#or is it his uni just a bunch of faculties | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

actualbird · 2 years ago

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assorted hc rambles that one way or another have something to do with the academia in tot's canon

wc: 1k

cuz even if i know this is a game of romance and wits and murder mystery law, hyv cant just drop the cast like the nxx team (aka vyn and artem have doctorate degrees, mc is a graduate attorney, luke has a master's in bioengineering, and marius is working on his master's in oil painting) and not expect me to want to know more about how theyre interacting with their specific spheres of academia

stellis university's biology department is begging "Pearce, L." to please consider giving a guest lecture for their students, pretty please

i think it's very entertaining to remember that several departments at stellis university have a bunch of Celebrity Poster Students/Alumni/Profs.

psychology dept obviously has the graceful intelligent dr vyn richter and hoo boy, that incident back in his personal story 3 where for a hot sec the university believed a SKETCHY CALLOUT POST accusing him to be a TOXIC MANIPULATOR....okay thats pretty on par for the course of how social media works HAHA. but my point here is that vyn is beautiful and a great teacher and theres a fanclub for him and he was momentarily involved in juicy drama. hes the perfect poster prof, he brings in a lot of attention and, in turn, interested students.

the law dept obviously has artem wing, and theyve also got rising attorney mc too!! im not sure if ingrid rosworth is canonically also a graduate of stellis uni, but if she is, im sure the law dept can drop some spicy rumors about ingrid and artem's Bitter Rivalry or something

aaaand the fine arts department has The marius von hagen as a grad student, and that in itself is already a big draw and a bunch of publicity.

but what about the STEM nation?

luke pearce is the only person on the team that is in no way affiliated with stellis university. he got his master's degree at national central university, which (and i know i mentioned this before but i want to mention it again) is noted in the Big Data Lab to be a canonical rival school of stellis university

National Central University has been competing with Stellis University for the top-ranked college domestically for years, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. [from the Big Data Lab entry on NCU]

which is already so hilarious to think about. can you imagine national central university and stellis university's sports teams go against each other for a big game and suddenly the nxx investigation team is divided due to school loyalties? luke's gonna be the lone ranger rooting for national central and everybodys gonna affectionately call him a traitor

but i digress.

while luke is the most lowkey of the team in terms of publicity/popularity he gets from the media, surely, surely this canonical genius' bioengineering contributions during his studies garnered attention from the nerds at stellis uni.

the master's thesis written by Pearce, L. is something many students and faculty have been fangirling/fanboying over the moment they read it, and it becomes known that Pearce, L. is currently residing in south stellis, and thus the dept keeps sending luke emails inviting him to do a guest lecture sometime

and he always just replies with a concise and friendly "No thank you! :D" because 1) hes got enough on his plate to do right now and 2) cuz of stupid school loyalties jhvJHVKSJHFS, hes not teaching on enemy territory

"MY DISCIPLINE'S citation style is better than YOURS!!!"

luke (biology/engineering) and vyn (psychology/pedagogy) use APA. mc and artem (law) use The Bluebook Style. and marius, our sole trooper in the fine arts, uses MLA.

if ever the team have to collaborate with somebody else in the team who is outside of their respective discipline's citation style to co-author some research, blood will be shed. the chaos would be immense. everybody assumed they were using the same citation (i.e. whatever citation each of them were respectively used to) and then when they realize the formatting discrepancies, the ACADEMIC RIFTS IN MANUALS OF STYLE, everybody gets extremely defensive and comically overdramatic over their preferred format of choice

vyn, luke, and marius: //squinting at the bluebook format

vyn: this is...

marius: youre gonna be way too passive aggressive with your thoughts, what we need is blunt aggressive. this format sucks balls

artem: it does not suck balls

vyn: no, he's right, it does

marius, muttering to himself: oh that was a weird feeling, vyn saying im right

artem, louder: it doesnt!!

luke, looking at mc with the biggest saddest puppy eyes: w-when did you change so much...i...i thought i knew you, i trusted you 🥺🥺🥺

mc: STOP MAKING THAT FACE AT ME, I HAD TO ADAPT IN LAW SCHOOL. WHY ARENT WE BULLYING MARIUS??

marius: uh, cuz marius is right and holy and all of you are wrong?

vyn, immediately switching sides cuz he loves the drama: MLA is ridiculous. why on earth is the only number present in the in text citation the page number?

marius: cuz it's simpler and doesnt take for-fuckin-ever to read past?????

luke, grumbling: least MLA could do is have the year in the in text citation...

marius: thats what the works cited portion is for, bitch!

artem: so you want us to flip all the way to the works cited portion to see the year? that seems like it would take much longer to do, like it would take forever---

and this argument would go on for far too long.

moving on

one day vyn is sick and has to postpone a class and...

if vyn comes down with the ails, he'll of course have to update his students about how he wont be coming in on that day.

now, he wanted to start off his email saying. "I am afraid I will have to postpone classes [...]" and whatnot, but vyn is Very Sick. he starts writing the email, passes out like a few words in, and when he wakes up he sees the email he had accidentally sent to all his students:

Good day, I am afraid

(based on this hilarious tumblr post)

#tears of themis #luke pearce #marius von hagen #vyn richter #artem wing

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riridontneedya · 3 years ago

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Hot ad doctorem

(Hot for teacher )✨

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Any house reader (y/n)

Wordcount: 4,300

Warnings: SMUTTY SMUT SMUT , Dom, Sub, Oral, Praise kinks , spitting, Choking , Angst , Teasing , Mature language.

A/N : Back at it again with the saucy contents. I would like to add whilst this is a teacher/ student dynamic everyone is of age!! no minors here the character is an adult!! I have alluded to this in the story as I DO NOT BE SUPPORTIVE OF ANY NONCEY AGE GAP ANTICS. Consider it like hogwarts uni! Other than that do please enjoy , once again this is inspired by the one and only beautiful bestie @littlemissnoname13 and her immaculate Draco as a professor piece *chefs kiss* @littlemissnoname13

Summary: Draco returns and is the new teacher of defence of the dark arts navigating his past and new and improved self he soon finds himself in a budding new relationship.

“Absolutely preposterous if you ask me” groused Jeremiah sneering at the newspaper before him . ‘Well its a good thing no-one is asking you’ tutted Angelica as she plucked the newspaper from his grasp. Angelica feasted her eyes upon the article, they darted back and forth as she lapped up the information. ‘Ugh of course you’d be delighted Jelica, your judgment is skewed because you're simply trying to get with him’. ‘Correction, I will get with him and don’t be so whiney, he’s hardly a baddie anymore I highly doubt Hogwarts would be so keen to have him back. ‘Could’ve fooled me this place is going to the dogs I wouldn’t be surprised them welcoming back a criminal with open arms’ grumbled Jeremiah attempting to retrieve his newspaper from Angelica.

“Sounds like your quite intimidated there Jerry’ giggled y/n who had emerged from the other side of the classroom. Propping herself onto the desk she peered over Angelicas shoulder glossing over the article that appeared to cause quite the stir amongst students . ‘Me , intimidated pfft as if darling please you know I'm more the man than he could ever be” he scoffed triumphantly . “Ooff, well I guess there’s only room for one cocky blonde… though I don’t think he would take to kindly to your words Jeremiah”. “And you would be absolutely correct , ms Y/N Is it?’ Immediately everyone spun round to source who was responsible for the unfamiliar voice that echoed through the classroom.

Stood before them was the infamous Draco. He was much older now but still remarkably handsome. His three piece suit clung perfectly to his muscular frame, trademark blonde locks combed to one side however a new feature were his tortoise shell glasses. The class was rendered speechless unable to do anything yet gawp in amazement. “What appears to be the problem, you all were a lively bunch just moments ago” remarked Draco “also you appeared to have the bit to say…Jeremiah is it?” Raising his eyebrow at him. Jeremiah immediately began to fumble on his words attempting to make some poor excuse, however Draco couldn’t care less about what he had to say. He himself was far too fixated on the girl on the desk beside him.

His eyes wandered up the length of her body stoping to admire her curvaceous thighs and how her skirt simply grazed the tops of them. Seeing how her form fitting blouse encased her ample bosom. Completely ignoring Jeremiah he turned his attention to y/n. “Ms y/l/n do you make a habit of sitting on the furniture. “Without missing a beat y/n responded ‘And do you make a habit of immediately picking on students sir?” Draco was astounded by her response , he admired how brazen she was it riled something up in him wanting to bend her over his knee and make her regret having a smart mouth. “No.. only those I find deserving’ he smirked.

Draco cleared his throat capturing the attention of the class . Placing his hands into his pocket he began to speak “Ive been informed by the faculty, that I should pick a senior student to be some sort of guide give me the rundown on the class and so on until I find my feet, I understand many will be hesitant but I thought it best I ask” Angelica rapidly flung her hand in the air and frantically wobbled it about “ Draco.. I mean Mr Malfoy I assure you id be perfect for he position , I am oh so zealous when…” “Yes maybe a bit too zealous for my liking Ms Sinner but thank you for expressing an interest’.

Mumbles and faint chuckles could be heard throughout the classroom . Angelica not getting what she wanted was not a common theme and by the disgust plastered across her face it was clear she was unimpressed. “What about you Ms y/l/n from our brief interaction you strike me as someone who welcomes a challenge” asked Draco locking eyes with her . “You’d be correct about that sir , Id be delighted to” y/n remarked gently gnawing her bottom lip. “Excellent, stay behind and ill give you details after class”.

Y/n let out a hefty sigh as she approached the door of the address he had given her earlier that day. She coyly tapped on the door. It creaked open and revealed a rather smiley Draco grasping a small glass of fire whiskey, “y/n I'm so glad you came here let me take your coat come on in”. Y/n still incredibly nervous handed him her coat without so much as a faint smile “don’t worry I don’t bite” giggled Draco sensing her nervousness towards him “don’t worry I bite back” wittily remarked y/n “ah there’s that fighting spirit from earlier” roared Draco ushering her inside.

I didn't take long until the pair where comfortable with one another. It was a lovely evening of laughter and lively chatter whilst simultaneously grading papers. “I know this seems rather odd especially coming from your teacher but Jeremiah .. what’s his deal I see the way he looks at you please don’t tell me you date that … bafoon”. Y/n burst out in raucous laughter. “No way he’s been a family friend since forever absolutely not!’ . “Right , since were on the topic of odd questions Ive been meaning to ask why didn’t you chose Angelica , I mean she practically fell out her seat” giggled y/n popping a piece of a chocolate frog into her mouth.

“Yes about that , Im sure Angelica is … lovely but I know her type.. she’d simply try and have me fuck her only to then use it as bragging rights or some feeble attempt to “fix” me thinking I’d become besotted and she will have me to herself.. I’ve come along way to distance myself from all things cliche Draco I don’t want to give people a reason to talk I want to start afresh and everything I do to be meaningful and for myself.”

“I see” said y/n softly glancing at the faded mark on his exposed forearm. “Did it hurt?’ “The mental did more than the physical” Draco sniffled pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Well I can’t possibly imagine what you went through but I'm proud of you for making it this far , I know we don’t know each other well but if you need anything ,ill be here for you” y/n smiled bashfully. Visibly touched by y/ns words Draco leant across the counter taking y/ns hand beginning to graze his thumb against her knuckles.

“Come here’ Draco said softly . Y/n manoeuvred from her side of the kitchen island and made her way to him . His blonde locks were tousled ,the first few buttons of his shirt were undone , the sleeves rolled up. He looked much more relaxed and far less intimidating than earlier when he was sporting his three piece suit. ‘What is it sir?’ Y/n questioned. “God I don’t think you know what it does to me when you call me that’ he chuckled. Y/n nervously giggled “oh my I’m intrigued, what does it do”. “Would you like me to show you he offered, extending his hand for y/n to grab. Y/n keenly placed her hand into his. Dracos large hand encapsulated hers and he began to guide her onto his lap. Y/n let out a small squeal as she landed on him, she was affronted by his large member protruding through his trousers.

“Sorry we can stop if yo” Draco's sentence was cut short by y/ns kiss. With that being the confirmation he needed he flung his arms around her and kissed her back with an intensity. Y/n began to grind her hips against him whilst ridding Draco of his shirt. Once it was off draco balled it up and flung it across the kitchen in the same breathe he scooped y/n up and set her down on the counter. “Hmmm , I love this little school skirt of yours … so much easier to fuck you in .. I was thinking about how id simply flip it up and have my way with you the moment I laid eyes on you”. His large hands began to travel up her thighs slowly caressing them whilst spreading them apart “oh and don’t get me started on how divine these thighs are”.

He hooked his fingers into the tops of her underwear and began to slope them down. Y/n tilted her hips making it easier for him to shimmy them off. “Ill be keeping these” Draco winked sliding them into his pocket. Sinking to his knees he began to devour y/ns sex. Y/n began to shudder as Draco's tongue flickered and vibrated against her swollen bud. He knew exactly where to ripple his tongue in order to make y/ns body vibrate. Y/n screeched with pleasure her hands gripping his hair legs entangled around his neck. Unexpectedly Draco thrusted his fingers into her moving them at a tremendous pace whilst his tongue continued to swirl relentlessly on her bud. This was enough to tip y/n over the edge her bud was pulsating and body quaking.

Draco detached himself from y/n ,he watched in awe at how she unravelled for him. “Im not done with you yet darling”. Helping her down off the counter he manoeuvred his finger in a circular motion indicating for her to turn around. Y/n willingly spun around and leant over the counter “what a good girl you are” grinned Draco as he gently pushed into her. Letting out a robust moan Draco bellowed “God, you feel so good” his grip on her hips was feral, the rate in which he pounded into her made the counter top shake, sending the items on it flying. Y/n cried out in jubilation. It wasn’t long before Draco's pace became more sluggish and he finally let out a fierce moan as he shot ropes of his warm contents into her. Y/n collapsed into a pile onto the floor she was exhausted she had never experienced anything of that ferocity but all she knew was she could never go back now. “Forget the rest of the papers lets get you cleaned up , Ill run you a bath and bring you up some tea , we can do coffee before class in the morning” he said smiled aiding her off the floor.

“A D! What in merlins names is this monstrosity!” Y/N exclaimed fiercely jabbing at the scroll. What’s the matter pumpkin pipped up Jeremiah. Y/n pulled a face and motioned towards her scroll. “Crikey darling , a D there must be a mix up the only Ds I've known you to have is the two in-front you”. Y/n tossed him a threatening glare. “Shut the hell up its fine , like you said there must be a mix up and it will be changed il make sure of it’ y/n drummed her fingers on the table debating her next move. Suddenly a “Ms y/n” broke her from her train of thought. “Umm yes professor Mcgonagall”. “Could you be a dear and collect everyones name for me who will be attending the senior end of year ball , then bring it to me once you’ve finished” she said with a warming smile. “Of course , it would be my pleasure professor” . Y/n rose from her chair setting out for Draco's direction.

Name … scowled y/n . “Draco” he replied dryly looking unamused at y/ns tone. ‘Draco who.. sarcastically scoffed y/n’ “Draco … Malfoy, perhaps you would like me to spell it out for you. ‘That won’t be necessary Mr Malfoy y/n tutted as she flashed him an apathetic smile. Draco cleared his throat and began to rise from his seat. Y/ns eyes followed him as he made his way to her side of the desk ,standing beside her feigning interest at the paper in her hand. He closed the space between them speaking so only she could hear. “ I know I wouldn’t need to spell it because you sure as hell had no trouble yelling it last night… so I suggest you drop this attitude or do I have to fuck it out of you ..hmmm”. Y/ns breathing became shallow she could feel the wash of arousal taking over her body. Attempting to conceal her emotions in regards to Dracos teasing words she stammered “You wish’ and left leaving and enraged Draco. “Detention ! Ms y/n” he called out his eyes carefully following her as she made her way back to her seat.

As the class clamoured to leave Draco called out. ‘Not you ms y/l/n your detention starts now. Y/n pouted as she begrudgingly shuffled back to her desk. Soon it was just them. ‘What’s the matter bunny you seemed quite gleeful last night now today .. you appear to have a vile little attitude’. Taking hold of her face he used his index finger and thumb to squeeze her cheeks together making her pout more prominent. Y/n swatted him away, folding her arms she turned to face the opposite direction. ‘Fine , pray tell what’s the matter” questioned draco. Y/n exhaled and slowly manoeuvred herself in order to meet his gaze. “Oh so you want me to tell you what you already know huh …? Spat y/n her gaze fixated on his pale blue eyes. “Hmm I may have an idea about what’s ruffling your feathers, but do go ahead and amuse me bunny” he said

Leaning playfully in his chair brandishing a mischievous grin.

“What an earth do you call this shit” y/n shrieked , waving around the scroll visibly enraged. “What , I couldn’t have it look like you're the teachers pet now can we ..” Chuckled Draco. “You're ridiculous … you know that” tutted y/n firing the scroll in his direction , turning to leave . Draco shot up almost immediately grabbing y/ns wrist and hoisting her towards him. “Looks like I do have to fuck it out of you’. His hands began to travel up her shirt, caressing and fondling her breasts. He placed his lips on her collarbone decorating them with kisses travelling up to her neck along her chin until his lips met hers .

As their lips collided he kissed her hungrily removing his hand from her breasts he now entangled them in her hair. In the midst of the kissing Draco had steered y/n into the direction of the wall and pressed her against it. With her now against the wall Draco drove his knee in between her legs prying them open. Y/n let out a moan “filthy girl” Draco chuckled darkly now open your mouth for daddy” . Y/n blissfully complied taking his index and middle finger he glided them into her mouth , y/n began to suck them earnestly coating them in spit.

“Ugh , thats it make them wet for Sir” Draco moaned. Removing his fingers from her mouth with a gratifying pop, he took his spit ladened fingers and moved them under her skirt , finding her sex and beginning to trace circles on her swollen bud . Suddenly he thrust them in her entrance. Y/n began to convulse her back arched off the wall her mouth hung open and eyes rolling back. Dracos fingers were moving at a rapid rate ,her legs began to quiver as she was unable to withstand it anymore.

“Draco … Draco” she whimpered . “Funny that I thought you didn't know my name earlier Draco laughed menacingly. Yanking his fingers from inside her he began to instruct . “knees now’ once more she complied and dropped to them. Draco undid his trousers letting his erection spring free and brush y/ns face. ‘Spit on it for daddy, make it nice and wet now and just maybe ill fuck you , you little filthy whore”. Y/n began to suck eagerly upon his length making sure to try and fit every inch in order to please him. ‘Thats my girl’, he moaned as he thrusted deeper and deeper into her mouth. Draco began to pant y/ns impressive skills were going to make him finish quicker than he anticipated.

Whisking his phallus out from her mouth he said with a smile “ ooh I think you deserve that fuck after all”. Yanking her from her knees and towards him he kissed her feverishly, placing his hands around her waist he spun her around pressing her up against the wall . Y/n groaned in delight at the feeling of his firm cock pressed against her backside, “fuck me draco’ y/n begged .Tugging at y/ns hair sharply ‘Dont be an impatient little slut , I will fuck you good and hard when I'm ready”. With his face buried into Y/ns neck he let out a groan as he pushed into her at an agonisingly slow pace “I'm going to fuck you over every desk, every chair, every corner of this God damn classroom ”.

With that he jerked forward pushing his full vast length inside her. Y/n let out a mighty gasp letting a immense moan tumble from her mouth. ‘Thats a good girl’ beamed Draco, ‘What’s my name ? .. go on say It you little brat.. i'll make sure you never forget it again’ spat Draco his grip tightening on her waist as he continued to pummel into her. Y/n attempted to utter his name but with each stroke from his throbbing cock made her crumble. ‘Say it!’ He roared driving himself deeper and deeper into her. ‘ Draco… Draco’ ‘Draco fucking who? Huh y/n? ‘Draco fucking malfoy’ y/n cried out y/n as she began to fall apart beneath him.

Y/n wasn’t even a stone throw away from the classroom but she already missed Draco's touch. She craved every inch of him ,the mere mention of him made her heart flutter. Y/n staggered back to her dorm , had anyone been watching her hobble back they’d assume she was injured. Smiling to herself she eventually made her way back to the dorm , exhausted she collapsed into bed and promptly drifted off to sleep. Y/n woke up still in a tremendous mood from yesterday’s antics .. she knew she had coffee scheduled with him before class so she hastily got ready in order to meet him. ‘Good morning” chirped y/n popping her around around the door to the classroom. “Good morning angel” gleamed Draco . He scrambled across the classroom to embrace y/n and place a delicate kiss on her forehead. “Did you sleep ok darling” “like a baby” chuckled y/n. “Come here , sit on my lap angel.

Y/n perched on his lap and looped her arms around his neck. “I missed you” “I missed you to bunny” smiled Draco pulling her in for a deep, soft and slow passionate kiss . With the kissing becoming heated y/n could feel him grow beneath her this made y/n let out breathy moan against his lips. “Fuck it , forget about class today lets just go back to mine Im gonna fuck you senseless” y/n chuckled you can’t just do that can you ? Either way let me show you how much I missed you first” y/n grinned from ear to ear as she sloped down to her knees and began to unfasten him. “Fuck you're killing me y/n” groaned Draco as he leant back in his chair.

Draco flung his head back in ecstasy his body quivering as she so effortlessly submerged his length into her mouth. His nails were sure to leave indentations on the chair as his ferocious grip tightened. “Fuck” he muttered under his breath unable to form full sentences due to the immense pleasure. Draco could feel her smile forming, she revelled in the delight of having the power even if it was for a brief moment. Y/n looked up at him with doe eyes as he looked down at her .Draco marvelled at her beauty , despite being on her knees mouth full and eyes streaming she still remained a work of art to him. Removing his grip from the chair he extended his hand to cradle her face “who’s daddy’s good girl ey” he smirked. Just then the door to the classroom swung open with brut force.

“Oh Mr Malllllfoooooyyy” there was no mistaking that relentlessly irritating tone of Angelica. Draco immediately hunched himself over the desk in a bid to conceal y/n it was a grand enough desk but you needn’t be a brain surgeon to know what was going on had you hung about. “What an earth do you want Ms Sinner, class doesn’t start until another 15 minutes” he snapped “Well.. you know me just keen to learn .. there’s something I could use your help with actually” pouted Angelica as she attempted to flutter closer to his desk. “Stop at once Angelica!” Barked Draco , rendering Angelica in complete shock. Now despite Angelicas intrusion y/ns lips remained firmly around Draco's member,Y/N proceeded to continue to pleasure him she could feel now with how firm he was becoming and how he would tremor at the swirl of her tongue , he was close and could hardly contain his composure . Draco wouldn’t risk exposing her so she was now the master and he the puppet .“ Oh , sorry I didn’t mean to disturb you I just”… “You just what! once again did what Angelica wants hmm .. like I said I'm busy and i'll let you know once I have the time” roared Draco. Without deviating his icy glare from Angelica he discreetly lowered his hand to Y/ns shoulder squeezing it tightly ,

This was to act as a warning signalling for her to unlatch, however this had the adverse effect and only spurred on y/n. The immeasurable pleasure seared through Draco the surge of heat coursed through his veins making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle . “ Dammit! Draco's fist plummeted off the table “what are you still doing here?” Like a wounded puppy Angelicas eyes widened in horror and she quickly fled from the classroom.

As the door closed behind her Draco immediately thrusted his wand at it causing the locks to clink. “You!!” He hissed as he grabbed the base of y/ns neck , plucking her off him. Y/n could see the wrath in his eyes as he drew her close “Now don’t you dare think you can pull a stunt like that and get away unpunished”. Y/n couldn’t help but beam in delight in the thought of what he would do to her. Draco cupped y/ns face then suddenly administered a slap across her cheek . This was instantaneous arousal for y/n as she pang of heat on her struck cheek sent shock waves of excitement through her body.

“Turn around I want you face down on this desk whilst I fuck you silly” understood spat Draco as he grabbed a fistful of her hair. Y/n let out a lustful moan. “ oh and by the way , the locks may be on but there’s no silencing spell.. class starts in 5 minutes tops .. Id be quiet if I were you , we don’t want anyone finding out what a filthy little slut you are, now do we?”. With that Draco flipped up y/ns school skirt, hooking her underwear to the side he abruptly thrusted his length inside her. Y/n let out a yelp . ‘What did I say’ growled draco as his hand came down on her arse. S..ss.ssorry she attempted to utter whilst being slammed up against the desk trying to keep up with Dracos ferocious pace. ‘Sorry who?’ Sorry sir she whimpered. ‘Thats my girl’. Y/n clung helplessly to the desk her fingernails etching into the hard wood surface, she wanted nothing more than to let her sultry moans slip out at and bellow across the classroom but she couldn’t risk it.

Her tears of pleasure brimmed at the surface of her eyes as she gurgled on her moans. Dracos erratic pace began to dwindle . His grip tightened on her body embedding it with marks, he leant down by y/ns ear and with ragged breathe whispered . ‘Im going to come up that pretty pussy and you're going to sit and pay attention in this lesson whilst it drips out of you’. A euphoric ‘Fucck’ rolled out from y/n. With a final grunt and groan he thrust his head back released into her with elation. Draco grinned triumphantly as he whipped the beads of sweat from his forehead. With a cheeky wink he smacked y/ns arse and promptly flipped her skirt back down. Just as Draco began to rearrange himself the doorknob rattled. From behind the door came a gruff “Professor , professor the door is locked”. The couple exchanged a quick glance and stifled a giggle.

“Umm yes Im aware, its cursed and part of your task is to see who’s able to unlock it’ Draco yelled. The boom of Jeremiahs voice echoed from behind the door “Stand back everyone allow me”. For merlins sake Jeremiah I said to unlock it nit blast the door of his hinges’ squawked Draco, making a beeline for the door. Tugging open the door he came face to face with Jeremiah wand akimbo ready to conduct some elaborate spell. Dracos eyes narrowed as he watched him lower his wand. ‘Enter’ grunted draco as he turned his back to him making his way to his desk.

“Crickey!, what are you doing already at your desk y/n’ spewed Jeremiah his eyes blinking slowly in bewilderment. “Well , you know me just keen to learn …” smiled y/n.

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vermillioncrown · 3 years ago

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look verm… all i wanna know is exactly how does lxc know univers-ity!zyx is a dancer and what kind of chaos he wakes into bc from what we know, she goes full thot while dancing… and if lxc spontaneously combusted when witnessing it

it's a long story, and you've uncovered a snippet! x10!

from the early, early stuff on oblivious university, it's noted that a source of conflict between lwj and zyx involves her dance group

the dance group isn't an official school dance team, so they don't have official practice space or schedules. the group was formed in this 'renegade' manner to specifically counter the competitive nature of university-level dance teams, or just dance teams following the popularization of competitive streetdance.

(while zyx loves doing it, the fact that the group isn't competitive puts a chip on her shoulder in that everything she does isn't 'good enough')

but back to the topic, the fact that the dance group (let's just name them 'the renegades') don't have a practice location means that they scout around campus or other places nearby that can: 1) hold a bunch of young people, 2) tolerate loud noises, 3) has smooth flooring, 4) has something reflective and large (mirror, windows, etc) nearby, 5) gives a modicum of privacy, be it due to the hours of practice (sometimes at 3am) or being out of the way

unfortunately, there was one month where the renegades picked a practice spot near the old music rooms. lwj enjoys the acoustics of the old music rooms compared to the uni's newer facilities. the renegades interrupted lwj's music practice (his 'late night' practice at 8pm to make his 10:30pm bedtime) (what fucking modern student sleeps at 9pm unless they don't have friends???) (oh no lwj :( ) so lwj was extra grumpy, came out to get rid of the noisemakers, realized too late he knew one of the people and could have talked it out more diplomatically

so on lwj's side he's also a bit embarrassed about his second impression on zyx as she is with him.

the whole time lwj is laying siege to zyx in the practice rooms, he thinks he's getting through to his (possible?) friend and has a chance to work things through

so he talks to lxc about her.

that's how lxc knows about her dancing.

to know is one thing, to witness is another.

this coincides with the first time lxc gives zyx a ride home. she's staying late on campus, crawling out from the crevices between the social sciences buildings that the renegades used for practice that night

lxc just finished up a late-night faculty meeting (he's a golden boy of his dept, so even as a younger grad student he gets to sit in on stuff)

sees her dragging her feet to take the bus home, no one's around, she looks exhausted and unalert

'i can't let my brother's friend find her own way like this'

(for as 'normal' as lxc seems compared to lwj, you bet your ass there's some weird standards of behavior for both brothers; being genuinely and overly concerned for your brother's friends is one)

lxc outmaneuvers her that night, and drives her home. bc zyx is tired, she ends up answering his questions with actual detail despite her vow to never let him learn anything about her

(set in-between these two blurbs)

once she finishes the current semester, lxc has offered to drive her home enough times that it's not too weird. (it's fucking weird but none of them are aware enough to notice)

he notices that she spends a lot more time on campus, and later at night. he catches her out at the drugstore near his apartment past midnight, and after his gentle but insistent pressing she admits that she was overdoing things a bit with practice ("it's not even a sprain, I was just looking for tape!") because the renegades expected her to choreograph something for them.

lxc is confused. "is no one helping you? why are you doing this after hours? how much are you expected to do?"

it's their first heart-to-heart on the curbside of the 24 hr coffeeshop.

zyx, for once, is honest and vulnerable. she owes lxc that much. and it's not like they haven't had conversations of substance before. and it has nothing to do with lxc, which in a way, is freeing.

"do you ever feel like a fraud?"

those words sucker-punched lxc.

"people think you're one thing, but you're not really that. you wish you were, though." zyx doesn't touch her drink at all, which is a first. "i like dancing, i really do. but i don't feel like a dancer like the rest of the renegades. a lot of them will probably join the uni team when they outgrow us. they actually watch dance videos, learn guest choreo, it's a thing. i don't do any of that."

"you feel like you're not a real dancer, because you're not doing things like them." lxc puts his drink down, and looks away. "i get it. and you feel pressure to at least pretend to be like them, that they can discover your... 'duplicitousness' at any time."

she gives a short laugh that's more like a scoff. "senior, how can someone like you know that feeling?"

he doesn't answer.

zyx sighs. she stirs the straw around, takes a sip, and mulls over his words. "well. yeah. so... it's not like i know how to come up with choreography. i also don't feel - i feel nervous if i have to come up with shit in front of other people. like, once i have something i'm fine with showing it, but i have to have something first. it needs to be worth looking at, first."

lxc knows. the perfect eldest son of the main lan family, there to right the wrongs of his wayward father. their family would have hidden away in shame for the rest of their lives if either him or wangji weren't worth watching.

"so... you need somewhere private to practice. easy to access, better hours."

"that's the dream, i guess."

here, at least he can do more to help. "my apartment complex - it has nice gym facilities, but no one uses it because they either go onto campus or go to private classes."

"not broke-ass undergrads, got it," zyx nods seriously.

lxc laughs. "well. yes, putting it unkindly, i suppose. but that means it has the space and privacy you need to... work things out." he thinks it's a great idea. they already carpool every week. eat lunch together. have overlapping gaps of free time. work adjacent to one another, even if they aren't studying at the same level or the same subject at all.

(lxc will pay her to come to tutoring if she takes art history again. never will he ever let her study like... that.)

zyx jumps up. paces around. looks at the storefront, does a weird... measurement of space with steady footsteps and arm span.

"... how big? does it have mirrors?"

eventually it becomes a regular enough thing. whenever zyx needs private time to dance, either to choreograph something new or practice something privately, she'll ask to come to lxc's apartment. he doesn't ask more than she offers to tell. he doesn't ask to watch.

the complex has a moderately sized yoga studio, as pristine as the day it was built because anyone into yoga that lives in the complex is rich enough to attend classes at the upscale boutique downtown.

and the borrowing of gym access turns into

"hey, you look tired; i have some tea brewing if you want to catch your breath before biking home"

"if you don't mind staying a bit longer, i can drive you back to campus" "... i can do some homework and wait. oh, let me tell you about that show you should watch -"

"hey, mind if i use your shower? i need to change into something for shop class that's not short-shorts" "sure, i have extra towels in the closet - yeah, that one -"

(there's even a day that she spends the night. not on purpose. but after a particularly grueling week, running back to back with things, dealing with both a lwj and wwx interaction, separately, that left her with hives but no one injured nor dead - it's no wonder she falls asleep at the couch in the minute it takes lxc to pack his oboe for orchestra.

from what zyx said about her midterms, she should have a break this weekend. so he leaves her on the couch w a blanket, and heads off to practice. if she wakes up when he returns, he'll drive her back to her apartment.

she's still asleep when he comes back, legs dangling and back contorted in an impossible position. lxc feels... off until he decides to move her onto his bed, and take the couch instead.)

the prelude to seeing something thotty was lxc catching the renegades during practice on campus. this week, they were in their rotation near his building.

He catches them at the tail end of everything, when members are lying around on the ground heedless of filth, some draped on the random assortment of chairs all over, and others were going through moves in a lackluster and joking manner.

"Yunxun, your ride's here!"

"Quick, speedrun any percent complete!"

Zhu Yunxun is one of the dancers still upright. She and her friend mirror each other, performing their choreography so quickly that it's more rambunctious arm waving and enthusiastic vibrations than any semblance of form.

"If you can do it slowly, you can do it quickly!" one of them yells, and Lan Xichen has to cough from a surprised laugh. The cough turns into a full-blown laugh when Zhu Yunxun and her partner grab one of the chairs for a part of the dance, and in their exhausted enthusiasm they end up falling over each other instead, and start kicking at one another.

"Is that how it goes?" he interrupts their 'practice'.

"You'll see at the festival," Zhu Yunxun groans, picking herself up. "Thanks for the ride, like always. I'll buy boba."

"Please come!" her partner calls out from the floor. "Tell your friends and family!"

"I will!" Lan Xichen promises. He's actually very excited for the fall festival - all his years attending this university, hearing of The Renegades but nothing in detail, this will be the first that he sees of their performances.

"Hey, I never noticed."

"Hm?" Lan Xichen looks up from the frying pan. Instead of sitting at the counter like she does after helping him prepare the mise-en-place, he sees Zhu Yunxun stalking around his modest dining table. Her eyes are narrowed at the furniture in a considering manner. "Noticed what?"

"These chairs are so... perfect."

What?

Lan Xichen turns back to the pan, noting that the mushrooms were done, and turns off the stove. They can wait a bit before serving.

"What does that even mean?" he prods her with a laugh. After these last few months, she has loosened up to speak her mind. Lan Xichen considers his life much poorer for the lack of her conversation before.

("'Why don't I like this?!' Limp noodle shit! Look at them! My grandma does taichi with more life than this!" she says with heated criticism. His TV is playing a dance that he caught her complaining about to her teammates, and he asked out of curiosity.

It's very much like martial arts, in a way. He doesn't understand it, but Zhu Yunxun is not the fraud she keeps labeling herself as. Not if she feels like this.

"Ugh, they're only getting away with this because they're hot and skinny," she scowls. "The Renegades have people three times that size with ten times more energy and appeal.")

Zhu Yunxun pulls out one of his chairs. "I keep telling Yan Xichao that we need to find better chairs for the choreo. The ones we're borrowing are 1) too flimsy, and 2) ugly as fuck."

"Sit down?"

Lan Xichen sees no reason to not listen.

"You got some real adult chairs, here, senior. Do you mind -" she kicks gently with her heel, demonstrating for him to push backwards, "- nice, padding the feet and all that, you must pay your taxes, too -"

"Would you like to borrow my chairs for your performance, Yunxun?" Lan Xichen stops her muttering; as entertaining as it is, dinner is getting cold and he'd rather cut to the chase.

"May I?" She starts doing the Nervous Fretting Thing, "I mean, you don't have to, I don't want us grimy goblins ruining your nice furniture, none of us have the money to pay you back - I can probably get Shen Yuan to pay, he owes me his life - but -"

"It's fine," he interrupts her with a chuckle. "I wouldn't offer if I wasn't sure."

"Okay, okay, okay," she accepts. "Um, just... can we check height?" Zhu Yunxun stands next to him, and squats to his seated depth. She frowns and does it again. "I don't wanna take your chairs if they're just gonna be too awkward."

He sits there as she moves around him, hovering over his thighs, reaching forward with her arms to occasionally check distance. It's rather awkward, with no discernable purpose to her motions.

"Wouldn't it be better to actually perform the moves?" Lan Xichen asks dryly.

"I just showered and borrowed clothes, don't wanna get sweaty," she complains, but still moves to start over.

Lan Xichen listens to her quickly explain his part - he doesn't have to do much but sit there, reclining leisurely, until she gives the cue for him to push back.

"I'll push, too, but you need to do the hard work." Zhu Yunxun steps away and puts on her earbuds. Once she fiddles with her phone and starts the song, the only cue Lan Xichen gets before she starts is a quiet "five, six, seven, eight -"

With the music in her ears and perfect execution on her mind, it's as if he becomes a prop for her performance. Not that she ignores him - she makes eye contact that sells the mood, she is unafraid to walk up to him directly, and she puts her hands solidly on his thighs.

It takes everything to not yelp when she makes contact, and even more of himself to keep steady when her sharp motions before are juxtaposed with the languid arch and drop Zhu Yunxun does in front of his seat. The pressure of her hands on his thighs change as her weight distribution shifts, he notes - she pushes his legs apart, a bounce on her heels, knees out then in, and another sinuous roll that ends with a toss of hair. That twists back into a standing position without any instability or effort, closing his legs along the way.

(For as clumsy as she is as her typically sleep-deprived self, her balance and physical control are quite apparent now.)

The next test of Lan Xichen's control over his reflexes is after a few more beats, and she seats herself on his lap with legs swept to the side. He hears her counting under her breath, "- lean in, six, seven, eight, then -" her left hand slides up, hovering over his chest.

"Loosen up my buttons, babe, uh huh -" she murmurs, as the hand then slides down and emphasizes the cadence of the lyrics with mock-pulling, as if she were ripping his shirt open.

When she pushes away, Lan Xichen has a not a moment of rest before she turns and swings her legs open, straddling his lap while facing away. Her thighs keep her from truly touching onto his legs like before - even as she does body rolls, arms and hands cutting through the arm in intricate poses ("It's called 'voguing'"), hair whipping close enough that the pink strands almost brush his nose with the scent of his own shampoo -

Then the arch of her back goes lax and she abruptly sits down onto his knees.

"Uh -" His face feels ice cold, but his ears feel like they were doused with gasoline and lit with a match.

"So tired," she complains, pulling the earbuds out and pocketing them. "I think that's most of the chairwork. If I have clearance, then so does everyone else. Or they can lean more, I don't care. I like these chairs."

Zhu Yunxun gets up, finally showing her fatigue in the slight sway of her posture. Lan Xichen reaches to steady her automatically, but flinches as he touches the exposed skin of her hip. The borrowed pants, his own sleepwear, started low and rode even lower over the course of the dance. Zhu Yunxun's own fitted t-shirt ("Always have freebies from school giveaways," she jokes) didn't cover that gap.

"If you like the chairs, just borrow them," Lan Xichen says, standing up quickly to get back behind the kitchen counter and plate their dinner. "Let's eat?" He glances over at her for a moment.

Zhu Yunxun is busy moving the chair back and setting the table. "Appreciate it - dinner and chairs," she says with cheer.

#inquiry #Anonymous #zyx au's #alternate universe-ity #just imagine most of the shuangfeng kids as part of the renegades #zyx and zxz have a very harmless rivalry bc zxz's actually a senpai from the renegades that joined the official uni team #'slutty chair dance' was what my dance group called it with affection #the guys were always like 'fuck yeah i get to sit there like a useless lump i love it'#okay there's two camps of guys in the group; second one was 'but I Want To Be The Slut' except the homophobic aughts were not ready for it #now on lxc in this snippet #zyx and lxc have gotten friendly enough that they kinda know what each other are like #(hint hint dbd lxc also finds zyx's singular focus doing a thing very funny and interesting)#(it's just that au zyx hasn't cried in front of lxc -> she's not precluded from thinking 'this guy doesn't hate me/think i'm weird!')#up to you guys to figure how much lxc is affected by this #'if this is the practice i won't survive the performance'#lol no idk #this is pre-moby-dick-sighting aka the big penis incident #to zyx lxc is friend/gege/senpai-shaped. car rides. good food. sleeper-hit-funny. good for study concentration. lets her rant.#also other twoset watchers: if you can play it slowly you can play it quickly

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fadelbison · 2 years ago

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babygirl you wouldnt believe the mess of firstkhao wips my google drive is right now:

Uni AU; PG-13; FirstKhao go to Joss' sex party

---

First is surprised when he pulls into the driveway of what appears to be just a regular old house, driveway lit with regular look lantern posts and soft music coming from within what appears to be an ambiently lit living room.

Admittedly this, a bunch of guys hanging out on the couch drinking and sharing cigarettes, is not what he had expected one of Joss’ infamous sex parties to look like. Everyone looks fairly casually dressed, like you’d expect to see them at the grocery store, in fact it’s Khaotung who is sporting a night out look with his tight graphic tank and distressed genes.

‘Nong Khao.’ Joss greets them at the door, and something about the way that Joss licks his lips before pulling Khaotung into a one armed embrace has First wanting to throw his shirt over Khaotung’s shoulder.

‘Who’s this?’ Joss asks, when he notices First, which would be a valid question if Joss wasn’t in the very same faculty.

‘This is my friend who drove me here.’ Khaotung says, quickly stepping inside and something about how Khaotung so obviously wanting to be rid of him, grates at First’s ears.

‘I’m First.’ He introduces himself, turning his smile on to maximum charm, ‘also from Fine Arts. If there’s room I’d like to stay’

He tries to pretend he can’t see the way Khaotung’s eyes widen in alarm as he keeps smiling at Joss while Joss looks him up and down. Joss pulls a hand through his hair, enticingly flexing his biceps as he grins, ‘Of course Nong First. The more the merrier.’

#firstkhao fanfic #nani writes

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golden-pickaxe · 3 years ago

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Coffee (Part 3)

Fandom: Vikings

Paring: Ivar x Reader

Type: Modern AU, Office AU

Wordcount: 2707

Warnings: reader drinks wine casually

[Coffee - All Parts Here]

A/N: Here is the third part! It makes me so happy to see how much you all enjoy this story! I had not expected it at all! Also, I hope I’m not making too many casual references to norwegian life, I just noticed that I include a lot of that. I hope it is not too distracting.

Tagged: @youbloodymadgenius @punkrocknpearls @mootiemoose @istorkyou @dini73 @heavenly1927

Summary: You are a graduate student at the University of Oslo, and have applied for a job as a personal assistant at the Lothbrok Corporation, without really knowing much of the position advertised. When it turns out you are going to work for the (in)famous Ivar Lothbrok, your whole life is turned up-side-down.

By now it was around Yule, and Ivar had forced you to take the past week off. Your last exam was coming up, and your supervisor had asked you for a full status update and a lot of results to send her before the holidays, and you had been a stressed out mess all of December.

He had dramatically rolled his eyes, complaining that he could not focus when you were so stressed around him, and that he did not need you to come into work completely exhausted and distracted. Which was Ivar-speak for ‘Go study, I can survive a few days without you’.

You had been very thankful for that, but Ivar had just murmured something about being too busy to fire you, and had waved you out of his office before focusing back on his e-mails.

With a lot of more time on your hands, the exam went well, and you had been able to send everything your supervisor wanted from you one night at two AM. Now, the winter break had started, leaving you free from uni work until early January, where the spring semester would start. You had been working almost non-stop on your thesis, spending almost every second of your free time on it, only stopping whenever Solveig forcefully pulled you away from your computer and made you a cup of tea. She was not better off, though, as it as also her last year of university, and she also had her own thesis to write.

Right now, both of you were sitting on your fancy new sofa (well, ‘fancy’.. it was from IKEA, who were you kidding), wearing your most comfortable ‘chill-at-home’ clothes and sharing a bucket of ice-cream between you, while in front of you slow-TV was playing, showing a train ride from Trondheim to Bodø. Outside the sun was just setting, as it was around three PM, and it had started to snow around an hour ago.

Solveig would soon leave Oslo, visiting her family home in Ålesund for the holidays. You of course stayed in Oslo, visiting your own parents for a few days, but mostly just taking the time to relax.

Beside the company Yule party, there was not much for you to look forward to, next to long hot showers, lazy afternoons in front of the TV, and a lot of sleep, before the new semester would start.

“How was your date?” you asked into the silence, as Solveig handed you the ice-cream, and you dumped a bunch of sprinkles onto it.

Solveig grimaced and shrugged.

“He was nice..” she started.

“But?”

“I don’t know. Just not..” she gestured vaguely. You nodded, handing back the ice-cream after putting your spoon into your mouth.

“He’s just not Einar, right?” you giggled, hinting at her long-term crush, one of the PhD students of your faculty. Solveig just rolled her eyes, ignoring your comment.

“How about you?” she then asked, grabbing the sprinkles from you.

You shrugged.

“Nothing new. No time.”

“Married to your job.” Solveig laughed. “Or at least.. having a crush on your boss.”

Your eyes went wide, moving away from the train ride on TV to your roommate next to you. Solveig laughed at your facial expression, putting a spoonful ice-cream into her mouth. Was that the revenge for you mentioning Einar?

“Solveig!” you exhaled, shaking your head.

“What? It is obvious!” she said with her mouth this half full of ice-cream. You pursed your lips, watching her finally swallow it. “Y/N, I’ve known you since our first semester. I know how you act when you’re into someone.”

You sighed, grabbing the tub of ice-cream from her hands.

“Yea, well..” you started, not even knowing what you wanted to say. “He is really good-looking. Not my fault.”

“If the two of you start a steamy office affair, you have to tell me.” Solveig laughed again, as you just threw a pillow at her.

-----

The Lothbrok Yule party took place in the 34th Restaurant & Bar, a very fancy restaurant located on the top floor of a tower providing a panoramic view of the whole city. There was a dress code, naturally, and you had spent quite a sum on a fitting outfit, that made you feel like a Hollywood star.

You were seated with some of the other personal assistants of the Lothbroks, while the family themselves had their own table, Ragnar and Aslaug looking like the perfect high society couple. Even Bjorn had come over to Norway, with his new wife he had married recently. His children were also there, together with his ex-wife Torvi, who he still was very close with.

A few months back, you would have felt terribly out of place here, but by now you were used to all of this, even though you were quite aware that you were not quite part of this world. You enjoyed it nevertheless.

The food was excellent, the drinks were tasty, and all employees present got a small bag of gifts, filled with wine, fancy foods and a snow globe.

Ragnar held a speech, thanking all the managers and assistants, and after dinner, everyone mingled at the bar.

You were standing at the bar, waiting for your order to arrive, before you would re-join Hvitserk’s and Ubbe’s assistants again, when you noticed Ivar’s wheelchair beside you. He had a drink in his hand, and a smile on his face, dressed in an even more expensive looking suit than usually, his long hair styled back in his typical neat bun.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked casually, taking a sip from his drink.

“Yes, I do.” You smiled, before thanking the bartender, handing you your drink.

“Good. Because I am rather bored.” Ivar stretched his neck a bit, before letting his eyes wander through the room.

You had to chuckle at his words.

“A few more hours. And tomorrow, you are off Tyrol to ski.” You looked down at him, raising your eyebrows. Ivar grimace in agreement.

“Something to look forward to, at least.” He looked around the room once more. “How about you? Any plans for when I’m gone?”

You supressed a laugh, amused by his automatic assumption that he took up so much space in your life. Well, he did, but still.

“Sleeping. Sleeping. And.. hm.. of yes, sleeping.” You said with a smile. “Relaxing, enjoying the fact that I have the flat for myself, and not even looking at my thesis for a few days.”

Ivar raised his eyebrows.

“Knowing you, I think you’re going to end up working on it anyways.” He said, mustering you with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Knowing me?” now it was you who raised an eyebrow at him. He didn’t really know you, beyond what your job was. He probably didn’t even know what it was that you were studying, as you never really talked about yourself.

Ivar narrowed his eyes a bit, but a soft smirk remained on his lips. You took a sip from your drink, before you gave him one last smile, pushing away from the bar and returning to the other personal assistants, who were sitting on a few comfortable chairs right by the window.

-----

After the dawn of the new year, you immediately were neck-deep in university work again. Just as Ivar had predicted, you had not completely stopped working on your thesis, but you had still taken it slow, only reading a bit and working on minor tasks. Apparently, he knew you better than you had imagined.

You were glad though, that he would not be back until mid-January, which at least gave you a bit time off, to get a head start on your studies. You had only a few months left to finish your thesis and prepare for your defence, so the more you got done while not having to work, the better.

Winter dragged on, and you did not really notice how fast time passed, your schedule not leaving you much time to rest. You noticed though, that Ivar had started to send you home more often, went on a few business trips on his own and there was a noticeable lack of files on your desk on Monday mornings.

“I am just.. I’m afraid he’s going to fire me.” You said one evening, sitting together with Solveig, after the two of you had cooked dinner.

“Why would he? You have done no major mistakes, from what you’ve told me.” Your friend tilted her head at you.

“I know, I just.. what else could it mean? He realises that he can do all that by himself after all. No need for me anymore.” You dropped your head into your hands. Being fired now from a job you liked so much, by a person you liked so much, right in the last few months of your master’s degree, that was the absolute worst-case scenario. You had saved up enough from your high salary to get by, sure, but still.

“Or maybe he just noticed you being burnt out from over working yourself, and taking a few things off your shoulders so you can focus on your work? Thought about that?” Solveig poured two glasses of wine, putting one in front of you.

You blinked a few times at her. You had not thought about that.

“Hm.” You only made.

You were not quite sure if Ivar was the guy who would do something like that. Only last week you had seen him shout an intern into the ground and fire him on the spot for being ten minutes late for the third time. Why would he be more lenient when it came to his personal assistant who did far more important work than an intern? It didn’t make a lot of sense.

Over the next few weeks, the trend continued. By now you were effectively working only ten hours per week instead of twenty, but got full pay. It did wonders for your mental health though, as well as your physical because you actually had time to sleep, and pulled less all-nighters than before.

“How is your thesis going?” Ivar asked, one Tuesday morning, after you had put a cup of coffee onto his desk, a special coffee-bean-blend kind from a hipster café that had opened recently.

“It is.. going.” You tried a smile. Ivar raised an eyebrow at you, and a sigh escaped your lips. “It is fine, just.. a lot of work. First draft is almost complete, though.”

“That is good to hear.” Ivar smiled. “I’m sure it will go well.”

“Thanks.” You grinned, pulling your work laptop out of your bag, and sitting down on the chair of the other side of Ivar’s desk, to go through some recent contracts.

“I was wondering..” Ivar completely ignored your social cue, folding his hands in front of him, elbows resting on his desk. “What you intend to do afterwards? In June there will be your defence, yes?”

You blinked at him a few times and nodded.

“I know for you this job was more a way to have some money next to uni, and for me it was a way to annoy my mother, but now?” he leaned back a bit and gestured around. “This is kind of working out, isn’t it?”

“Well..” you swallowed. “Yes.”

Ivar frowned a bit, mustering you intensely. You got a bit squeamish under his gaze, that usually didn’t mean good things. That was the kind of expression he wore before he threw someone out of the office and locked himself in for the rest of the day.

“You are going to make me say it, aren’t you?” he said, tilting his head. Your heart started to pound, although you were not quite sure why.

“Say.. say what?”

Ivar rolled his eyes, while letting his head fall back into his neck.

“Y/N, you’re smarter than this.” He groaned. “Ok, fine.” He raised his head looking back at you. “What I am talking about is, that you can keep your job after you graduate. And we can upgrade your contract to full time.”

You were speechless for a moment. You just stared at the man in front of you, not knowing what to say. That was.. kind of what you wanted, right? That was exactly what you had not dared to hope during the past months. This temporary thing had grown on you, just Ivar had. Thinking that he would fire you, and now him kind of offering you a full time position.. you could not believe it.

Still, this was not healthy, and you should decline. Better yet, just quit, and get over this crush you had, that only grew the more time you spent with Ivar. Crushing on your boss was certainly not a good thing.

“I would love to!” came out of your mouth instead, and a broad grin formed on your lips.

Ivar’s surprise was apparent on his face, as if he had expected you to decline his offer (as had you). He smirked, nodding, before leaning forward a bit again.

“Good.” He said. “Please pull up the agreement for the new ships, to start off with.”

-----

Spring came and went. You really only noticed the time passing by the Russ kids running around town, and of course the festivities on the national holiday, where your friends managed to pull you away from your studies to have a day out, eat and drink.

After that, it was hard to find you anywhere else than at Blindern, where you either sat in the university library or in a study hall, headphones in and typing away. Solveig was no different, and the closer your graduation came, the more stressed out both of you were.

After you had entered Ivar’s office twenty minutes late with a starbucks, dark rings underneath your eyes, he had yelled at you to get out, and to not come back before you could call yourself ‘Master’. He still paid you, for some reason, but you surly would not complain, neither about the money, nor about the time off.

Finally, the day of your defence was there, and it was over before you even realised what was happening. You passed with a B, and later that day had a huge celebration with your friends and family and other students, in one of the university gardens. Solveig had also passed a few days earlier, and the two of you just got completely wasted, happy that it was all finally over.

That had been university. You were no longer a student.

And now.. now you could work full time at the Lothbrok Corporation.

You had not told anyone about it, not until your graduation celebration, and your parents were insanely proud of you, just as your friends. Ragnhild was still very sceptical, once again reminding you to be careful.

“Does that mean you’re going to move out of our shitty apartment now?” Solveig asked, more than tipsy, throwing an arm around your shoulders.

“You know how much I hate apartment hunting.” You shook your head. The Oslo housing market was a nightmare. “I’m afraid you have to deal with me a while longer.”

“I’m not complaining, love.” Solveig hugged you a bit closer. Then, she gestured slightly to one direction, where you spotted Einar talking with some people. “And I’m going to take my chances.” With that she was gone, walking over to the blond man, starting to chat him up.

The next few days you spent doing absolutely nothing productive, going on hikes and for swims, as summer had arrived in Norway. The days had grown insanely long again, and you enjoyed the bright evenings, sitting in parks with your friends, playing music and drinking.

Solveig and Einar had become a thing now, as it turned out he also had been crushing on her for quite a while, although both of them had been too shy to do anything about it. You were happy for them, though, even if you sometimes had to put in headphones, when Einar stayed over at your apartment. Which had very thing walls.

Still, with your degree done, and a full-time position in your pocket, all felt as if it was well.

#ivar the boneless #ivar imagine #ivar vikings #ivars heathen army #ivar x reader #vikings imagine #ivar the boneless x reader #coffeeAU

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“…There is a real belief on behalf of a not insignificant subset of society that the medieval Church was a shadowy organisation dedicated solely to suppressing knowledge and scientific advancement. This is not true.

The Church was in all actuality the medieval period’s largest benefactor of scholars of all stripes. Initially, in the early medieval period much learning was focused in monastaries in particular. Because monks took a vow to eschew idleness, they were always looking for new ways to work for the greater glory of God, or whatever. Sometimes this took the form of doing manual labour to feed themselves, but as monasteries such as Cluny rose to prominence they did more and more work in libraries as well.

Monks copied and embellished manuscripts and kept impressive libraries. Sometimes this work took place inside what we call “scriptoria” where more than one scribe is working at a time. They saw themselves as charged with transmitting knowledge. A lot of that knowledge was, of course, pagan, because they were extremely into classical thinkers. They were also reading this work of course, and writing their own commentaries on it. Many of them took the medical texts and used them to set up hospitals within their monasteries, as we have talked about before.

Lest you think this is all one big sausage fest, women were also very much about that book life within nunneries. They also had their own scriptoria and were busy scribbling away, reading, writing, and thinking. If you wanted a life where you strove for new scholarly heights, odds were that in the early medieval period you did that inside a monastery on nunnery.

As the medieval period moved on, scholarship eventually moved out of the cloister and into cities when the medieval university was established. The first degree awarding institution to call itself a university was the University of Bologna established around 1088, though teaching had been going on there previously and students had been going to Bologna from at least the late tenth century. Second was the University of Paris, which was established in 1150. Again teaching had been happening there from much earlier, and at least 1045.

Medieval universities weren’t like universities now, in that they didn’t have established campuses or anything like that. They were, more or less, a loose affiliation of scholars who would provide lessons to interested students. The University of Paris, for example, described itself as “a guild of teachers and scholars” (universitas magistrorum et scholarium).

In Paris there were four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. Everyone had to attend the Arts school first where they would be asked to learn the trivium, which was comprised of rhetoric, logic, and grammar. Basically that meant all undergrads spent their time learning to argue, which is how the whole Abelard thing comes about. Then if they wanted more they could go do medicine, law, or theology. Theology was considered the really crazy good stuff, as medieval theologians were sorta held up in the way we worship astrophysicists like Neil de Grasse Tyson (ugh) or Stephen Hawking now. But if you wanna be a dick and super modern about it and think that nothing is more important than science, you will note that medicine is there and actively pursued.

So what, what does all of this have to do with the Church not being suppressive? Well literally everyone, both scholars and students in a medieval university was a member of the clergy. That’s right. Are you a Christian and you wanna learn about medicine? Well you need to take holy orders first. So every single scientific advancement that came out of a medieval university (and there were plenty) was made by a man of the cloth.

The quick among you might have spotted that the thing about unis is that they were just for dudes though, and that is lamentably true. Women weren’t able to take the same orders as men, which means they were excluded from university training. Plenty of them got tutored if they were rich. (See poor Heloise who just had Abelard, like, do himself at her.) Otherwise there was plenty of sweet stuff going on in nunneries still and always, as the visionary natural biologist Hildegard of Bingen can attest. Monasteries were also still producing good stuff as Thomas Aquinas would be happy to let you know from the comfort of his Dominican order.

Given that all of this is the case, it’s hard to square that circle of “the Church is intentionally suppressing knowledge!” with the fact that everyone actively working on acquiring and furthering knowledge was a member of it and all. The Church was a welcoming home to scholars because it was a place where you got the time needed to contemplate subjects for a long time. If you have your corporeal needs taken care of, then you can go on to think about stuff. The Church offered that.

Having said all of this, there were, of course, plenty of Jewish and Muslim scholars at work in medieval Europe as well. The thriving Jewish communities of the medieval period had their own complex theological discussions about the Talmud, and produced their own truly delightful sexual and scientific theory that I will never tire of reading.

I’ve also talked at length about how Islamic medical advances were very much taken on board by medieval Christians in Europe. The fact that the Christians in holy orders beavering away at the medical faculties of universities across Europe were very much looking to a Muslim guy called Ibn Sinna for medical knowledge makes it hard to see the Church as an oppressive hater of all things non-Catholic. I’m just saying.

What else is at play here? Meh, society writ large. A lot of us in the English as a first language speaking world, and in northern Europe more generally have been raised in a Protestant context even if we ourselves are not Protestant. The thing about that is Protestants, famously, is that they are not huge fans of the Church. Big news, I know. In the Early Modern period this could get kinda wild, with things like the Great Fire of London being blamed on a nefarious “Papish plot”, for example, becoming a nice early example of a conspiracy theory. (That conspiracy theory was still written in Latin at the based of The Monument built to commemorate the fire until 1830 when the Catholics were officially emancipated in Britain. LOL.)

When the whole Enlightenment thing went down, generalised distrust of Catholics was then later compounded by the fact that “serious” thinkers aka Voltaire’s ridiculously basic self began to categorise the accumulation of knowledge specifically in opposition to religious thought. This is the old “Age of Reason” which we currently allegedly reside in, versus the “Age of Faith” idea. The Church as an overarching institution from the age of faith was therefore thought of as necessarily regressive, and it became assumed that it has always been actively attempting to thwart advantage for vaguely sinister reasons that are never fully articulated.

…Now, plenty of people were killed for witchcraft because they were doing medicine. The witch trials were a very real thing, and you know when and where they happened? In the modern period, and usually with a greater regularity in Protestant places. Witchcraft trials peak in general from about 1560-1630 which is the modern period. The most famous trials with the biggest kill count took place in Trier, Fulda, Basque, Wurtzburg, Bamberg, North Berwick, Torsåker and Salem. You know what was going on in most of the places? The Reformation. Witch trials sort of reflected various confessions of Christianity’s ability to effectively protect their flocks from evil. Did Catholics kill “witches” oh you bet your sweet ass they did. So did Protestants, and it was all fucking ugly.

What is important to note is that in countries where Catholicism was static witch trials were largely unheard of. Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy, for example, just didn’t go in for them even though they were theoretically in the clutches of a nefarious Church bent on destroying all medical knowledge or something.

Now, none of this is to excuse the multifarious sins of the institutional Church over the years. In many ways my entire career as a medieval historian is a product of the fact that I was frustrated with the Church after 16 years of Catholic school. If you had to go to a High School named after the prosecutor in the Galileo trial, you might also end up devoting yourself to picking intricate theological fights with the Church, OK? (Yes, this is my origin story.)

And that brings us to the crux of the matter: if you make up a bunch of stuff that the Church did not do it makes it harder to critique them of the manifold things they actually did do and are doing right fucking now. We need to be critiquing the Magdalene Laundries; the international cover up of pedophile priests; signing an actual concordant with Nazi Germany; the regressive attitudes towards abortion and contraception that happen still, now, and endanger the lives of countless women. All of this is real, and calls for the strongest possible condemnation.”

- Eleanor Janega, “JFC, calm down about the medieval Church.”

#medieval #religion #education

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palukoo · 3 years ago

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tww teacher au for the ask game!

combining this with another ask from anon: tww academia au!! bc i was gonna make this college anyways bc most of them are too pretentious to work at a high school even if they are passionate about education

jed was the chair of the economics department for a really long time (including when some of the staff went to whatever made up school i'm having them be a part of) and would be like. kind of a polarizing figure on ratemyprofessors. his classes are generally engaging and you learn a lot, but the lecture is on externalities and he's been talking about national parks for the last twenty minutes. he also tends to run late, and his class isn't easy, but he has tons of office hours and writes great recommendations. he would generally teach like a freshman/intro course for fun (maybe intro to macro?) and then one or two advanced classes. for like, some structure, these days he's probably the president of the college/uni, but maybe he just. let's himself teach a random class every semester anyways, because he misses it. (if he occasionally hijacks the american studies or theology department, who is gonna stop him? usually its like. history of the global economy or something tho)

leo is probably like the provost or dean or whatever in charge of faculty or something. if he teaches, which he probably has at some point but idk if he still does, it's probably some foreign affairs class. like international security or something.

abbey is probably the chair of their pre-med program or like the director of their (science) research programs. there's probably someone calling it nepotism at some point, until everyone points out she's had this job since before jed was president, so. checkmate. she'll rotate between a few different classes, probably like. an anatomy at some point, but for some reason i really like the concept of her doing some molec cell or biochem (def more on the cellular side of things as opposed to ecology, and also less genetics, so. but maybe more public health). a lot of students are kind of afraid of her but tons of people apply to work in her lab, and she really loves her lab students so much.

cj could do like. media/publicity for the school, like that's a job she could easily have, but i kinda want them all to actually. teach, so she probably teaches some form of media studies/communication studies/journalism. students love her, because she's funny and smart and energetic in class, and compassionate about extensions and whatever. she takes her job super seriously, and wants to give everyone the best chance she can. she'll like, practice in her lecture hall ahead of time.

toby i can't decide on. you would think some form of writing or communications class, but i want to give him like. a bunch of classes cross listed as like sociology and political science and philosophy and american studies. like he'll teach like political ethics, or classes about civil rights, or literature about specific political movements. he assigns like no tests and all papers and grades them like. harshly, but the students who really come in and try, he loves and will work with. realistically he should probably be chair of a department but idk which one.

josh teaches a bunch of political classes and his students all make fun of him, thank you. like he'll teach classes on legislative processes, and he's like not a bad professor and clearly knows what he's talking about, but he also comes in with coffee stains and messy hair and his chair breaks weekly and he and his projector are in the middle of an ongoing war that they all know he isn't winning. he (like cj) really wants his students to like him, and they mostly do. his lectures can also get a little tangenty, but that's okay. he should also probably head a department, i guess political science, but rip to all those other profs.

donna ta-ed for josh at some point when he was still really new at it, and was probably going to do political science but also maybe english, who knows, in grad school, but ended up spending a summer working in the admissions office and actually really loved it, so she did admissions for a while until she got too depressed rejecting students, and now she does some form of academic counselling and everyone loves her, and she absolutely will fight professors on behalf of students

sam also does some niche cross listed humanities classes, like he'll do literature & law, or american lit and culture. he does a ton of pre law advising also!

amy! amy is probably chair of the gender/sexuality/women's studies department bc i say so. she mostly teaches more gov focused classes, though, like women and the law, or women in leadership, or sexuality in america. she's also kind of harsh on grading, but she's super good at helping students make connections for their careers and shit.

joey teaches polling/stats and political polling classes thank you.

half of them are known for writing those papers that are clearly part of a huge academic disagreement where they're just criticizing other people's papers. usually at different schools, but not always. interdepartmental/humanities prof gatherings are fun!

#tww #asks #answered #claudiasjeancregg #anonymous #there's other characters and other thoughts to be had but gsws amy is everything to me #anyways i looked through my schools entire course catalogue for this and it shows. made me realize how many classes i wanna take but cant #also my school doesnt call it political science and i kept having to change it here #but yeah! i like the thought of charlie as jeds ta also but idk how to make that work if jed is the president #hmmm maybe santos is the provost. or becomes pres to led jed go back to teaching more full time? will and elsie both teach writing classes #kate does foreign policy. ainsley maybe also does pre law stuff or if they have a law school works there #i realize they could also have a med school that abbey could run lol #none of the bartlet daughters go to this school much to jeds dismay #lord marbury is an adjunct prof who no one can stand #ill stop now #also i didnt do character tags bc too many #oh wait maybe annabeth doesnt teach and actually does university comms and as part of like a marketting campaign is trying to do cool #profiles on some of the profs and they mostly cant stand it but yk #ANDY how did i not do andy!! andy would. also teach some kind of foreign affairs/diplomacy thing or like legislative processes. maybe #josh can take a class on the executive instead or something. ugh or andy could do something with their hypothetical law school #she's on like ethics judicial and foreign affairs in canon iirc so. idk!#cj probably also had some overlap and does like women in the media at some point just for fun

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tackyink · 4 years ago

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Rambling for real about things that happened ages ago. tl;dr my school from 16 to 18 was pretty crappy

I was reading the link to the Père Lachaise bat lore on the last reblog because I did a project on that cemetery, along with a few others, when I was 17. In order to graduate from our equivalent of high school, you need to do a big project with a presentation on your last year, and my school forced us to make it a group project because the faculty just didn’t want to deal with triple or quadruple work. They heartily recommended us to pick people from our own class and do something related to our branch of study, so of course I went and joined forces with my close friend group, which was split into three separate branches (tech, humanities and social sciences). Our homeroom teachers didn’t seem to mind a lot, so we went to grab something to eat after school and brainstorm about what we could do.

In the end, we settled on cemetery art. There’s a couple of interesting cemeteries in our city, so we could do field work instead of just doing a lot of copy pasting from the internet and books.

Problem was that not only did the faculty not want to work, our Art History teacher, who actually liked the idea, was unavailable, and no one else wanted to work specifically with us because they thought the subject was too creepy.

Let’s keep in mind that these were a bunch of 50-something year olds refusing to supervise some teens’ project because they thought looking at angel statues was scary. I... just... what.

In the end, we were assigned the French teacher, who according to the only one of us who had her as a teacher was a bit nasty, and hoo BOY.

There were two groups under her supervision, and she favored the other one and couldn’t even be discreet about it. At least once a week we met with her for an hour to review our progress, and she spent at most 10 minutes looking at our material, not even feigning interest or offering any suggestions, to then go to the other group and chat with them until the time was up. This went on for months. This project was 10% of our grade and the most civil thing that woman said to us all along was that it was nice that we had translated and cleaned up a statue chart that we found on the internet. We ended up doing everything by ourselves.

My Spanish Lit teacher, bless his certified weirdo soul, and my homeroom teacher were the only adults that attended our presentation in a cramped room that wasn’t even used for lessons, and I guess the French teacher hadn’t been saying very nice things about our work because both were pleasantly surprised with the result and congratulated us.

Then, the final nail in the coffin was when the grades came out. We got a 9 out of 10. Nobody in the school got a 10 because according to the teachers we asked, “the perfect project doesn’t exist.”

This was a problem, because students averaging 9 to 10 on a global scale get their first year of university free, and there’s a limit to how many of those a school can give out. One of my female-presenting friends and I were essentially competing for one of the three available spots, and we really needed that extra point because guys had an advantage over us: our PE teacher was a sleazy sexist bastard and it was well known that he never graded guys below 7 and girls above 6, barring two exceptions: we could get up to an 8 playing extracurricular sports or, in one spectacular case we witnessed, being a literal model with very bouncy tits. This isn’t a jab at her, she was a professional model and dressed as such, even to school, and looked older than her age. He liked that. How’s that for creepy, faculty?

Adding to that, I fucked up my knee playing basketball when I was 15 and relapsed at 16, so I had to sit out PE classes for most of the year. I had a flat 5 in my report card.

Our saving grace came with the final meetings the teachers had at the end of our second year. I would bet a lot of money that it was a combo effort by our homeroom teachers, the Spanish Lit wacky man, and the Latin teacher, but they decided to up our PE grades so we could have a 10 in our global grade and get that free pass to university. To which we went together, by the way, so group projects were never shit again.

I didn’t fully realize the gravity of all this until I was older, but the rampant disfunction and cronyism in that school nearly left me out of university. There’s no way I could have afforded it, and with the rapid rise of uni prices in the following years and the economic crisis, there’s even less of a chance that I would have been able to save money and go later. I was very fortunate to have a few choice people willing to stick their necks out for me, but I also hope the French and PE teachers choked on a spiky dick in the years that have elapsed since then. At least they fired the English teacher after only ~10% of us passed the English test in our uni access exams.

#tacky ramblings #as in tacky rambles a whole fucking lot

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liw-the-melancholic-apple · 4 years ago

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The first one - Bonusscenes in traditional written word

This is a smau and a zukoXreader, although i haven't decided how this ends yet.

Y/n has recently transferred to Ba Sing Se from Omashu university and meets the gaang through a schoolproject they do with sokka and suki.

Masterlist

Bonus 3: Partytime

It was a short walk from the metrostation to the park in which the party was held. Suki and Sokka had explained to you that their friend Haru had helped organise it. Apparently, it was a thing the Psychology department threw every year – that was to say the students of the Psych faculty. Haru was one of them and deeply involved in Campus life.

Sokka had said that you were going to be gobsmacked and mind boggled by the professionality with which the party would be set up and you had laughed. Shame on you for not believing him. He had been right.

The park was obviously of the public variety and so you expected a couple speakers, and crates of beer strewn about. What you didn’t expect were fairylights in every last tree and bush, a DJ set-up of the highest quality and amazing sound from all the speakers one could imagine, or three tents with bars in them, where drinks were reasonably priced. You hadn’t been expecting the benches, couches and tables made from pallets used in warehouses or the abundance of cushions and pillows. You hadn’t expected the camping chairs and the make-shift firepit. It was insane and you stood in awe as you failed to follow Suki.

“You coming?”, Aang laughed before he grabbed you by the hand. You first made your way to one of the bars, then, equipped with alcoholic goodness, Suki introduced you to Haru, who turned out to be an ex-roommate of Zuko’s. He also played guitar in what he called an inappropriately ambitious garage band, which intrigued you. But before you really got to interview him on any of that, he was disappeared by a friend of his.

Suki found a couple of her Kyoshi sorority sisters and introduced you to them and their partners. It turned out that your initial idea of fraternities and sororities was wrong: They were not all terrible and not all ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ were stuck up snobs. Suki was the best example of that. She was amazing and clever and smart. And very kind and not at all elitist. After all she was the one who invited you to this shindig. Her ‘sisters’ and their boyfriends and girlfriends, some of which were also in fraternities and sororities, were as kind and open as Suki was and you spent a good portion of your night learning names, trying to remember the history of the different organisations and their respective significance to BSSU, being taught simple fight stances and moves from the Kyoshi’s and laughing.

You laughed a lot. Only halfway through the night, hours later, after Sokka had joined you again, when you had lost all sense of being a stranger, you realised how desperate you’d been for this kind of interaction. This kind of laughing, dancing, making fun of people and talking bullshit. How much you had needed to be part of a group. How lonely you had actually been.

But at this moment, while you were trying to not spit out your beer as you listened to a story about Suki, expertly told by Mamoto, who was either someone’s boyfriend or someone’s brother – who knew? There were so many people and so many connections and a good deal of friends dating a friend’s ex – you didn’t think about what you’d needed for two months. You thought about … nothing? Everything? Really, you just let your thoughts drift, like you drifted yourself. From conversation to conversation, from person to person, from group to group, from subject to subject.

As nervous as you’d been standing in front of the dragon, as relaxed you were now. You didn’t really care about the music or the drink you had in your hand – you were not overdoing it, though, you were still new and needed to make a good expression – you cared about the company. And the company was excellent.

Bian, one of the Kyoshi-sisters, and her girlfriend Tuyet had claimed you after they found out about Gray Sky.

“A band? Like a proper band?”

“I mean that depends on your definition of ‘proper’ but, yeah? There were several people, playing several different instruments in order to create a coherent song.”

“Which means a proper band!”, Tuyet assured you.

“Have you ever played at a place? Or like an actual concert?”, Bian wanted to know.

“We used to play Friday nights at a bar.”

“Proper band!”, they both smiled at you.

“You should meet TaMing. She was a Kyoshi-sister before she dropped out of college. She plays in the same band as Haru.”

“Oh, I’ve met him. Seems nice.”

“Right, right. He is. Usually he brings his guitar to these things. At some point he will sit at the bonfire over there “, Bian explained, “and play some typical bonfire music. He’s good. You should go over there.”

“Not right now, though. I would first like to know what you think of Sokka!” Bian’s face was hard to read. You couldn’t tell if she liked or hated him but in a sense you also didn’t care. Your answer came instantly: “He’s great!” He was. A funny kind person with some brains. Admittedly, he didn’t look like a genius or ever put a lot of emphasis on how much excelled academically, but that didn’t take his intellect away. His jokes and nonchalant-ness were inviting and genuine and deceptively ‘hid’ his smarts. Sokka wasn’t intimidating when you first met him, but that didn’t mean that you shouldn’t be scared of him.

You were quite certain that you wouldn’t want to cross Sokka. You’d be dead. You’d be killed until dead. But it would look like an accident…

“Don’t you think he is a bit too goofy?”

“No, I don’t. I mean he sure is goofy, but I find that to be delightful.”

“Give it a couple more weeks.”

“You don’t like Sokka?”

“No, I like him! I just also find him annoying, I could do without all the dumb jokes. But he’s good to Suki and really, that’s the only thing that matters…If he makes her happy who am I to complain about some goofy puns, you know?” You liked Bian.

So, a little later you followed her to the camping chairs by the bonfire. This is where you met back up with Toph, who you now realised you hadn’t seen in a hot minute. Just like a bunch of the others. In the beginning of your little Kyoshi-session you had all but held hands with Suki and Katara, but Suki soon left you in order to wash someone’s head about their head – Wan is that you? In Ba Sing Se? – so you held on to Katara who vanished quickly after Suki with what looked like Aang.

Now you were reunited with Toph you brought out the bottle of Banana liqueur you got earlier that day. Toph tried some and declared you crazy. It was an acquired taste. While you were drinking your respective drinks Toph explained the general basics of the group to you:

“Well, you obviously know that Sokka and Suki are dating. That’s a nice spot to start. Suki is new, Sokka is old, meaning that I knew Sokka before I knew Suki. Suki just is Sokka’s girlfriend to me, you know. He went off to college and weeks later we were hearing about this badass girl he tried to get to like him. It was very entertaining.” You chuckled at the idea of Sokka trying to impress Suki before they were dating.

“Anyways, I heard about Suki because I was friends with Sokka in High School. Sort of. I was friends with Aang, who was friends with everyone in High School, because, well you’ve met him. He’s Aang. He’s friends with people. But he was pretty close to Katara and Sokka, after they met. And us four kinda became our own little core group.

So, Sokka, Katara, Aang and I are all old, while Suki, Zuko, Haru and you would be new.”

“Well”, you interrupted her, “I wouldn’t dream to compare my standing with you core group to Suki’s position. I just met you. She’s been dating Sokka for how long?”

“2 years 10 months.” That was quick. She just knew that. Off the top of her head. You made a mental note.

“And Zuko has probably been a part of your group for a while as well, right?”

“More or less since after he graduated. His time at uni did him well, I’d say. We ran into him around new year’s of his freshman-year here”, she whirled her arms around, hitting Tuyet in the face.

“Sorry, I thought you were further away. Anyways, he started being nice and I think we ended up together on New Year’s. And after that he bonded with Sokka in his first year here. So, you know, Suki – Zuko – Suki -Zuko – about the same time they joined.

And back then Zuko lived with Haru, so that’s how we met him.”

You kept drinking and chatting until Sokka burst onto the scene looking for Suki. When he couldn’t immediately find her, he asked you for the bottle of rum you still had.

“Listen, it’s late and I’m not waiting for my illusive girlfriend to bring me a drink, to start catching up!”, Sokka yelled after you commented on how much of the bottle he had emptied in just his first gulp. “I asked Suki to get my drink ready and await me, but she ignored that… No, Toph. No.”

He held the bottle out of her reach and twisted his shoulder weirdly, so that she’d never guess where exactly the rum was. He kept cradling the bottle while Haru and some friends found their way to the bonfire and – like Bian had promised – broke out the guitars. They were good. Really good. You hummed along to some of the songs and joined the choir of Toph, Sokka, Suki, Zuko and a bunch of strangers in the choruses of most others.

Suki took the bottle off Sokka, nearly as soon as she arrived, but when the 90’s boyband hits sounded through the park, Zuko gave it back to him.

“Poor Suki, will not agree with that”, you grinned as he caught you watching him.

“Maybe, but you will. Believe me”, Zuko said with a smirk and a wink.

He was right. With another two gulps of rum, Sokka was ready to not only sing solos but also presenting his version of well-known boyband-choreographies.

“You still judging me?” Zuko leaned over and gestured for the bottle of Banana liquor.

“Yes, sorta. I’m still feeling for Suki. She will not have a good time tonight.”

“You really underestimate Sokka, you know. He’ll be just fine. And so will she. Maybe a little exhausted because he’s going to be full of energy all night.”

“What about the hangover tomorrow?”

“They don’t live together.”

“Sounds like a technicality…”

“Meh”

With a look Zuko asked permission to try the Banana liquor and, with a look, you gave it to him. His face twisted in various amusing ways before nodding.

“Not what I expected. Gotta say it. But I think I may like it.”

“Take like, two more sips. You should be a fan after.”

He followed your instructions and grinned at you. “It is unique, I give you that.”

“You can always give me the bottle back.”

He kept it. What happened to it, you didn’t know but it never found it’s way back to you. Zuko either emptied it or he passed it on to someone. Not that you cared. Suki had reluctantly joined Sokka in his choreography and, surprisingly, so had Bian and Tuyet and some other Kyoshi sisters. Tuyet was pulling you from your seat to join. Toph pushed you off the chair and when all said and done you had been dancing stupid choreos of Sokka’s for about 80 minutes and missed Zuko leaving. Thus was created the mystery of the Banana liquor.

The night ended late. It was early morning and the birds were chirping when you carried the last of the boards that had made up the bars to the van. It would be locked and collected tomorrow by some Psychology student. Haru offered his parents’ house as refuge for the night as a reward for helping to tidy up. You all had gladly agreed. Sokka was still singing 90’s anthems to entertain you all and you weren’t the only ones tidying up. It was rather fun, really.

When you arrived at the house you didn’t really take in the details. You were shown a room and fell into the bed, fast asleep before your head hit the pillow.

#atla fanfic #atla zuko #smau #avatar: tla #zuko x y/n #zuko x reader

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weilongfu · 5 years ago

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Wei watches 2gether the Series Ep 6

Okay before I get into the episode, I’m just glad GMMTV is finally dropping Eng subs day 1. ANYWAY WHO’S READY TO GET HURT WAITING FOR THESE TWO IDIOTS TO KISS KISS FALL IN LOVE.

We start back up with Tine’s declaration to pursue Pear. Cue Sarawat’s indignant yelling and the kiss. I didn’t notice Sarawat’s drunk blush last week so it’s nice to see this week. Sarawat tries to go for another kiss but falls asleep drunk and Tine starts shaking him to wake him up and ask what he just did. Typical. For both of them. Sarawat, however, desires to stay asleep and tells Tine to let go of his hand.

The next morning Tine’s friends come to see if he’s okay and Sarawat is gone! Fong asks why Tine hasn’t taken a shower yet, looks like it’s a school day! Tine lets them in while he gets ready and Phuk notices Tine has a new wallet sitting on his desk. Tine realizes it’s not his and snatches it away, saying it’s his brother’s. However, as he checks the ID, he sees that it’s Sarawat’s!

Ohm then points out that Tine’s “brother” must have also forgotten his phone! Tine tries to snatch that back too, but Ohm looks at the lockscreen and points out how odd it is that Tine’s “brother” has set Tine’s photo as his lockscreen. Tine says it’s normal because they’re brothers, but Ohm points out it’s not normal because it’s a picture of Tine and Sarawat! (The plot thickens but we all know what’s going on here.)

Tine struggles to come up with another excuse, but Fong says not to bother since he knows Sarawat slept there last night. Apparently Sarawat left a note. “I didn’t want to wake you. I am off for music practice.” Phuk asks if they moved in together already and Tine calls him crazy. Tine tells them that Sarawat came to record the video for Music Club and it was late by the time they finished, so Tine had let him “crash.”

Fong then asks if Tine has had a chance to ask Sarawat how he feels about him and Tine remembers what happened between them last night. Tine lies and says that Sarawat says he’s just messing with Green. Tine then makes excuses and tries to take his shower quickly.

In Music Club, Air points out how distracted Tine seems today. Tine apologizes as Sarawat walks in. Air says they can stop there, but Tine should practice at home. Tine finally realizes Sarawat is staring at him and gives him back his wallet and phone. Sarawat thanks him and Tine runs away. Sarawat follows though and asks why he’s mad. Tine asks why shouldn’t he be mad. Sarawat thinks about it and apologizes and says he was in a rush to leave. Tine says he isn’t mad about this morning but what happened last night. Sarawat wonders aloud what happened and Tine asks if he doesn’t remember. Sarawat admits he was drunk and he knows they recorded the video and he can’t remember what happened after. Tine says to forget it and tries to leave.

Sarawat pulls him back and asks him to cheer for him during his match on Saturday. Tine says he won’t because university cheerleaders aren’t assigned to it. Sarawat says it’s not about Uni cheerleaders (he actually says screw Uni cheerleaders), he just wants Tine to cheer for him. (TINE. TINE HE’S BEING SO OBVIOUS.) Tine says he’ll think about it and says he has to help Phuk with his food page and runs away.

At the Faculty of Architecture, a guy named Chat is asking for people to register for an intensive course with him as the tutor. A bunch of girls scream in approval and move to sign up. However, the girls are interested in Mil. Speak of the devil, Mil shows up and Chat asks him to tutor the girls. Mil says he doesn’t have time to be the tutor since he has to practice his music. Phukong then shows up and asks if Mil can just tutor one student, him. The scene cuts to the time Phukong and Mil spent together during the open house.

Mil reminds Phukong that Architecture isn’t easy and Phukong fires back that it’s why he needs a great tutor like Mil. Mil says he doesn’t need a troll student like Phukong though and leaves. The girls try to chase after Mil, but Chat herds them back to the sign up sheet while Phukong watches Mil leave.

Back with the four dumbasses, Phuk introduces his page, “Gross But Cheap So We Gotta Eat.” (Excuse me, but as a foodie myself, you have to have standards Phuk. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s worth the intestinal distress.) Today they’re at a hot pot restaurant which is cheap but tastes horrible. Fong asks why Phuk had to be so loud in announcing how horrible the food tastes because they might get kicked out.

Tine then gets a text from Sarawat asking where he is since the game is about to start, but Fong asks him to take a taste and describe it. Tine does so and complains, wondering what kind of soup it is since it burns his throat. Phuk says it’s special because they put a Thai herbal liquor in it as part of the special recipe. He tells his friends to prepare to get drunk and Ohm notes guys can’t bring their girlfriends there. Tine asks why, and Ohm says it’s because people speak the truth when they get drunk and you’ll never be able to lie to your girlfriend. (That’s a lie. People just have less inhibitions when drunk. If you’re someone more likely to lie, you might find yourself being truthful because you don’t have a filter. Other people might be more inclined to lie because the filter that tells them to tell the truth is also gone.)

The boys keep eating and drinking the alcoholic soup. Tine seems to be the only one not drinking as seriously as the other boys. Tine asks again if it’s true that drunk people tell the truth and Phuk says that’s not true. Phuk then says there’s something he’s been meaning to tell Tine and it’s that his old phone with a cracked screen wasn’t broken because Tine sat on it, but because Ohm dropped it and blamed it on Tine. (So right after telling Tine drunk people don’t tell the truth, he tells the truth. Good job Phuk.) Ohm tells Phuk to shut up, but Phuk keeps going. Phuk confesses that Fong used Tine’s Facebook to sign up on a porn site. (Geez, why are you still friends with these idiots, Tine?)

Elsewhere, Mil is working behind the counter (of maybe a cafe?) and a woman flirts with him, saying how nice it is that her husband is there to help out and work. Mil says of course he is because his car broke down and he needs money to fix it. The lady then says Mil should have just become a tutor since she heard a lot of girls wanted to be his student. Mil tells the woman (named Jae Tun) that little girls have nothing on a real deal like her. Jae Tun calls him a sweet talker, but she won’t raise his wage. She tells him to do the OT (overtime?) in her room (oh that kind of overtime).

Phukong then comes in and shows Mil his work. Mil asks what it is and Phukong says Chat told him to draw Kon (person), Rod (car, watering), and Ton Mai (tree). Phukong says he’s finished and he wants Mil’s opinion. (Gotta say, they’re nice drawings on the cover of his book. I wonder if he drew them himself.) Mil asks if he gives a comment if Phukong will leave him alone. Phukong says Mil might want to be his tutor after seeing his drawings. Mil gestures for him to reveal them. Phukong opens his book to reveal a stick figure person watering a very small tree sprout. Mil asks Phukong to go be a troll elsewhere.

Phukong then reminds Mil that he’s a customer and Mil can’t shoo him away. (Yes he can. If you’re being a disruptive troll anyway.) Phukong threatens to report this to Jae Tun and Mil stops him and asks what he wants to order. Phukong orders 100 honey toasts. Mil asks if he’s ordering for the whole universe and that he won’t prepare the order. Phukong starts calling for Jae Tun again, and Mil stops him again. Mil asks what he wants for real and Phukong asks him to be his tutor and he’ll stop misbehaving. Mil says fine and gives Phukong the same assignment Chat gave him and says it’s due tomorrow morning. Phukong says there’s no need to wait until tomorrow, he can do it now. Mil stops him though and says he wants 100 drawings altogether! (Turnabout is fair play, Phukong!) Mil also says that if Phukong can’t do it, he might as well get out of his sight. Phukong smiles and gets to work.

Back with the four idiots, they’re about to move on to another restaurant but Tine says he’s not going and we see that Tine is looking at an IG post by Man which says, “RIP Sarawat’s knee.” and has a picture of Sarawat in black and white with his knee hurt.

Tine goes to the football field to see Sarawat and Sarawat comes up and asks if he’s looking for him. Tine asks how he’s standing, wondering if Sarawat broke his leg. Sarawat points out he just scraped his knee from a tackle and asks when he broke his leg. (Man, you sneaky sneaky friend you.) Tine says Man posted on IG that Sarawat’s leg was broken and Sarawat says Man was just being Man (which I guess means overdramatic) and asks if Tine believes him. Sarawat says it’s good Tine is there though and asks him to bandage his knee. Tine asks why he should do it and Sarawat says it’s because he’s out of energy/tired. Tine eventually agrees and Sarawat gives him that, “god I love you,” look. Tine starts to clean the wound and Sarawat asks him to be gentle. Tine continues to work anyway. Sarawat asks why Tine’s hands are shaking so much and Tine says he might be afraid of blood. Sarawat says he must also be because he’s also shaking. Tine looks at him in concern, but Sarawat says he means his heart and then smiles. (HE SMILES! HE SMILED SO MUCH!)

Tine makes an excuse and moves to leave just as the game ends and Pol. Sci. wins. Sarawat motions for everyone to come in and give high fives. Man is also one of the players and notices that Tine is there. He invites Tine to celebrate with them and eggs him into joining especially since Tine’s friends will also be coming. Apparently Phuk has stories to share. (Gee... I wonder what stories he’ll be telling...) Sarawat also looks up at Tine hopefully and Tine ends up agreeing.

The group go to a bar and Tine sits next to Sarawat as they all drink. Everyone keeps cheering and drinking. Man also attempts to tip Tine’s glass so he’ll drink more. Even Sarawat tells Tine to drink up properly. Tine then asks why they’re celebrating so much. He also notes that it’s like they’re trying to get Tine drunk! (Oh... so we’re on this part huh.) Man and Boss share a conspicuous look and Tine looks to Sarawat who suddenly won’t meet his eyes. Tine asks if Sarawat wants them to get him drunk. Boss and Man look guilty and concerned as Sarawat silently shakes his head. Man jumps in to say Sarawat was just playing. (In the novel, Man is already drunk and admits that Sarawat promised them 3000 baht if they got Tine drunk.)

Man then says he’s so jealous that Sarawat has someone cute to play with. Boss brings up the person Man met at the spiritual/meditation seminar. Man says he doesn’t even know the guy’s name. Boss tells him to go to every seminar and look for him. Sarawat says they talk too much, but then cheers for them being lucky to get the table. Tine says he’s doing too much, but ends up taking a sip anyway. Then he realizes his friends ditched him and Sarawat and his friends cheer again anyway.

His friends come back in time to say they want to cheers because Phuk got a LINE ID from a hot girl. Boss and Man continue to try to get Tine to finish his drink and succeed, only for Tine to pass out. Tine wakes up in his boxers in his room and someone wrapped in his blanket. However, it turns out to be a pillow and Tine relaxes after that.

Later Tine’s friends ask how his night went and Tine complains about having gotten so drunk he passed out. Tine then asks who got him home and Ohm asks if Tine really hasn’t seen the evidence on his IG yet. Tine then goes to look. and finds a picture of him passed out in his shirt and over shirt, but no pants, only boxers, posted on his IG.

The scene then cuts to Sarawat trying to find Tine’s room key and digging in his pockets. Tine drunkenly asks what he’s trying to grab. Sarawat tells him to be still and Tine says Sarawat’s digging in his pockets was fun and he wants him to do it again. Sarawat says no. Sarawat then throws Tine onto his bed and helps undress him a bit to make him comfortable. As Tine is passed out, Sarawat takes a picture and posts it on his IG with the comment, “I am reserved <3.” (Okay guys, remember that this is really not okay and you shouldn’t do things like this to drunk people.)

Tine curses Sarawat out and says that between Green and Sarawat, he can’t tell who’s more dangerous anymore. Phuk would say it’s Sarawat because he got into Tine’s room. Fong points out that Green isn’t bothering Tine anymore and that he should tell Sarawat to stop the fake dating. However, Green was in the stall! He knows now!

Later, we cut to Mil coming out of a class and seeing everyone looking at drawings on the walls. Phukong comes out and says it’s all 100 drawings as promised so it’s Mil’s turn to keep his promise. Chat says Phukong has done a good job and that if Mil says no he’s a loser. Mil agrees to be Phukong’s tutor and asks if he’s happy.

Later at night, Green comes up to Tine at his dorm. Green says he knows Tine asked Sarawat to flirt with him as a fake boyfriend. Tine denies it and Green asks why Tine lied to him. Green also says he overheard them in the bathroom and asks why Tine had to be so harsh. (Okay, Green has a point. BUT you were literally not taking his no for an answer either? Like he turned you down how many times and you still stuck to him like glue? Also Green, you’re not innocent either if the spoilers I’ve read are true!)

Tine says he didn’t mean to be so harsh and Green hugs him saying he knows he’s not good enough for Tine, but he asks for one more chance. Sarawat comes in and pulls Green away and asks who said Sarawat was flirting with Tine just to get rid of Green. Sarawat then says he did everything because he actually likes Tine. Green doesn’t believe him and says he knows everything was a plan. Sarawat says it was a plan at first. But then he realized he really likes Tine. Green says he’ll never believe it and Sarawat asks if he wants him to kiss Tine to prove it and moves to do so. Green stops them mid way and says that’s enough and that he believes that Sarawat likes Tine and then runs away.

Tine says it was close and asks how Sarawat knew Green was going to come by. Sarawat says Green has been following him since Tine was at uni and he knew something was going to happen. Tine then asks if Sarawat would have finished kissing him if Green didn’t stop him. Sarawat smiles and asks if Tine really thinks Sarawat would kiss him. Sarawat then says he knew Green wouldn’t be able to bear seeing it and says who would kiss Tine. (YOU WOULD. YOU TOTALLY WOULD.)

Later Tine treats his friends to a meal and drinks (product placement here) and Ohm asks why. Tine says it’s just because he hasn’t sat with them all for a while. He then tells them all that he has something to ask them and everyone says it at the same time. Tine asks how they know and Fong says that whenever Tine treats them to a meal, he always needs help and asks what the problem is.

Tine says he has a friend from Music Club and his friend is worried and wondering if there is a guy that likes him. (Person A liking “friend.”) Ohm asks who A is anyway and offers to hack into his FB. Phuk says you should get him drunk. Tine says he must be crazy to ask them and Fong suggest making person A jealous. Fong says jealousy always shows no matter how good a person is at hiding their feelings. (JOKE’S ON YOU. I’LL KEEP ALL THESE FEELINGS IN MY CHEST AND THEN DIE BEFORE I ADMIT THERE’S A PROBLEM.) Tine nods and takes the advice in.

Meanwhile Man is going to a lot of seminars and admits in some of them that he’s there to look for someone. Boss tells him to keep looking and Man says he’s gone to a whole host of them and he just hasn’t gone to the Dharma camp. However as he talks about it he sees his man! He chases after him and gets stopped because he doesn’t have a pass.

Man tries to lie and says his pass is with his friend and if they let him in, he’ll go get it. The staff tell him to call his friend out and give it to him instead. He tries to dodge them and is unsuccessful and the staff make him wait outside.

Meanwhile, Tine is in Music Club waiting for Sarawat and stages himself. He sees Sarawat come and then asks Sarawat if he wants to get a meal together. Sarawat looks at him funny and Tine asks if Sarawat already made plans. Sarawat says that Tine just asked him to eat together and that it’s weird (I guess more out of character). Tine tells him not to think about it too much and calls Sarawat his dear friend and asks him to also come out and have a drink. Sarawat ends up agreeing as Tine starts jumping and shaking him.

Sarawat tells Tine that his band is actually playing at a bar (L Co Hol) that night and it’ll be a warm up/practice for opening for Scrubb on Saturday. He tells Tine to meet him there since they’ll be playing Scrubb songs. Tine happily agrees, if a little too enthusiastically and Sarawat wonders what’s wrong with him.

Back with Man, we see the seminar has let out and he’s looking for his mystery man. Man gets stopped by an older gentleman who found the pen at the last seminar. Man remembers him and the man tells him that the guy showed up today and invited him to another seminar, but he’s not sure he can go. Man asks what the seminar is and the gentleman gives him the brochure. It’s a meditation retreat for 2 nights. The gentleman says it’s perfect for Man and Man thanks him.

At the bar, Tine sits with a girl. The girl asks if all she has to do is pretend to be Tine’s girlfriend when Sarawat walks in and Tine says that’s it. Tine says that if she does a good job (her name is Nancy), he’ll give her extra tips. Nancy agrees and says they should practice. She even tries to pull Tine’s shirt open and Tine says that’s too obvious. Nancy then goes to flirt with another guy as an example of how else she should do it. Tine then points out Sarawat is here and Nancy chooses to fangirl over Sarawat instead of doing all of the above. (I mean, if I was Nancy, I’d fawn over Sarawat too NGL.) Sarawat asks if Tine has been waiting long and Tine says he hasn’t but he’s leaving soon. Sarawat tells him to stay, he’ll pay for Tine’s drinks, he just wants Tine to watch him play first. Tine agrees and Nancy completely abandons him to fawn some more over Sarawat.

Later the concert starts and the lead of the band tells everyone they have a special song prepared, requested by their guitarist (Sarawat) and that he even wants to sing it himself. The Lead then gives the mic over to Sarawat who steps up. Sarawat says, “This song is for someone so silly who didn’t get to hear it when I played it the first time.” Sarawat is going to play Everything by Scrubb!

Tine sits and watches as Sarawat begins. Tine starts to mouth along to the words. After the song is done, Sarawat steps off the stage and is mobbed by girls. Nancy comes up and says she wants a picture with Sarawat and asks Tine to ask Sarawat for her. Tine tells her to ask herself and Nancy asks why Tine is so upset, as if he’s Sarawat’s boyfriend. Tine then remembers Fong’s advice about making people jealous. (OH. IS IT FINALLY CLICKING FOR YOU NOW?) Tine huffs and gets up, leaving Nancy behind. Sarawat sees Tine leaving and tries to leave the mob to chase after him.

Tine then bumps into Mil and apologizes. Mil addresses Tine by name and says it’s okay. Tine asks how Mil knows his name and Mil says that Tine is a uni cheerleader so of course he knows his name. Tine apologizes again and Mil says he won’t be mad about Tine bumping into him if Tine lets him take a selfie with Tine. Tine ends up agreeing and Mil takes the selfie and thanks him before moving on. Tine tries to leave again, but Sarawat stops him this time. Sarawat asks what’s wrong with Tine and why he took a photo with someone.

Tine says that who he takes pictures with is none of Sarawat’s business and that he didn’t say anything when a bunch of girls surrounded Sarawat, handing him drinks and hugging him. Sarawat points out he accepted no drinks and gave no hugs, so Tine had better think more carefully before saying that. Tine moves to leave anyway and Sarawat asks what his problem is. Tine finally admits he’s jealous and after a stare down, he walks in the other direction. Sarawat watches him go with an evaluating look on his face.

The next morning, Tine wakes up and hears his phone go off. Sarawat asks if Tine still wants to get Scrubb’s autographs and that he’s waiting for Tine. We then see Sarawat waiting outside the Faculty of Architecture. Tine remembers all the things that have lead him to this moment of realizing his feelings for Sarawat, or at least his jealousy. Sarawat continues to wait. (Poor bby, he will always wait, won’t he.) However he gets called inside as everyone is ready and Sarawat can wait no longer.

Later he comes out with his guitar and checks his phone again. Tine finally runs up and asks if he can still get the autographs. Sarawat says no way since his show was, “Over like 10 years ago.) Tine’s face falls and he says he drank too much last night and he can’t remember anything. The only thing he remembers is watching Sarawat play live and waking up in his room. (YOU LIAR. JUST ADMIT YOU LIKE SARAWAT!) Sarawat looks disappointed for a moment and nods his head, as if understanding that it still continues to be difficult to woo this disaster of a beautiful boy.

Sarawat then says the Scrubb concert is still going on and he asks if Tine still wants to go. Tine says there’s no need to ask and heads in. They make it in time for the last song. Tine says the song they’re playing is called Deep. The band calls for everyone to put their hands in the air and Tine gets up on a railing to sit and watch. Sarawat tells Tine to hold on to him so he won’t fall. Tine just rests an arm on Sarawat’s shoulder, but Sarawat puts it around him. (HE’S TRYING SOOOO HARD!!!) Tine asks what Sarawat is doing and Sarawat says he’s afraid Tine will fall. Tine just shakes his head and goes back to enjoying the music. Sarawat sneaks looks at Tine as he enjoys the concert and he smiles.

The scene cuts back to when Tine was helping Sarawat redecorate his room and he told Sarawat his favorite band was Scrubb. And then his invitation to Tine for the bar the other night and his performance. (This is supposed to be in time to the line from the song Deep about the moments that bring them together.) The montage continues with a few more scenes and then comes back to the concert where everyone is waving their hands. Tine scoffs and waves Sarawat’s hand for him. Sarawat scolds Tine for waving at the wrong rhythm even though he claims to be a fan. Tine tells him it’s the right rhythm. Sarawat pulls his hand away and tells Tine to wave instead. Tine does so and Sarawat says it’s cuter when Tine waves anyway. (SOOOO SMOOOOOTH.)

Tine smiles and the concert continues. The singer then calls for everyone to put both their hands in the air and jump. The crowd does so and Tine just goes back to waving Sarawat’s hand. The concert ends to a large amount of applause. Tine complains about his butt hurting and Sarawat asks if he told Tine to sit on the railing/divider. Sarawat then asks if the crowd is screaming for him or Scrubb. Tine asks who would scream for him. (YOU WILL AT SOME POINT TINE. I KNOW IT.) Tine then thanks Sarawat for being there with him and Sarawat says it was fun.

Sarawat then asks how did Tine know they would play Deep. Tine says he was there watching their concert on campus last year and he got the same feeling. He also remarks that he misses that time because he was really happy. Sarawat says he knows and Tine asks how he knows. Sarawat then remembers the concert and how a young Tine had been jumping and bumped into him. Tine had bowed quickly in apology before going right back to enjoying the concert. Sarawat’s gaze is immediately interested. Before Sarawat can say how he knows, the episode ends.

The jealousy is real on both ends next week. WHEN WILL THEY LEARN?!

#wei watches #2gether the series #2gether

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constantconfusion111 · 4 years ago

Text

Etched into your skin - Chapter 3

Here’s the 3rd chapter! Thanks everyone for the comments/likes/Kudos, you’re the best!!!

Link to AO3

Link to Ch1 ; Link to Ch2

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

Type was an expert at denial. He wore it like a second skin.

As he moved his boxes in the condo he’ll share with Techno, no one could have imagined his brain was torturing him. He almost met Tharn.

The first thing he’ll do as soon as class started was to find out in which university his soulmate was exactly as to stay the fuck away from it forever. Maybe he should consider changing university. His parents would definitely not be on board with that. It took him almost 3 weeks to convince his father to let him ditch the dorms.

Frankly, his dad didn’t want him in a condo for his first year, but Type had little choice in the matter. He simply couldn’t be in the same room with Tharn. The man would find out. Maybe not the first week, maybe not even the first month if he lied about his name. But he would eventually. And Type refused to deal with the potential fallout. So he had to use an argument he wasn’t proud of.

‘Dad, I’m not feeling safe in a room with another random guy.’

He had felt guilty and uncomfortable using that against his dad. But the result was instant, and the following week he was already signing the lease of his new condo.

“Type! Here’s your last one,” called Techno, sliding a cardboard box on the floor.

All was fine, he could handle this.

----------

Maybe Tharn had been overeager.

When he had red the letter, he’d stared at it unblinkingly for what felt like an eternity. His mother, worried, had read over his shoulder. Before he knew it, his face got crushed in a suffocating hug as she was part laughing part crying for him.

His dad had soon barged into the kitchen, concerned about the noise.

The rest of the evening had been very loud as his parents swinged between congratulations and hugs. And then he had to explain everything for a third time when Thorn came back home later in the evening.

Saying he was excited was the understatement of his life. So as soon as the first day of moving into the dorm rolled around, Tharn brought all his boxes and started to put his things away.

He wanted to be there to welcome Type in what would be their first home together. Tharn wanted to smile at him, see in his eyes a reflexion of his thoughts. Would he be nervous? Giddy? Composed?

Type would already know who he was.

Were they supposed to hug? Was that too forward? But at the same time, he couldn’t just… not. That would be too strange. Maybe they could go out and eat together to chat, starting to get to know each other. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to bring themselves to leave the room.

Tharn had so many questions for him. But probably the first one would be why hadn’t Type registered himself? If his soulmate was in Uni, he had to at least be his own age. Was Type one of these people that wanted the meeting to be organic? Was Type a romantic?

His heart was beating too fast, he was feeling light headed.

Tharn was going to be fine, he just had to handle himself until Type arrived. That’s what he had to keep repeating at least.

Tharn looked up at the dorm’s door with each item he was putting away.

After emptying his first box, he only raised his head whenever he heard movement in the hall.

After the third box, he stopped altogether, massaging his neck slowly.

As the night rolled around, he had to accept today wasn’t the day. Maybe he really had been too eager. They still had quite some time until the start of the semester.

However, on the first day of class, as he woke up yet again facing an empty bed, Tharn’s enthusiasm vanished like smoke in the wind.

Type must have known, he must have received the same letter as him, clearly stating who his roommate would be. Suddenly, Type not being registered sounded less like romance and more like avoidance.

But why? Why would Type not want to meet? Even if he didn’t want a romantic relationship, which did happen sometimes, why not meet with him and tell him?

What if something bad had happened?

As soon as his first day of classes ended, Tharn excused himself from the group of freshmen that wanted to go out for celebratory drinks, claiming he had some administrative issues. Lhong had thrown him a look, but didn’t stop him.

Technically, Tharn wasn’t lying. It just wasn’t his own administrative problem. He approached a woman reading behind her desk.

“Hello, I’m sorry to bother, but I think there’s a problem with my roommate.”

She looked at him with the sort of weariness born out of dealing with stupid requests from days on end.

“Unless the issue is actually very serious, there’s nothing I can do to help. All the rooms are jam packed, so we can’t transfer the freshmen left and right.”

“Ah, no that’s not why I’m here. I’m worried for my roommate, he never moved him. Since classes started already, I was wondering if everything was alright. His name is Type Thiwat Phawattakun.”

She hummed, turning toward her computer and checking some files. It took a couple of minutes of silent scrolling before she turned toward him again.

“He cancelled his spot in the dorms. Very last minute actually. Freshmen are more and more irresponsible each year…”

Tharn felt a pang in his heart at the news. Type has cancelled. He’d backed out of their meeting.

“Where is he now? Did he drop out of University?”

“I don’t think so, it does happen that freshmen give up the dorm for their own private accommodations. It’s more expensive, but also more comfortable.”

So Type was definitely avoiding him.

“Could you tell me which University he’s enrolled in please?”

At that, the woman looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“These are private information that I cannot share with just anyone, sorry Nong. You should just enjoy your big room for yourself, you’re the only one lucky enough for that.”

Tharn felt anything but lucky.

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

Turns out, finding one guy within an entire University complex could be quite the challenge. The first thing people said when he asked if they knew Tharn was:

“Tharn? From which Uni?”

So far, he’d only managed to confirm Tharn wasn’t enrolled into the faculty of sports. Only a million more people to ask.

Despite the stress of having to look over his shoulder all the time and making a point of asking people their names before they could even think of asking his first -which had already put him in hot waters with some seniors- University life wasn’t half bad.

Living with Techno was fun. In the evenings they played games together and chilled. Sometimes Techno invited some of their classmates to hang out and drink. They had met some very cool people, particularly a guy called Champ who seemed to know all the best restaurants around. Friday or Saturday nights, they even managed to motivate each other enough to actually go to a proper bar.

Classes are as easy as they ever were and as long as Type listened to the lecture, he barely had any efforts to put into his homeworks. Still drove Techno up the wall in frustration. The coach liked him, even though he always said that Type had to keep his temper in check or he’ll be benched. Type knows he’s good enough to not have to worry too much about the threat. Again, that drove Techno completely crazy since he’d already started his recruitment campaign to convince everyone to elect him as team captain. For his senior year. What was wrong with that boy, Type wasn’t too sure sometimes. In any case, sucking up to the coaches was part of his strategy. Techno did try to deny that last point, but there was an overwhelming amount of evidence against him. For instance, the way he almost tripped on his own feet to play delivery boy.

“Bring this to the music faculty office, it’s the selection of songs we want them to play during the matches.”

“No problem coach! I’ll go right away.”

His bunch of papers under the arm, Techno came back to his group of friends.

“Guys! Come with me, we need to deliver some papers.”

“This is in no way a ‘we’ situation No,” said Champ, stretching out his legs.

“Sorry, we’re kind of in the middle of our stretches,” tried Team, offering a small smile to the other boy.

“Type is on his phone! He’s not even pretending to stretch!”

They all turned to the accused who was indeed lounging on his side, scrolling lazily.

“Type does whatever he wants…”

That was true and it made him very happy to know they already realised it after only a couple of short weeks.

“Tyyyyyype.”

“I would rather die than come with you No,” came the deadpan answer.

“You could at least look up from your phone!”

His plea went unanswered. Knowing better than to annoy the young man to the point of aggression, Techno cursed them all and started his solo adventure.

Techno had to actually ask his way a couple of times as the music and sports department weren’t close at all. He even had to take a Uni shuttle, receiving plenty of curious looks since he hadn’t taken the time to change out of his sports outfit.

Despite being quite a trek away from their faculty, the music building looked pretty similar to their own. Maybe there were more windows. Was light important for musicians? Did they share with the art department?

His adventure wasn’t over quite yet though, the entrance office wouldn’t take the papers, complaining about messing the systems up and Techno got redirected once again.

“So… third floor, and then at the back of the building…”

Every single room, every corridor looked the same and nothing appeared as being the back of anything.

“Shit!”

“Hey, are you alright?”

Techno turned around, coming face to face with-

“Handsome boy!”

The man raised both eyebrows in surprise, readjusting the straps of his bag on his shoulders.

“What?”

“You’re so pretty, are you an angel sent from the sky to help me?”

The man was adorable with a very cute face and pouty lips, a single long earring catching the light on the side of his face and despite his clear confusion, he still offered Techno a large smile.

“I can definitely try.”

“I need to find the faculty office of the music department. It’s about music for our matches,” he explained, flapping around the brown envelope he’d brought all the way there.

“Ah I see, I’ll walk you there. You’re very close, but it can be tricky to find the room.”

“Lhong, is everything fine?”

Techno turned toward the man that seemed to have called his saviour.

“Damn! Is it a requirement to be handsome to get into the faculty of music?”

If Lhong was cute, the newcomer was definitely handsome, and that despite the dark circles under his eyes.

“All good, I’ll just show this guy the way to the office. Save me a spot in the canteen?”

The man nodded and left without further ado.

“Let’s go!”

“Thanks man, I’m Techno by the way. I’m in the faculty of sports.”

Lhong laughed, checking him out from head to toe.

“Yeah I could have guessed that. I’m Lhong. Isn’t the faculty of sports super far away from here?”

Techno groaned loudly.

“So far away! I had to take the Uni shuttle to come!”

“Sounds like a pain, you should stay to eat with us so you wouldn’t have travelled all the way for nothing.”

After one last corridor turn, they finally arrived in front of the teachers’ office. Techno would never have found it, even the door tag was scratched out and faded.

“I wish, I lost too much time already, I’ll have to hurry back and pray my friends didn’t ditch me. But give me your Line ID! I’ll send you a message and we can go grab a drink, I’ll treat you as a thank you.”

“Ah, that’s not necessary, it was nothing.”

Techno shushed him, already fishing out his phone and pushing it in Lhong’s hands.

“Nonsense! It’s gonna be fun. I’ll bring my friends, bring the hot one you were with before. I’m sure music students know the best bars.”

Lhong shared his number and after a last goodbye, they parted in front of the office.

Maybe his adventure hadn’t all been in vain.

#tharntype #tharntype the series #tharn x type #soulmate

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badgirlsinterviews · 4 years ago

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The Depth of Humanity | Camila Sosa Villada | TEDxCordoba

Description

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Camila Sosa Villada began her career as an actress in 2009, when she was garnered international acclaim for the autobiographical drama Carnes Tolendas, the stage portrayal of a travesti. In this work, she fused acting, the poetry of Federico García Lorca, and her identity as a travesti. In this talk, she speaks of her journey as a young sex worker, and the incredible human beings which accompanied her along the way.

Transcription

You there- you’ve been with a sex worker before, right? I see a few familiar faces out there, but they aren't alone and I feel bad outing them like this. Anyway, you must have been through a red light district before. In your car, on your bike, you must have crossed paths with a couple of travesti sex workers, working on the street corner, or does this concept seem completely unfamiliar to you? Completely unfamiliar?

My father used to say that if you want to be happy you have to be a good person. He said that to be a good person, you must have a family and go to work. When I began to cross-dress when I was a teenager, my father put a curse on me, and told me that one day he'd get a knock on the door and that they'd tell him the news: that I'd been found dead, left in the gutter, because the only job I could hope for as a travesti was having sex with men for money. I'm paraphrasing because they won't let me swear, but he put it a bit more directly that that. He said I would die alone.And so, before the awards, before I became a cult actress, before I travelled around the world and discovered amazing places, before the prestige, and the affection people gave me, I ended up working as a prostitute, like my old man said I would.

I didn't end up left for dead in the gutter after all. The first time I did sex work, I was coming out of my university faculty where I was studying Social Communication. When I came to Córdoba to study I arrived with the personality traits of an Aquarius - highly emotional, very rebellious. I wanted to show my father that he was wrong about what he said. But I failed. Because every time I tried to find a so-called 'decent' job, like working at McDonald's or in a call centre, when they checked my I.D. and then took a look at me they became immediately brain dead, and refused to give me the job. So then one night, when I was leaving the university district a car stopped next to me, and the driver asked me how much I wanted.That was the first time I had to take a path towards my destiny and make a decision, and I got in his car.

I started going around Barrio Alberdi at around 3 or 4 A.M. knowing that, at that time, my neighbours wouldn't be around to see me. I knew people drove around there, that drunk men would be leaving the bars. But working alone meant that I was exposed to many dangers. If it wasn't the police, it was the crazy people leaving the clubs, if it wasn't them, it was the group of beggars passing by. A travesti sex worker who worked in Dean Fuentes and Corro told me to go to a red light district and there I'd be adopted by other travestis. She said that, since I was a girl, they'd treat me like their daughter.

So I began to go around the red light districts that I knew about back then, which were la Cañada and Rioja, el Mercado de Abastos, and Sarmiento Park. Since I had always had an affinity for the trees which grow all on their own, without the help of others, Sarmiento Park was the option I was left with. Nowadays, people go out running there, they walk their dogs, they go cycling, they go there to make out,to eat sandwiches, but back then, the park was dark and it was used in order to get from one side of the city to the other, and it was where people looked to pay for pleasure.

The first time I went there, I sat down on a bench close to a group of girls and travesti sex workers who were out working in front of the statue of Dante. I was listening to José Luis Perales on my headphones I saw how they immediately recognised me and they sent over a girl to figure out what I was doing there sat in the park. The truth is, I was very scared: the only thing I knew about red light districts was what was being shown on TV at the time. There was also that whole mess going on in Palermo where the neighbours wanted to get rid of the sex workers, so the images they put on TV were always awful. I basically felt a resounding terror, a huge amount of fear.

She approached me - as the first girl in the group approached me, I realized that she was pregnant. Her stomach was huge. She had straight, black hair, that came down to her waist. Her hair was full of grass and so were her clothes, because she met with her clients there, inside of the park.I told her, "Hold on a second!" She asked me for a lighter, and asked me what I was doing there. She left, and told the other girls that I was Camila, that I was 18 and that I was trying to work there, the same as them. When I left that night, I was worried that they might to do something to me, that they'd get mad if a girl like me stole one of their clients.

I went back the next day, and they all came up to me and introduced themselves. There was Gabriela, the pregnant girl; the other Gabriela, another travesti who was working there. She was enormous, almost 6 ft tall, and she spoke like Libertad Lamarque. She had such a womanly voice, like Libertad Lamarque. There was also Angie Desiré, one of the most beautifu travestis that I've ever met - and, by the way, there are some beautiful travestis in Córdoba! There was her cousin, Pilar, who actually identified as male but just dressed as a woman when he went to work in Sarmiento Park.

And there was Cleopatra, who was like the pharaoh of that land, of that horrific inferno in front of the statue of Dante. She was a 6 and a half foot tall travesti. Her hands were huge, and she made such amazing roasts in her house in Alta Gracia. I mean, my father knows how to make good roasts because he’s spent his whole life making them, but this girl made the most delicious roasts I've ever eaten, and that I probably ever will. With her, I learned how much my body was worth and the price I should put on it.I learned how to defend myself, and to look twice at someone before judging them. I learned how to construct a weapon to fend off a client if things got ugly. It was made of a bar of soap and a razor blade, wrapped together in a hairband. You'd take it out like this and use it like a knife, but you could keep it in your purse or in your sleeves, or anywhere else. I never used it, but there were many times which I could have.

The only time us girls separated from each other was when we were with a client, or when the cops showed up. They're still as ineffective as ever, so just imagine what they were like in 2000 or 2001. We were no saints, so we obviously wouldn't just shut up and take it if the police provoked us when we got caught. We'd come home with broken septums, black eyes, misshapen breasts, so when we'd see the police arriving, we'd start shouting "The police! The police!" And we'd run off like a bunch of cockroaches scuttling away from a light, all of us, sprinting off through the park in our heels, because of how terrified we were of the police.

I never figured out in which exact moment those girls became my true friends. I don't know exactly when they knew my birthday, nor when they knew if my heart was broken or whole, if I needed money for rent, if I needed money to eat, if I was tired, if I was in class. All my other friends, my uni friends, my friends from high school, my parents - none of them knew that, when class was over, I'd go to Sarmiento Park to work. Those girls did.

In that park, amongst the men who hired us, there were those who were old, young, skinny, fat, poor, rich happy, bitter, married, single, tops, bottoms. We didn't pay attention to the skin colour or the origins of those who sought our affection. And here I am at TEDx, trying, somehow, to put out an encouraging or inspirational message, although I don't believe in self-improvement - far from it. I accepted to do this talk firstly, because I needed to ask for forgiveness, for never trying to find those girls again.

I never saw them again. And I wanted to tell you all about how Gabriela, the pregnant girl, would cycle to the park every night. She locked her bike up against a tree and did her job there, right next to it. And I thought about this shitty system, the reason for which two unborn children in a girl's belly are forced to attend such a spectacle. I want to ask if any of you have ever thought that there could be anything more concretely poetic than that girl working in Sarmiento Park, getting there and going back home by bike.

Perhaps I wouldn't be here at TEDx today, wouldn't have become the actress, or all of that, because I would have ended up in the gutter, left to die, like my old man said, if Cleopatra hadn't seen those two guys that hired me that one night. They came out of a club in Nueva Córdoba, and picked me up in their car, and when they realised I was travesti they began punching the crap out of me. From inside the car, while I was being beaten I saw Cleopatra coming, in her skinny, high-wasted jeans, a denim jacket which was cut off here, so you could see everything, the underside of her breasts a high ponytail, black hair, and her huge hands. She opened the car door, pulled out the two guys, and beat the crap out of them.

It was the first time in my life that anyone ever defended me. It was her - not my parents, my friends, my siblings, or anyone else, but her, who saved me from death that night. Maybe I wouldn't be here if I hadn't followed my intuition and hadn't arrived at that park by chance, guided only by my affinity for the trees that grow without the help of others. Thank you.

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jeannereames · 5 years ago

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Hello, Dr. Reames! I love your work (and am very excited to read your novels very soon!). I am thinking of doing a phd (not history or classics, but maybe sort of related to Alexander) but I'm scared that I'm not going to have the motivation to go through with the whole thing... Do you ever lose motivation and get discouraged when researching/writing and how do you deal with it? I know that this is completely unrelated to Alexander/ancient history so feel free to ignore it☺

Hi, there! This reply is going to be in 3 parts. First, about my own motivation…

I think everybody (even Alexander!) has periods of feeling discouraged. It’s part of being human. This is especially true when something you put days, weeks, or sometimes *years* of effort into doesn’t work out, or isn’t well-received, or comes back with “revise and resubmit.” Ha.

So, real life recent example: About a year and a half ago, I finished an article that took me (literally) 5 years to research and write, because it combined research into two different areas, only one of which is my research area. It took a huge amount of reading, and I’d even presented it at a couple of conferences, where I received good feedback. It was supposed to be published in conference proceedings, but that fell through (not my part of it, the entire publication didn’t happen because the editor quit). So I had to shop it around to journals. It went out to three readers, and all three returned it with “Revise (substantially) and resubmit,” + large *additional* bibliography (mostly not in English) in the area not my field. Two of the readers thought my chief point was valid, but needed more support. (The third just flat disagreed with me, but it’s academia; that happens.) But that was after it had been presented 3xs already, and revised after each.

OTOH, I was pretty discouraged. But OTOH, the suggestions and reading lists were helpful. These are blind reviews, so it wasn’t personal. And the entire point of peer review is to help a book or article improve. Lord knows, nobody wants to put out something that will get you laughed at. But after all the time I’d already spent on it, it was still really discouraging as I’d thought it in pretty good shape.

Almost everybody in academia is going to have an article or three turned down, or a book refused, etc. And after a while, it can be really hard to keep trying. And it’s not just in academia.

Do you know how long it took me to sell Dancing with the Lion? 15 years! I got my first serious query from an agent in 1996. (The first words of the novel were written in December of 1988–that’s how old it is.) That agent eventually decided it wasn’t for her. I’ve had a couple others since…same thing. I’ve sent out probably around 500 queries to agents or publishers. In fact, I’d put the book AWAY and started a completely different trilogy (which I’m in the middle of now), because I figured it would only sell later.

Then I happened to read comments about Madeline Miller’s A Song for Achilles written by an English professor and new acquisitions editor at Riptide. She liked it, but there were a couple of things she really didn’t like. And they were the very ways (I thought) my novel was different. So I emailed her. She asked for sample chapters, then the whole thing, and finally, Riptide offered me a contract. They’re not a major press, they’re a Romance publisher primarily, but they were willing to take a chance on my coming-of-age historical, so I grabbed the opportunity. Now the book is out (well, the first half is), and it’s getting pretty decent reviews.

So persistence can pay off.

That said, if someone else had told me that story 10 years ago, I’d have snorted and said (in my mind), “Maybe it did for you. Maybe I’m just a bad writer and I’ll never succeed.” I’d also just been through a divorce and was having trouble selling my house in the housing bust, etc., etc. So a lot of things in my life were pear-shaped at the time, and that can make it really hard to keep trudging.

The “Dark Night of the Soul” is a real thing, and we all go through it.

The only way I get through it, myself, is to remember things in the past that went well, times I succeeded. Plus, I’m just a really stubborn SOB. Ha.

But discouragement is normal, and there will be points in everybody’s life where not just one or two things are going wrong, but it seems as if EVERYthing is going wrong and you’re just a total failure. You have to believe it’ll get better.

Now, part #2, about motivation to complete a degree. It’s a bit like the AA motto: one day at a time. Or really, one semester at a time. One hurdle at a time. When I first got to Penn State, the long, long road ahead made me freak out a little, but Gene Borza (my advisor) told me to take it in bites. And to remember that other people had made it through; I could, as well.

Also, don’t let yourself get thrown by “Imposter’s Syndrome.” This is the feeling that you don’t belong somewhere: in grad school, in a PhD program, in a department (or really, ANY arena). You’re not as good as the others. Minorities, women, and first-generation college students are those most likely to suffer imposter’s syndrome, but it can hit others too, such as the children of academics (I’ll never measure up to mom/dad), etc.

Last, part #3, and this may seem an odd coda to all the above rah-rah cheerleading. But as a (now former) graduate program chair, I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t put out a warning.

Not only is the field of humanities in trouble right now, in the US and Canada, and elsewhere, too, but the entire university system is changing. This latter is especially true in the US, but I hear rumblings from other places. Partly, this owes to the rise of online education. But even more, it’s what I call the “Wal-martization” of the university, where tenure-track lines are being replaced by a bunch of part-time instructors who have to teach 6 classes just to make enough to EAT. “Adjunct” professors, even those with PhDs, are paid a pittance. It’s absolutely immoral and ridiculous.

Universities are turning into profit more than education, with a degree seen as “job training” instead of learning to think critically and exploring Big Questions, which are increasingly viewed as a waste of time. Administration levels are increasingly bloated with deans, assistant deans, supervisory boards, etc. They’re (mostly) not teaching, but their paycheques are high. Tenured faculty positions are being eliminated. Colleges and unis realized that they could turn over a lot of (especially intro and survey) courses to part-time instructors for a *fraction* of what they paid tenured and tenure-track faculty, but still reap high tuition.

When I was finishing up in the ‘90s, I was teaching as an adjunct while writing my dissertation, then for a bit after, as was expected for “teaching experience” before being hired. The phenomenon of the “Visiting Assistant Professor” (or VAP) was *starting* to gain traction, but was still usually just a year or two until these people would find a tenure-track position (VAP is not tenure-track). But now, I know people who’ve been VAPping for YEARS. And some just give up. Also, adjuncting like what I was doing has gone from “teaching experience for a real job” into “the only lane for employment” for a lot of PhD (and some MA) graduates. Especially women PhDs get caught in that trap.

These are the realities of where we are right now.

And THE MOST USELESS DEGREE ON THE PLANET is a PhD in the humanities. I say that as one who holds it. With a few exceptions, a humanities PhD prepares you for pretty much one job: being a professor. And those jobs are winking out of existence with frightening speed. This is a change that has accelerated over the last 10 years, and especially over the last 5. We’re turning out PhDs with no available positions. Museum studies, Classics, archaeology, philosophy are in even worse shape. SOME history PhDs are more popular. This year, H-Net has a bunch of Latin American positions open, for instance.

An MA in history (or related) is still useful. There are certain jobs that like them, ranging from state jobs like the Park Service to the FBI and CIA.

But a PhD? Think loooooong and hard before investing that time and money. This is not a matter of *you* not being able to do the work to get one. It’s a matter of the university system as we’ve known it crumbling away under our very feet. I have no idea what the American university will look like in 10 years. And once you have a PhD, it educates you out of most other jobs.

So that’s the unfortunate bad news. And I’d be a very irresponsible advisor if I didn’t tell you the truth. IME, people who really want a PhD will ignore me and go after it anyway. But at least you’ll go in with your eyes open.

#encouragement #dealing with discouragement #imposter's syndrome #academia #PhD track #Adjunct Hell #Think twice (and then a third time) about getting a PhD these days #Humanities tenure track jobs are drying up #asks

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