he said. If you thought your face couldn’t get any hotter, you were wrong. 

“Jesus Christ, I am so sorry. I mean I really like you but I didn’t mean to say that and I’m so sorry, that probably made you really uncomfortable and I understand if you want to leave and-” You were cut off by his lips on yours. You quickly melted into the kiss, even though you still weren’t exactly sure what was going on.

“Je veux t’embrasser,” Lafayette said as he broke the kiss.

“What?”

“Je veux t’embrasser. That’s how you say I want to kiss you,” he explained.

“Je veux t’embrasser,” you repeated with a small smile.

“Good.” You were rewarded with another soft kiss. Maybe French wasn’t so ridiculous…

No, it definitely was. 

**********

Permanent Tag List: @treatallwithkindness, @laic2299, @delaber

[kylos]

Finding high quality film/tv rips, saving the large files, and screencapping them are half the battle for gifmakers when setting out to make a gifset. Here’s a little guide on this process, including my advice on

Where to download stuff

Where to store your movies/shows

Screencapping programs

Making gifs as HQ as possible, including tips for picking out what to download when you have multiple options (not all 1080p rips of the same movie or tv episode are the same quality and I explain why)

Why screencaps of 4k movies can look weird and washed out and how to fix that

and more

✨ You can find my gifmaking 101 tutorial here and the rest of my tutorials here.

Where can I download movies and shows?

First off, I prefer direct downloading rather than torrenting stuff because it’s faster and with torrenting, there’s more of a risk. Other people downloading the same torrent can see your IP address. This means movie studios can find out you’re downloading their content and can send you a warning letter. The download speed also varies depending on how many other people are seeding it. I would only do it if it’s your only option and you have a VPN or something.

This is THE best guide for pirating I’ve ever seen. I use it for finding sites for books, music, you name it. The part of the guide you’d want to look at is where it says Direct Downloads Link (DDL) sites. My favorite place is Snahp. These ddl sites will have links to their movie/tv rips that are typically hosted on one of these two sites: google drive or mega.nz. You can download stuff from both of those sites for free, but with mega, they have a 5GB file download limit unless you have a premium account. I personally pay the $5 a month membership for mega because it’s worth it imo. You can buy a subscription through the mega app found on the iphone app store (so you’re billed through apple and it’s less scary than giving a random site your credit card info lmao) and as for androids I think mega has an app on there too.

So basically, if you go to http://snahp.it, they’ll have rips for different movies and shows.

You click on the movie title and it’ll take you to a page where they have links for the video which they have uploaded on a variety of sites (including mega).

How do I make my gifs as HQ as possible?

It’s best to gif things that are 1080p. And usually the higher the file size, the better. A really important thing to note is that not all 1080p bluray rips are the same. The piracy groups that rip these files take uncompressed .mkv rips from discs that are anywhere from 10gb to like 50gb, and then run that through video converters to compress the file down so that they’re 2-8gb. Sometimes when that happens, the video quality goes down a LOT. The same goes for TV episodes. One rip could be 800mb, the other could be 3gb and both could claim to be “1080p” but the quality would be NOTICEABLY different. Your best bet is to always pick the rip with the highest file size.

I’ll show you an example with this scene from You’ve Got Mail.

I downloaded 2 different 1080p rip versions of the film. Both claim to be 1080p, but one is 2.41 GB and the other is 9.75 GB. After taking screencaps, it’s obvious that there’s a BIG difference in quality.

(these pictures are best viewed on desktop tumblr)

When it comes to Blu-ray rips, download remux versions of films and shows if possible. Remux means .mkv files that are uncompressed and straight from a Blu-Ray disc. Giffing remux rips cuts down on the possibility of seeing pixel-y effects a LOT in my experience. It’ll take a bit longer to download than typical 1080p rips but it’s worth it imo.

For TV episodes, if you can’t find a Blu-Ray rip, uploads with the word AMZN in it are usually the highest quality and your best bet (unless you see another upload that’s higher in file size - again: always try to pick the highest file size). 'AMZN’ means they’re from a person that ripped the episode from Amazon Prime Video.

Also, even better than 1080p is 4k (2160p). I only really recommend this though if you know you’re going to gif something up close and crop it a lot - like if it’s a big 540x540px close-up gif of a person. You’ll REALLY see the difference if it’s a 1080p vs 4k rip in that situation. I usually don’t bother with giffing 4k files unless it’s the case above because my laptop lags when taking 4k screencaps and it takes longer to load them into photoshop (4k screencaps are usually about 60mb each!)

⭐️ Another thing that’s important is making sure that when you actually make your gifs, you set them to the correct speed (.05 for movies and most shows, and .04 sometimes for reality tv and live broadcasts). Here’s my gif speed guide. Having the right gif speed is really important for making a gifset HQ. You don’t want it to look too slow or too fast.

What’s your favorite video player to take screenshots with?

MPV player, hands down. And I’ve tried a TON of programs over the years. I’ve tried KMPlayer and found that it added duplicate frames (and even missing frames) which is horrible, and I’ve tried GomPlayer which is.....I’m just gonna say it, I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s a little overly complicated in my opinion and it has ads. If you like these programs, more power to you! Use whatever you’re comfortable using. I just like MPV the most because it doesn’t have ads, it’s simple, you can take sequential screencaps with a keyboard shortcut, and it can play 4k movies.

Screencaps I take of 4k 2160p movies look so dull and washed out, like the colors aren’t right. Why is that?

That’s because your computer can’t handle HDR 4k video files. It probably can handle SDR 4k video files, but unfortunately, 99% of 4k rips out there are HDR.

[picture source]

Now, HDR displays just fine on computers that have 4k-HDR capabilities, but most older computers don’t have this ability. Having said that, MPV - the video player I mentioned above can take a 4K-HDR video and fix the colors/lighting in real time so it displays correctly AND take screenshots of it with the fixed colors. If you have an older version of MPV, make sure you download the newest update for this. In my general gifmaking tutorial, there’s a portion on how to install this program on macs. I also just made a video tutorial on how to install it on pcs here!

High quality TV and Movie rips can take up a LOT of space on my computer. Where do you store your files?

I store them on external hard drives. External hard drives are like flash drives but they have a MUCH higher storage capacity. You just plug them into your computer via a usb cord when you need access to the files and it’s that easy. I have two of these Seagate 4TB hard drives in different colors so I can easily pick out whichever one I need. I have silver for my movies (because it makes me think of “silver screen” lmao and it’s easier for me to remember) and then I just have a blue for shows. Now, external hard drives of this size can be $$$$ but it’s worth it imo. Look out for when they’re on sale.

What’s the size limit for gifs now?

It’s 10mb! It used to be 3mb and then last year Tumblr upped it to 5mb. Some gifs initially had distortion because of Tumblr’s switch from the .gif to .gifv format, but they’ve fixed the problem AND increased the upload limit to 10mb.  Just make sure not to add any lossy to a gif.

Lossy is basically a grain you can add to a gif to lower the file size down. Gifmakers (including myself) used to use this as a trick to get the file size down under 3mb. However, since the .gifv update on Tumblr, any gifs with Lossy added will look distorted like it’s a gif made on a phone app or something.

_________________________________

That’s it for this guide! Again, feel free to check out my other tutorials on photoshop, how to center subtitles, download hq movie trailers, and more ✌️

UPDATE 6/23/20 ⚠️

I’ve gotten an ask about this problem 3 times since I’ve uploaded this tutorial, so I thought I’d add this in. If you are experiencing duplicate and/or missing frames in mpv, it is a glitch with the latest version of mpv. download an older version like 0.29.0. this happened to me on my mac and downloading an older version fixed the problem.

[rohondra]

Firsts || Izuku Midoriya

a/n: this is for another bnharem discord collab!! the prompt was “Pen Pals”. I’m pretty content with how this came out and I’m super excited to write a bit more considering I got a computer!! I’m hoping to do a pt2 hehe. god bless the people in my haikyuu server who swooped in and saved the day every time I had a brain far. 

rating: n*fw 18+

word count: just over 2k

warnings: virgin!Reader, daddy kink yes again ok I have a problem, FaceTime sex, mutual masturbation, big buff Izuku

all characters are aged up when I write and I take no credit for the images I post w said writings unless stated otherwise.

PLEASE CHECK OUT EVERYONES AMAZING FICS FOR THIS COLLAB!!!

A notification from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Field Office Discord server you were a part of popped up on your phone. It was an announcement that they would be randomly selecting pen pals as an event to get people more connected during this pandemic, of course you had the option to opt out, but the idea of doing something so “risky” excited you. You held your breath and reacted with a thumbs up, butterflies instantly flooding your stomach.

Just under an hour later one of the admins sent you a pm;

-Hey! Thanks so much for joining our penpals event. Social distancing is a pain in the ass, but hopefully this will lighten your spirits! We paired you with @/izuku#2485. Xx

Being the nosy son of a bitch you were, you immediately typed his user into the server and checked his activity within it- specifically the “#pictures” channel, but found nothing. Just as you were about to send him a friend request, you got a notification of another pm.. Oddly enough from him;

-Hi, we got paired for the penpal event! It’s okay if you don’t want to send your address to a complete stranger, I get it haha.

The butterflies returned as you pressed the request button, and immediately saw it change from “pending” to “send message”.

~Hi! If I’m honest it’s just my college address lol, nothing too risky.

-College huh? Me too. I was afraid you were going to end up being a minor and then I’d feel kind of weird ha. What school?

~Do not fear, I am in fact legal. Even if it is by 8 months lol. ASU! Yourself?

-Arizona huh? Interesting, I’m actually finishing my senior year at Iowa State.

Your stomach flipped, anxiety coursing through your veins at the last message. Senior?! What if this guy was like, 40?? No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t be living on campus at that age.. But he never specified he was living in a dorm. You closed Discord and moved onto what seemed to be the never ending flood of assignments, two of which were due that night.

A notification popped up on your computer mid essay;

-Don’t wanna be pushy. Here’s my address if you decide to write me.(:

You chewed at your bottom lip, weighing the consequences. It couldn’t be that bad of an idea right? He seemed nice, not pervy at all.. Fuck it.

“Hello! It’s your good old pal from the Marvel server. If I'm honest I'm not that good at these things, haha. This letter will be pretty short, but tell me- who’s your favorite Marvel character? Feel free to gush! I’m looking forward to hearing back from you.

From,

Y/N”

-

Two weeks later your RA slipped the envelope under your door, “MAIL!!!” she yelled before hurrying to the next room to deliver. Your heart fluttered as you opened it, admiring his clean handwriting;

“Hi. Alls good, I’m pretty awkward myself ha. My name is Izuku Midoriya! My friends call me Deku. Y/N is a nice name.

Honestly, it’s kind of cliche but Captain America has to be my favorite. I’m a bit of a Marvel junkie. I’ve seen every movie, have the entire Captain America comic series, own a Marvel Encyclopedia, plus almost every Marvel funko pop they’ve released.. Now that I think of it I’m definitely more than “a bit” obsessed ha. How about you? If it’s easier for you, you could just message me on discord.

-Izuku”

You giggled as you opened the app on your phone.

~Hi! I just got your letter. Seems to me you’re DEFINITELY obsessed lol but that’s okay, me too. I’m obsessed with Captain America. Chris Evans? *cheff kiss*”

-Hey. That’s so funny! I aspire to look like him one day haha. Taking it one day at a time, but this pandemic is making it difficult rip. You wanna add me on snapchat? I probably came off as some creepy perv ha. @/deku_zuku.”

From that point on, you two became OBSESSED with each other. Deku was an extremely gorgeous, freckled man with colored, fluffy green hair. You thought your sleep schedule was already fucked because of the pandemic? Sike, now it really was. You were staying up until 5am snapchatting him, interacting with him on discord, texting him, etc. You just couldn’t get enough of each other.

Your favorite snapchats from him were his post workout selfies. You loved the way his skin glistened, his muscular body littered in scars and freckles. More often than not you screenshot them and definitely got off to them, but you could never tell him that. It was embarassing to think about how most nights you laid in bed pumping a dildo inside of yourself desperately calling his name, imagining it was him fucking your tight virgin pussy.

As you were getting lost in imagining scenarios your phone began ringing, oh fuck he was FaceTimeing you.

You quickly sat up, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear and setting your phone against a book for support before answering.

“H-hi! Sorry I wasn’t expecting you to FaceTime me ha.”

Izuku grinned ear to ear, “No I’m sorry! I should’ve asked first, but you look great so I mean.. No complaints from me with how you look.”

Red tinted your cheeks, “A-ah thank you. You’re pretty good looking yourself.”

Izuku’s eyes narrowed, “Did I catch you at uh- a bad time?”

You tilted your head in confusion, “No? I mean I was trying to catch up on some stuff but other than I wasn’t doing anything important.”

“Ha, that looks pretty important. You also look a little flushed.”

When your eyes followed his on your screen your cheeks immediately lit on fire and you shifted to cover the dildo you carelessly left on the parallel night stand.

“So that’s why you’ve been screenshotting my pictures huh? I never would’ve taken Y/n to be such a slut.” he smirked.

He could feel his cock begin weep at the sight, he couldn’t help but palm himself. What if you got off to him? Thinking about how your little moans might sound when they slip out of your mouth made his cock pulse, he wanted to make you moan. He wanted to be the reason you came undone.

You tried to defend yourself, slightly annoyed by the derogatory term he referred to you as, “I- no. It isn’t like th-”

He cut you off, his voice having dropped an octave, “It’s okay baby, tell me what you think about.. I wanna hear what gets you off with those pictures.”

Hands came up to cover your face, you felt like you were going to puke- this was too embarrassing. His screen went to “paused” and you heard shuffling from his end. Within seconds you received a picture of Izuku in the mirror, his large hand barely covering his erect penis and his shirt between his teeth. He chuckled, “How about now princess? What makes that pretty pussy tighten around your toy?”

Slick slipped from your previously abused cunt, he sounded so delicious and looked even more delicious. When you spoke, your voice came out as a squeak, “I-I uh, I can’t tell you! It’s embarrassing.” If you could light on fire, it would’ve already happened. In fact, you wish you could. If you’re lucky the entire dorm might catch ablaze as well so all evidence is ruined.

A deep chuckle echoed from your phone speaker, “Embarrassed? It’s not like you’re a blushing virgin baby.”

There was a pause as you lowered your hands, your nose scrunched from the humility and one eye shut, “.. And if I told you I was?”

Izuku felt his member pulse yet again, precum gliding from his slit. That almost sent him over the edge, there was no way someone as breathtaking as you hadn’t been with anyone. Fuck, he could take your innocence and ruin you for any other man. He could make you his own and have you milking his thick cock every night, screaming his name and begging for more.

A meak sigh pulled him from his fantasies as you spoke up, “Sorry if that makes me less appealing.” He was quick to follow up, “N-no. God no. That,” he sighed,” fuck that’s honestly hot.”

Boldness coursed through him as his hand lazily pumped his shaft, “That just means I can be all your firsts.. Here, give me a minute.”

Your heart sank for a minute when the FaceTime ended, but fluttered once again when another call from him came through. This time though, it was from his laptop. He smirked before rolling back in his computer chair, his cock twitching against his stomach anxious for attention.

Desire burnt within him at the sight of you, eyebrows raised and eyes enlarged with pupils blown while you licked your lips. Izuku couldn’t help as his hand encircled his shaft once again, “What is it you think about baby? Me kissing and licking all over your body? My fingers pumping in and out of you while my tongue plays with your nipple?” He began a generous pace of pumping himself before his next taunt, “Maybe my tongue playing with your clit?”

A soft moan fell from your lips as you nodded, “A-all of that. ‘Zuku c-can I please touch myself?” You gasped as you watched precum flow from his tip at your words. He nodded, “Please do.”

You sat back, lifting your hips just enough to slip your panties off, nervously looking at him. All caution was thrown to the wind when Izuku groaned, “Ah, be a good girl for me baby.”

You made sure your full body was in view before grabbing the toy and lowering it between your thighs, which were now covered in a thin layer of your arousal. Squeezing your eyes shut you opened your legs and gently pushed until the dildo was fully sheathed inside of you.

Opening your eyes you were greeted with the most sinful sight, Izuku Midoriya quickly gliding his hand up and down his cock with his chest heaving, his body sheen with sweat.  You let a high pitched moan, your name resonating slowly from his chest. With every thrust your wrist made, a coil began to form inside your belly, it all seemed so familiar but was far more exhilarating knowing that someone else was watching.

“Just think about when that’ll be my cock splitting you in half. Shit- close your eyes for me, start playing with your clit and imagine it's me.” You nodded in response, unable to form words.

Obeying his command, it felt like electricity struck you when your finger made contact. The coil was now fully formed and threatened to burst with every movement.

“I need to cum, p-please.”

“Yeah? Only if you beg for daddy to let you.” He smirked as he watched your thighs tense for a moment.

“A-ah.. please! Please let me finish. Please d-daddy, need to so bad.”

Izuku felt his orgasm quickly approaching with each shaky word spilling from your beautiful lips, “Yeah baby, you can cum now. Let me see the pretty faces you make.”

SNAP

You were gone, your body lost to the ocean of ecstacy ripping through you as you rode the waves of your release.

He sat forward, studying the way your face contorted and how your cunt sucked the toy in as far as possible. The thought of you milking the absolute hell out of his cock sent him over the edge, head thrown back with spurts of cum covering his beautifully toned chest and stomach.

Eyes twitched trying to focus from the intensity of your orgasm as you came down from euphoria.

As Izuku  began cleaning himself off he spoke up, “So you’ve genuinely never done that kind of stuff before?” You shook your head before sitting up to sling a large t-shirt over your body, “Nope, when I said I was a virgin I mean like V I R G I N.”

He shook his head and chuckled, “Crazy. I have some assignments I need to do, if you want you could keep me company?”

You pulled a pillow under your chin and hugged it.  “I have some work to do too, so I guess that’ll work.” You giggled. He twirled a pen between his fingers before bringing it up to chew on, “And once we call it quits for the evening, how about we check off some more ‘firsts’ for you?”

[apathycarestostudy]

Any studying, motivation and procrastination tips please? Desperately in need of some before a new academic year starts.

Hello hello! Yes! I’m sorry I took a bit to get back to you with these - I just wanted to give you the best I got. So here ya go, I mixed up everything you asked for in a couple of strong tips. I’ve divided into preparing for the new semester, study tips, and then procrastination tips with a sprinkle of motivation all over it.

Prep:

Sooo the academic year is right around the corner (or dreadfully yet, already here), and you need to shift to get with the times. Fixing your sleep schedule? Getting your syllabus ready? That’s all important and good, but how do you keep the determination strong as the first few weeks go by? How to prepare better?

make a lessons learned note

I learnt this from my internship. It’s a good practice that after a project, you take some time to review what happened during the project and create a final report, concluding it with a couple bullet points of the lessons you learnt from it. If you need a feel of what that looks like, here’s my lessons learned from last semester:

Using OneNote is a waste of time

If you don’t keep up in the beginning, you’re going to show up for attendance and give the bare minimum to move on

You need to learn how to speak up during class - you know the answer, what’re you so nervous about?

Don’t fear marking up your books - it’s yours??? You paid for it??? Using highlighters are useful if used appropriately

Be careful about helping people - you’ve been caught four times helping friends while they kept stuff from you and got ahead

Y’all I had to stop myself lol. I planned to write my top three, but then kept clicking enter again and again. Well. Now you know my concerns. 

Getting back on track though, you should take some time to write down the stuff you learned from last semester’s experience to know what you’re going to take with you, and what you’ll quit doing. It’s a strong, positive start, and it prevents you from making the same mistakes again.

delete/move stuff off your phone + organize your laptop’s folders

It’s better to keep our phones clear and ready for the new semester’s mess, right? I have a bunch of screenshots, and files, and notes on my phone that I don’t need to keep anymore, but I’m a bit of a hoarder :))) I like to keep stuff in case I wanna look back, be that girl people just know has something they’d need, or hell if I need to retake a class (it’s happened unfortunately). Maybe you got a junior you want to pass your stuff along to. So what do you do? Move it to your laptop of course!

Well, that’s what I do. If you don’t have a laptop, you can upload it somewhere (google drive etc.), attach them on emails, anything that works for you! There’s always somewhere you can put your stuff that’s private and safe.

That goes into my next point - be sure to take the time to reorganize your spaces now. Since I put it on my laptop, I organize my folders to my liking, make sure everything is where it should be with older ones, and create new ones for the coming semester. Just pop on some music, sit down and get cracking. It gives me a pleasant feeling after I look at everything when I’m done.

set up your calendar/planner!

This is a recurring tip that I think is good enough to reiterate. Whatever method you use to keep track of stuff needs to be updated, upgraded, and ready to go! If you’ve used something that failed mid-way through last semester, or you didn’t like but had to keep with it because you were in too deep, put that in your lessons learned record. Here’s your chance to change to a better system. It’s fine if you already started your new term - it’s still early enough to switch/set up a new one!

Make sure you don’t overdo it though. The point of this is to keep track of, say, assignments and quiz dates, not spend an unnecessary amount of time organizing and stuff and falling into the pit of preparing to study. If it works for you and has been working for you - keep going! But if it’s taking time and having any negative correlation to your performance, it’s better to do away with it than to keep going and have it be another lesson learnt next semester. I��ll be the first to say that I tried setting up a bujo for myself - bought markers and washi tape and all - and I gave up after three days of using it. And I set up an entire month and then some. It hurt my soul to admit that it was a waste of time for me, and not keep beating at it, but I did, and now it’s sitting here mocking me everyday. But I have time to watch it mock me ;) 

My go-to organizational system: Microsoft To-do (not sponsored :((), phone’s calendar, phone’s notepad. That’s it.

create a night routine

People usually say fixing your sleep schedule and having a night/morning routine is good, but in my opinion, a night routine is stronger than both. For some reason, for the life of me, I can’t get my sleep schedule right unless some force stops me from staying awake. I tried getting in bed early and throwing my phone across the room - but I’d lay there for hours thinking about the next day so I don’t bother anymore. The morning routine just ruins my mood because I’d either fail miserably and feel worse, or feel overwhelmed. It’s better if both happen either circumstantially or organically for me. 

Night routines set an easy-going mood, and it’s full of potential because it also sets the scene for the next day. By night routine, I don’t mean what you do before you sleep, I mean the consecutive things you do every night. For example, I play a round of games with my siblings (card games and board games), then shower, do my skin care routine (wash-toner-moisturizer that’s it lol), watch a video as I’m combing my hair (and then watch a couple more), feed my turtle, and then see what I want to do. Sometimes I sleep right after, other times I’m on my phone or reading a book. But just this set of recurring events calms me down when my life is chaotic, and it’s easier and more doable than morning routines for me.

Action:

Now we’ve set the scene, so it’s action time (I’m so lame). 

don’t let work pass you by

In regards to studying, this is the - BIGGEST - tip I can ever give you. The ironic thing is, it’s still going to happen no matter how much you try, and that can damper your mood and your drive, but here’s my tip: MILK IT FOR ALL IT’S WORTH!! 

If you know it’s going to happen eventually, don’t let it affect you - focus all your efforts not in doing it everyday, but maintaining it for as long as you possibly can. Don’t let your studies pass you for even a second. Work it like you work a job as long as you can, and you’ll end up surprising yourself on how much you had completed when you gotta review for quizzes and exams. 

You know how they say exercise and earn your shower everyday? How about study and earn your play time everyday :)))

if it does, work backwards

So we’re here. You’re behind by two weeks. Like I mentioned up there, we knew we were going to end up here eventually (and if you didn’t, share your ways lol. no matter how much I cred myself with studying and getting shit done, I still don’t know what’s going on), so now what do we do? Work backwards. The prof/teach is at point S and you’re still curling the bottom of J? Start from S and go to R, then Q, then P....while maintaining the new stuff you’re learning after S. Pinch it in. We should aim to follow the class as much as we can so it’s more effective to study backwards and keep going with it. It’ll also help killing the thing that’s refusing to let you go faster with the beginning stuff, and you’ll be reviewing what you learnt in real time along with the class. 

Don’t know why I said the previous tip was the best I had to offer when we both know that this one is the real G.

pathetic notes are still notes

This one is a weird one - I had an issue with notes for a beat. I have this belief that you should always make notes every class, no matter how much new stuff you learn, but then there’ll be days where I write three lines and it just hurts my soul for some reason. I guess it’s the incomplete page? The three lines I’ll add tomorrow and face this again? Not sure. But whatever it is, do not stop writing notes! If you learn something new that’s not written anywhere, or hell you just wanna jot it down somewhere more accessible, always write it down, no matter how pathetic your notebook’ll look. I had to get over that, so I thought it would be good to mention. Always. Take. Notes. Nothing is too much information on the race to securing your livelihood.

If you can’t get over it, maybe try printing the slides and making your notes on the borders. I started doing this for more technical courses that don’t get a lot of notes, and it works really well having it in one place.

(I should pin a picture, idk, I’m really proud of it.)

starting strong is good, consistency is even better

In the end, that person who walks in stronger than last semester are plenty, but the one who wins in the end is always that one person - what makes them different? They don’t watch the ones who’re running strong in the beginning and mess up their pace by either trying to keep up with them, do more, or discourage them. They maintain a consistent effort and benefit in the end. It’s the story of the hare and the turtle - consistent, slow effort beats rushing and getting out of fuel in the last stretch. 

There was this one semester where it seemed like half my class decided that they were all going to be on all of a sudden, and it threw me off, made me insecure, and then I started comparing myself to them. The only thing that saved me was that I kept my consistent effort in the meantime because I had consequences if I didn’t perform - so at the end of it, it didn’t matter how hard they started. Only two out of the thirteen elevated their rank. And I was where I needed to be, so that feeling was wasted.

Well, not completely wasted now since I’m telling you. Focus on yourself. Stay consistent. It’s good to be aware of where everyone is, and use it to motivate you, but no negative feelings that’ll hold you back. Release it.

(also pro-tip: teachers don’t care about the loud ones, they care about the consistent ones)

Procrastination:

Now we got the ball rolling - how to avoid this monster? Also, if you still haven’t gotten the ball a-tumbling,

what do you fear?

Oftentimes it’s the fear of something that hinders us from starting. My common fears that keeps me procrastinating are fear of failure, fear of taking too long and wasting time, fear of finding out how little I know of the thing I haven’t learnt yet - I could keep going forever. It’s easier ignoring it and treating it like it’s not there than to face it, I know. But we wanna be better, so how can we?

Write down what you feel, get it out, and then study. A lesson I learnt from last semester was that journalling before I studied helped immensely. Just try it for a session - get out what you’re thinking about, and end it with an action item (I’m going to do xyz now) and then do it. It’s like a weight being lifted off of you. I’ve never felt so light studying in my life, I feel. 

do, don’t tell yourself you will, do

shameful self plug: read this to see what I mean (specifically the you don’t need a lot to get started ramble) 

don’t take on more than you can chew

Something that can kill your grind is if you overwhelm yourself by tying yourself down to things you know you won’t be able to handle later on. It kinda plays off the doing too much in the beginning - you’re setting yourself for failure if you don’t think through your decisions, and then fall into procrastination with the things that’d breed the most consequence. So be careful.

I’m not saying don’t apply yourself - it’s really good to get as much experiences (fun and useful) as you can. But don’t let it be at the expense of what matters. Your health, your faith, your studies - all these things matter more than....insert something here....yeah.

start everyday intentional, end every night with intentions

I’ll end it with this. Start your day intentional on getting stuff done, and you can cleanly avoid procrastinating. End it with good intentions for the next one, and you’ll keep this habit going. Whatever that is, finding your happy place, making a to-do list, praying, journalling, talking to someone - always try to wake up with the mindset that this’ll be your day, and end it with a pat on your back and a promise to do better - if you managed or not. Everyday is a new chance. Every midday is a chance. Now is your chance. It’s just a matter of being hungry and taking it.

Ooof I took water breaks writing this, and it still felt like I had more to say. Sorry for the length lol - I hope this helped in any way. And good luck! New semester, same you, new mindset, better results ;))  (I’m so lame lol).

By the way y’all, if you happen to be loud and consistent, share those tips also lol. 

Here’s to our collective success!

[x-de-con-struct-ed-x--arch]

So the wifi got knocked out there for a while there and I wasn’t able to do anything on my laptop, but I had a text post still open on a page that hadn’t tried to reload itself so I just started writing...

...can I interest anyone in a very informal and messy headcanon post about Cybertronian reproduction? Slight nsfw warning, but nothing major. I might add more to it or clean it up later but I doubt it.

basics.

reproduction only occurs when two mecha merge sparks. A piece of the sire’s spark will literally chip off during merging (under any other circumstances this is an extremely painful process) and latch itself onto the carrier’s.

whoever ends up being the carrier almost always depends on who has the stronger spark - the stronger the spark, the easier it will be for the carrier to care for both themselves and the sparkling during growth.

immediately after getting sparked the carrier has to start using nutrient-rich additives in their energon to promote protoform growth, otherwise they can get very weak. Their own frame will start cannibalizing itself to make a frame for the sparkling.

carrying kinda sucks, to be honest. The sparkling leaches off of the carrier’s spark and frame and it can be very dangerous, hence everything largely depending on who has the stronger spark. But as long as everyone’s careful and watchful? It’s alright.

transfluids. Getting fragged? It can help the carrier. Transfluids from the sire are very rich in nutrients, nanites, materials, metals, etc. that are beneficial for protoform development, so that can be a fun way to keep the carrier healthy. Of course, this does not mean they wouldn’t have to keep taking the nutrient-rich additives.

twins, both fraternal and paternal, are very rare. However, multiple sparklings are not, or at least they wouldn’t be, if mecha wish it so. Meaning? It’s rare for a single spark to split into two (paternal twins) and even more rare for two chips to attach themselves to the carrier in one merge (fraternal twins), but a carrier can end up being sparked multiple times over multiple mergings. Think like a cat with a litter of kittens. It isn’t practiced often, since having just one sparkling can be very taxing, but it is entirely possible and a lot easier than having actual twins.

...I’m not sure how to re-word this but it’s one of my favorite headcanons about the genetics part of reproduction so I’ll just say it as I did in the screenshot, can’t link it right now but I’ll come back when the wifi’s back up if I remember to: “..OK bit off-topic but at the same NOT, so the way I headcanon sparklings occurring is, of course, through merging sparks. When the sparks merge a piece is chipped off from the sire’s and it kind of latches itself onto the carrier’s. Now if simply let be it’ll just be NORMAL, for a lack of a better term, genetics from both parents, etc. etc., BUT if for some reason a third ‘parent’ were introduced and they and the carrier merged the sparkling can take in more genetic information. So it would have traits from all three parents.” Or even more, if there were more than three genetic contributors.

baffles. I don’t remember where I saw these, it was in a fic somewhere and GOD now I gotta find it, but baffles. A baffle is a type of contraceptive that is installed in the spark casing and lets mecha merge without having to worry about getting sparked. Theoretically, a mecha could use one baffle their entire functioning. And they’re easily installed, easily removed. A lot of younger, war-forged mecha do not have baffled nowadays, though. Something lost to the war. EDIT: thank you anon for finding the fic this is from! Visions and Regrets; A Wish, Fulfilled by LJMouse on ao3!

this can all be done in vitro. A piece of a spark can be attached to a carrier’s, simple as that.

heat cycles.

cycles are not necessarily an indication of fertility. Mecha are not necessarily any more fertile when they’re on their cycle than any other time. It simply encourages reproduction.

please note, again, reproduction only occurs when two mecha merge sparks. And merging is not at all necessary during a cycle, either. Simply absorbing transfluids will sate the coding eventually. Again, it all ties into transfluids being very rich and good for the development of a new protoform.

most Cybertronians have coding for it, even cold constructs. The coding can be deactivated (temporarily or permanently) or deleted, but it’s a difficult process and was a rare thing even before the war. It was easier, cheaper, and far more sensible to either regularly take suppressants or to have someone else help you through it.

a cycle can last anywhere from a few days to almost a month with varying intensity; it really depends on the size and frame type of the mecha in question. Speedsters and seekers are stereotypically known to have very strong but rather short heats that will last four or five days at most, while a larger, heavier-duty mecha’s cycle can go on for weeks at a time. Their heats are also significantly milder.

an in-heat mecha will literally give off a scent. Pheremones to attract a mate. This by no means ‘blinds’ a potential mate or makes them lust-mad or anything, no one should get jumped. But it sure as hell smells nice. Little fun fact: mecha who do not have heat coding themself usually can’t smell it, but their frame will still react to it anyway. It’s weird and no one’s sure why it happens.

the coding is very stress sensitive. A lot of mecha had fewer cycles or maybe even stopped having them once the war started because the coding responds to the stress of it and recognized that it was not a good time for reproduction.

[ascreamingstrawberry]

Prompt : 18. “He’s so pretty it makes me cry.” “That’s a bit dramatic but I support you.”  from this list 

Pairing : Prinxiety (and highkey Logicality, I didn’t mean to make it about them too, but ya know) 

Word Count : 2,250

Requested by : @prinxiety-and-chocolate

Roman appreciated his roommate very much. Logan sent him Chemistry lecture notes when he decided to skip and go get coffee with Remy. Logan was the one who remember to take out the trash late at night when Roman was doing homework he should’ve done earlier. He also, on more than one occasion, would physically pick Roman up out of his chair and throw him on his bed while tiredly mumbling about the benefits of a good sleep schedule. His roommate was great. But probably his most valuable trait was the fact that he would sit idly while Roman showed him pictures of the incredibly attractive edgelord he’d met in his Psychology lecture.

“I mean, come on, Logan, have you seen him?” Roman shut the door behind him quietly, as Logan would not appreciate the slam that he wanted to emphasize his statement. He put his phone on the charger and flopped dramatically onto his bed.

Their beds were closer than most roommates had them, and they were only separated by their respective nightstands stacked on top of each other in the middle. But their desks were on the opposing wall, faced away from their beds, so Logan had his back to him.

“If we’re talking about Virgil, again,” Logan was probably rolling his eyes, based on his tone. “I have seen him. Multiple times. You’ve shown me every picture he has ever taken.”

“Probably not every picture.” Roman thought out loud, more for the way Logan turned out and pointed aggressively at him, than his own amusement.

“If you finish that thought, I will come over there and stick my fist down your throat.” Despite threatening him, Logan had the smallest of smiles on his face. Surprising too, considering he was doing his Calculus homework. It had to be whoever ‘Blue Heart’ emoji was that he had been texting.

Logan didn’t use contact names, he used emojis. Made it easier to him to remember. And since the boy never used Siri there was never any downside to it. Logan and Siri, didn’t get along. Roman had seen them fight once. Logan had almost broke his phone.

“Kinky.” Roman rolled over to check his phone, despite his own knowledge that it had probably only charged like a percent or two. snapchat from dark and handsome

“Logan, give me your phone!” Roman hopped off the bed and ran over to steal Logan’s phone right off the charger plugged into his laptop, despite Logan making grabby hands at him. “Shush I’m not going to look at anything, I’m just taking a picture of his snapchat.”

“You really need to stop doing that, he’s going to think you’re a pervert or something.” Logan groaned. Roman had a system, since Snapchat let the other person know when you took a screenshot of their picture, he used Logan’s phone to take pictures of the cute selfies Virgil would send him. He’d admire it for a minute, and then make Logan delete it. He wasn’t weird. He just needed more than ten seconds to admire Virgil Sanders’ beauty.

“For that comment, I might just look at your texts to Mr. Blue Heart.” Roman wasn’t going to, he wouldn’t invade his friend’s privacy, but the actual fucking whine that came out of Logan’s mouth made him toss the phone back in Logan’s direction. “You can delete that now.”

“Weirdo.” Logan mumbled, and Roman barely had a chance to see 2 snapchats from dark and handsome when Logan continued. “Hey Roman, did you see what this message said?”

“Actually, no. Isn’t it weird to say I was kind of just focused on his face?”  Roman said, typing in his code leisurely. He opened Instagram first, checked the dm from Patton, the guy down the hall, as well as his groupchat from back home.

“Yes it is.” Logan replied, turning around in his chair to face Roman now.

“What did he say?” When he opened Snapchat, Roman went to open the next picture but it was just a message. What? Virgil never messaged him.

“He’s asking you out.” Logan deadpanned.

“What?” Roman panicked. Well more, he panicked because Virgil was probably panicking. When the man informed him of his anxiety, Roman had been a little shocked. Not personality wise, Virgil had been wary when Roman had first reached out via a friend request on the university website, let alone snapchat. It just seemed unfair that someone as naturally attractive (and wonderful) as Virgil had a mental illness that prevented him from just going up and talking to anyone he wanted. ‘

dark and handsome : sorry i probably shouldn’t of done that over snapchat

dark and handsome : it’s okay if you don’t want to

me : no no, i’d very much like to.

me : if you want

dark and handsome : roman i asked you

me : i’m just making sure!

dark and handsome : okay ,well see you tomorrow i guess

me : yeah!

dark and handsome : gn roman

me : goodnight virgil!

To say that Roman annoyed Logan very much that evening would be an understatement. First he had to check the time and place on the photo, then he spent most of the night worrying about what to wear, what to say how to act. Dress like you normally do, say what you normally do, act like you normally do. Wait.

“But what if he doesn’t like what I normally do, Logan?”

“As insufferable as you are Roman, the right person will. I have no doubt Virgil will like you as you are just fine.”

“Aw, you do love me.”

“Do you know what insufferable means?”

And by the time it came for the actual date, Logan had to walk Roman to the Starbucks on the edge of campus himself, or else he was pretty sure his poor love stricken friend might faint. When Roman sat down nervously across from the dark haired, all-black teeager, Logan had fully intended to just grab a coffee and hide himself among the other caffeine dependent students. However, fate had a different plan for him it seems.

“LOGAN!” Patton attacked him from behind. Normally Logan would’ve had better reflexes, but something about the smell of chocolate chip cookies and caramel kept him frozen in his spot. When Logan didn’t return his hug, Patton pulled away, a sad smile across his face. Somewhere in Logan’s brain told him that just wouldn’t do.

“Patton, you’re looking lovely as ever, how are you today?” Logan tried to his deer in the headlights look as that those words slipped out, but found he didn’t have to because Patton’s gaze fell to his shoes, trying to hide a blush. Well, that’s a visual representation of the word cute, if Logan’s ever seen one.

Across the tiny Starbucks with baristas that were always way to chipper, Virgil was laughing. It wasn’t intentional Roman was sure, his own joke hadn’t even been that funny, but he was blessed for being able to bear witness to the sight. Virgil’s hand was kind of hovering in the air like any moment he would cover over the beautiful smile that made his eyes light up under the dark eyeliner. He was beautiful.

“Fuck, I’m gay.” Roman mumbled, covering his own mouth as soon as the words slipped out.

“Well that’s good news.”  Virgil’s shoulders kind of closed in on himself. He took a minute to scan the cafe, looking for someone maybe, but when he didn’t find what he was looking for or either didn’t like what he did found, he looked down to the floor.

“Do you want to head back to my dorm?” Roman asked, noticing his discomfort.

“Hm?” Virgil looked up, and while he reached down to take another sip of his drink, the blush on his face betrayed the nervous and almost fearful eyes he had.

“You know just cause there seems to be a lot of people here. We could always just hang in my common room or something if my roommate’s there.” Roman shrugged, hoping it came off as nonchalant.

“Sure.” Virgil was up before Roman had even realized he’d answered. And Roman grabbed the coffee that Virgil had forgotten on the little table that had been in between them that was really too short for anyone to use properly, and followed out the door. And it was like as soon as they were outside, Virgil had taken a big deep breath. Figuratively, well, guessing by Virgil’s state, maybe literally too.

Virgil stretched his arms out, shook at the hands as if he was dispelling some kind of energy from with him and his mouth was half opened, and his shoulders tucked up into his ears. And then he let go. Of all the tension in his body, at least, he hadn’t really been holding onto anything since Roman had his drink in his hand.

“Better?” Roman perked up and Virgil turned around to blush again at the fact that Roman had been watching him. He handed over the other boy’s drink and the two fell into a comfortable walking pace, making   to Roman’s dorm in under five minutes. Roman didn’t mind the time that much though, he really just like listening to the way Virgil’s hands moved subtly at his sides as the other boy talked. He was entrancing that way.

“Race you up the stairs.” Virgil called, just as soon as Roman had slipped his ID card back into the holder he kept on his keychain.

“I’m only on the second floor.” Roman called, trying to keep up as Virgil’s long legs made it so he could do three stairs at once compared to the normal one (or two in Roman’s case). Virgil barely stopped to open the door on the stairwell, whipping it in front of Roman’s face as Roman’s called directions from behind him. By the time Virgil skidded to a stop in front of the door that read ‘Logan and Roman’, the man from the second half of that label had been out of breath.

“Been a while?” Virgil laughed, barely sounding winded.

“Yeah.” Roman leaned one of his hands on one of the walls of the hallway, bending over a little bit to catch his breath while taking his time to stare at Virgil’s ass. He may not have been subtle but by the way Virgil walked over, took Roman’s chin in his hand, and pulled him up into a quick kiss, the other boy hadn’t seemed to mind.

“You’re kinda cute, I guess.” Virgil laughed when he pulled away, running a hand through Roman’s hair. Roman stood up straight, tried to ignore his blush as he moved past Virgil with his key in his hand, and unlocked the door.

“Just wait til I get you in-” Roman’s statement was interrupted by a giggle as he opened the door to his room, and reached over to turn the light on, managing to turn it off. When he flicked the light back on, his roommate was cuddling with Patton, from down the hall, on his bed, while two two drinks stood on the nightstand. “I didn’t realize this room was occupied.”

“Uh, Roman, hello. I didn’t think you would be back this early.” Logan said, moving to stand up but Patton kept his arm wrapped around Logan’s waist where they laid.

“Hey Pat.” Virgil said from behind Roman, moving around the boy stuck at the door with his hand gripping the handle. When Roman stayed still for even longer, Virgil reached down to pry his hand off the doorknob, taking it in his own, and pulling him over to the desk. Roman blushed as Virgil sat down, plopping Roman on his lap.

“Somebody got awful confident.” Patton’s voice was teasing, Roman knew, but something still made him squeeze Virgil’s hand.

“It’s his fault.” Virgil mumbled, laying his head on Roman’s shoulder while still trying to look up at him. Roman twisted a little. Sure, they’d been on half a dare, but they’d talked for weeks maybe more, and something about the glimmer in the other boy’s dark brown eyes made him lean down and kiss him lightly on the noise.

The four boys made their way downstairs playing pool by the front door, swapping jokes and staring at their respective crushes, until they grabbed food together from the vending machines and went back up to Logan and Roman’s room to watch some shitty Adam Sandler movie on Logan’s laptop.

It was six o’clock by the time Virgil headed back to his dorm and Patton left for his room down the hall. Closing the door behind them, Roman locked it shut and walked over to his bed to dramatically flop his upper body against the bedding. He kept his feet on the floor, and he crooked his head to look over at Logan who was sat at his desk again, but he was just leaning backwards in his chair kind of staring up at the ceiling.

Roman let out a deep sigh, and Logan made a noncommittal noise in response. Something about that made Roman laugh, and Logan made eye contact with him, watching as his roommate’s neck was crooked back and that made him laugh. Roman sighed again, “He’s so pretty it makes me cry.”

“That’s a bit dramatic but I support you.” Logan replied, the amusement never leaving his face.

“Shuddup.” Roman replied, tossing a pillow backwards as he climbed up fully on his bed, face first, knowing very well that Logan was probably blushing over his own crush as well.

[latestnews2018-blog]

macOS Mojave 10.14 first look

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/macos-mojave-10-14-first-look/

macOS Mojave 10.14 first look

Seems like iOS gets all the love these days. And it’s easy enough to see why. The smartphone has long been the dominant device in many users’ lives, while the desktop/laptop category has been on the decline. But macOS still has some life left in it yet.

A year after introducing the more incremental High Sierra (it’s right there in the name), Apple has returned with a macOS update that’s jam-packed with new features. Unlike other recent updates, a number of the big additions here are targeted at creative professionals, as Apple refocuses its efforts on the user base that has long been a core part of its target market. In the case of features like Dark Mode and Gallery View, there’s a lot to like on that front, as well.

For the first time iOS apps have been directly ported to macOS in an effort to kickstart cross-platform development, while Stacks should go a ways toward helping users stay a bit more organized — and sane. Now that the operating system is in public beta, here’s a rundown of the biggest and best new features Mojave has to offer.

Dark mode

The biggest addition to Mojave is also one of the more interesting from a populist standpoint. Apple made it clear during its WWDC presentation earlier this month that Dark Mode is a hat tip to creative professions. It’s a category the company once owned outright, but one Microsoft has been aggressively gunning for in recent years with its Surface line.

Apple’s been knocked for a handful of decisions viewed as taking its eye off the ball for the small but loyal contingent that has formed its core user base. The company’s been making amends for this over the past year and change, with the addition of the iMac Pro and the promised return of the Mac Pro. Dark Mode is clearly a nod toward those who spend long stretches staring at bright screens in dark rooms.

Of course, it’s not just for creative pros. Dark Mode is a potential boon to all of us desk jockeys looking for some respite from eye strain. It’s also just aesthetically pleasing, and a nice visual break from a Mac desktop design that really hasn’t changed much in the past several generations.

Apple’s done a good job here maintaining consistency across its own apps. Along with darkened menus and frames, Mail, Contacts and Calendar invert to white text on a dark background. The default Mojave desktop image of a winding sand dune has also been transformed accordingly.

Better still, there’s a dynamic version of the wallpaper that will darken, based on the time of day, as the sun sets and stars come out in the desert sky. A nice touch. However, only the default wallpaper is capable of doing that at the moment. If you want the effect, I hope you don’t mind staring at sand.

The biggest issue with Dark Mode (in this admittedly still early public beta stage) is compatibility. Apple says that the mode is designed for easy adoption by third-party developers, assuming their apps are built for the macOS Mojave SDK, but there’s no guarantee the apps you use regularly will have that compatibility at launch. That means there’s a decent chance your dark desktop scheme will be regularly interrupted by a blast of white light.

This is also the case for Apple’s own apps like Safari (though iWork and other not preloaded Apple apps don’t yet have the functionality), which have implemented aspects of Dark Mode, but in which you’re going to be spending a lot of time looking at bright pages regardless.  For most of us who spend time in and out of various apps, Dark Mode’s actual functionality is pretty limited, but you’ll no doubt be compelled give it a go anyway. At the very least, it’s a nice departure from the default macOS color scheme you’ve been ensconced in for so long.

Stacks

Dark Mode may be the feature that got the biggest crowd reaction at WWDC, but Stacks is the best. No question here, really, and this is coming from someone who’s gotten fairly consistent about tidying up his desktop. This thing is worthy of a clickbait-style “One Weird Trick to Organize Your Life” headline.

This is a surprisingly cathartic act. Hover over the wallpaper of your out of control desktop, two-finger tap the touchpad and select “Use Stacks” from the drop-down. Poof, they all shoot into their pre-ordained piles on the right. The default mode categorizes files by product type, which is probably the most straightforward method of the bunch (you also can switch to category or tag). If a file is the only one of its kind on the desktop, it will maintain its name below the thumbnail; otherwise, the file kind will show off below. Unclassified files will show up in a less helpful “other” Stack.

When new files are added to the desktop, they automatically appear in their associated pile, so long as you stay in Stacks mode. When the mode is enabled, files are essentially stuck to these spots like a grid. You can drag and drop them into apps, but can’t move them around the desktop.

Once everything is sorted, clicking on the top of the stack will spread it out so you can once again view everything all once. Click the top of the pile again, and poof, everything goes back into the pile. You also can hover over the top with the cursor and swipe the trackpad left or right with two fingers to scrub through the list. I find the method a bit less useful, but some will no doubt prefer it.

If you decide the whole cleanliness thing isn’t for you, two-finger tap the wallpaper again. Click “Use Stacks” and poof, everything gets sent back to its original entropic position on the desktop. Good on Apple for letting users revert back to the madness.

Apple’s added a LOT of different features — from Launchpad to Tags — designed to help users get better organized. For my part, I’ve largely tried and failed to incorporate them into my daily usage. Stacks, on the other hand, is a genuinely useful addition and a strong contender for the most useful feature Apple has brought to macOS in recent memory.

Desktop

Gallery View is an interesting addition for similar reasons as Dark Mode. The feature is a spiritual successor to the familiar Cover Flow. It’s less dynamic, relying on a bottom scroll bar, rather than large images up top. It puts meta data front and center much more than before. This is especially apparent when dealing with images, giving you an almost light-room level of detail on photos.

The information includes, but is not limited to: dimensions, resolution, color space, color profile, device make, device model, aperture value, exposure time, focal length, ISO speed, flash, F number, metering mode and white balance. It’s lot for most users. In fact, it’s probably overkill for a majority of us, but it’s clearly another indication that Apple’s working to maintain its hold on the creative professional category by building that intense level of detail directly into the Finder.

Tucked down in the bottom-right corner of Finder windows are Quick Actions. There are a handful of handy features for editing images and PDF docs, including Rotate Left (as found in the iOS Photos app), markup (as found in Adobe Acrobat), Add Password and Create PDF, which turns files into PDFs, as advertised.

It’s an interesting system-level embrace of Adobe’s file format, and also makes the need for Preview somewhat redundant, as it’s baked directly into Finder. The options are dependent on file type — so, if you have, say, an audio or video file, you can trim it directly in the Finder window. For most tasks, you’ll probably want to open an editing app, but I would love to see more personalized actions down here. For my own needs, something like file cropping and resizing would be great to have built directly into the Finder window, saving me a trip to Photoshop or some online editing tool. I realize my needs aren’t the same as everyone’s — but all the more reason to offer some manner of customization down there, akin to what Apple offers with the MacBook Touch Bar.

Screenshots

File previews are getting a lot of love here, throughout. I’m not sure how often normal people use screenshots, but I take them all the damn time, so any addition here is welcome. Beyond general usefulness, I suspect a lot of people simply don’t take screenshots because the key command is fairly convoluting. Shift-Command-5 isn’t exactly easier to remember than other, similar combinations, but it does bring up a hand control window overlay.

From there, you can choose to capture a full screen, a window, a selection you outline yourself, record a video of the entire screen (which I used for the above Stacks GIF) or record a video of a selection. It certainly saves from having to memorize all of the different commands. The new screenshots also make it possible to set a timer of five or 10 seconds before snapping a photo.

Apple’s taking a play from iOS, offering up a small window in the right-hand corner of the screen once the screenshot has been snapped. You can click directly into that, or just wait for it to disappear. From there, you can markup the file, drag and drop it it into a document or have it automatically sent to the desktop, documents, Mail, Messages, Preview or a Clipboard, so they don’t all wind up in the same spot.

Continuity Camera

Not sure how often this feature will actually prove handy for most users, but it’s a cool feature, nonetheless. Continuity Camera essentially uses an iPhone as a surrogate camera for the desktop. It’s a clever bit of cross device synergy.

Say you’re in Page. Go to Edit > Insert from Your iPhone and choose Photo. Take a shot, approve it on the device, and it will automatically insert itself in the doc. It works like a charm. The scan feature also works surprisingly well here. I took a shot of a crumpled receipt and it looked pretty pristine, regardless. As someone who recently went through a lengthy visa process, I wish I’d had access to this thing a few weeks back.

FaceTime

This one definitely wowed the crowd. FaceTime’s macOS/iOS-only is the main thing that’s hampered my own use of the service, but there are some really nice additions here that are making me rethink the decision. The ability to add up to 32 users is far and away the most fascinating, and Apple’s done a good job managing that kind of unruly number.

Similar to services like Google Meet, the system automatically detects who’s speaking and places them front and center in the app. Also like Meet, you can manually prioritize the users on whom you’d like to focus.

Other users will shrink down and eventually populate the carousel at the bottom. You can get the list of participants by clicking the Info button. And invitations for more users can be extended while the chat is in progress.

iOS apps

Apple made a point of addressing longtime rumors of a convergence between the company’s desktop and mobile operating systems, flashing a giant “No” onstage. That said, the two OSes are getting even more shared DNA. The biggest news on this front is the porting of three iOS apps to the Mac. This is clearly the first step toward a larger convergence of some kind, but more to the point, it’s a way to start getting app developers to port their iOS apps to the desktop.

Sure, macOS had a huge head start, but iOS has been getting all of the developer love in recent years. Making it easier to create apps cross-system means devs don’t have to decide. It also means that the app that come to macOS through this method will be more likely to do so through the Mac App Store — a distribution method Apple clearly prefers over more traditional downloads, for myriad reasons.

To start, Apple has brought over News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home. In my time with Mojave thus far, News is the one I now use pretty regularly. I was a bit hesitant to move to a more walled approach to news delivery, but I do appreciate having a centralize hub of the trusted news sources I visit regularly, coupled with alerts that populate the Notification Center at right.

It’s probably not going to replace my use of TweetDeck for work-related news, as, among other things, it just seems to update more slowly. But it’s a nice tool to have churning in the background, along with a check-in once or twice a day, to make sure I haven’t missed a moment of the horror show that is news in 2018. Fun!

Voice Memos probably has the most limited scope of the bunch. I’ve switched over from various third-party tools I use to record meetings from time to time, and it’s nice having that sharing across devices. Students will likely find it handy for lectures as well, but beyond that, it’s probably not going to get a ton of play for most users.

Home is the most interesting addition of the bunch. Certainly it makes sense, as Apple makes a bigger push to remain competitive against the likes of Amazon and Google in the smart home. The Mac isn’t designed to be a hub in this case — that’s still the job of Apple TV and HomePod, so far as the company is concerned. But the desktop OS does make for a nice control panel, and it’s handy to be able to check in on your place remotely from the comfort of your MacBook.

Given that they are, in fact, ports, not much has changed from a design standpoint. That means it’s essentially the same layout as the one you’ll get on your iPad, with a grid of tidy little boxes representing your various connected home devices. It’s pretty hard to shake the compulsion to reach out and touch the things. Apple, of course, has taken a hard-line against incorporating touch into its laptops and desktops, so reaching out won’t get you very far in this particular case.

Odds and ends

The Mac App Store gets an overhaul here, including search filtering and new content categories. Apple’s also added the kind of editorial curation it’s had on iOS and other apps.

More privacy permissions is always a good thing. In addition to the standard access to Contacts, Calendar Photos and Reminders, Apple’s added notifications for apps accessing the camera, mic and sensitive data. That means more pop-ups to click through, but more importantly, some extra peace of mind.

The system now does “password auditing,” to make sure you don’t reuse the same passwords over and over again.

Siri gets a couple of additions on the desktop here, including the ability to add passwords with voice.

[thecanadiantechie]

Even though the iPad has only been around for seven years, it has revolutionized how we think of computing and started the tablet revolution. And since 2010, Apple has stuck to the 9.7-inch screen size for the main iPad line, until they introduced the 12.9-inch iPad Pro back in 2015.

But now, Apple has gotten rid of the 9.7-inch screen size and replaced it with a 10.5-inch screen which is the perfect middle ground between the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the 7.9-inch iPad Mini. I’ve been using the 10.5-inch iPad Pro for about two weeks and it’s one of the best iPads to date.

Design & Hardware

The smaller iPad Pro now has a 10.5-inch Retina Display with a resolution of 2224-by-1668 at 264 ppi. The new display looks great from all angles and playing videos and games on it look amazing.

The new iPad Pro 10.5’s screen has a 120Hz refresh rate along with Apple’s ProMotion technology. This makes the screen feel much more responsive than previous models. And the True Tone display technology automatically adjusts the warmness of the screen depending on the light in the room you’re in. The iPad Pro 10.5 that I tested was in Space Gray, which means it had a black front and that helped when watching videos.

Apple has somehow made the iPad Pro 10.5 even thinner than its outgoing model. The iPad Pro 10.5 is just 6.1mm thin and weighs around 1 pound, it was fairly easy to carry around. The device is being powered by the new 6-core A10X Fusion chip and the device could easily keep up even on the most demanding tasks like editing videos or playing graphically intense games.

Just below the display, you’ll find an improved Touch ID sensor which was fairly quick to unlock the device, my only minor annoyance is the way Apple has changed how unlocking your device works in iOS 10. Before you would just hold your finger on the home button for it to unlock but now in iOS 10, you need actually press the home button and sometimes that always doesn’t work.

As for battery life, I was able to easily get 8-10 hours of usage on the iPad Pro 10.5. And when I wasn’t using the device, the standby time is so good that you could leave the device for a day or so and it will still have a decent amount of charge left.

The iPad Pro 10.5 has a Lightning port for charging and data transfers, and you’ll find the standard volume buttons, headphone jack and four speakers, which helped when watching videos.

In my iPad Pro 12.9 (2015) review, I talked about some of the accessories available for the two iPad Pros like the Smart Cover, Smart Keyboard but alongside the new iPad Pro 10.5 announcement at WWDC 2017, Apple introduced some more iPad Pro accessories.

Apple introduced a new leather sleeve that will allow you take your Apple Pencil along with your iPad on the go. I tested out the Leather Sleeve in Midnight Blue and it’s a very high-quality case to keep your iPad Pro protected. And the included slot for the Apple Pencil makes it so much easier to carry the Pencil. But the Leather Sleeve is a bit on the expensive side at $179 CAD (for the iPad Pro 10.5 version) but it does come in four colours, Midnight Blue, Black, Taupe and Saddle Brown.

The Leather Sleeve is available for the iPad Pro 10.5 and the refreshed 12.9. There is also an Apple Pencil case that comes in the same four colours as the Leather Sleeve and goes for $39 CAD. In addition, there are some new Smart Cover colours including Mist Blue, Pollen (aka yellow), Flamingo, White, Pink Sand, Midnight Blue and Charcoal Grey and cost $69 CAD.

You’ll also be able to get some new USB 3.0 adapters like one for Lightning to SD Card, Lightning to USB 3 Camera and USB-C to Lightning.

I also got to test out the iPad Pro 10.5 with Apple Pencil, which is an additional $129 CAD. Like I said in the iPad 12.9 review, the Apple Pencil is my favourite part of the iPad Pro. I’m one of those who likes to draw and drawing digitally makes it so much easier to colour my drawings and then share to social media.

The iPad Pro 10.5 comes in four colours, Silver, Space Gray, Gold and Rose Gold. It comes in three storage options, 64, 256 and 512GB.

The pricing for the iPad Pro 10.5 is as follows:

64GB (Wi-Fi) – $869 CAD

256GB (Wi-Fi) – $999 CAD

512GB (Wi-Fi) – $1259 CAD

64GB (Wi-Fi & Cellular) – $1,039 CAD

256GB (Wi-Fi & Cellular) – $1,169 CAD

512GB (Wi-Fi & Cellular) – $1,429 CAD*

* The model that I tested

The new iPad Pro 10.5 and the refreshed 12.9-inch version are available from Apple’s website.

Software

The iPad Pro 10.5 is running iOS 10 and I’ve gone into detail about iOS 10 in my iPad Pro 12.9 (2015) review. But when Apple introduced the iPad Pro 10.5 at WWDC 2017, they also detailed iOS 11 and all the new features coming to the iPad.

iOS 11 is said to bring a whole bunch of new features to the iPad. The first of which is a new Dock which allows you to easily find your favourite and recently used apps and files. This will make it much easier to multitask.

A new Files app will also be coming to iOS 11 for the iPad, it will allow users to not only access files on their device but on cloud services like Dropbox, iCloud and Google Drive. iOS 11 also brings drag and drop support to the iPad and you’ll be able to do things like move text, photos and files from one app to another.

Apple is also making multitasking more intuitive on the iPad in iOS 11 with the inclusion of the Dock in addition to Split View and Slider Over. The App Switcher in iOS 11 has also been redesigned and it will remember what apps you’ve multitasked with.

And for you Apple Pencil users, Apple has made using the Apple Pencil in iOS 11 “more versatile, powerful and natural than ever.” You’ll be able to do things like signing documents, annotate PDFs or even draw on screenshots in iOS 11. And you can also start writing notes with the Apple Pencil straight from the lock screen and they’ll be saved in the Notes app.  

iOS 11 will be coming to iOS devices in the fall.

You can read my experience about iOS 10 on the iPad Pro below.

iOS 10 is similar previous versions, meaning that you tap, swipe and scroll to get around. Your homescreen is just a grid of icons and to get back to the homescreen, is just a button press away. iOS 10 is a smooth experience and there’s zero lag.

Features like Multitasking and Slide Over and Split View were all introduced back with iOS 9 (which is what the iPad Pro launched with) but I found that some features like Slide Over still needs some work. Slide Over is there, so you can open a second app without leaving the one that you’re in but most of the time, when I tried to use Slide Over, it only opened YouTube in that view and wouldn’t let me choose another app to open.

Split View is a feature that allows you to use two apps at once and that’s one feature that does work well but I didn’t find myself using it that often.

Picture in Picture does work, but it only works for certain apps and sadly YouTube isn’t one of them but at least Netflix works in the mode.

One feature that I absolutely don’t like about iOS 10 is the press home to unlock. Gone is the swipe to unlock, because that was replaced by the new homescreen widgets, which I didn’t find useful. And even though the iPad Pro has Touch ID, whenever I would press the home button to unlock the device, it wouldn’t always work. I don’t know if it’s because of which generation Touch ID sensor the iPad Pro has but I’ve set at four fingers and when I press home to unlock, it doesn’t seem to work and asks for my passcode.

Camera

Apple has improved the camera on the iPad Pro 10.5. It is now 12-megapixels and is supposedly the same camera as in the iPhone 7. With the new camera on the iPad Pro 10.5, you’ll be able to take great photos including Live Photos.

The new camera is capable of taking 4K video and slow-motion at up to 240fps and there is optical image stabilization with the iPad Pro 10.5. The iPad Pro 10.5 takes good photos but they’re nothing mindblowing and please don’t be one of those people who take photos with their iPad, it’s just weird and awkward and you’re guaranteed to get at least one weird look (possibly more).

The front-facing camera is now 7-megapixels and can capture more colours for more vibrant selfies and better video during FaceTime calls.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for the best iPad you can get, then look no further than the iPad Pro 10.5. It strikes the perfect balance between the smaller iPad Mini and the biggest iPad Pro 12.9. If you’re looking to do more than just tablet things, you should look elsewhere (maybe a Macbook Pro or Surface Pro 4 or some other laptop).

However, the iPad Pro 10.5 does come at a cost, it starts at $869 CAD which is quite a lot for a tablet and that’s not including the cost of the Apple Pencil and other accessories. The 512GB Wi-Fi & Cellular model that I tested out goes for $1,429 CAD which at this price point, is laptop territory and I think most people would go for a laptop over a tablet at that price range.

But nonetheless, the iPad Pro 10.5 is one of Apple’s best iPad to date.

Pros

Beautiful display and the 120Hz refresh rate make it better

Premium design

Excellent battery life

Awesome speakers

Powerful processor

Great performance

iOS 11 looks promising for the iPad

Apple Pencil works great  (especially for drawing)

Cons

Can get as expensive as a laptop (especially when adding cost of accessories)

TouchID issues

iOS 10 can be limited

iPad Pro 10.5 Review: Apple’s best iPad yet Even though the iPad has only been around for seven years, it has revolutionized how we think of computing and started the tablet revolution.