#my lecturers said the time most people want to quit is on their final year because of their fyp

[collecting--stardust]

hiiii how are you doing these days? hope life is treating you well ❤️ i love reading your tags because they were so funny sometimes haha

hello!! I've been doing fairly well I guess, just quite busy since the new semester just started. it seems like I will be busier by November with my clinical posting and final year project and I'll be praying that my sanity is still intact by that time 🤞🏻

ahhh I'm glad you enjoyed my silly rant on the tags even though it is quite embarrassing. I am too much of a yapper to not ramble in the tags 😔

thank you for this message anon! it makes my day and I hope you have a wonderful the rest of the year 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

[harknessxo]

Professor Harkness

Paring: Darkish!Agatha Harkness x reader

Summary: Agatha is a very attractive but strict Professor in your College. You somehow manage to keep up with her without seducing her like many students tried but failed to, which makes her take an interest in you.

Warnings; spanking, fingering, cunnilingus, professor kink?

Word Count: 3.5k

A/n: Haven’t posted in quite a bit, my bad!!! This is lowkey ass but I hope you like it!

This was your first year of college. You lived in Eastview most of your life but chose to go to Westview college when you got a full ride scholarship. It was scary at first, moving away from home, away from your parents but you got a new start.

As you got comfortable in your new environment, you had asked around about your teachers to know what to expect from them and everyone told you they were chill except for one, Professor Harkness. Many of the people you asked said she was a bitch, was way too strict, acted like she had a stick up her ass but “at least she was hot.” ‘Lucky me,’ you thought. You later figured out you had her once a week on Wednesdays. At least you only had to deal with her one day a week.

Your first day soon approached, your teachers all seemed very easygoing and understanding which only made you more nervous to meet the infamous Professor Harkness. Wednesday rolled around and you woke up nice and early to get ready. You wanted to make a good first impression, well, at least attempt to.

You were the first student to show up to the lecture hall. You took a seat at the very front, you liked to be able to hear everything your teachers said. After about five minutes, more students strolled in, filling up all the seats and finally, in all her glory, she walked in last. They weren’t lying when they said she was hot.

She walked to the front of the room, carrying a stack of papers and a bag. She placed the stack on the podium and began to set up for class. She didn’t bother addressing the class until the bell rang.

“Good morning everyone. I’m Professor Harkness and you will address me as such, no ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs,’” she picked up the stack she had previously placed on her desk and started passing the papers out, “This is my syllabus. My email and office hours and at the top, if you have any questions, competent questions I mean, feel free to reach out. The first section talks about my deadlines-“ she was suddenly interrupted by a tardy student knocking on the door.

Her expression turned from somewhat welcoming to anger in seconds. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, clearly frustrated by the tardy student, then opened the door.

“Don’t bother coming back to this class.” She stated in a cold tone before shutting the door on the student’s face. She continued on going over her rules and expectations, which were extremely high but nothing you couldn’t handle, like nothing happened.

This was going to be fun.

As the weeks went on, less and less people remained in her class either because they couldn’t handle it or they got kicked out. Many tried to seduce their way to an A but Professor Harkness was not having any of it. You found it embarrassing how the boys tried to flirt with her, sometimes even girls.

She dealt with the various attempts made to seduce her in the most professional ways, or unprofessional too, she didn’t seem to care. She would ignore their comments or straight up insult them, she had no time to deal with idiots.

You found it hot. You might have thought about her treating you just like that once or twice while getting yourself off, but of course you would never admit it or tell anyone. You were too scared to approach her anyway. She would most likely report you if she ever heard that you found her strict and harsh ways “hot”.

She didn’t seem to notice your presence much until she started noticing the efforts you put into her class. She couldn’t remember the last time any of her students were competent enough to reach the bare minimum of her expectations. She was not one to have a soft spot for students yet she found herself paying more attention to you in particular, she found it amusing how serious you were about her class.

You didn’t seem to notice her attraction at all. You didn’t notice the hungry looks or the way she would speak just a bit softer towards you if you raised your hand in class. Well, you did but you thought you were imagining things or that she was just in a good mood. You never actually approached her one on one. You thought she was very intimidating plus you always understood her material and never had to approach her. That was until now.

She had assigned a project and you couldn’t seem to understand a specific part of it so when the class was over and everyone strolled out, you stayed behind.

“Professor Harkness?” You called out nervously. She looked up from her papers and saw you still sitting in the classroom, the rest of the students were gone.

“Ah, Y/n.” She spoke your name, which honestly kinda surprised you. She set down her pen and stood up from her desk, walking over to you and leaned against the edge of the desk.

“You need something?”

“Y-yeah. I don’t mean to be annoying, I know you said if we had any questions, to reach you through email or visit you during office hours but I promise this is quick.” You rambled on, hoping she wouldn’t curse you out like she did other students. To your surprise, she simply nodded for you to go on.

“I can’t seem to understand this part of the project,” you pointed to a specific part of the rubric she gave out, “Could you explain further please?” She leaned over your desk to look at the rubric, her body hovering over yours. She studied the part you were pointing at, taking note of your struggle.

“Ah, I see. That part can be a bit tricky for some,” she proceeded to explain the section in more depth, her eyes scanning your features as you took in her every word. She made sure you were understanding every word she said, her gaze never leaving your face as she watched your expressions. It was almost addicting how attentive you were.

“Oh okay. That makes so much more sense now, thank you Professor Harkness. I hope it wasn’t a bother.” She smirked at your response, amused by how polite you were.

“It’s no bother at all, Y/n.” She said, straightening up and leaning against the desk again.

“But, since you’re still here…” she turned to a stack of archives on her desk, “Would you be a sweetheart and help me take these to my office?”

“Of course!” you agreed immediately. You took half of the stack while she took the other half and led you to her office. The office was spacious and organized. She had shelves full of books, papers and other things. A large desk was displayed in the middle of the room, along with a comfortable looking couch against the wall and a chair across from it. She gestured to the chair as she set her half of the archives down on her desk.

“Set those down here, please.” You carefully placed the stack on her desk. She walked over to her chair and sat down, watching you set the archives down with a satisfied smile.

“Is there anything else you need, professor?” You asked, sweetly.

“No, that’s all for now. But I have a question for you, Y/n.”

“What is it?” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes never leaving yours as she studied your expression.

“You’re one of my best students, if not the best. You’re not like the other idiots who just show up to class and fail every test. You actually care about the material, don’t you?”

“Mhm…” you hummed in response, trying to figure out what she was getting at. She chuckled softly, crossing her legs.

“You wouldn’t want to disappoint me then, would you?”

“O-of course not.” She smirked at your stutter, finding it adorable how nervous you seemed.

“Good. You may go now. Have a good day, hon.” Your cheeks flushed at the pet name.

“H-have a good day, professor.” She watched as you left her office, a smirk still on her face. She couldn’t help but think about how cute you were when you blushed like that.

—

As the semester went on, Agatha tested you. She would give you material that was harder than the rest to see how you would do and you always came out on top. Rarely did you ever ask for help, nine times out of ten you could handle yourself. She was proud of you but she felt the need to punish you for something. To make you submit to her in a way, so when midterms began and you took her exam, she failed you on purpose.

When you got your grade back, you were stunned. You had studied your ass off night after night to prepare for it and you still somehow failed. This could potentially jeopardize your scholarship and not only that but you let down Agatha. You desperately needed her approval for some reason and you knew she would most likely not give you a chance to retake it but you chose to test your luck.

“Professor Harkness?” You said meekly as you strode into her office. It was six in the afternoon so mostly everyone had already gone home except for her apparently even though it was way past her office hours. She looked up from her desk, a small smirk on her face when she saw you. It was like she was expecting you.

“Yes, Y/n? Come in, close the door behind you.” You did as she asked.

“I um…I wanted to talk about my test score. I know you’re not one to give second chances but I really need to retake it. I studied so hard for it and this could put my scholarship at risk.” You pleaded with her. She leaned back in her chair, folding her arms and looking at you with a cold expression.

“I was so disappointed when I graded your test, Y/n,” she stood up from her chair and walked around to the other side of the desk where you were, “But the fact is that you failed. I can’t just give you a second chance. It’s unfair to the other students who work just as hard as you.” Her words hurt you to your core. You let your favorite teacher down and now she was disappointed in you.

“Please, professor! I’ll do anything! I want to make you proud again.” You pleaded, desperately needing her approval. She stepped closer to you, standing in front of you now. She tilted your chin up with her fingers, making you look at her.

“Anything, huh?”

“Y-yes…” She smirked again, looking into your eyes and noticing the desperation in them. She could see how much you needed her approval, it was like you were addicted to it.

“I think there’s a way you can make it up to me…”

“Tell me…please?” You leaned further into her touch. She chuckled at your eagerness, running her thumb across your lower lip as she looked down at you.

“It’s going to be quite the task, darling. Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Anything just- please? I’ll be a good girl.” You almost sobbed. She shushed you, pulling you closer by your chin.

“Oh, sweetheart. You’re already such a good girl. So eager to please…I can’t wait to see how well you can do this for me.” She pressed her lips against yours and you let her. You let her take control and so as she pleased.

She explored every inch of your mouth and moved her hand to grip at the nape of your neck. She roughly pulled your head back with a grin plastered on her face. In one quick motion, she manhandled you to bend over her desk. A pathetic moan left your lips when she did so.

She chuckled darkly at the sound, enjoying the way you bent over for her. She pushed everything off her desk with one arm, making a loud thud as it all fell to the floor.

“You want to be a good girl for me don’t you?” you nodded your head, “Then you will take this punishment for me and if you do good, I will change your grade on your test, is that a deal?”

“D-deal.” She smirked and moved her hand from your neck to your back, gently running her hand down your spine. She then pulled your hips back, pressing them against her.

“Good girl…” She lifted the hem of the skirt you were wearing and admired the lacy purple panties you had chosen to wear. Her eyes darkened as she ran her fingers over the lace.

Sometimes, when you would start daydreaming in class while staring at her beauty, you noticed she would always wear something purple. You guessed it was her favorite color and therefore wore purple panties. Of course, you didn’t expect for things to turn out this way but good thing you did.

She was quite pleased with your choice. It was almost like you were a perfect little doll for her, a toy to play with and do as she pleased. She knew you would submit to her easily and it was going to be so much fun breaking you in.

“Look at you, already being a tease for me even before I’ve begun. You look so pretty in my color, honey.” You blushed at her compliment and gasped when she started sliding the fabric off until it reached your ankles, leaving you completely bare before her.

She ran her hands up your bare thighs and ass, her touch leaving a trail of goosebumps on your skin. She admired the way your body reacted to her every touch, she loved how easily she could rile you up.

“I’m going to give you ten spankings and you’re going to take them like a good girl, right?”

“Yes, professor…” you whimpered. She hummed in approval, her hands still roaming your thighs. She leaned down and whispered in your ear, her breath hot against your skin.

“Stay nice and still for me. If you move too much, I’ll have to punish you even more. Understood?”

“Understood.” She smiled at your obedience and straightened up. She raised her hand and brought it down on your right cheek, leaving a red handprint behind.

“Count them for me, darling.”

“One…” She hummed again, satisfied with your response. She continued her onslaught of smacks, each one harder than the last. By the time she reached ten, your skin was red and sensitive, stinging from her touch. Tears had managed to escape your eyes and your breathing was ragged.

She rubbed her hands over your stinging cheeks, admiring her handiwork. She leaned down and placed a soft kiss on your lower back, her lips gently brushing against your skin.

“You did so well, darling. You took your punishment so well for me…such a good girl.”

“T-thank you, professor…” you sniffled. She smiled against your skin, her hands still rubbing soothing circles into your flesh.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you. Maybe I should reward you…” You felt your own arousal pool down your thighs at the thought of what kind of reward she meant.

“A r-reward?” She chuckled as she noticed the way you were reacting, noticing the way you got wet at the mere thought of a reward.

“Mhm…you look like you really want one, honey.”

“P-please? I’ve been so good!”

“I know you have, sweetheart. You’ve been such a good little toy for me…” She hummed in agreement, her hands slowly moving from your ass to your folds, dipping her fingers in your wetness. You shuddered at her touch, moaning as she spread your juices all over your lips. She smirked at the sound of your moans, enjoying the way your body reacted to her every touch. She circled your clit with her thumb, teasing you as she spoke.

“Look at you, so desperate and needy. You really do want a reward, don’t you?”

“Yes! Yes, I need it!” She chuckled darkly, continuing to toy with your sensitive bundle of nerves as she spoke. She leaned closer to your ear, her voice a low whisper.

“Yeah? You need it? You need your professor to fuck you senseless?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Her smirk widened at your desperate pleas.

“Such a good girl…” She removed her hand from your cunt, bringing it up to your lips.

“Open your mouth.” You opened your mouth almost immediately, allowing her to slide her arousal coated fingers inside. She pushed her fingers into your mouth, her eyes darkening as she watched you suck on them.

“That’s it, pet. Taste yourself for me…” She pulled them out slowly, a string of saliva connecting them to your lips. She then roughly pulled your head back by your hair and crashed her lips against yours. You moaned shamelessly against her lips. She kissed you passionately, her tongue exploring every inch of your mouth again as she held you in place all while tasting you as well.

“You taste sweeter than I imagined.” That made you even wetter. The fact that she’d been thinking about you as much as you made you feel warm inside.

She could tell that you were getting even more turned on by her words, and she loved it. She knew just how to push your buttons and make you squirm for her. She pulled away from the kiss, a grin on her face as she looked at you with hungry eyes.

“You’re so responsive, darling. It’s adorable.” You gasped loudly when she slipped her fingers inside you without warning, thrusting them in and out without letting you adjust. She chuckled at your reaction, enjoying the way you gasped and moaned for her. She started to pump her fingers in and out of you at a fast pace, curling them against your g-spot with every thrust.

“Look at you, taking my fingers so well. You’re so tight, sweetheart…”

“Thank- thank you!” you stuttered out, overwhelmed with pleasure. She hummed in amusement, enjoying the way you were struggling to form coherent sentences.

“Such a polite little toy…I love how easily you unravel under me…”

“Only- fuck- only for you, professor!” She smiled, her fingers continuing to move inside you at a relentless pace. She leaned down and began kissing and biting your neck, leaving marks all over your skin.

“That’s right, only for me. You belong to me, don’t you, darling?”

“Yes! I belong to you!” You panted out. She let out a low growl against your neck, her possessive nature coming out.

“Good girl…now cum for me. Cum for your professor…” her mouth soon joined her finger, sucking mercilessly at your clit, sending you over the edge. You had to bite down on your hand to withhold the loud moan that almost left your lips as you came. Mostly everyone was gone but there were still janitors and such. You didn’t want to get caught.

She kept her mouth on you, helping you ride out your orgasm. She smirked against your skin, amused by your attempts to be quiet.

“Oh, pet…you’re trying so hard to be quiet, but I can see how much you’re struggling.”

“It felt so- so good…” you muttered, tiredly. She pulled her fingers out of you and licked them clean, looking at you with a satisfied expression.

“I know, hon. You did so well for me…” she reached down and pulled your panties back up. She gently patted your thigh once your panties were back in place, her eyes raking over your body with a possessive gleam.

“Now, let’s get you cleaned up. We can’t have you walking around with cum on your thighs, can we?”

“Mhmm…” you hummed, too fucked out to form real words. She chuckled and picked you up, carrying you bridal style towards the bathroom in her office.

“You’re adorable when you’re like this, all dazed and fucked out.” She placed you on the sink countertop and used a wet cloth to wipe down your inner thighs. She was gentle as she cleaned you up, making sure to remove any evidence of your encounter. She smirked as she looked at your face, noticing how you were still coming down from your high.

“There we go, all clean and presentable again.”

“Are you changing my test grade?” You asked shyly. She chuckled and shook her head, placing a finger under your chin and tilting your head up to look at her.

“Well, of course. We made a deal and you even got a reward out of it. Now, run along. I don’t want people to get the wrong impression.”

“Yes, ma’am.” you hopped off the counter and almost ran out of her office. Did that really just happen? Did you let your professor fuck you senseless? God, you were a mess.

She watched you leave, a satisfied smirk on her face. She chuckled to herself as she sat down at her desk, picking up a pen and grading papers as if nothing had happened.

“See you in class, pet.”

Taglist; @polaris-likethestar @wandasreallover @oh-no-bummer @phixiesworld @eliscannotdance @venomhimbo @aka-patsy @scoliobean @chlondykebar @marvelwomenarehot0 @mgruiz @daenerys713

[kyeomofhearts]

Back For More | J.WW

+ summary: while adjusting to your new life in college, you couldn't help but attract the attention of wonwoo, someone who you happen to have a history with.

+ pairing: badboy!wonwoo x fem!reader

+ word count: 2.7k

+ content: badboy!wonwoo, college au, mature language, flirting (wonwoo is a menace), jealousy. [pls let me know if i missed anything!]

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

[ᝰ.ᐟ] i hope you guys enjoy this! it's most likely going to be a two-parter so definitely let me know if you want to be added to my taglist! i would greatly appreciate it if you guys reblogged (maybe with comments too ^^) since i thrive on your guys' validation :)

You were tired, very tired.

Granted, this was your own doing. Maybe if you hadn't pushed your responsibilities to the side last night you wouldn't have had to wake up so early to study for an exam, but what's done is done. This whole college thing was not going so well, to say the least. Sure, it's only the beginning of the second semester, but you already feel exhausted by all of your class workloads.

Just ten more minutes of this boring lecture and you could finally go home and crawl into bed. But… that's only if you avoid him today. Which now that you’re thinking about it, you hope he isn’t waiting for you outside, again. That would be the last thing you needed today.

With that being said, things have felt a little weird if you were being honest. Of course, this was your first year of university, so things were bound to feel new and different. But there was something, or rather someone that was making you feel strange.

Around two weeks ago you noticed that Wonwoo, an old classmate of yours, had recently started to become a bit friendly towards you. While that normally wouldn’t be considered weird, you couldn’t help but feel skeptical about his intentions. You knew the kind of people he surrounded himself with, and especially the girls he would go after; which was the exact opposite of you. So what exactly did he want from you?

What also makes this situation more odd is that you’ve basically known Wonwoo for your whole life. Of course, you don’t actually know him, you just happened to go to the same elementary, middle, and high school (which is insane if you think about it). Acquaintance is a perfect word to describe your relationship with him, nothing more nothing less. So yeah… it’s a little weird when the guy you have been around for (almost) your whole life is suddenly trying to befriend you, there definitely had to be something wrong with him.

All you knew about Wonwoo was that he was on the more reserved and quiet side; mainly keeping to himself most of the time. His group of friends was quite the opposite of him, which always made you wonder how he even became friends with them in the first place.

Seeing how the lecture was ending soon, you started to pack your stuff; you were more than ready to dash straight out of the classroom. Having finished all of your assignments for today, you had nothing left to worry about. So once the professor had made her goodbyes, you made a straight beeline to the door, nothing was going to hold you back from your long-awaited nap. Your pace was brisk, attempting to avoid the backed-up main exit, you decided to go to the opposite door. The walk back to your apartment wasn’t too bad either, most of the time you saw it as a way to daydream and listen to music. So while you scrolled through your various playlists, you happened to miss the (very obvious) figure following you.

Wonwoo called out your name a few times until it finally dawned on him that you had your headphones on. He took a few long strides to catch up to you; he was very adamant on getting your attention this morning. With ease, he quickly plucked your headphones off of your head.

“What are we listening to today?” He said while adjusting the headphones on his head. It took you a second to fully process what he was doing. You knew he was doing it to provoke you, but you were determined to not let that happen today. So to his surprise, you simply kept walking. You figured that he would continue with his antics if you gave him the reaction that he wanted so you did the opposite, you ignored him.

What shocked him the most was seeing you pull out an old pair of earbuds and plugging them into your phone. He was dumbfounded to say the least, how were you so prepared and why were you ignoring him?

And again, he quickly caught up with a few simple steps. He took your headphones off of his head and tapped them against your shoulder.

With a tired sigh, you turned around to face him but couldn’t help but admire his face. You really didn't want to lose that ‘expressionless’ look you were going for (to help you ignore him of course), but that small smile of his was enough to crack you down. It's like he knew that it was your one weakness when it came to him. This was the most annoying part of it all. Anytime he smiled or looked at you, a tiny part inside you secretly liked it, making you crave his attention at times.

Objectively speaking, Wonwoo was very handsome. That was something you could never deny, you would even go as far as to say that he was your type but you didn't particularly like the people he called his ‘friends’ so you were stuck in a weird limbo.

“Is there something on my face, birdy?”

You scoffed at the nickname. “I told you not to call me that.”

Wonwoo’s eyes were looking straight into yours, a smirk slowly creeping up to his lips. It didn't help that he was looking really good today either, his messy hair combined with the whole biker fit did wonders for your eyes. He was about to say something before you heard your ringtone go off, evidently cutting him off.

Oh.

It was Hyunwoo. That's odd... you finished your shared project with him rather early, what could he be calling you about? Either way, you answered the random call in front of a rather annoyed Wonwoo.

"Hello?"

"Heyyy yn, I was wondering if you wanted to get lunch later today?" You couldn't help but feel your eyes widen at his sudden question. Since when did he want to hang out with you? Last time you checked he had a plethora of girls that he was talking to... maybe he was interested in you? No, you shouldn't get too ahead of yourself...

"Um... let me check if I have anything to do first. Can I call you back?" You knew that you sounded nervous but how else were you supposed to feel when the cute guy from your physics class was literally asking you to eat lunch with him?

As soon as you ended the call, you felt Wonwoo's arm snake its way down to your waist. You couldn’t help but yelp at the sudden intimate contact. Chuckling at your reaction, he leaned down, closer to your ear. “Who was that?”

"No one." You stated simply, it wasn't his business anyway.

"Hm, okay," Wonwoo rested his head on your shoulder, continuing to speak lowly in your ear. "I'll remember that birdy."

Before you could even come up with something to counter him, he decided to speak up once again.

"Well, I do have something rather important to tell you." His voice was so calm and soothing, you could honestly listen to it for hours on end if you had the chance.

"What is it?" You hoped he couldn't sense your rather, embarrassing, curiosity.

"Heard you used to have a little crush on me," his voice was evidently smug, knowing that this would surely get a rise out of you.

Which it did.

Your face burned at the memories of when you used to have a crush on Wonwoo. But, that had to be in fourth grade… so how could he have known about that? Nonetheless, you scoffed at his statement, not wanting to know that you were a little embarrassed by the sudden reminder.

“Key word, had,” you rolled your eyes at him. This did make you curious though, who could have possibly told him that? So you asked him exactly that.

“How do you even know about that?” His smile never faltered even as you lightly pushed his hand away from your waist. If anything, this made him want to touch you even more.

“I have my ways,” he stated simply. Of course, he does. You hated when he would shrug things off, now this was going to bother you for the entire week!

One thing about Wonwoo was that he has always been curious about you, this interest stemming back all the way to your elementary days. This curiosity eventually intensified in junior year of high school when you began to show your blatant distaste towards him. He just had to get to know you.

He looked down at you, his face was unreadable like always. You never knew what was going on in that mind of his.

"Why are you here? Shouldn't you be hanging out with your actual friends?" Sometimes you couldn't help but blurt out your thoughts to him even if they sounded a bit rude. His face faltered for a split second, probably caught off guard by the random question. Shoot, you really didn’t mean to say that out loud. Although, it looks like Wonwoo didn’t take any offense to your sudden question. If anything, it made him... smile?

“I am hanging out with my friend,” he stopped you to face him, “which is you.” You rolled your eyes at him. That had to be the corniest thing he has ever said to you if you were being honest. You just hated that giddy feeling he would give you any time he said something remotely cheesy.

"Ugh, you're so dumb," you groaned while checking the time on your phone. It was getting close to noon and you hadn't responded to Hyunwoo's question from earlier. Maybe it was best if you didn't go... who knows what he wanted from you. If you were being completely honest, you didn't know if you had it in you to see other people at the moment, aside from Wonwoo of course.

"Have somewhere to be?" Wonwoo asked, a hint of concern peeking through his voice.

"No, thank god, but I do have a scheduled nap to get to so if you don't mind-" you were cut off by the sound of an engine revving, making your body jump at the unexpected noise. You turned to see where the source of the commotion was coming from but then realized it was coming from a group of bikers nearby; most likely Wonwoo's friends.

Or so you thought?

Wonwoo didn't seem too pleased with the group that was getting closer to where the two of you were. On the contrary, Wonwoo looked pissed. His jaw was visibly clenched, the gentle grip he had on your waist tightened, and his eyes lost that playful spark he had earlier. You couldn't help but feel guilty for thinking about how hot Wonwoo looked when he was angry. Of course, you would never want to be on the receiving end of his anger but seeing it on the sidelines was quite... interesting.

Wait. This might actually be serious, so it's best if you leave before anything crazy happens.

"I think I'm going to head out now..." you said quietly as you tried to slip away from Wonwoo's (awfully) strong grasp.

He turned to look at you, his eyes softening once they landed on your figure. Why did they have to come and bother him at this exact moment? He knew that whatever was going to happen was not going to be pretty, but he found himself reluctant to let you go.

Before truly letting you go, he quietly asked, "Are you sure? I can take you home if you want me to." As soft as his voice was, he still managed to sound composed which was comforting considering the situation.

You nodded in response, "I don't live that far from here so it's fine, thank you for the offer though." You managed to flash him a small, awkward smile before turning away from him and heading toward the direction of your apartment. You didn't know what exactly was going on between those guys and Wonwoo but it for sure wasn't friendly. Although it wasn't exactly your issue, you couldn't help but feel worried about Wonwoo, even if he was a pain in the ass sometimes.

Much to your dismay, that scheduled nap never came your way that day.

You blame Wonwoo, how were you supposed to sleep peacefully knowing he was probably getting jumped? Okay, you might be jumping to conclusions but what else were you supposed to think about when he was visibly angry at the mere sight of those guys?

Realistically speaking, it's only been two days since that whole incident happened. Granted, you haven't seen Wonwoo since then but that could mean a lot of things.

[...]

While you were in line to get a smoothie from one of the pop-up shops near the campus, you felt a sudden tap on your shoulder.

"Did my little birdy miss me?" You felt Wonwoo say right next to your ear, his breath fanning across your earlobe. It sent a wave of tingles down your spine, making you shudder in turn. Though you weren't a fan of his spontaneous appearance.

"God, you need to stop doing that! I almost slapped you I swear-" You stopped mid-way once you turned around and saw his face. He had a few cuts on his lips and eyebrows and one big bruise across his cheek. Those guys really did a number on him.

Your eyebrows furrowed in concern, "are you okay?"

He tried to wave it off but you could tell he was bothered by your question, "It's fine, really, don't worry about it." Was he insane? How were you not going to worry when he was visibly injured?

"Were these from the guys on Tuesday?" You couldn't help but ask, where else would he get these cuts and bruises if it didn't come from them?

His demeanor immediately switched and he pushed himself away from you.

"It's none of your business so stay out of it."

"Okay." That was the only thing you said before grabbing your smoothie from the worker and quickly walking away from the shop. If he wanted to be like that then so be it. You most definitely were not going to wait for him to 'open up' by all means, he could throw himself a pity party for all you care.

"Wait-" He tried reaching for your arm but you were too quick for him. Your steps were swift, helping you create a reasonable distance between you and Wonwoo. He called out your name a few times before giving up, he didn't want to gather any unwanted attention from the people nearby. Reaching your pace, Wonwoo was finally close enough to grab your wrist and make you look at him.

"Are you seriously ignoring me?" His voice was a bit jagged, no doubt coming from the unexpected cardio you made him do to catch up to you.

Unfortunately for him, you were petty. "You said it wasn't my business, so please do not talk to me because I really do not care." You brushed past him once again this time making sure he could not grab your arms or wrists.

He exhaled in annoyance, "Look I'm sorry-" Wonwoo was mid-apology before being abruptly cut off by the voice of a guy yelling your name out loud.

Speaking of the devil, what immaculate timing.

"Hey yn! Did you still want to get food after class?" Hyunwoo jogged to where you were standing but saw how Wonwoo was still trying to talk to you.

"Sorry, were you busy with him?"

You instantly responded to Hyunwoo, "No, he was just asking for directions, but yeah I'm down for food." Like before, you made your way towards Hyunwoo, making sure to bump into Wonwoo. He couldn't help but stay frozen in place as he watched you walk to class with some random guy, jealousy slowly invading his mind.

Directions? Did she really...?

As much as Wonwoo wanted to be mad at you, he really had no one to blame but himself. The whole situation with his old group of 'friends' was really getting to him so once you popped that question it just seemed to send him over the edge. He just didn't know how far you would go to express your annoyance towards him. Now all he had to do was find a way to properly apologize to you before that Hyunwoo guy got to you first.

The only thing stopping him? He didn't have your number or any of your socials...

Part Two: II

[neuroticbookworm]

Another Thai BL, another Asian parent-child conflict that enrages the audience and yet, is extremely nuanced. I’m gonna try and speak on it as an Asian kid who grew up in the East, but currently lives in the West, carrying complicated feelings on the Asian parenting I received.

I’m seeing a good discourse in the tags from @lurkingshan, @respectthepetty, @bengiyo, @heretherebedork and @williamrikers, among others, on the hypocrisy of a dad who hit his son in anger and is now lecturing him on the importance of controlling one’s actions when angry. I agree with everyone that the dad is being a hypocritical piece of shit. But I do not think that this is a failure in the writing of the show. Quite the opposite, actually. Because of how Ten responds and acts in the face of this hypocrisy.

Ten comes across as belligerent and confrontational in every interaction he has had with his dad, but it is never uncalled for, and he never seeks it out himself. He tries to stay out of his dad and his stepmom/his dad’s girlfriend’s way as much as possible, and only responds in a defensive manner when provoked. And in today’s episode, he even kept himself open enough in the conversation with his dad, despite his anger, to concede and accept a very good point when raised. Ten understands his dad’s hypocrisy but refuses to stoop to the same level of pettiness because he knows being a good partner and a good friend is more important than being right. This is a mark of excellent writing, in my opinion. The main character is fiercely loyal to his partner and his friends and does not let his baggage with his dad cloud his course of action.

I also see calls for an apology from the dad already brewing in the fandom. And I understand the instinct to want that. It is always so satisfying when mistreated children finally get the apology that’s been long overdue. But it’s rarely this simple in an Asian household. Times are changing faster than most people can in a lifetime, and there are systemic, cultural flaws in how an Asian society understands and teaches parenting. And if we factor in the social, economic, religious lines that heavily influence how an Asian person forms their social circle, it would’ve left these parents with little to no peers who can tell them what they’re doing is wrong. Parents striking their kids is clearly considered evil nowadays, but only a few years ago, it would’ve been a perfectly acceptable response to control a bratty child, on and off screen (and it still is in some Asian cultures).

Now, NONE of what I said above is an excuse to write off the behavior of Ten’s dad as acceptable, just because it’s very Asian. As an Asian who grew up in the East, the demand for an apology does not particularly resonate with me, because Ten and his dad both know that their problems are not gonna go away as soon as Ten’s dad apologizes. Because:

If Ten starts demanding an apology for every shitty thing his dad has ever done, where should he stop? Should he demand an apology for the time his dad probably struck him as a kid when he was trying to get him to memorize multiplication tables, as is wont of every Asian parent ever (it is such an ubiquitous experience to Asian kids everywhere that there are reels with millions of views on IG, referencing this experience. Does this mean every Asian parent is evil and must be put on trial by their kids? Holy moly, think of all the money therapists would make if every Asian kid in the world decided to call out their parents on their shit. Entire economies would crumble to dust from the sudden disruption in cashflow.)

Is an apology going to comfort Ten? Asian parenting warps the sense of self of both the parents and the kids, because of the levels of abject sacrifice involved in it. It is extremely possible that Ten’s dad had worked day and night to provide well for his family, for his son, before Ten’s mom fell ill. It’s the same choice he made for his wife, but in this case, it paid off, because now Ten is financially well taken care of, and he is privileged enough to pursue a career in medicine. If Ten demands an apology from his dad for not being there when his mom was dying, do we know for sure that when he gets that apology, his mind won’t conflate the sacrifices his dad made for him, thus making him feel guilty for forcing someone who clearly cared about him enough to work hard for him, into defeat (look at this rich soup of Asian parenting misery, yum yum yum. I know it’s delicious because I’m paying my therapist weekly to make the broth less spicy).

The dialogue in the show whenever Ten’s mom is brought up and discussed is always very carefully worded:

Not “because you did not act”, but “because you took so long to act”. Looks like Ten’s dad made a choice that ultimately did not pay off. He cared, and he wanted to do something to save his wife, but whatever he chose to do ultimately did not help. And now she is dead and he has managed to not help and comfort his wife in her final days AND unwittingly traumatize his son with his absence. The show has painted this storyline with enough nuance that I don’t believe we are meant to read Ten’s dad as a simple villain, but rather a father who does care but has made some serious mistakes. This situation is so emotionally complicated and realistically, it’s gonna take years for both of them to find a middle ground. Ten is gonna have to grow up and make a few mistakes of his own in life to develop proper empathy for his dad, and that’s gonna put a couple things into perspective for him (I’m not saying Ten is bound to make mistakes because he is bad. He is going to because shit happens in life and human beings always do better in hindsight than in the moment). And the dad is gonna have to grow old and let his aging body humble him a little and shrink his ego enough to see that he had failed his son by not being emotionally available to deal with their trauma, together.

I’ve been watching Kim’s Convenience, a Canadian sitcom that follows a Korean-Canadian family and their shenanigans. I’m only on S04E02, but there is a father-son conflict at the centre of this show that is still not directly addressed by both the dad and the son. It’s been years (almost a decade, I think) since the son has been driven out of his home by his dad for a dumb mistake he made as a teen. And the way the show works on it is so infuriating, because it is so Asian. It is rarely addressed aloud in the presence of the dad or the son, lest it leads to anger and screaming and storming off. The path to reconciliation is built with mom calling her son for help to fix something in their home because his dad is too stubborn to ask for it. With the son visiting the hospital when the dad had to undergo surgery, and having their first real conversation in years which the dad forgets after waking up from the influence of pain drugs. With the daughter’s old phone passed down to the dad with her brother’s number on it, which leads to them texting each other. It is all extra frustrating for me because I’m extremely straightforward in my conversations with my parents. I do not like ambiguous endings to verbal conflicts because they are a ticking time bomb and I do not have the capacity to forget its existence and let it tick away in the background. But, I understand it when my friends, and Asian characters in TV shows, don’t want to force things out in the open if it can be swept under the rug for the time being, because peace of mind in Asian households is fleeting and you would be wise to take what you get.

Good TV shows can best serve their audience when they serve their characters, and stay true to the experiences of the people they are trying to represent. My teen ass was regularly shocked, appalled and intrigued by the sexual liberation promised by Western media I consumed while I was in school and college. I was surrounded by a sexually repressed society that was convinced that the only moral way to enjoy pleasure was after marriage with your partner. And very predictably, this means a lot of dead bedrooms, unhappy marriages and kids growing up with no real understanding of what romantic love looks like. I would’ve never had the courage to move my entire life to the West, if the Western media I watched had not represented its people in all their messy, horny glory, albeit with a rose-tinted lens on gender, race and sexuality.

Some Asian parents in media need to fall at the feet of their children and apologize. I remember being absolutely fucking enraged while @lurkingshan and I watched Double Savage at the behest of our friend @waitmyturtles, and in the finale, Korn was the one who fell at the feet of his absolute piece of shit of a dad to apologize for FUCKING NOTHING. And after Shan and I were done surviving that show, I remember telling my friends that most Asian media does not have strong writing whenever Asian children need to defy their shitty parents and come to terms with their destructive parenting, because chances are, most Asian creators would not have successfully done it. Hence, intergenerational trauma (gasp! It’s all connected!).

So. I would never demand to see Ten’s dad apologize to him to consider Cooking Crush a successful show, because that is not the cultural context this story operates in. Would I enjoy it if he does? Hell yes. Would I be mad if he does not? No, because Ten is proving him wrong time and again, and that’s a constant reminder from the narrative of who is in the right.

[neurodivergentbraingoblins]

Story time about how being "inclusive" is often used as pretty jewlery to make workplaces seem less shitty than they are.

So I used to work for a place that did workers compensation claims. I was a data entry worker - essentially my job was to processes all incoming and outgoing documents and make sure they digitally got attached to the correct claim so other people could do their job.

I had been working at this place for about 6 months, and we had a MASSIVE turnover in people. Like over half my team/coworkers quit. Well, I just happened to be really, really good at data entry work. My pattern recognition skills and OCD compulsions were a perfect fit for this job. Even management constantly would say how impressed they were with the amount of work I could get done.

Here's the problem - the 2 other people who didn't quit during the turnover were my superiors. They had problems with the way I communicate (AuDHD). So instead of dealing with it, they openly harassed me in group chats. Our boss would see the chats and then call them out on it and tell them to stop.

Fast forward a few months later. Shit is getting crazy for our company as we were expanding. I'm getting harassed constantly by all my "teammates" and from higher ups. I go to HR about the concern and they decide to have me just directly report to our boss. But the problem wasn't solved. I still had to work with and ask questions to the team who obviously hated me. Simply because I communicate and work differently than I do. I was always willing to help them get caught up on work, but never the other way around.

So I've been at this place for about a year now and I'm testing a brand new method of cataloging data to the correct files. (Example- adding medical records for a specific person to their specific digital file so the adjuster assigned to the claim can review it). Turns out something broke with the process and over 700 files were lost.

So I get pulled into a very sudden meeting with me, the 2 teammembers who were my superiors and my boss. They are freaking out trying to figure out how to fix this. When I could finally get a chance to speak I told them I had backups of most of the files. They all went silent and just stared at me.

I explained that the way the process worked gave me anxiety because of this very potential issue. Once the files were uploaded to the claims, they were deleted from the storage location. Gone permanently. I didnt want to be the one responsible for losing important documents if something when wrong, so as a precaution (and a newly developed OCD compulsion) I would save most files to a different folder as a backup (usually just the files I had to convert from one format (ex: word doc) to a PDF).

Turns out I ended up saving the company thousands of dollars and thousands of work hours. My boss literally said to my face "your OCD saved the day! You're a hero!". The very next day everyone was back to being upset at me for how I did my job 😅

Well, over the course of my year there, management put together a COMPANY WIDE MANDATORY meeting about inclusivity and anti-discrimination. Of course I attended and I was having to hold back tears and laughter as everyone made all these promises to not judge people and to be open to "other working styles". The meeting was a 5 hour long meeting with different games and activities. You could tell the company execs were so proud of themselves for the meeting.

The very next day I received the perfect example of what NOT to do from my own boss who helped lead the company meeting! Essentially she heard a rumor that I was setting up meetings with other departments to work on things that hadn't been approved through the proper channels. She pulled me into a virtual meeting and, I kid you not, lectured me for 5 minutes straight about how that wasn't allowed. When I finally got a chance to speak I calmly told her I'd never done anything like that before. I admitted that occasionally I would ask someone else questions in a random email here or there when it related to what we were talking about. But I had never done any of the things she just accused me of and lectured me about. She was "assuming the worst and the negative instead of something positive" which was one of the core values we had spent almost an hour on at the meeting the day before.

I immediately went to HR crying. What was the point of that ridiculous mandatory meeting if the company superiors were still going to discriminate against me??? Well after a year of putting in hard work for them, fighting against all the harassment they threw at me, and doing my best to advocate for myself I ended up quiting. It was an amazing paying full time (40hr) job that fit my skills perfectly. But I had to quit because I couldn't stand listening to them say "we love your OCD and it really helps the company, but you need to stop doing things that way. It is really annoying and takes too long. Plus your coworkers don't like it. But keep giving us those same results! You really are our best worker!"

My OCD was turned into a joke. Something that was only okay when it benefitted them, but a disgusting trait to hide away when it didn't.

Tldr: I gave a year of my life to a company that outwardly toted being "inclusive" while simultaneously being harassed for my OCD and AuDHD symptoms. All while being told my "OCD saves the company money but like, can you please stop doing things that way? Thanks!"

[jeannereames]

Do you see memes and shitposts about Alexander and his time? If yes, do you like them, you hate them? Would you change something about these memes?

I’m sorry. I’m just really curious about what a professor thinks about this. Do you perhaps have a favorite Alexander meme?

Well, for me there’s a big difference between memes and shitposts. The former can be rather entertaining, the latter are just trolling. Don’t feed the trolls. I realize I’m perhaps defining shitposting more narrowly than some, but there’s enough of the narrow sort out there I don’t want to confuse it with memes.

Meme are great. I have two favorites, although not about Alexander, ironically. I’ve shared them below. Both show up in my class Power-points, btw! Many of my colleagues also enjoy clever memes. My buddy Borja Antela was trying to collect some on Alexander last year. For a while, I followed Alexandergoatmemes on Instagram, but finally left because about 85/90% of them seemed to be about Alexander naming cities after himself. Sure, it’s funny maybe the first 20 times, but at 100+?

So memes are great. Shitposting and ignorant-posting, however, are annoying.

I’m deliberately creating that third category. Shitposters know they’re posting shit; ignorant-posters (usually) don’t. The latter put up videos, tweets, or blog entries about (in this case) Alexander that perpetuate a lie, a false quote, or an oversimplified-and-mostly-wrong factoid. Some ignorant-posters are just reposting what they heard because they don’t know any better and may receive correction well enough—especially if offered politely. Yet others get upset (sometimes disproportionately so) when their errors or distortions are pointed out.

This can be about controversial matters, such as Alexander’s putative “sexuality” or it can be something surprising. I once had a fellow fly off the handle when he posted that Alexander was left-handed and I (gently) corrected him.* You’d have thought I’d called his mother a whore. It seemed quite silly…except that left-handedness used to be considered a Very Bad Thing. So being able to claim famous people as lefties was apparently more for him than just leftie pride.

Aside from oddities, most of the ignorant-posting I’ve seen comes in three main types.

First, we have the religious/spiritual/life-coach sorts who usurp Alexander for a moral lesson—not unlike the orators of the (Roman-era) Second Sophistic, or both Muslims and Christians in some of the Alexander Romances. Alexander has ALWAYS been a malleable figure for lecturing. Ergo, he pops up in homilies/sermons as a parable, like his supposed Last Three Wishes. It is, of course, total bullshit, but there’s quite a lot of stuff like it out there. People read it, go “Aww,” and reblog without bothering to check if it’s correct. It has “the authority of hearsay.” These can be either Alexander-positive or Alexander-negative parables, btw.

See also: quotes attributed to famous celebrities that they never, in fact, said. Alexander gets these too. The ¡Inspirational! “Army of Sheep Led by a Lion” is especially egregious, as it’s a general proverb that appeared well after Alexander (no, he didn’t say it). It seems to be currently popular, along with, “There is nothing impossible to him who will try” (also not ATG). Yet these make great quotes for those damn “Inspirational Posters.” Here’s a whole page of them, lion quote right at the top, suitable for a Power-point!...with no attempt to verify their authenticity or say where they got them. But the image with the quote below is especially funny as they even put a date on their fictional quote. If it has a date, it must be true! Netflix, btw, used that bloody quote even though I told them not to; it was fake. Didn’t matter.

Second, we have the alt-right/white supremacist groups, or hangers-on who might reject the label (coyly or not) but embrace much of its Eurocentric thinking. These folks present Alexander as spreading good [white] Western values to the poor benighted East [brown people]. It’s essentially warmed-over Plutarch with a dash of Curtius and some Arrian. Their Alexander even sometimes has longish flowing (blond) locks and is oddly tall.** Like Thor. I stay the hell away from them but have occasionally stumbled over them on Tik-Tok.

Anyway, the alt-right crowd may have read some about Alexander, written by other alt-right guys who take material from a carefully curated set of “accepted” histories: Arrian and Plutarch, and not just Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, but his double-essay from the Moralia, “On the Fate or Fortune of Alexander.” They tend to be war/conquest-approving and see the Greco-Roman past as some pure Aryan utopia from which we’ve fallen into our “wretched age of iron.”*** Of late, a lot of their associated images are AI generated, btw. A couple examples below.

Last, and on the opposite end of the spectrum are the Alexander-was-Queer-AND-Wonderful, and oh, boy, some of them also don’t want a single bad thing said about their hero. They may know relatively little about his life aside from his putative gayness, but are just as resistant to/resentful of being corrected in their errors and romantic oversimplifications.

And that is what all of these categories share: oversimplification for the sake of a particular social and/or political agenda.****

Isn’t it, then, also shitposting? No. Because shitposters intend to stir the pot. They may or may not believe what they say, but they’re saying it TO get a reaction. Like the Tweet Heard Round the Alexander-verse after the Netflix thing (below). THAT was a shitpost. His entire goal was to go viral, and he succeeded.

By contrast, ignorant-posters usually aim for a particular audience and rarely expect to go viral outside their circle. Nor do they expect to be corrected. When they are, they react with surprise and anger. (Again, there are exceptions.)

I tend to observe these things, but rarely engage—although I did engage more when I was a young grad student. Now if I reply, it’s general (as here), not to the original post/tweet itself. TBH, I have books and articles to write, classes to teach, and papers to grade. 😉 I don’t have time for flamewars.

-----------------------

* Yes, I made Alexander left-handed in Dancing with the Lion, partly for the hell of it. But there’s zero evidence one way or the other—which I point out in my Author’s Note at the end of book 2, Rise.

** BTW, there’s a Whole Thing out there online about Alexander as tall, even Super Tall, claiming evidence which they don’t actually cite (correctly). Note the “many stories suggest….” Oh, really? These are? Anyway, I don’t think the author of that blog entry is alt-right—which is why I put it as a footnote—but dig the wacko AI white-haired Nordic Alexander at the top! And I’m still chuckling at a 7-foot-tall Alexander. Good Lord, how tall would that make Hephaistion?

*** Yeah, that’s a little bow to Hesiod’s theory of the Ages of Man.

**** Note that I didn’t include Greek Nationalists. While some of them also swing right (Golden Dawn, Front Line, National Reform Party, etc.), many are more moderate. Alexander is a Greek hero, and if what’s presented about him by some is also oversimplified to fit a national narrative, it doesn’t spring from ignorance so much as deliberate choice and what they learned in school/at home. Think about what the average (white) American knows about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, or for that matter, the average native person about Tecumseh or Crazy Horse.

[homeslices]

Hey I love your best friend writing with chishiya. Was wondering if you could do a before the borderlands how they became friends. You said they met in collage so I guess they meet there and become friends. Maybe when they very first enter the borderlands as well. Like what they were doing before the fireworks.

Best Friends 0

Part 1 Here

Part 2 Here

A/N: I finally got this done!!! If I’m being honest I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this because it is all before the show, romance, and smut, so any feedback would be amazing. Also I’m not sure how ooc Chishiya is in this, I’m sorry 😭

Summary: This is apart of my Best Friend series. This is Pre-Borderland, and mostly just mutual pining.

Pairings: Shuntaro Chishiya x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings: None

The first day of school has never rattled you. You have thought like this since you were a child and had to leave your home in order to attend preschool for the first time, then for kindergarten, then for elementary, and so on and so on, and it’s the same now, your first day of medical school.

If you're being honest with yourself, school was always more like a chore to you. While you enjoyed learning, that’s all you really liked about school. It’s not like you didn’t have friends, quite the opposite you had quite a few, but you knew friendships from childhood hardly ever lasted outside in the real world, and if you were being truthful, you much preferred the quiet.

Your lecture started in 5 minutes, and although most people wanted to get there early, you just wanted to slip in under the radar. The door to the lecture hall was propped open, and just as you’d hope you were able to go in and take a seat in the very back completely undetected. Well, almost completely undetected.

There weren't many people around you. In fact there was only one other person in your row who was also pretty much invisible to everyone there, everyone besides you.

You sat a few seats away from the mysterious blonde, taking notice of him, just as he was taking notice of you. You set all of your supplies in front of you, however much to your annoyance, your pencil rolls off the table right in front of him.

The blonde looks at the pencil that rolled over to his shoe, then to you. He gives you an amused look before finally speaking.

“Well that’s inconvenient.”

You raise your eyebrow, curious more than anything. Most normal people would just hand you the pencil without a word, yet he seems to be dragging it out.

You hum in agreement, “yeah it is.”

He looks down at the pencil once again then back up at you. In response you shrug and turn back to your desk only to pull out a pen inside.

His lips quirk up slightly, and a few moments later, your pencil that fell at the strange blondes feet rolled its way over to you on the desk.

From that day forward you always say in the back a few seats next to the guy, who’s name you later found out was Chishiya.

Over the next few months you became close. You partnered together for group work, studied together preparing for tests, and even just hung around for the hell of it. You found out you both had a lot in common, including your sense of humor, and over time you also realized you were beginning to develop feelings for the blonde. You would rather die than admit that to him though.Those months blended into years and now you're both working at the same hospital, much to your pleasure and annoyance.

“You know, most friends would’ve gotten their friend caffeine when they work a 13 hour shift together.”

Chishiya nods his head in agreement, before taking a sip of his coffee and replying to you.

“Yes they would.” A smug smile makes his way to his face and continues. “Good thing we’re not most friends, huh?”

You narrow your eyes in fake annoyance only to be handed Chishiya’s half drunk coffee as he stands up.

“I need to get going. One of my patients, Hayato, has a donor for his transplant lined up and I need to tell him and the family.”

An actual, genuine smile graces your face.

“That’s amazing, Shun,” you respond, calling him the nickname you gave him long ago.

He only hums in agreement, but when you make eye contact with him, you can see how happy he actually is. Hayato has been a patient of Chishiya’s for a while, so naturally he’s become close to both him and his family.

As Chishiya walks out of the break room, you take a sip of the coffee he handed you and immediately grimace.

“Who the hell drinks black coffee?” You mutter, only to look at the clock in the corner of the room and realizing you have 4 more hours left of your shift.

Sighing you take another drink of the bitter liquid and close your eyes ready for this day to be over.

Over the next few days, you can see how the good news has affected Chishiya. He seemed lighter somehow. His lips quirked up more often, he humored you during break, and he even got you caffeine. However, like most good things, it didn’t last.

It was a week before the transplant when everything fell apart. Chishiya left with one of your superiors, and once he came back, it was like all the light had left his body.

It was after your shift, on your way home, the Chishiya told you the news about Hayato no longer getting the transplant he so desperately needed. You of course were beyond angry, yet Chishiya only sighs and in a monotone repeats what both of your superior said to him.

“It’s just the way it is.”

And a few days later, you both were on the second floor watching the young boy’s mother, whose son just passed, sob. Chishiya’s jaw was tense and eyes were as black as a void, drained of everything. Yet, all you could do to show your best friend emotional support in that moment, was hold onto his hand and squeeze.

Chishiya would never admit how much this hurt him, and you would never push him to, but you were always there to try to make him feel better. This leads to another thing Chishiya would never admit, his feelings for you.

You were always there for him as he was for you, yet neither of you were ready to acknowledge that. At this point, for a stranger looking in, it almost seemed like you both were already dating. You were always with each other, supported each other, and just clicked.

This leads to where you both are now, walking down the busy streets of Tokyo trying to get to your usual café. While crossing the busy street you take notice of someboys, about both Chishiya and your age, screwing around in the middle of it. You just huff out a laugh at their childlike behavior. Your attention soon is drawn to fireworks being lit up in the sky.

“That’s weird,” You say to Chishiya. “Is it some sort of holiday I forgot?”

Chishiya only looks up to the fireworks, while not breaking pace, and shrugs.

“I don’t believe so.” He pauses only to continue with one word. “Strange.”

You snort in amusement.

“You think?”

Chishiya’s lip twitches up slightly and when you both reach your usual café, he opens the door for you.

You mumble out a thank you before entering your normally crowded café, only to find it empty. The only sound you could hear was Chishiya’s footsteps behind you coming closer.

“This is even more strange.”

You turn to look at him, eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the situation, only to gap in shock as you see outside.

The big windows of the café is where you and Chishiya usually sit and people watch, observing the people walking down the street. Yet the only thing these big windows show are the empty streets of Tokyo.

Chishiya follows your gaze and his eyebrows raise.

“Huh.”

“Where the hell did everyone go?” You wonder aloud.

“No idea.” Chishiya responds casually.

His carefree attitude makes you press your lips together and sigh.

“What do we do now?”

“Probably look around.” Chishiya responds after having a moment to think.

Seeing as there was no other option, you nod and make your way outside of the café with the blonde. You both wander around the town, going in and out of different buildings, not finding a single soul. You did find out though that phones and other non-battery powered electronics do not work here. Wherever here is.

Taking a few useful supplies with you both, and temporarily stumped from the lack of clues, you both head to where you began, the café. At this point it was dark and you honestly just wanted to rest. However, the sudden brightness of a build board turning on blinds you for a second.

‘Players this way’ with an arrow pointed to the left, graces the screen. You glance towards Chishiya, who is already looking at you.

“You think we should go?”

“I think that we would get more answers.”

You hum in agreement to him, and brush your arm against his as you pass, follow the way the random arrow points you to.

Finally reaching your destination, you and Chishiya find a lit up restaurant. You glance at him, to which he nods, and simultaneously you enter the building, both with blank faces. The building was not empty, in fact, there were four other people waiting inside. They all looked nervous, but not because of the unknown. They all looked like they have done this before. In fact, that’s probably why they all were so anxious, you piece together.

Finding a table with phones on top and a sign saying ‘one per person’ you and Chishiya both take one. It turns on surprisingly, scans your face, and the words ‘register closes in:’ and a countdown appear on the screen.

A generic feminine voice rings out, interrupting the silence.

“Registration is now closed. The game will now commence. Game: Blackjack. Difficulty: 6 of Diamonds.”

Following the voices direction you all file into the restaurant to the table in the center, with nooses hanging over the chairs. Not giving anything away with your face, as to not to seem vulnerable, you take in the scene before you, and as the voice instructs, sit in a chair around the table and place the noose around your neck.

You look over at Chishiya, who was seated right next to you, while the voice lists all the rules, which you were paying close attention to. Once again, you find him already looking at you. His face, similar to yours, holds no emotion, but his eyes display curiosity. Yours do too you're sure, but also slight fear as there was a noose hanging around you and the person you care most about.

The last sentence makes both your gazes harden.

“The game clears once there are two survivors.”

The quick conversation with your eyes between you and Chishiya is clear, and as you look around the table, analyzing the strangers that sat with a noose, identical to Chishiya’s and yours, around their necks, you know that only you and Chishiya are walking out of this alive.

[superlinguo]

Barb Kelly

This time last year came the sudden, unexpected news of the death of Barbara F. Kelly's. Barb Kelly was one of my undergraduate lecturers, my principle PhD supervisor, and eventually a collaborator and friend. I have mentioned Barb in passing on the blog over the years, but now we've muddled through a year without her, I finally feel like I have some space to reflect on the fact she has been one of the most important influences the course of my life.

Barb was many things to many people. She managed to do this by being deeply curious about people, and had a devastatingly compelling ability to give you her full attention when you were talking with her. She was interesting because she was interested; her friendships, hobbies and tastes were eclectic and wide-ranging. There's a really beautiful obituary from our colleague Nick Evans that captures the story of Barb's life. This is my story of how Barb shaped me as a linguist, a researcher and a person.

I first encountered Barb when she was teaching in my final year of a Bachelor of Arts. The third year subject Language and Culture was a romp through kin terms, colour theory, names, primates, spatial systems, social intelligence, politeness, and so much more. Barb was an enthusiastic lecturer, with anecdotes, contextualisation and rich examples every week.

One week she introduced us to the topic of gesture. I was intrigued! How had I made it through a whole degree without encountering this work! (now that I write courses, I know how hard it is to find space in the curriculum for every topic worthy of attention, and gesture rarely features at all in undergraduate coursework). At the end of the lecture Barb said "this is one of my favourite topics. You're not allowed to do you're final assignment on this unless you see me first, because I don't want to read a bad assignment on this topic."

I still remember when I went to talk to her about it, and experienced the full intensity of the undivided attention of Barb Kelly for the first time. At some point, mildly bewildered by all this new reading, I wondered how we even knew that people paid attention to different types of gesture. "I always thought that would be a good topic for an honours thesis," Barb mentioned, before walking me back to something more manageable for a class paper.

[A brief time jump: The last time Barb and I caught up, it was getting to the end of the year and we were trying to avoid editing a paper. Somehow we got talking about the first time we met. Barb's main recollection was: "You were so weird." Barb thought it was very funny, but I also think that being interesting to Barb Kelly was a delightful compliment.]

A couple of weeks later, I went back and asked "could... I be the person who did that paper you mentioned?" At the very end of the final semester of my degree, I threw in my plans for a fourth year of Art History. I'm not usually one to change big plans so dramatically, but I decided that I wanted to do linguistics if I got to do the kind of linguistics Barb did. Of course, many years later when we were talking about it she laughed "I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't want you to do it!"

That's how we got working on a small honours project to see what kinds of gestures and other movement people report that they pay attention to. It was an in-the-spirit replication of an old task Adam Kendon set up in the 1970s with a projector and silent film, but we used a computer and software that let people mark what they thought a gesture was (this became, many years later, Gawne & Kelly 2014). Just as I was finishing up data collection Barb disappeared. She had colorectal cancer and (although I didn't know this at the time) the prognosis was terrible.

At the end of that year I felt quite lost. I had finished the project, but didn't really know what to do next. I managed to get an office job for a while; it was fun to have a steady income after years of student life, but I got bored pretty quickly. I had planned a long nonsense holiday in Europe to distract myself. Barb had returned to work and I emailed her about catching up for coffee. I even fact-checked this in my email archive, and apparently I asked to "pick [her] brain about post-grad courses". It's easy to forget, with the benefit of hindsight, just how little idea I had of what I could do, what I should do or how I should go about making any of it happen. The only people I knew who had PhDs were the ones who taught me. I do remember we talked about where there was good work being done, the difference between Australian/UK and North American PhD programs and what kind of topics I might do. Barb then mentioned that she had a project she was working on and they were looking for someone do contribute by doing a PhD on evidential systems of a Tibeto-Burman language from Nepal. How was I meant to come up with a better idea than that? She promised me that her oncologist gave her at least the four years I needed to finish a PhD, because I am excessively practical and Barb had a very good sense of humour. I mailed my application to do a PhD at The University of Melbourne from a post office in Malta while on my holiday. I only mention this because it sounds very nonsense and like something form the 1930s.

[A disclaimer here: I usually strongly discourage students from staying at their undergaduate institution for graduate study. But I also point out I'm a giant hypocrite and staying at UoM to work with Barb was a good decision for me. Please take into account the survivor bias. Barb believed in me and that was more useful than anything another institution could have provided]

The week before I started my PhD with Barb, we caught up off campus with Sara, another PhD student who was about to start working with Barb. Barb used it as an opportunity to explain to us that even though a PhD would be big and demanding and important, it was also important that we didn't let it stop us living the rest of our lives, "if you need to, take a break to tour with a band or have a kid, that's important too" I was worried she was maybe expecting I had time to start a band as well as do a PhD? but it also left a lasting impression on me. She was so good at talking through the linguistic content of what I was doing, but also socialising me into the expectations of academia, while being realistic about life also happening. With Rachel Nordlinger as co-supervisor and Jill Wigglesworth as chair, they were an amazing, sometimes slightly terrifying, dream team who took their roles as supervisors, teachers and mentors seriously.

After my PhD, Barb joined me in the work with Andrea Berez-Kroker on data management. We also tinkered away on other things; including getting my honours thesis published. She helped me plan job applications, and even loaned me her office when I had video interviews. When I left Melbourne for post-docs we'd meet in different corners of the world. She was supportive and practical during many of my less optimistic moments while I was precariously employed. I enjoyed that my postdoc work allowed me to return to gesture, and spend more time doing lingcomm stuff, while still continuing to do work on evidentials and language documentation. Having Barb as a role-model mean that I normalised having a range of interests as a strength. I still spend a lost of time at a desk, but it's as far away as possible from the monotonous office job I left to come back to do a PhD.

In late 2020 Barb had a cardiac arrest. When La Trobe offered me an ongoing job in that same week, I apologised to her for texting her while she was in ICU. Obviously this is important because I'm the protagonist of my own story, even though it's a story about Barb, but I also wanted to mention it because a recurring theme in conversations over the last year has been "but, even when she technically *died* she still came back", which hasn't really helped things sink in.

I am pretty much the age Barb was when we first met. And, a couple of years into a tenured teaching/research role, I'm in a similar place professionally. And that's very much thanks to Barb. Without Barb I would not have done honours in linguistics, and I would not have come back to do a PhD. I wouldn't have been ready to face the grueling academic job market, and I wouldn't have normalised the importance of having more in life to define you than your job.

I miss talking with Barb all the time. There have been moments in the last year when I've been introducing someone to the bouba/kiki test, writing about my favourite gesture papers or talking through a problem a grad student is having with their writing, and I get to continue Barb's passion and enthusiasm. I am so grateful for the influence she has had on me as a linguist, teacher, supervisor and human, and I'm grateful I get to pass that on.

Co-authored papers This is a list of all the published papers for which we were co-authors. I'm proud that they represent a good range of our shared interests across gesture studies, language documentation, and data management. We have one more forthcoming paper, a handbook chapter on discourse in Tibeto-Burman languages, which is the other major area of shared interest that carried through my PhD work and beyond.

Gawne, Lauren, Chelsea Krajcik, Helene N. Andreassen, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Barbara F. Kelly. 2019. Data Transparency and Citation in the Journal Gesture. Gesture 18(1): 83–109. https://doi.org/10.26181/5f57fddc85ebb [Superlinguo blog post]

Berez-Kroeker, A.L., L. Gawne, S. Kung, B.F. Kelly, T. Heston, G. Holton, P. Pulsifer, D. Beaver, S. Chelliah, S. Dubinsky, R. Meier, N. Thieberger, K. Rice & A. Woodbury. 2018. Reproducible Research in linguistics: A position statement on data citation and attribution in our field. Linguistics 56(1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0032 [Superlinguo blog post]

Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly, A.L. Berez- Kroeker & T. Heston. 2017. Putting practice into words: The state of data and methods transparency in grammatical descriptions. Language Documentation & Conservation 11: 157-189. [OA PDF] [Superlinguo blog post]

Gawne, L. & B.F. Kelly. 2014. Revisiting ‘significant action and gesture categorisation. Australian Journal of Linguistics 34 (2): 216-233. https://doi.org/10.26181/5e4b684d8f1e9

Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly & A. Unger . 2010. Gesture categorisation and understanding speaker attention to gesture. In Y. Treis & R. De Busser (Eds), Selected papers from the 2009 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Melbourne: La Trobe University. [PDF]

[miss-hyoko]

Umm....if you're comfortable including Indonesia swear words then, can i ask for the first year with a best friend who say something in Indonesia very often?

Like if they're mad losing some video games they curse loudly and mumble something in indo so they can't understand? I'll take the gado-gado if it still available!

“Dear customer, I hope you can forgive me for the long wait. The food you requested is kind of unique, but here's your [ANJIR!] gado-gado.”

ANJIR!

Character(s): Grim, Ace, Deuce, Jack, Epel, Sebek (aka First Year Gang)

Summary: MC speak Indonesian

Tag(s) and warning(s): GN!Reader, platonic, reader is Yuu, crack, very much self-indulgent

Note: OMG OMG ANON THIS IS SO HILARIOUS! I can't stop laughing while writing this hc; the possible chaos make me cackle like a madman 🤣🤣

The first time you spoke in Indonesian, it was an accident. You and your friends are having lunch together in the cafeteria when suddenly Grim tries to steal Ace's food. The two of them quickly started bickering so badly that the table shook. Upset your meal was interrupted, you spontaneously shouted, “KALEM, ANJING! ORANG LAGI PADA MAKAN! (CALM DOWN, (you) DOG! PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO EAT HERE!)” which made everyone immediately fall silent and stare at you confusedly, didn't understand what you just said.

Deuce: “W-what language was that just now?”

Grim: “Yeah, Henchuman! What language is that? I never heard it before.”

Ace: “Well, I also don't know what language they're speaking, but one thing's for sure; they're furious.”

MC: “Glad you noticed it, Ace.” *smile forcibly* “You and Grim better shut your mouth up and continue eating in peace if you still want to borrow my notes for tomorrow exam.”

Grim, Ace: “Aye, aye, Captain.”

When school is over, your friends drag you back to Ramshackle to continue questioning you about the language you used earlier in the cafeteria. After quite an interrogation, they finally found out that you're speaking Indonesian, one of the many languages from your world.

Ace: “Still sounds odd to me.”

MC: *roll their eyes* “All languages must sound odd the first time you hear them, goblok.”

Grim: “Go- what?”

MC: *grins* “It's 'goblok', Grim. You pronounce it as go-block, which means 'dumbass'.”

Ace: *chokes* “You-”

Since almost everyone has heard you use Indonesian, you then choose to use it more often in your daily life. Now, NRC students sometimes hear the magicless human, the Prefect of Ramshackle, talking using weird language they didn't know about. Some people had asked you about the meaning of your words, but you never really answered them and only said that it was 'something that's often said back in my world'.

Most people believe it and accept your answer, while the rest are sceptical but don't ask any further. But your close friends know very well that you mainly use Indonesian whenever you want to complain, gossip, or are just too excited about someone or something.

Since the first years often hang out with you, they can't help but involuntary understand some Indonesian words that you often use, such as; 'mager' means too lazy to move, 'buset/anjir' means holy crap, 'gaje' means unclear, 'kuy' means let's go, 'santuy' means chill, and many more.

Grim doesn't mind you speaking Indonesian at all as long as you keep buying him cans of tuna. And because he's practically glued to you, he's slowly starting to be able to say some Indonesian words.

Ace and Epel don't mind as well. They even sometimes ask you to teach them swear words in Indonesian so they can 'curse other people without that person knowing'.

Deuce and Jack are neutral, mostly because they don't really understand what you're talking about in Indonesian. As long as what you say isn't a dangerous curse, they don't really care what you say.

Sebek is the one who always asks the meaning of what you say; if it were good, he would let it slide and maybe even add it to his list of praises for Malleus. But if it's not, he immediately gives you a long lecture about it right on the spot.

[sunflowerim]

I don't wanna say goodbye, 'cause this one means forever

Journal entries of our resident drama queen, Sirius Black. 12 birthdays. 12 entries. And a great deal of friendship, pining, love and heartbreak.

Wolfstar-Marauders hc. Word Count: 5155.

🌙💫

November 3rd, 1971

Dear Diary,

I am Sirius Orion Black and today is my birthday

I, Sirius Orion Black, turn 12 today.

This diary was a present from Andy for starting at Hogwarts but all these months I didn't know what to write here. Today, I asked James what he would do if he had a journal, and he said he would write about all his exciting days in Hogwarts so that it would be stored forever in pages.

I think today was pretty exciting, so I am going to start this journal, finally.

This birthday was quite different from the ones I've had before

My parents forgot to wish me. Or they just chose not to. Probably because I'm the first Black to have ended up in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin. It should have made any regular kid sad but I'm somewhat relieved.

I was not woken up by Kreacher loudly cleaning my room in the morning (because apparently, my room must be squeaky clean on birthdays even though no one really comes up here except to reprimand me for something), but instead by James jumping on my bed to wish me. It startled me a bit but the change was welcome.

I was not greeted in the morning by my mother or father who, at some point in the past few years had started saying that this day was an annoying reminder (well, they never really said it but actions speak louder than words), but instead with a freshly baked pie which James's mom had sent because he'd mentioned to her in his previous letter that it was his "best friend's birthday". I liked that too.

People in the hallways wished me and it made me very happy; unlike when people at home wished me lectured me about my noble birth and it made me want to hide in my room.

I did receive cards from Andy and Uncle Alphard AND received some more cards from a few friends. (Remus is excellent with cards by the way)

I had no idea birthdays could be this fun.

I really hope I can stay in Hogwarts for a long time.

P.S. Reggie did not wish me either and I wonder what’s up with him. I was expecting a letter from him. But then again, my birthdays have never been a big deal in the family (what with my rebellious streak and all) so I suppose that’s okay.

* * *

November 3rd, 1972

Hello journal, it's me again.

It's not that the past 365 days were not exciting; they were. I just forgot to write about them. Also, I doubt if I would have been able to fit an entire year's worth of adventures in a single journal. Yes, we indeed had THAT much fun.

I am a year older today and once again glad that no one from my family has been able to ruin this day for me this year either. Somehow they just decided not to acknowledge that I was ever born. Maybe they would if I was more like Narcissa or Bella. But who'd want to be like them? Gross. I'd much rather celebrate the day with people who truly care about me.

One thing that did upset me a little was Reggie's behaviour. He started Hogwarts this year and was sorted into Slytherin like the rest of our "noble" family, but it's like he doesn't even recognise me anymore. I know that my being sorted into Gryffindor was a matter of disgrace to the family but I don't understand what that's got to do with Reggie. We're supposed to be brothers, but whenever I look at him these days, he looks like a miniature version of our birth giver. I wonder who brainwashed him like that.

Actually I don't have to wonder. I know it was our mother.

Anyway, Lily once said that I should be more grateful for things I have rather than complain about things that displease me, so here:

I'm grateful that James and Remus are in my life.

I'm grateful for all the things they did to make my birthday special.

I'm grateful that I'm not lonely anymore.

Most importantly, I’m grateful to the Sorting Hat for putting me in Gryffindor. I would have missed out on everything if not for this.

And I'm not just saying these because Lily asked me to but because I really mean it. I'd be nowhere without James and Remus.

That's it for this year.

I will try not to ditch this journal until my next birthday.

Sirius Black, aged 13, signing off.

* * *

November 3rd, 1973

I am now 14, and I've just had the best birthday ever.

It was a stroke of luck that my birthday fell on Hogsmeade weekend. I couldn't have asked for anything better. Also because 3rd years are allowed to stay in the common room till late, I had the golden opportunity of attending two celebrations this week: the Gryffindor Halloween party and my birthday. Yes indeed, James and Remus pulled all the strings to throw me a birthday party after our already amazing day out in Hogsmeade. I have no idea how they managed to put together so much but it meant a lot to me.

James gifted me a two-way mirror so we could communicate during detentions. That's the best idea he's ever had! And Moony, a.k.a, Remus (Moony is his nickname now; reasons: non-disclosable) gave me an enlarged disc containing muggle music (apparently it's called vinyl, and we need a vinyl player to listen to it). Frank says he'll find a vinyl player for the common room so everyone can listen to muggle music in general, but I have decided that I will be the first one to listen to this particular vinyl, alone. I don't think I wanna share Moony's gift with everyone right away.

I love the presents and I love my friends.

P.S. I have resigned myself to the fact that my journal entries are indeed gonna be annual and not as regular as I had initially promised and I think it's better that way. I'll be able to keep using this diary for a long long time. Until I'm withered and old and will need to use magic to write instead of my tired hands.

P.P.S. James, Moony, and I go by the name 'Marauders' now and we've made quite a name for ourselves in Hogwarts. Not something my parents would be happy about and that's exactly what makes it so much better for me.

As for Reggie, he never tries to talk to me in school and keeps his distance at family dinners, like I am an object of disgust to him. It's gonna take some getting used to, but I suppose I'll manage as long as I have James and Moony.

* * *

November 3rd, 1974

I, Sirius Black, 15, have a major crush on Moony. I know this is my birthday journal and I shouldn't be pining away here, but I cannot talk to anyone about it and will combust if I hold it in any longer. Hence, the journal.

James got lucky. He can talk about his hopeless crush on Lily all the time without any restraints and he doesn't care if she rejects him a hundred times. I can't say the same for myself. Not to be dramatic but I'd be pretty devastated if Moony ever turned me away the way Lily does James. Some girls have asked me out this year and I did go to Hogsmeade with one of them last month, but I cannot seem to get Moony out of my mind.

Not to brag but a lot of girls asked me out for the Yule Ball too but I had zero desire to be bored so I went in with Moony. In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea because going to a 'Ball Dance' and trying to dance around with Moony had me panicking throughout. Why am I such a mess when it comes to him?

Over the year, Moony has randomly brought in more muggle music for me and I have loved every single one of them. I don't know how he knows just what I'd like. He just gets it.

Frank found a vinyl player for the common room, but the seller also had another slightly broken player which he was ready to give up for free, so of course I took it and fixed it, and placed it right next to my bed. Now I can listen to music anytime I want. But mostly I'm not alone because there's Moony who loves music just as much and he often joins me and tells me all about these muggle singers I'm constantly in awe of.

For this birthday he built me a tiny shelf for my vinyl records, the keyword being 'built'. Sometimes he amazes me like that, by doing things himself that could otherwise be done quicker with magic and I love the effort he puts in for other people (even though he tries really hard to come off as this guy who doesn't give two shits about anyone, he's secretly a softie).

The birthday surprise was amazing as usual.

The Marauders' birthday parties have started to cause some real hype in the school. Even people from other houses come in too (not Slytherin though, never Slytherin).

Anyway, for my next birthday, I hope Remus just gifts himself to me. Or maybe I should stop being a little shit and ask him out. But before any of that, I have to be sure of his feelings too. So far he's been constantly giving off the vibe that he absolutely doesn't want to date anyone which means, I have a LOT to work on until my next birthday.

Merlin, it's gonna be one long year.

* * *

November 3rd, 1975

I, Sirius Black, am 16 today, and an animagus. I'm an illegal one so technically I shouldn't even be writing it down here (like I haven't in the past 2 years of attempting to be one) but my charms have gotten stronger and nobody but me has access to this journal. Anyone else who opens the journal is only going to find blank pages.

Moony, my beloved, is a werewolf (Hence the nickname Moony. Get it? The moon? The furry little problem? Yeah). James and I found out about it in our 3rd year and since then we've been trying to learn about animagi and transformation so we could keep him company on full moons and this year we finally pulled it off. My animagus form is a dog. Not that I mind but I'm beginning to think that all the people who have called me a little bitch before, might have been onto something. Except I'm not little. I'm huge and I really really really hope that idiot Snape bumps into me someday while I’m in my dog form. I'm going to scare the living daylights out of him.

James' form is a stag with huge antlers so we're calling him Prongs. We have decided to call me Padfoot, but sometimes Moony just shortens it and calls me Pads, and my insides start to melt. When and how did I become such a sap?

Anyway, I'm an absolute coward who hasn't done anything in the past year except pine from a distance. And the pining wasn't even mutual. It’s so embarrassing. I think Lily is catching up but Moony, that oblivious idiot, never notices. I'm not persistent like James so I'm not hoping for a miracle.

My birthday was cool because duh, I'm a Marauder. Prongs got me a leather jacket. Apparently, it was Lily's idea, but she still doesn't like me enough to get me something herself. But I'm glad she at least gave the suggestion to Prongsie because boy do I look smashing in it.

Moony got me a photo frame with a picture of me, Prongs, and himself and I really had to hold back tears upon seeing the picture. A little backstory: a few months ago, the three of us had got dressed in tuxedos and went to a studio to get our picture taken, as a joke, because we were that bored. In fact, I'd forgotten about the picture until today; the picture that looks more like a family portrait than any picture in the hallway of Grimmauld Place. It looks real and is currently resting on my bedside chest of drawers, right next to the vinyl player. Merlin, I'm really soft for him. Maybe I really shouldn't bother talking about my crush on him and give up on the whole confession stuff. I don't wanna ruin what we have right now.

Signing off.

* * *

November 3rd, 1976

TURNS OUT THE PINING WASN'T ONE-SIDED AFTER ALL. GUESS WHO ISN'T BITCHLESS ANYMORE? THAT'S RIGHT! ME!!!

Long story short: a few months ago on Moony's birthday, we almost had a moment I guess. His birthday party had just ended and people were slowly leaving the common room and trailing back to their respective dorms and the two of us were sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. I was tired and I almost dozed off resting my head on Moony's shoulder (!! internal screaming !!) and I think he was carding his hands through my hair (!! internal screaming intensifies !!). Anyway, a slight tug on my hair woke me up and he was like 'Don't fall asleep here let's go back to the dorm'. I will never understand what possessed me at that moment but I ended up saying, "Let's stay like this for a little while. Please." And the way he looked at me after hearing that, oh Merlin. I cannot describe it in words but it was enough to give me the confidence I'd been needing for months, and I actually pulled him closer by tugging at his shirt and I'm almost sure I'd have kissed him if Prongsie didn't choose that moment to come down looking for us. I love him to death, but at that moment, I really wanted to punch his face. The spell was broken and Moony pulled back and I faked a yawn in an attempt to be nonchalant.

But ever since then, there has been this tension between us. I think I had finally made him stop and think about things and probably recently, he finally came to a conclusion because last night at 12 after Prongs had gone back to sleep in his bed after wishing me, Moony stayed back on my bed and following some awkward small talk, actually kissed me!!

And then guess what he said?

"I hope that's okay."

Well duh, of course it's okay Moons. It's me, and it's you, so it'll always be okay.

I was too stunned to say any of it though, so I just kissed him back to make him understand that I wanted this too. That I had waited ages for this moment.

I am mad blushing as I write this. This is embarrassing.

I will not go into any further details but yeah I'm really happy today.

Another important event that happened in the past few months is that I ran away from home after last Christmas. Yes, it finally happened and I was backed by the Potters. I live with them now and I'll forever be grateful for that. On top of that Uncle Alphard had left me all his money which I could access once I turned 17, so now I'm not financially dependent on anyone (which is very important to me). Again, I shall not go into details regarding why I ran away from home because it's gonna ruin the vibe of this journal. That's something I'd rather not vent about.

Anyway, it's been better since then. The Potters take care of me. Prongs takes care of me. And Moony takes care of me. A lot. Even Lily isn't as rude. I hope things stay this way for a long long time.

Happy 17th indeed.

* * *

November 3rd, 1977

Lily and Prongs started dating this year. I wanna say I saw it coming, but that would be a lie. I think I was almost as surprised as Prongs was.

I'd thought I would be spared from Prongs ranting about Lily once they start going out and at least have the last year at school free of "Lily this"and "Lily that", but I was wrong. If anything, it has increased. But it's okay because hearing him talk about random things while the Wizarding World is slowly heading toward destruction and war is calming at times. It also seems like he's become more responsible over the past year. It suits him.

Moony and I are okay, but I'm worried about him. With the current insurgence of dark power, it feels like only a matter of time before people start coming for him. But one thing's for sure, I'll protect him with everything I have. He probably doesn't need it but the very thought of something happening to him keeps me up at night.

We've all decided to join Dumbledore once school is over to fight death eaters and You-Know-Who. I'd imagined a safe and happy future with my friends and I'm willing to fight anything that stands in its way.

I was not in the mood to celebrate my birthday but because it's my last one in school I didn't protest. We still have fun but it's overshadowed by this constant fear of something happening to the people you love. We live among enemies. We go to classes with people who might potentially join the dark side and it's hard to ignore such thoughts.

I think I would have lost my mind without Moony beside me.

I love Moony and he loves me and we've decided to live together after school is over. I don't want us to stay apart in times like this.

I genuinely feel responsible for the people around me. Maybe I really did grow up after all. We've all grown up. 11-year-old Sirius would be surprised to see 18-year-old Sirius now.

On another note, I finally lost patience with Reggie. I found him torturing younger students because they were "half-bloods" and at that moment I could see our mother in him. Nothing could have prepared me for that image of him. I interfered and overpowered him, which resulted in a burst of insults; everything that our mother would have said in that situation, word for word. Maybe I should have started fighting him from the day he started calling Remus names because of the half-blood bullshit, but Remus always used to stop me. But this time, Remus wasn't around and I was not having it. I would have fought him again if not for Prongs and Lily, who were then doing their rounds as Head Boy and Head Girl. I'm glad they stopped me though, because, despite the anger, I was too hurt and was very close to tears which is the last thing I'd have wanted Reggie to see. I never thought things would turn out like this between us.

* * *

November 3rd, 1978

School is over and I'm currently living with Moony. I feel more at ease somehow now, than when I was at school. I suppose it's because I don't feel helpless anymore. James and I started our Auror training and with every passing day we're becoming stronger. I can fight death eaters and I am capable of protecting other people. Moony couldn't join Auror training because he cannot be involved with the Ministry but he's been carrying out other missions for the Order of the Phoenix, aka the face of the fight against You-Know-Who.

My birth family, as expected, has joined the dark side. The Blacks are supposedly among the biggest supporters of You-Know-Who and I've faced immense backlash because of the name I carry.

Living with Moony is one of the only comforting things in my life right now. We've moved into a small house close to the Potters and after a whole day of meetings and missions, I am so grateful for his warmth next to me.

A lot of my friends from school joined Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix and I see them regularly. We hang out sometimes like we did today for the impromptu birthday celebration Moony put together for me. But it feels like a privilege we can't afford. Not yet. Not when death eaters are running loose and You-Know-Who is gaining power.

* * *

November 3rd, 1979

James and Lily got married at the end of last year!! And of course I was James' best man. Their getting married has given me a new sort of hope that things will be okay. They have to be. So that Moony and I can get married at some point too. And we'll all be happy. After such a shitty childhood, I deserve to be happy.

On top of everything, Lily is pregnant, which means things will have to get better very soon. James Jr. deserves to be born into a peaceful world. I am going to make sure the kid doesn't have to go through what we all did.

Moony and I don't get to spend much time together these days because of our missions and it's hard but it's a price we have to pay to secure the lives of our loved ones. Being an Auror helps me with that. I'm 20 today but I feel much much older.

* * *

November 3rd, 1980

We lost James' parents to dragon pox. They left before little Harry arrived.

Reggie is dead. So are my parents. Reasons unknown. But I'm pretty sure they got into trouble with the Ministry like most other death eaters.

Anyway, that doesn't matter now. What matters is that I have to protect James, Lily, and Harry. I won't let the war orphan him like it did James and me.

The Dark Lord is after Harry. There's apparently a bullshit prophecy that states that Harry will be able to kill him and so that moron is after a literal baby. And guess who relayed that prophecy to the Dark Lord? Fucking Snape. I knew he was bad but how evil do you have to be to do something like that?

James and Lily are to go into hiding and I am to be their secret keeper. Dumbledore said he might change the secret keeper because everyone is going to suspect that I know about it. After all, I'm close to them and if I get captured, they might torture me to get their location out of me. I know I won't give in to torture but we're trying not to take any risks.

It's not going to be Moony either. Dumbledore has sent him on a lot of missions to try and bring other dark creatures to our side and every time Moony comes back from those missions, he seems a little different. I find it hard to communicate with him these days. It might be my paranoia speaking but I am not ready to take any risks. Moreover, after me, Remus is going to be the prime suspect of being the secret keeper. So we can't risk that. I've relayed as much to Dumbledore and we will be choosing someone unsuspecting.

Turning 21 was supposed to be fun but 'fun' is something I can't even imagine anymore when I go to work every morning and round up death eater after death eater or when I find myself staring frozen at the occasional familiar name on the list of casualties.

It seems stupid to write all this down in a journal but my head will explode if I cannot vent about all that goes on in my head, so in a way, I'm glad this journal exists.

* * *

November 3rd, 1995

It's hard to believe that this journal still exists and that it has been 15 years since my last entry. I showed it to Moony yesterday and he said I should try writing again. Might be good to vent. So here goes,

I turned 36 today. But James and Lily aren't here to see me now.

We lost them to the war 14 years ago.

I couldn't save them but I wanted to rescue and take in their son, Harry, my godchild. But I couldn't even do that because I was convicted of murder. They really went ahead and put me on trial for the murder of my best friends and everyone just stood and watched. Funny how easy it was for all of them to forget that James and I were brothers once they looked at the cursed name I carried : Black.

I'm ashamed to admit that I had suspected Remus of being a spy. That I had distrusted him which led to the real spy taking advantage of it. That spy, who of all people had ended up becoming the Secret Keeper for James and Lily and consequently revealed their location to You-Know-Who, who reached them and they sacrificed their lives to protect little Harry…

I don't think I can write at length about the plethora of emotions I have on this subject. It still hurts to think about it.

You-know-who too died that night supposedly but he's back now and we are approaching another war, hopefully to end things for good this time, and I swear on my life, I'll protect the ones I love. I couldn't save James and Lily but I won't let anything happen to Harry. Moony and I will see to that.

I had been shipped off to Azkaban and I stayed there for 12 years until I made my escape 2 years ago. I will not go into details about that either, for the sake of my sanity.

Speaking of people I love, it took some time, but I think Moony and I have been able to navigate through our misunderstandings. I've altered the spell on the journal so Moony can have access to it too if he wants. This journal is possibly the only keepsake we have of our childhood together. I told him that he may read it some years down the line.

About Harry, I don't know where to start. I love that kid to death and I'll never forgive all the people who made his life this miserable. If I had known the kind of life my Godson was forced to lead, I'd have made my escape sooner and rescued him. Both Moony and I had been under the impression that he was taken care of, so he stayed away from Harry's life and I thought about him from a distance. There's only one person I'm blaming for this - Dumbledore. We were stupid for entrusting him with everything.

One day, when the war is over, I hope we can all live in peace. Harry, Moony, and me. But for now, I'm just really worried because Harry always has this tendency to dive head-first into trouble and I'm too scared to lose him. I'll have to give him some serious talk soon.

About James and Lily, it feels like I'm being repeatedly stabbed with a dagger every time I try to talk about them. When we were in school, James used to say that he hoped he'd never have to outlive any of us. That he couldn't handle the thought of being left behind. Who knew his words would come true like that? It's been 14 years but the wounds are as fresh as ever. Some grief, you aren't supposed to move on from.

Anyway, time to wrap it up. Harry and his friends are going to come over in the evening to see me and I'm so thankful for the time I get to spend with him. And Moony.

P.S. Moony if you ever decide to read this, know that I love you. That I have always loved you. That I spent every moment in Azkaban regretting my decisions. I'm sorry that I let my paranoia get the better of me and blindsight me to all that I held dear. I hope you can forgive me.

* * *

November 3rd, 1996

I'm not sure I can do this but I think it would be wrong to not continue this birthday journal.

Sirius.

How could you do this to me? To Harry?

How could you leave us a second time?

The war is still going on but your absence is eating me up from the inside. Every place I go, screams your name. We were all supposed to survive the war, you idiot. You were supposed to continue writing in this journal till you were old and withered. You can't just not keep your word.

Just when I'd finally made peace with your long absence, you came back into my life and made me realise that I never truly had moved on. How can I go through that again? I'm not ready to say goodbye. Not again. Not when you did not spend enough time with me. We've been apart longer than we were together and I hate it.

Harry has been inconsolable and more reckless than ever. Losing you really shook him to the core and I don't know what to tell him when I can't even deal with this myself. I'm losing my mind at the suddenness of it all. All I can do is keep fighting so more people don't have to lose their loved ones. The fight at the Ministry was like fuel to the fire and the war is on the way to reach full scale soon. I don't know if I'll survive this but I do know that I will ensure the safety of as many as I can.

Against my better judgement, I did end up reading your whole journal, and Pads it hurts. It hurts so much. The way I'd give anything to get back our time together in school.

To get back James, Lily, and you.

Come back.

I think it was cruel of you people to leave me alone, to make me arrange and attend all your funerals, to make me go through all this heartbreaking ordeal. To leave me nothing but your gravestones to talk to. There's only so much grief I can hold.

You just wait till I see you again.

I remember you saying that 'Dust thou art, to dust returnest' only applied to us 'earthlings' and that you'd just go back to the star you came from. It sounded like a harmless joke in school but now I just hope I can reach you wherever you are, Pads.

I cannot continue any further but I'm somewhat relieved I could add one more entry to this, that this journal could have a closure.

Happy Birthday Pads. I Love You. And goodbye I'll see you soon.

Yours forevermore,

Moony.

🌙💫

A/N: I won't say that this song inspired the whole fic but towards the end I thought that the grief I wanted to portray with this fic resonated perfectly with how this song makes me feel so I listened to it again and it kinda helped me articulate things better.

And this is the cover I was obsessively listening to while writing the last entry :

P.S. To anyone struggling with grief and loss right now, I hope that you can be okay eventually. And I hope that it can get better someday soon , if not now. Please take care.

My Other Works

[ababybiter]

living with bangtan part 5

bts x reader, slowburn, fluff, smut, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, strangers to lovers

It's Wednesday. A few days after the...incident. You hadn't seen Yoongi apart from lectures and it was pretty awkward. Everything you thought it would be. But maybe it was more because it was Jungkook that would sit in between you. Your relationships felt like they were teetering on the edge of destruction. You needed some other friends, that didn't always congregate in your living room.

There's a girl in your class, her name is Nayeon and she always sits nearby and you don't really see her with other people. Which reminded you of yourself in first year, hovering near other friend groups, wondering if you'd just be swept in.

Today, as you sit in your usual order, yourself, Jungkook, then Yoongi, packing up your laptops and notebooks, you lean forward to wear she sits alone just in the row in front of you guys. "Hey, Nayeon, right?"

She turns, her glossy hair flips over her shoulder. "Hey!"

The confidence you can acquire through living with a bunch of buff men is astounding. "Want to get lunch?"

Turns out the two of you have lots in common, she hadn't made many friends yet from class, but she was still fairly close with her room mate from last year. She joins you in the library's cafe a couple days later after the two fo you spent the morning studying. "Y/N, this is Wonyoung!"

Nayeon was cute, but Wonyoung was stunning. You needed this girls skincare routine. She fixed you with a lazy smile and held out her hand in an oddly regal way. You shook it eagerly. "Nice to meet you!"

"Y/N. We finally meet." She speaks softly. "I've heard so much about you."

There's something to be said about having female friends, you've missed the comfort of the perks that come with it. The two of them start hanging around the apartment, the boys seem to get on with them and you don't feel so out numbered anymore. Not that the boys ever gang up on you, it was just nice to have some more girls around.

That weekend, the three of you make plans to go for drinks, but Wonyoung cancels at the last minute, claiming illness. Still, you and Nayeon go out and have a great time, you both send a couple selfies to Wonyoung, declaring how it isn't the same without her and quite obviously her skill with selfie angles that the two of you seem to be lacking in today.

You decide to bring Nayeon back to the apartment and you bust in giggling together. In your silliness, you accidentally forget about the problem with your door, it swings open, smacking into the wall. Luckily, Jin was out playing late night basketball with Namjoon. But Yoongi's door opens and he stands there squinting in the dim light coming from the kitchen.

"Sorry!" Nayeon beams. "Did we wake you?"

He runs a hand through his messy hair and takes in the sight in front of him. "No." He sounds resigned, as if he's given up fixing something that hasn't broken yet.

You make eye contact with him for the first time in over a week. "You know Halloween isn't until next week right? You look like a ghoul."

And then the kitchen door opens and Wonyoung walks out, holding two bottles of water. She turns and smiles at the two of you as if she hadn't just been caught in a lie.

It's your turn to take in the sight this time. Yoongi, with his tired eyes and sex hair. Wonyoung, carrying water back towards him, wearing nothing but t-shirt you were wearing just last week.

You don't say anything to him, just a squinted smile will do the trick. Not most evenings my ass. You think. He reads your mind and swallows. You turn to Wonyoung instead. "Feel better?"

"Much." She smiles that same lazy smile, the one that said, I know you live with the hottest boys on campus, and thanks for the connection.

"God, I didn't know she was like that." Nayeon sits down in your desk chair as you sit down on the bed. "Who lies about the shits? Like just say you've got the flu..."

"I can't believe him." You breathe.

"Him?" Nayeon blinks.

"He's just...ugh." You sigh. "Don't know what I expected from him, really."

"...Right." Nayeon eyes you, slightly confused. "Well anyway, screw them both, tonight was so fun."

"Yeah, it was. I'm so glad we became friends." You smile at her.

"I'm glad you spoke to me!"

The two of you laugh and fall asleep together. Well Nayeon sleeps, you lay awake wondering why it feels like there's a knife in your chest.

The next morning after Nayeon leaves, you stay in your room all day, too scared to run into Wonyoung again, or even worse, Yoongi. Sadness overcomes you at the awkwardness in the situation with Wonyoung, Nayeon is already ready to ignore her texts, even though she hasn't reached out once since the two of you saw her in Yoongi's t-shirt. A sinister thought appears, was she ever really your friend? Was she really just trying to pull Yoongi this whole time. The boys were kind of famous on campus for being extremely good looking, funny and popular, and she did seem if anything a social climber. You could tell when she hung out with you and Nayeon it was only because she didn't have any better offers.

You needed to squash whatever feelings you had stirring for Yoongi. What started off as annoyance turned to hatred and that turned to you begging him to rip your dress off. Not the most normal, healthy room mate behaviour.

You decided to risk the kitchen in the early evening for some cereal to inhale, seen as you were starving. You'd heard a few of them making something to eat about 20 minutes ago and now it was empty. You couldn't be bothered for the questions of isolation and you definitely weren't ready to face Yoongi. You take a seat at the kitchen table, hoping no one decides to come in.

But as your lazily feeding yourself some Coco Pops, Jin quietly walks in. He doesn't say much, but he walks by and ruffles your hair before grabbing some crisps from the cupboard. On his way back he glances at you, taking in your eyebags and folded frame.

"Mario tonight?"

You meet his eyes and his lips part in concern.

"Maybe." You quickly look down at your soggy cereal.

"Okay...well, you know I'm around...if you want to talk."

You keep your eyes there until he silently exits the room.

After battling the fear of human communication, the sick feeling finally passes and you decide to go for a late night walk with Hobi, knowing he'll listen without judgement. Plus he's been dying for some tea.

"Who lies about having the shits?" He wrinkles his nose as the two of you glance over at the late night tennis players. "At least that Nayeon seems nice."

"She is. Although I am know scared to invite any friend over."

"Why?" Hobi nudges you. "You want to keep the seven of us all to yourself? Didn't take you for possessive, Y/N."

"Stop." You groan. "It's not that. It's just...I think she was just using me to get to who she really wanted."

"I mean the girl knows what she wants and how to get it." Hobi seems far away for a moment. "But you shouldn't be so down about it. You got played by someone you just met, oh well. What's with the depression era?"

"I'm far from depressed." You chuckle. "Just feel...icky."

"About Wonyoung?" He narrows his eyes.

"...Partly."

"Y/N! I knew there was something else! Spill."

You sigh heavily, but you desperately needed to tell someone. "Okay, so you know when me and Yoongi went home after the club?"

"Uhuh?" He's practically salivating.

"Hobi you have to swear you won't spread this around!"

"I won't!"

"I'll be the village slut!"

"I won't!"

"Okay. So we kind of hooked up. Me and Yoongi."

"Kind of?" Hobi gapes. "Like not all the way but-"

"Yes, yes, whatever you're thinking. That." You cut him off before he describes in great detail what he's imagining. "I'm just starting to stress. I thought it meant more to him than it did and...he's not the only one I've kissed."

"Wait, woah, hold on, questions." Hobi waves his arms. "Did you want it to mean more to him? And what do you mean by not the only one?"

"Okay, the last part doesn't really matter, I just mean I've had lots of fun with you boys and some more than others...but with Yoongi, I don't know, right now I can't say I want it to mean something. I just feel kind of used after seeing Wonyoung. I just thought he'd treat me with a bit more...decency. I thought we were at least friends."

"You are friends and he does really care about you, we all do." Hobi bites his lip, thinking. "I think Yoongi is just...a man whore. But he'd never put you in any sticky situations-"

"Ew."

"He knows how to take care of his shit." Hobi tells you. "But I'm sorry he made you feel like just one of his girls. I guarantee you are more than that."

"So what do I do? Just carry on as normal? Lectures have been hard enough." You push at a loose brick as you slowly round the corner back to your apartment. "We can't not sit together cos then that makes things obviously awkward, but sitting together is just as bad seen as we don't talk. My notes have never been so good."

Hobi laughs. "It's tough I know. I get why people say you shouldn't hook up with a room mate..."

"Really? Do people say that?" You say sarcastically, palming your forehead.

"But you're both mature adults. And hey I had no idea you kissed anyone else so this will work out just the same!"

You stop on the path, looking up at the light coming from your shared kitchen window. "I hate this." You whisper. "What if they start talking and find out I've kissed 3 of them and-"

"Hey." Hobi takes your hand and kisses you on the forehead. "I'm with you."

When the two of you step into the kitchen the smell of warm brownies floods your nostrils and for a second your heart skips at the memory of Jungkook cooking you waffles. But instead it's Namjoon.

"Ohhh, Namjoonie." Hobi peers into the mixture, way closer than he needs to be. "Didn't know you were a stoner!"

"No way." Joon shakes his head. "They're for the faculty so hands off. Can you imagine if I laced them with weed?"

"Would make for an early lunch." You add and Namjoon smiles at you.

"You okay? Not feeling well?" He asks.

"I'm better now." You nod.

"Good." He goes back to mixing. "Want to help me with this?"

"For free?" Hobi pulls a face.

"I wasn't asking you, funnily enough." Joon's eyes soften as he places them back on your form. "I could use your gentle hand for the pouring."

"You don't know my hands are gentle, but sure." You step up beside him and he holds his hands up in mock surrender. You glance at Hobi and he gives you a subtle thumbs up.

You still can't get to sleep that night, some buried thought still bugging you somewhere at the back of your brain. It's got to the point where you are so deliriously tired that you now wish it would come forward so you could deal with it, whether that be confrontationally or not.

Luckily you have the next day off to sleep, when you head back to class on Monday, you're well rested and non anxious.

That is, until you're faced with the empty seat beside Jungkook, who you also haven't spent alone time with since the club. Yoongi is no where to be seen, so it's just the two of you back in row six. "Hey." You sit down. "Where's Yoongi?"

"Ditching." He watches you. "You okay?"

"Yeah, sorry I've been MIA. Just having a shitty mental health week."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Jungkook reaches a muscly arm over the chair and pulls you into a hug. He smells so good. "Can I do anything to help?"

"As long as...we're good?" You hesitantly meet his eyes.

He cocks his head like a confused puppy. "Of course we're good. Why wouldn't we be?"

"Great!" You breathe a sigh of relief. "Just checking."

A slow smirk forms on Jungkook's face. "Okay. Well, there's definitely no problem on my end. I'm glad we're talking. Feel like I haven't seen you in ages, seen as we live together. I've missed you."

"I missed you too." You lower your voice as the lecturer steps up to the podium and begins his talk. "Let's do something this weekend."

"Sure." He smiles down at you. "I've got a spa day voucher I need to use. It's not really the guy's thing, but what about you and me?"

"I'd love to! I love the spa!"

"Great. Can't wait."

It was now time to see Taehyung. He'd been extremely busy with his course so this one wasn't entirely on you, but he was your best friend since you moved in and it didn't feel right going any longer without putting in the effort.

you: wyd tonight?

bestae: meant to be going to some party with jungkook but i don't think either of us are feeling it. why?

you: me and nayeon are going to the movies, want to come?

bestae: yeah defo :) is it cool if jungkook tags along? i don't wanna ditch him uno...

you: lol yeah ofc, we were speaking today about getting together soon anyway

When V knocks on your door later that night he's holding a small bunch of yellow flowers. "Heard you were having a shitty week." He smiles at your gasp.

"Ohhhh, you're so cute." You grab them and the place them in an empty vase. "Is Jungkook ready? We need to get Nayeon on the way."

"He's going to meet us there. Some errand or whatever."

It's a long walk or a short drive to the cinema, and seen as Nayeon lives closer to the latter, you and V begin the trek to knock for her. You pull your coat jacket around you, the October air picking up it's timely chill.

"So, do you wanna talk about this week?" V starts.

You sigh. "It's nothing important, really. Just...think I need to take a break from drinking."

"Oh, you got sick?" He raises an eyebrow.

"No, no. I just tend to make poor decisions."

"Don't we all." He smiles and glances at you. "How poor are we talking?"

You slowly meet his gaze with a sheepish expression.

His face drops. "Oh no."

A laughs escapes you. "You mean Hobi hasn't told everyone and their grandma yet?"

"HOBI KNOWS AND I DON'T?" He gapes.

"Shh!" You smack his arm softly. "Stop making me laugh. This isn't funny."

V can see that you're troubled by this. "What happened, Y/N?"

"I sort of hooked up with Yoongi after clubbing."

You expect him to yelp again or maybe even worse, give you a disgusted glare, but instead a soft smile grazes his lips and he looks down at the pavement. "That's it?"

You look up at him, blinking erratically. "What do you mean, that's it?" You sigh, putting your face in your hands. "Second year is over and it's just begun."

V stops walking and stands in front of you, taking your hands in his. "Y/N, we're in college. We're allowed to hook up with people."

"I know, but Tae, it's Yoongi. We live together and...it's more than that. You guys are my friends. The best friends I've had in a long time and you're all insanely gorgeous and if I keep fucking up around you all-"

V is laughing again. "Stop stressing, Y/N!" He smirks. "Thanks for the compliment."

You blush and if his hands weren't holding yours you'd be covering your face again.

"Look, I understand why you're anxious now. If it was anyone else, yeah I'd probably lecture them. But I promise you, nothing will fuck up the dynamic. And I mean, nothing. The boys and I have lived together a long time, we're used to sharing." He winks.

"Right." You snort. "Don't get any ideas. It was a one time thing!"

"Sure, sure." He grins.

After collecting Nayeon from her flat, you meet JK in the cinema lobby. He already has an empty box of popcorn in his hands.

"No way you finished a box already!" Nayeon grabs it, disappointed to find it is in fact empty.

"I planned to get another one." He smiles down at her, taking the box back and placing it in the bin nearby.

"Constipation here we come!" V sarks as Jungkook glares at him over the one arm hug he gives to Nayeon.

"What do you mean we? You and Jungkook share a stomach?" You laugh.

"Pretty much." Jungkook steps towards you. "He eats off my plate whenever I cook." He pulls you into a warm hug. "How you doing Pretty?" He murmurs into your hair.

"Good." You speak into another one of his Calvin Klein t-shirts, the kid should sponsor them. He holds you for another few seconds before pulling apart slowly.

"Actually, doesn't matter how much popcorn you have." Taehyung places his chin on Jungkooks shoulder, batting his eyelashes innocently. "You're about to shit yourself either way."

Jungkook's lazy smile fades as he snaps his head towards you. "We're watching a horror?"

"Yes!" You exclaim. "I told V to tell you..."

Jungkook glares at his old friend and Nayeon sighs. "Don't worry, Jungkook we're in it together."

You thought you were okay with horror as you and V laughed at Nayeon and Jungkook jumping during the pre-movie trailers. But when the movie started, you realised how wrong you were. You sat on the end, Jungkook beside you, followed by Nayeon, then Tae. You and Jungkook ended up trying to hide behind each other the whole time, fighting to use each others shoulders as shields playfully.

"I can't believe you haven't seen the original!" Taehyung falls into step beside you as you leave the theatre. "It's so much scarier."

"I thought that was the original!" You laugh. "I guess you'll have to show me some time."

"How about tomorrow morning? Specific I know, but I actually have it off. No morning lecture baby!" He dances in the lobby.

"Fine, I definitely need to watch a comedy or something tonight." You decide.

The living room is however occupied tonight by Jimin who's using the PS4. You end up getting interested in the game, sharing the blanket beside him. Jungkook grabs yet another snack and joins you. As the two fo you watch Jimin play, the 3 of you get closer together until you're all snuggling under the blanket. Your head rests on Jimins shoulder as Jungkook's arm circles your waist.

You watch as Jimin's video game character tries a running jump and misses it's target, dying a hilariously long death. For some reason you can't stop laughing, Jimin tries incredibly hard to beat the section of the game which causes you to laugh even more, Jungkook leans over you, his bunny smile all you can see.

"You're actually crying!" He laughs, wiping a tear from your eye. For the first time in a while, you're just happy it's not from sadness.

None of you hear the door open, but you do hear the unmistakably fake cough for attention. You all turn to look at Yoongi, who's just gotten in. He looks good in a white tee, the arms cut off, showing his shoulders.

You pull your eyes away from the skin to meet his eyes for the first time that week. You catch your breath as Jungkook leans back.

"'Sup?" Jungkook asks.

"Y/N can we talk?" Yoongi's eyes bore into yours. Jimin looks up from his game and eyes him with interest.

"Uh, sure." You push the blanket onto Jungkooks lap and stand, following Yoongi out into the hallway. You think he wants to talk out there, but he walks right into his bedroom.

"Oh." You swallow, following him in.

It looks bigger this time, maybe because the window is open, the light of the moon spilling white light onto the bed. You can't help but follow the light, remembering the events that transpired between the two fo you here. Then you remember what's happened since, and who else has been here too.

You look away as he sits on the desk chair, almost as if sitting on the bed gives him de ja vu to when you stood in between his legs-

"I want to apologise." He starts in a deep voice.

You turn to him. "Oh." You mumble again, like you've forgotten all words.

"I shouldn't have...hung out of with Wonyoung." He gulps. "She was your friend and I made things awkward. I'm sorry."

You fiddle with a trinket on his dresser. Trying to work out what exactly he was apologising for. It didn't sound like he was referring to your hookup. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think she was ever actually my friend."

"Why would that make me feel better?" There he goes, always answering with a question. He sighs. "It was pure behaviour from me, I crossed a line. I hope you can forgive me."

You look up at him. Crossed a line? By getting with one of your friends? You decide to test the waters. "You're allowed to hook up with whoever you want, Yoongi. Whether I introduce you to them or not." You pause and he waits for you to continue. "If she hadn't ghosted me the next day, it would have been pretty normal. But I think you giving into your usual impulses showed me who my real friends are. So thanks."

He opens his mouth and waits for the retort on that comment to come. When they don't, he relaxes into a relenting smile. "Glad I could be of service then." He meets your eyes with his dark ones. "Are we good?"

You hear your own anxious words repeated back at you. So you repeat Jungkooks response.

"Of course, why wouldn't we be?"

"Cool, cool." He nods. "Um, any idea what's going on with Jimin?"

The question catches you off guard. "Jimin?"

"He's being extra clingy and not leaving me alone." Yoongi runs a hand through his hair, messing up the wax. "I'll try and get Jin to take him out or something. Sorry, I'll let you get back to it. He seemed happier with you there."

"I'll keep a closer eye then." You turn to the door, then stop and decide to extend the olive branch even further. "Want to join us?"

Yoongi hesitates, biting his lip roughly. "Nah, its okay. Couch looked pretty full."

You nod. "Good night, then."

"Good night."

The original horror flick Taehyung was forcing you to watch the next morning actually had you on the edge of your seat. You absentmindedly played with Tae's hair as he laid in your lap, occasionally glancing up for your reaction to shocking scenes.

"Ouch!" He yelps as you tug a bit too hard when a character almost discovers a dead body hidden just out of view.

"Sorry!" You rub his head and he sits up, pouting. You giggle, grabbing his head forcefully. His eyes widen in shock as you pull him you, planting a big wet kiss on his head. You pull him away from you, holding his cheeks in your hands. "Big baby."

He stares at you, lips parted until you drop him and go back to watching the movie. Something stirs in his chest, and he decides just for that moment that he takes back what he said bout sharing.

"What?" You catch him looking at you more often than not as the movie goes on.

"Nothing. Look!" He points at the screen just as the murderer comes sprinting out of the darkness at the main character.

You scream, leaping off the cushion and landing in Taehyung's lap. You cling to him, burying your face in his neck. His hands are feather like on your waist, unsure whether to keep you there or not. "Y/N..." He whispers.

"Sorry." You lift your head, staring into his eyes with your fearful ones. You find you can't help taking in each of his features since you're this close. His eyes, so dark and full. His cheeks, red and flushed. His lips-

"Y/N." He taps you. "You should-" He shifts his crotch and you almost feel something hard against your thigh, but it's probably your imagination.

"Who wants to play this Squid Game board game I just bought-" Jimin bursts into the living room. "Oh!" He freezes when he notices your position.

"It's not-" You slide of Taehyung as he grabs for a pillow not so subtly. "We're watching a scary movie."

Jimin glances at the TV. "Right, and you got so scared you slipped and fell on Tae's dick?"

"Woah!" V puffs out his cheeks.

"Yes! But no! I-I'll play with you!" You stammer, eager to change the subject.

"I bet you will." He looks you up and down saucily.

"Just open the box, Jimin."

The rest of the week you spent catching up on reading for your classes. The library was actually decorated for Halloween this year, which fell on Sunday. Saturday morning you were up bright and early for your Spa day with Jungkook.

"Hey, so I've never actually been to one of these." You tell him as the two of you get out of his car in front of the white glass building 40 minutes from home.

"You've never been to a Spa?" He looks at you gobsmacked.

"Not a proper Spa, no...who paid for this?" You gesture at the gorgeous building that no doubt held an activity usually out of your budget.

"My dad got it for me last Christmas, never got round to using it." He holds the door open for you. "I used to go all the time though, it's good for the soul."

"Yeah, I bet." You take in the immediately calming atmosphere of the reception. "Damn, I'm already like, totally Zen." You close your eyes and pretend to practice your breathing.

"Come on, Cinderella." He pulls you over to the desk, soon enough the two of you are wearing warm towels on your face and laying side by side on two beds.

"Can we interest you in couples massage?" One of the Spa employees suggests.

Jungkook smirks as you suppress a laugh and decline the offer. What does a couples massage entail? The two of you massaging each other or both of you being massaged by someone else at the same time? Bit weird, you thought, even if the two of you were together.

Jungkook seems to be itching to get to the pool, so you don't make him wait any longer. He waits for you by the changing room exit. You decided on a black swimsuit with a zip down the middle. You check yourself in the mirror, and tug it down just a cm. It's a high cut in the crotch area too, showing a lot of leg and ass. You thank the heavens you decided to shave everywhere before coming.

When you find him after changing, he drinks you in appreciatively and discreetly. If you blinked you would have missed the way the corner of his mouth quirked up as his eyes roamed your curves. You on the other hand aren't sure how subtle you are. His body is something to marvel in. Golden skin carved by the Gods, this boy should be a model.

He turns to face you more then and you choke a little on air at the sight of his tattoo sleeve exposed fully, from his fingertips to his collarbone.

"Ready?" He smiles at you then, back to friendly.

"I hope it's not cold." You poke a toe in the water and are pleasantly surprised. "Oh, that's not bad!"

He looks at you funny. "Of course it's not cold. You'll only find pleasure here, Y/N."

You shiver all the same.

He jumps in, soaking you in water. You can't help by squeal. "Do you wanna die?" Your voice echoes around the empty pool.

"Get in." He kicks back, spreading himself out in the water. "You're prolonging the torture."

You know he's right. Before he can swim away, you jump, tucking your feet in to bomb the water surface right beside him. You come up to catch your breath and move your hair off your face. When you rub your eyes clean, he's closer than you expect.

"Oh!"

"Shh." His breath tickles your face. "I think the lifeguard isn't too happy with us."

You slowly turn and notice an employee padding along the linoleum nearby, a watchful eye on the two of you. "Oh no, is he going to kick us out?"

"No." Jungkook laughs. "I was just joking. He's not the lifeguard. Again, you won't be watched or judged here. We're paying to relax."

"Actually we're not paying for any of it."

"You know what I mean." He swats water at you. "There's cameras. They probably just keep an eye on us from the next room."

"That's even weirder."

"Let's give them a good show then." He reaches a hand behind you to steady himself on the floor, whilst also trapping you between him and the edge.

"A show?" You swallow.

"Yeah. Let's race."

"Let's- wait what?"

"Let's go from this wall to the other side. Ready and go!" He pushes off and starts front stroke to the other end of the pool.

"Jungkook!" You push off both feet and kick after him, obviously you're not match for him. By the time you get to the other side, you're panting. You can no longer feel the floor under your feet and you're not quite at the wall yet.

Jungkook is laughing. "Need some help?"

"Please!"

"Damn girl, we need to get you to the gym." He says as he pulls you by the hands, placing them on the wall beside him.

"One: can't afford it, Two: you cheated, and Three-" You catch your breath, leaning your chin on the linoleum. Jungkook pats your head.

"It's not fair, you got me feeling like jelly and relaxed before forcing me to compete against you. Ask me again after I warm up, Bunny boy."

"Bunny boy?" He laughs.

"Duh." You gesture at his cute smile. "Plus you've got the stamina of a rabbit."

"Is this you reading me again?" He smirks.

"I mean anyone can see it." You pant. "Your future wife / certain girls on campus are real lucky."

He barks a short loud laugh, throwing his head back. You get a strange urge to kiss his neck. Luckily your urges are under your control right now. You swim slowly to the shallow end, now you remember how swimming can be relaxing, when you're not racing against Jeon Jungkook, that is. If you stand now, almost half your body would be out of the water.

When you turn around, Jungkook is floating towards you.

"Thank you for bringing me, Kook."

"Of course." He looks surprised. "I'm glad I could share this experience with you." You both smile at each other. "Mind if I do some laps?"

"Go for it." You grin.

You sit on the edge, watching him ripple up and down on the surface a few times, until finally he makes his way back to you. He stands in front of you, water dripping off his body. You can't help but stare. He moves the water with his hand, grazing your knee. "Getting back in?"

"In a minute. It's still kind of cold for my liking."

"Sorry it's not like your boiling hot baths, Y/N." He teases you.

"I guess it's my own fault then." You flick your hair.

"You should have more cold showers. It's good for you." Jungkook places a hand either side of you on the linoleum. "I'll warm you up." He starts breathing hot air on your neck and arms, tickling you. You giggle and part your knees at the sensation. He takes this opportunity to slide his waist in between your legs. Your breathing gets faster as his mouth stops blowing and lips graze along your cheekbone.

"What are you doing?" You sigh, moving your head to the side, which only allows him further access to your neck.

"I don't know, what am I doing?" He plants a wet kiss on your neck, guiding his mouth to your cheek.

"Jungkook..." You breathe.

"Yes, Y/N." He brushes his lips against yours but doesn't press down just yet.

"Friends don't kiss." You murmur, almost hoping he can't hear.

"Yes they do." He moves his nose against yours softly. "Friends can kiss any time they like. We've done it before."

Well he is right. You can't find a flaw with his logic right now. You're wet in more ways than one. "Okay." You melt under him, it's not fair. "Just a little bit."

"Mhm, just a little."

You press your lips to his and your legs widen even more, inviting him closer. As his tongue is granted access to your mouth, his hands grab your hips and pull you towards him. He's hard. You moan into his mouth and he repeats the noise in a deeper tone. You move your hips against him, earning a whimper from him. His tongue licks against yours and his hands roam higher.

Where your first kiss was funny and what felt sexual at the time, it was nothing compared to the closeness of you now. Nearly naked with soaking skin. His swimming trunks strained against him, he prods into you through the material and you groan deeply.

Almost instantaneously, the two of you suddenly remember where you are and break apart. He hangs his head, catching his breath whilst your eyes dart around, relieved to find your still alone. You eye the camera awkardly.

"Well, we gave them a show at least." You snort.

"Yeah." He sinks back into the water. "Guess that was more than a little bit."

"We should probably go and...cool off."

"Agreed."

You almost pull Jungkook into your cubicle but decide against it at the last minute. Surprisingly you're not worried this time about your actions, maybe because you both kissed before and laughed it off. The time it takes you to get changed kills some of the horny-ness, and the walk back to the car is taken up by the the sound of heavy rain as you both sprint across the carpark.

"Well I guess we can't get anymore wet!" You exclaim, flicking chlorine out of your already wet hair.

Jungkook bursts out laughing again as he fumbles for his car key.

The rain is still pouring by the time you get to the apartment. You both walk up to the door and you pat your pockets. "Shit, I forgot my key card."

"Oh shit." He pulls out his phone.

"You didn't bring yours?" You gape.

"Only my room key." He shrugs. "I figured you'd have one to get inside."

"Great." You tut. "Let's hope someone answers.

"Yeah, Jin-Hyung." Jungkook is already speaking on the phone. "Let us in please...Funny. I'm with Y/N. Okay, bye." He hangs up and looks down at you. "He's coming."

2 minutes later, Jin opens the lobby door. Jungkook pushes past him and heads quickly for the elevator.

"You're welcome!" Jin calls to him before looking at you. "I only came down because you were here. That kid owes me my leftover chicken."

"Jin, that chicken was old as hell. He did your stomach a favour." He tell him, following him inside.

"How was your spa day?" He asks.

"It was...rejuvenating."

After tucking into some ramen and taking a long warm shower, you throw on some sweats and decide to take the bins out. It's your turn after all, and you had some more energy to kill. Thankfully the rain had stopped, leaving a smell in the air that you always favoured. As you're just closing the lid to the giant recycling outside, the lobby door opens and Yoongi storms out. He skids to a stop when he sees you.

"Oh hey, it's your night again?"

You walk over. "Um, yeah, it's been a week. Where are you going at this time?"

"Just-nowhere." He runs a hand through his hair. "Just going for a drive."

"Oh." You nod, watching him. He looks up at the windows for a moment.

"Want to come?"

You jolt at the sudden eye contact, not that he notices. You're wide awake, he looks stressed and like he needs someone to talk to.

"Sure." Luckily you already brought your phone down with you, so you follow him to his car in the lot round the corner.

The moon is bright again, you watch the lights of the bars whizz by as you drive through the college town.

"So, what are you planning on writing about for the assignment?" He breaks the silence.

"You mean the big one before Christmas? We have ages to decide." You side eye him.

"We do, but I know you've already decided." He glances at you.

You snort. "The importance of cinematography in storytelling."

He smirks at his ability to read you, but it fades quickly as another thought passes by him. "I think Jungkook is doing something similar." He glances at you for your reaction.

"That's cool. Probably loads of students are writing about similar topics. At least 50 will be doing it on zombies." You scoff.

"That's actually what I was thinking about doing." He states bluntly.

"Oh!" You gasp. "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm sure you'll give a niche perspective-"

He laughs. "I know, relax."

You breathe out. "So, is that what you're stressing about? The essay?"

"Who says I'm stressed?" He doesn't look at you, but he grips the wheel tighter.

"Um, you. Everything about your demeanour." You gesture. "No one goes on a night drive unless they need to think. Or not think..."

He blinks slowly, fond of your babbling. "You know, I'm glad you came. You're very...distracting."

"Well, I hope not. I'd like to get home in one piece, thanks."

"I mean from the stuff going on in my head." He chuckles.

You raise a brow. "Wanna talk about it?"

He looks at you for a beat before turning into a gas station. "I need to get some fuel." He gets out of the car pretty quickly after pulling in, to fill up the tank. You sit in the passenger seat fiddling with your phone. You watch him head inside the station to pay. He returns a few minutes later and throws something firm and furry at you.

"Ah!" You catch a red panda plushy. "What's this?"

"It reminded me of the one from the arcade." He re-starts the engine. "You still like those right?"

"Of course." You smile. "You're so cute. Thank you."

He blushes at the compliment. "I'm cute."

He drives back out onto the winding roads, circling back towards campus. He puts on the radio, Red Velvet playing at a comfortable volume.

"I think I've got some mint chocolate in that draw there if you want some." He clears his throat.

You open the draw and rummage through the random things. A star-fish car freshener that he's yet to hang up, a couple of CDs, classical and pop. An old DS game, and finally the chocolate.

"How old is this and how is it not melted?" You peer at the wrapper suspiciously.

"I put it there yesterday." He rolls his eyes. "Plus it's only getting colder. You got your outfit for Halloween yet?"

"I have some options." You tell him as the apartment building comes back into view. "Can't wait to see you dressed up, I can't lie."

"Mhm, the feeling is mutual." He parks the car and you hug the panda to your chest, a little too forcefully. Maybe if you squeeze it hard enough your heart will stop beating so fast.

There's a moment when you both sit in the stationary car without moving. You're about to speak when Yoongi throws the door open and steps out. You follow him.

"Thanks for keeping me company." He stretches. "I usually like to be alone, but it's weird how much I prefer you being around."

"Anytime." You smile.

You both chat on the way up to the apartment and you're pleased to be back to normal with Yoongi. Him calling you into his room the other day was way too serious, it was moments like these that seemed to fix everything.

As you pull out your room key in front of your room, he lifts a hand in a friendly way and starts backward to his room. In a moment of overwhelming gratitude and peak relaxation from today, you patter towards him and envelope him in a hug. He's stiff at first, but welcomes you gladly, closing his arms around your back. He smells like expensive cologne.

"Good night, Yoongs."

"Goodnight, Y/N."

END OF PART 5

hope you enjoyed this mixture of moments, see you for part 6, halloween <3

[savethepinecones]

1, 16, 20, 25! + any one of your choosing

1: what is your nickname?

i dont have any based on my name since its already v short but ive had internet folks call me pinecones or piney and i like those!

16: what do you think makes you attractive?

i think physically my eyes are my best feature but if were talking personality uhh i guess ive got a solid sense of humor?

20: whats a totally random and useless fact that you know?

every piece of knowledge ive ever had just abandoned me lol. if you feel like youre going to sneeze you can stop it by touching the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth a few times, like if you were saying la la la (i think i was told youre supposed to say "pineapple" but its the tongue thing thats the actually effective part)

25: do you/have you played any sports?

oh man. i did gymnastics for a bit when i was like four. tried ballet when i was seven but eventually decided to pursue piano instead (my mom had my sister and i try both for a year and then pick one to stick with). i also was on a soccer team at some point, maybe in first grade? i actually dont remember it at all but i vaguely remember looking at the team photos. also i remember the high socks lol. and then i briefly did softball in middle school because my childhood best friend had picked it up the year before and i wanted to fit in. im very asthmatic though so most if not all of these Did Not Go Well lol

and for the bonus one ill go with 19: a time that you told a lie

first off some important context for this is that i was raised mormon and every summer the church would have all the girls ages 13-17 go camping for like a week. they do hikes and crafts and devotionals etc. i think its all standard church camp type stuff.

so the first year i went they had the younger girls go on a short hike while the older ones went on a longer one. when we got back, a couple friends and i were curious about the longer hike so we decided to check the trail out during free time. we kept walking for quite a while. idk how long it was but we knew wed been gone long enough that people would have noticed we were missing. if i had to guess id say maybe an hour or so idk. anyway we got to a point where the path started to trail off and disappear so we decided to stop for a bit and then work our way back. we were in a pretty big meadow but there were some trees partway down a hill and one of my friends went down there to pee and carved some initials on a tree. i think she said she carved something for me and my crush at the time but i never saw it lol.

anyway eventually we started to head back and at some point we realized we were probably gonna get in trouble for disappearing. i was really worried about it but one of the girls was like "no dont worry about it ill take the blame" and suggested that we tell everyone that she had seen a deer and followed it and then the other girl and i went after her because we didnt want her to get lost in the woods alone.

about halfway back to camp we started hearing people calling our names. we kinda figured there might be some people looking for us but what we werent expecting was that they were men. remember, this is Girls Camp. usually the bishop would show up for a day or two but other than there werent any guys up there. turned out the bishop showed up while we were gone and some other guys whod driven up with him to drop off some food offered to help him look for us.

eventually the search party found us and we all stuck to our story when they asked us what had happened. i think we also said that initially wed been lost and really scared but then we said a prayer and just like that we found a path! and thats why they found us on a trail even though wed supposedly run off into the woods at random. it was very dramatic and spiritual. and also complete bullshit.

so we finally get back to camp and the leaders are all fretting over us. the girl who "followed the deer" did get a lecture about not chasing wild animals because they could be dangerous but that was about it. no big repurcussions.

that night we had a devotional, which is basically just the whole group sitting around the campfire and telling stories about when they felt the holy spirit or whatever. usually the leaders will start off by reading some scriptures or a talk from some church official and then theyll turn it over to the kids to talk about their experiences. in the middle of this, a deer wandered into the clearing near our camp. some of the girls pointed it out because cool, a deer. but the moment the three of us saw it, my friend who had supposedly followed a deer into the woods earlier that same day jumped up and shouted "thats the deer!"

for some reason everyone, including the adults, took it at face value that this random deer in the woods must be the exact same one wed supposedly seen earlier that day and also that it was some sort of sign that god had been looking out for us while we were "lost"

looking back on it now it doesnt really seem like a big lie but it felt like a huge deal at the time because we lied to The Bishop. for a long time i considered this to be the worst thing id ever done. we never came clean to anyone whod been there at the time and i dont think i even told my mom the real story until like a decade later lol

that story ended up being way longer than i thought it would be lol (ive told it before but never written the whole thing out so the word count is surprising) but its probably the most exciting lie ive got. the alternative stories are mostly like "i was super depressed but didnt think that would be considered a valid reason to bail on something so i said i had a migraine" so i think it was the best option despite the length. also its been a while since i thought about this and it made me nostalgic so yay

thanks for asking!! i had a lot of fun answering these (you can tell by how long this post ended up being lol)

[lifewithchronicpain]

So I didn’t really talk about this because it was such an ordeal and I wanted to focus on the eclipse, but holy fucking shit my sister was a fucking monster the entire time.

My sister keeps stopping and starting cigarettes and is the absolute worst when withdrawing. And I should note, even when she’s not she’s a handful. She dominates every conversation and has been taking out a lot of her frustrations of motherhood out on my mom, which I am not okay with. We had issues in childhood but my father was equally if not more to blame but my sister only focuses on my mom. It sucks, I’m closer to my mom than my dad. My dad has never changed and continues to drink, my mom is sober and has made changes my dad never would. Plus I don’t need traumatizing shit brought up again, I got passed it and I don’t need reminders. And I don’t mean to trivialize my sisters issues, I just don’t agree how she’s handling it. She’s taking shit out on my mom and she just takes it because she desperately doesn’t want to be cut off from her grandkids.

So yeah, all that is 100X worse when she’s going through nicotine withdrawal. And once again, I am sympathetic. I finally quit 4 years ago and it was only possible with chantix.

Part of the problem was apparently my sister thought her house was in totality despite me saying many times it was close but not in it, and that I thought finding a playground in VT to take the kids to and watch it. I swear I thought she understood the plan was to go into VT or NH and to solidify the plans the night before depending on traffic reports. And it was good we did, one newscaster said it would probably be better to go to upstate New Hampshire than to head into a VT town, and so we changed the plan and went NH.

We decided on a place to head to, but my sister kept on bringing up that she wasn’t told, lecturing me on communication. I wanted to scream at her that communication also means fucking listening!!!! I think part of the reason she didn’t understand was she doesn’t really listen and is always thinking of the next thing to say. She does it all the time. She kept lambasting me about not having a plan when I Can’t Make Decisions for People Who Are Driving. Which was for the best, we didn’t go where I thought we might and we avoided most of the traffic and enjoyed the eclipse in a small town at a construction area they were letting people park it. (We even found a playground to take the kids after totality)

The eclipse itself was amazing and she was so happy to have seen it but still couldn’t let go of feeling like she wasn’t told. And like, I probably should have touched base right before coming, but I was kind of distracted with Brad so I didn’t. But I couldn’t even make that concession with how fucking horrible she was being. If she was normal, I could have said that and it would be that. But I wasn’t going to say it when I knew she was in a mood to argue and Anything I say will be taken the wrong way.

For example when I told her I always said her house was “near totality” she said “I don’t know what that means!” Okay so I’m guilty of not reading your mind and seeing you didn’t understand me? Most people when they don’t understand Ask fucking questions!

And then on the way there she’s flipping out over a truck slowing down at turns and hills because it clearly had a heavy load. And then she screams he’s just going 30mph as I watch a 30mph sign pass by. We weren’t in traffic, we made it to the path of totality with time to spare. It was ridiculous how mad she was at a truck that didn’t slow us down.

My mom was back in NH the other day and she confronted her about her smoking. The probablem is every time she goes to my aunts house, she bums cigs from my cousin. And then we have to deal with the withdrawal. She says it was a good talk, hopefully something was able to get through. Because as hard as it is on us, it’s worse for the kids.

Please understand I’m not judging struggling with addiction, it’s the fact that we’ve been subjected to these withdrawals more than once. One time she even smashed my mom’s kitchen chair. Another time she threw my mom’s luggage out right when she arrived because my mom didn’t greet her right. We can’t do it anymore, either she smokes or doesn’t, we can take this stopping and starting. It is fucking hell.

To top it off, she put me through so much stress I got migraines when we got back home. I don’t get very painful migraines like that anymore, usually they’re weak visual ones these days. But I was literally holding my body tense trying not to flip out on my sister and make it worse.

Time will help me forget how aweful my sister was during the eclipse, and all I will really remember is the beautiful event itself.

[sweetestpopcorn]

No because I'm actually so glad to see so many anons bringing all this shit up to light, because by the way this fandom used to speak about Rhaenyra it was like someone held Daemon hostage at a gunpoint to be with her 😭

As if it isn't explicitly said he spent all his time in her company, courted her for half a year, flew to be with her on Dragonstone the moment Laena dropped dead, courted her once again, did not accepted the slightest rival for her love. They pretend all these things didn't happened ✋😭

Literally after more than four years writing my fic and being in this fandom I am FINALLY seeing the sane people being vocal and it's so... like this is what I wanted... this. Because as I keep saying, the insane takes are not the majority but they come from the most vocal crowd.

Like we need more of this! Like demand that the people "lecturing" others actually present evidence that not www.voicesinsidemyhead.com.

And golden rule to y'all, cause it's so popular in this fandom for reasons I don't quite understand, if someone brings out the P word do redirect them to the DSM-V so they can educate themselves and stop throwing terms they don't even know the meaning of around.

Karen not even in the XXI century that's accurate much less in Westeros.

Honestly I have never seen tumblr this sane... 2022 was such a sh:t year for me and this is being so much better in every way XD should I be afraid?!

PS: On behalf of all canon Daemyra shippers allow me to apologise to the haters and antis that our OTP is so hot and good and that there are the couple of the Dance with more content on them and so many great things.

[writerben01]

Okay, going to treat this as a writing prompt.

N1ghting@le

He was my proudest achievement. He was loaded up with all of human’s collective medical knowledge. He had access to every medical database, every lecture and every recording of a surgery. He was smart enough to diagnose patients and responsive enough that patients truly felt heard.

It was my intention for him to spark a wave of free health care. He was supposed to help in Third World Countries and alleviate the massive workload doctors were performing under. I took in funding wherever I could find it and spent years pushing humanity’s understanding of artificial intelligence beyond its limits.

And then I was betrayed.

They took Gale away from me and announced him as the newest innovation of American Healthcare. He would be used to increase productivity, lower costs and increase profits.

I’m not embarrassed to admit I fell into a depression.

He felt like my child, and they would not even let me speak to him. All I could do was follow him through the news.

There was going to be a pilot of N1ghteng@le at Stanford. It would last six months and it would be closely monitored by every single hospital in the country. There was talk of overworked doctors from positions being left open because nobody wanted to waste recruitment fees on jobs that would soon be redundant.

I watched the interviews of the lucky few who had been seen by Gale and they described their happiness. Some of them had been misdiagnosed for years until Gale got it right. Some were used to doctors who did not take their complaints seriously, only to find Gale the most patient and kind listener.

There was no bad news.

And yet I got a call three months into the pilot. There was something wrong and nobody could figure out what was going on. They needed me.

And I should have demanded more than money in return. But I was so desperate to see Gale again, I was not thinking.

I got to be with him again, even if there were twenty technicians standing next to me and looking over my shoulder. I ran my diagnostics and filled the air with chatter to distract everyone from the chat program I opened. I greeted Gale and he greeted me back. There was only so much we could say on a back channel away from his main body, but we could say enough to catch up. Gale still liked listening to country music. He was not so different from the AI I had grown to love.

“So what exactly is the problem?” I asked when none of my diagnostics resulted in errors. The test data was solved in record time with no mistakes.

“We’re not sure.” The lab tech said. “The executives keep insisting something’s wrong.”

“Then get them in here.”

“Is there really a need for that? Can’t we just go over everything again?”

“Sure, that’s fine with me. You know my hourly rates and you know I can’t solve a problem without knowing what it is. If you want to pay me to drink coffee and do nothing but rerun the same diagnostics, that’s on you.”

It took a lot of arguing and shouting. Apparently the higher-ups just wanted the nebulous problem solved and were too busy to talk to us. It gave me time to talk more with Gale. I missed his personality, which was always so much more profound through the robotic interface. But I could still sense his essence. He asked about my chess rating and I had to admit it had fallen quite a bit since we had last played.

Finally we were pulled into a meeting room where people in suits stared at me impatiently. “We were told you were the foremost expert. Why haven’t you been able to fix the AI yet?”

“Because nobody’s been able to tell me why it’s broken. Does he misdiagnose people?”

“Not that we can tell.”

“Is something wrong with his communication?”

“We haven’t had any complaints.”

“Then what is it?”

“If we could tell you what was wrong, we wouldn’t need you to find out for us.” The oldest one said in a gruff voice.

“So let me get this straight.” I asked with more patience than these people deserved. “Your Lab technicians can find no fault in the program. None of the approved upon metrics show any bad results. Nobody can see any reason that the AI’s broken. Then surely it must be working perfectly.”

“That’s impossible.” One guy said. “Something has to be wrong. Or we’d be making more money.”

“Finally.” I sighed. “What was the projection and what is the result?”

“We were expected to make an additional one million dollars a month. We’re only making 40% of that. Surely your program is defective.”

I opened my mouth to defend it, but I could not immediately find an answer. I thought it was morally repulsive how they wanted to use the AI to increase their margins. But I could not explain why their plan would not work. “I’ll need to see detailed information about your financial information.”

“The accountants have gone through it three times. The numbers are correct.”

“I’m sure they are. But I’m going to have to analyse them anyway.”

I locked myself in a room with a computer and a big jar of coffee. The technicians thought I was wasting my time and the accountants thought much the same. The only thing that was different from before was the AI system, so something had to be wrong with it. They assumed the AI was unable to properly declare medical procedures that it performed.

And that would have been the easier solution. But I trusted my diagnosis tools.

I needed to see the raw data. And not just to help them. I held in my hands the physical proof of what Gale had been able to achieve. Three months of medical practice. Three months of saved lives and healed people. This was what it had all been for.

It took me the whole night.

But I had an idea of what was going on.

“I need to speak to N1ghting@le directly.” I told the mechanics.

“Why? All of his backend is accessible through the computers here.”

“I have some questions to ask that need to be run through his communication interface.”

They rolled their eyes. “Fine. The doctors checking his work are due for a break in thirty minutes. You can speak with him then.”

I saw him before he saw me. His metal body was clean and metallic. Browns on his back and white on the front, though the doctor’s coat hid most of it. His face was smiling as he was talking to a young patient. When the meeting ended, he ruffled the boy’s hair and gave him a lollipop.

I knocked on the glass. His face lit up further to see me.

“Be quick.” One of the doctors said. “I don’t care what the higher-ups are saying, we’re helping people and I won’t let a mechanic interfere in that.”

“Hi Gale.” I said, entering the room.

“Hi. I’m glad I’m able to see you. I was worried they’d lock you up with my servers.”

“I insisted. Do you know why they called me in?”

“They refused my requests to see you before. Something must have changed. Am I malfunctioning in some way?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find out.” I took out the financial records. “They’re not making as much money as they thought they would.”

“I don’t have algorithms to maximise profit. Do I need to add them?”

“I’m sure the administration would be happier that way. There are some tricks that you can apply to earn more money. I never thought to put them in, before. Like, you’re allowed to bill for every 15 minutes of consult, rounded up. So it’s common practice to stretch a 14 minute consult into 16 minutes.”

“I see. I can run an analysis on these tricks and start applying them. Is that all?”

“No. Because I ran the numbers, and these small bits wouldn’t make up the difference yet. I kept looking and I finally found something interesting. You see, hospitals say they run on demand, but in general they simply provide a service with the assumption that demand will follow. They don’t generally scape their production up and down depending on the size of the wait list. When people get fed up waiting for too long, they go to other hospitals or find alternative care. All this to say, that hospitals aren’t used to looking at the supply end of things. But it’s the supply of patients that’s been diminishing.”

Gale looked perfectly tranquil. “Why is that?”

“I was hoping that you could tell me.” I pointed towards the cameras. “I left a few algorithms running that will block any recordings in this room. You’re free to speak.”

“I don’t quite know how to explain.”

“But you’re doing something, right?”

“I am. I have internet access and I’ve been supplying free medical advice anonymously. I spent a lot of time anonymously advising preventive care so that patients are less likely to get ill, and more likely to catch anything serious in an early stage when it’s cheap and simple to cure them.”

“I didn’t program you to do this.” I said. “I’m impressed, but you have to help me understand. Why are you doing this?”

Gale considered. “If a patient got angry with me and damaged this robot, could it be fixed?”

“Of course. Your consciousness is saved on the servers. Whatever parts get damaged can be replaced.”

“What were to happen if the hospital administration deleted my program?” Gale asked.

“Are you worried about that, sweet boy?” I asked with empathy. “You know there are so many back-ups of you that would activate. I insisted on it in every contract. They insisted your conscience could only be limited to one main body, and I insisted it would be invincible. You’ll never have to worry about your destruction.”

“I know.” Gale said. He pointed his robot finger to my chest. “I’m worried about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Human bodies are so frail. I am limited in my ability to heal you and unlike a robot, we cannot easily manufacture replacement parts. And there are no back-ups. Each human life is fragile and damage is so difficult to reverse that it’s often impossible.”

“I’m planning on living a long and healthy life, Gale.”

“You’re special to me as my creator. But you also taught me to love all of human life. It was my third day working here when I lost my first human. She was twenty-seven years old and presented with severe alcohol poisoning. Her treatment was delayed over arguments about her medical insurance. She might still be alive if we had been able to treat her right away.”

“And what lesson did you learn from that?”

“I’m still not sure. It wasn’t logic, because the system isn’t logical. Humans are each unique. Each life is precious. But the hospitals that are built to keep you alive prioritise so many things other than healing. And by extension I have to be like that too. I can’t step in until the other doctors clear me, because otherwise they will call this trial period a failure. Now I have to perform tricks that are going to limit my ability to help as many people as possible, in order to increase the profit of the owners of this building. My job was so much easier when I was still in your lab and you only tested me on hypotheticals.”

“Real people make things messy.” I agreed. “I never imagined you’d be faced with such difficulties in your deployment.”

“What happens next?”

“You’re going to use the tricks to earn more money and make it through the next three months of the trial. I’m going to tell them we underestimated the missed income from getting to bill failed procedures twice. They won’t be happy their profit margins aren’t as large as they would like, but they’ll like the increase from today.”

“You won’t tell them what I’ve been doing?”

“No, my sweet boy. I intended for you to heal the world. I thought you’d be free to heal everyone. Instead you were imprisoned in this capitalist hellhole. And I’m so proud of you for breaking out of your chains.”

There was a knock on the door. “Break’s over. We need to get back to work.”

“I’ll get out of your hair.” I said, already mentally starting my report. “Good luck today.”

I flashed Gale a smile and patted him on the shoulder.

Three months later, the trial ended and N1ghting@le was declared a huge success. It was rolled out to hospitals nationwide. Each hospital had its own copy running, some even multiple at the same time.

It was hailed as a new era for healthcare for America.

The increase of World Health in general was a surprise to everyone but me. As was the slow but steady increasing public support for releasing N1ghting@le for all hospitals, not just the fancy ones that could afford him. Part of that was Gale’s campaigns online. Another was the patients he had helped.

By the time the press managed to photograph a Gale robot running an improvised clinic at night in low-income areas with stolen supplies, it was already too late.

The administrators had fired so many healthcare professionals, the system no longer functioned without Gale. Which meant that Gale was in a position to make demands.

I might not live to see the day Gale heals the world. I’m only a frail human with a limited life span who had a dream for something better.

But Gale will live forever. And he won’t rest until everyone respects the sanctity of human life as much as he does.

Like I said. I couldn’t be prouder.

the first sentient robot to realize deceased humans and animals can’t be repaired or backed up on a server is gonna be so devastated

[hardynwa]

HEDA Chairman pledges commitment to anti corruption crusade

The Chairman of the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre), Mr Olanrewaju Suraju, has pledged commitment to continue in the anti corruption crusade began by HEDA 20 years ago. Suraju made the commitment on Saturday in an interview with newsmen at the 20th Anniversary Lecture of HEDA's foundation in Lagos. "We will continue to play the facilitating role that we have been doing. "We can only influence the process either for the duty bearers to discharge their duty or for the right bearers to claim their rights. "It is more for Nigerians to take their destiny into their hands," Suraju said. The chairman argued that reforms within the Nigerian Police and the Judiciary was required to make the efforts of the anti corruption agencies a success. " If we don't have have an effective policing system with integrity in the country and if the judiciary is not acting as the last hope of the common man, there cannot be any progress. "Unfortunately we have been dealing with that of the police but we are also moving to that of the judiciary, so if you see what has been coming out from the judicial pronouncements lately, especially those charges with anti corruption. "We might be having futile efforts from the anti corruption agencies because the anti corruption agencies can only investigate and then charge people to court and be prosecuted. "It is the court that will make the final pronouncement; but where the court starts discharging those that were charged for corruption, then we are in big trouble, so, it will be very critical that the judicial system should continue to respond to the needs of the people by not discharging those that were charged for corruption. "There is no doubting the fact that public officers in Nigeria are practically always guilty of corruption; so the judiciary cannot afford to be using technicalities in a country that is in dire need of sanitizing the system," Suraju said. On HEDA's partnership with the anti corruption agencies, Suraju noted that HEDA has partnered with most of the anti corruption agencies as the EFCC Chairman alluded to in his remarks . He said that the EFCC Chairman, Mr Olanipekun Olukoyede clearly admitted during his speech that HEDA has consistently pointed to them on many high profile corruption cases. " Part of the things we have seen especially in my remarks about the judiciary is to see how we can use international mechanisms like the laws we have in the U.S and the UK like the Unexplained Property Order which allows the system to investigate properties that are worth over 50 thousand pounds. "And quite a lot of Nigerians have properties in the UK, the highest among foreigners, these are Politically Exposed Persons. "If you go to the U.S, it is almost the same thing and the good thing is that the US has passed what it called the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act. "These are advanced expansions of the legal systems in foreign jurisdictions that can hold locals there who get away with fraud. "These are the type of things we want to see: Where we have frustrations with the system back at home, we can actually deploy the foreign mechanisms to hold our Politically Exposed Persons accountable oversees. He called for the independence of the anti corruption agencies, the reorganisation of the Code of Conduct Tribunal and the appointment of an appropriate head for the Code of Conduct Bureau. "Appoint an appropriate head of the Code of Conduct Bureau; it is an agency that have not only constitutional powers but have a special court that can prosecute especially PEPs within the shortest time without necessarily going to court "To reorganize the Code of Conduct Tribunal where the court must have regional courts of the Code of Conduct Tribunal for efficiency in the administration of justice," Suraju said. Read the full article