#people in community college are so much nicer compared to the people at the other college i'm gonna cry

[lesbian-rook]

shout out to my teacher because I've been having a lot of episodes and missing large amounts of class to go sob in the bathroom and i emailed her like "listen i have BPD and class has been triggering episodes but i didn't want to give the school my diagnosis because that's what lead to me having to leave my last college but if i really need to give the school my diagnosis plz let me know" and she was like "oh that makes sense, just wave to me if you have to leave and i won't mark it"

[certifiedtrashmouth]

6 bitch

TRACK 6 - as it was by harry styles (eddie munson x fem!reader)

a/n: this could have gone very sad, but i wanted to write something softer. :-) just some shortness and sweetness.

“in this world, it’s just us. you know it’s not the same as it was.” 

Laying here with her, the entire world melted away. The street lights were nothing more than highlights in the shadows casting across the walls of the bedroom, the sound of a siren in the distinct merely white noise. None of it mattered to Eddie; the only thing that mattered was the feeling of her head on his chest and her warm fingertips dancing over his stomach in soothing circles beneath his shirt. All he wanted to care about was the sound of her deep breaths, timing perfectly with his own. 

He had spent the night out with friends. A loud dinner at a nicer restaurant, discussions of simpler times as they compared what their lives were now. How they had all moved away from their hometown, how they were all official adults now. Steve had just gotten a job as a school counselor, Nancy was running her own local newspaper, Dustin had just been accepted into his first choice college - they were all growing and changing, leaving behind the people they once were. 

Eddie found himself panicking halfway through the night, getting lost in his own head as he had listened to his friends indulge in the details of their new lives. He missed them, awfully. These days, they could only find one or two days a month if they were lucky to catch up this way, a stark change from the way they used to see each other every single day. Everyone was always busy. Everyone was always on the move. 

He had changed too. The moment he’d graduated and saved up, Eddie had moved to the bigger city. He was playing small gigs here and there as a solo-act, taking classes at a community college. It’s not like he had stayed the same, but on nights like tonight, it reminded him of just how much he had changed. And it was usually fine, manageable, but tonight had simply felt like a bit heavy of a reminder. 

But then he came home to her. 

She was something that had been a part of his change, too. In a chance encounter as he packed up one night after a show, she’d approached him. All shy smiles and fiddling hands as she complimented him on his performance. He doesn’t know what had gotten into him, but he found himself offering to buy her a drink, because she was a pretty girl, and she was talking to him. One drink turned to two, which turned to three. Stories were told, names were learned, and numbers were exchanged. The rest, as some would put it, was history. 

“What are you thinking about?” she murmurs against his shoulder, leaning her head back to get a good look at him. 

He looks down at her, enamored by the way the shadows dance across her cheek bones and how her eyes still shine with just as many stars in them as they did that first night. “Just thinkin’ about how things change.” 

“Good change, or bad change?” 

He thought about the last year with her. How she had gone above and beyond for his birthday, going so far as to even contact his Hawkins’ friends and bring them all into town for one night. That night, he’d gotten multiple ‘she’s a keeper’ talks. He thought about their first few dates, and how goddamn nervous he had been for the other shoe to drop. But it never did. She still came back for more, even after that date in which he’d accidentally locked them out of his van, and it inconveniently began to pour down rain. She still wanted to see him after he’d spilled his wine onto her during their first time eating at a nicer restaurant, making him curse and nearly cry before she took his hands in hers and promised him it was fine. The shirt could be replaced, but the moment couldn’t. 

“It’s a cute story for the grandkids, right?” 

When she said that, he saw a fear in her eyes. She was worried she was talking about the future too soon; it was only their third date. 

She wasn’t. He had decided he wanted to marry her by the second date. 

Everything about Eddie Munson’s life had evolved and changed from what it once was, and it was for the better, and it was thanks to her. For the first time in twenty-five years, he saw a future for himself, and he saw it with her. 

“Good change,” he promises with a whisper, reaching down to cradle her jaw before bringing his lips to hers chastely, “Such good change.” 

She hums against his lips, a small smile cracking. He rolls them over, caging her in with his arms as he hovers over her, drinking in her every feature. The way her hair spills out around her against the pillow, the way her face is so breathtaking even with sleep lines on her cheeks. 

“I love you,” he quietly confesses, the words still lighting her up like it was the first time he’d ever said them, “I love you so fucking much.”

“And I love you,” she says in return, bringing a gentle hand to his cheek that he nuzzles into without hesitation, only pulling away to press a kiss to her palm. 

He dips in for a proper kiss, his hair falling down like a curtain around them as their lips meet. 

Things were always changing, and always would be. But sometimes, it changes for the better. Sometimes, it changes so you can meet the right girl at just the right time, and maybe that wasn’t so bad.

Eddie Munson’s life may not be the same as it once was, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

[cosmicheartz]

Koilee hcs

( possible parental neglect tw? It’s pretty brief compared to my Willow hc but just a heads up )

25 years old. She studied marine/freshwater biology at Hakuto college after graduating high school and got her Bachelors degree when she was around 21-22

Bisexual

Autistic. Her special interests include freshwater biology, marine biology and mermaids/sirens and she’ll gladly infodump abt them for hours

She also loves frogs! She has a frog plush named Wasabi who she had since she was a little girl

Raised by her aunt due to her bio parents not being able to take care of her properly. Koilee and her aunt are extremely close and her aunt is basically a mother figure to her.

Was sorta sheltered growing up?? not on purpose but Koilee didn't really get out of Sakura Bay much in her childhood outside of the occasional trip to Oilseed Springs and the one time she and her Aunt went to Calypso Island

The Houseboat is her Aunt's and before Koilee started working at the Scooperia, she and her aunt lived together. Koilee still visits her aunt as often as she can and also sends money for rent to her

Koilee has met her mom a few times but they have a really strained and awkward relationship. As for her dad, Koilee doesn't really know anything about him.

She worked at the Sakura Bay Aquarium for about 2 years before she ended up getting laid off due to lack of work/cutting costs

The reason she went to OnionTown was to take her mind off her getting laid off and because her aunt won a raffle for a free trip to OnionTown but wasn't able to go herself so she suggested Koilee to go in her place

Good friends with Joy. They met during the period of time Joy was staying in Sakura Bay ( which was around the time Koilee was starting college ) and clicked really well. they did fall out of contact after Joy left but reconnected when Koilee started working at the Scooperia and they hang out regularly

Adding onto that she’s one of the few people who know Ninjoy and Joy are the same person ( the others being Roy and eventually Moe ) She had some suspicions before but it all clicked together when she found Ninjoys suit lying around in Joys room. Koilee never told Joy about it until way later when they reconnected bc she was nervous abt Joy getting upset at her.

She’s also good friends with Nevada too. They met when they were kids when Koilee and her Aunt went to Calypso Island and were penpals for a while.

She and Carlo live together in an apartment in the " nicer " part of oniontown ( the same apartment Whippa & Mousse live in ) Papa provided it to them so they'd have a place to stay and while they were starting out in the Scooperia Papa paid the rent for them ( now Koilee and Carlo pay the rent themselves bc theyre more financially stable + Carlo is pretty well off outside of the Scooperia )

She and Robby are half siblings ( same dad different moms ) and only recently learned they’re related. They hang out occasionally and get along relatively well ( Koilees also older than him by around 2 years )

bottles up her negative emotions because she doesn't want to bother people with her issues. she also has trouble properly communicating her needs and setting boundaries

was definitely the girl who made those mermaid potions out of shit like shampoo and had to go to the hospital afterwards

drank pond water when she was 6 and somehow didn't get sick or catch anything from it

[elsanna-shenanigans]

June Contest Submission #6: Love, imperfect

Words: ca. 5,500 Setting: mAU Lemon: lime CW: angst  

–

“Do you think they’ll end up canceling people’s flights?” 

With her heart still stuck in her throat, Anna opened her eyes to look at the stranger sitting next to her on the plane. He appeared calm, but then again, she was sure that so did she. 

“I hope not,” she muttered before she gave him a tight-lipped smile and looked away. Another rough movement had her gripping the armrests and her stomach dropping. She kept trying to remind herself that airplanes were built to handle the worst—or so the article she’d skimmed as she waited at the gate had said. Even in the most severe turbulence, your plane isn’t moving nearly as much as you think! It sounded like a load of bullshit then and it sounded like a load of bullshit now. Plus, the exclamation mark at the end was absolutely unnecessary. 

The man next to her loudly cleared his throat. He seemed like he was trying to grab something out of the pocket of his trousers. Anna glanced at him. What the hell are you doing? she wanted to ask. The whole thing set her on edge for some reason. She just wanted to land in Miami already, call a cab and get to the address Elsa had texted her days prior. Was she looking forward to it? Not really. But it was better than thinking she was about to die and hadn’t even said goodbye to Chester, her cat. 

She’d told her parents this wasn’t a good idea. But her mom had insisted on some quality time because, “When was the last time the four of us spent some time together?” Anna had no idea, and she’d said so as much, which only aggravated her mother even more. But wasn’t she proud that her daughters were onto bigger and better things? Surely a few skipped holidays meant nothing compared to the pride their parents must feel on a daily basis. 

The turbulence continued. There was a storm coming. It wasn’t supposed to hit until late that night, which still allowed Anna to make it to Miami on time and probably even make it to Elsa’s apartment before the rain began. 

As to her parents… well, she really hoped their flight wasn’t canceled.

~~~

Anna could still remember the exact moment she became fixated with success. It happened on the summer day when she was ten years old and saw her older sister, Elsa, draped in four gold medals at the regional swimming competition. Their mom had signed them up for the swimming team at the community center after reading an article on the importance of sports in building girls’ self-esteem. Elsa had provided an aloof smile before she’d gone back to reading her book, but Anna… she was excited—she loved swimming. 

 When the season started, it didn’t take Anna a stopwatch to tell her that Elsa was easily the fastest swimmer on the team, often finishing races a full length ahead of everyone else. Anna would know, being that she was usually the one bringing up the gear. “You just need to practice more,” her mom would gently instruct when she complained about being last. So she spent the summer in the pool, with her dad dropping her off early on his way to work while Elsa was still at home, probably combing her pretty, perfect blond hair. Anna didn’t mind though, because she was sure all the effort would pay off in the end when she showed her parents and her sister how good she’d become in the final match of the summer. But things didn’t exactly go as her optimistic ten year-old self had expected. Elsa won four first place medals while all Anna walked away with was a cruddy participation ribbon with dry hot glue sticking out from under its cheap label. 

Watching Elsa standing on the podium, nodding humbly at the rousing applause with the medals draped around her neck and that stupid, perfect blond hair darkened still by the water, Anna was filled with a burning need to be up there. Because she didn’t just want to be a hard worker. She wanted to be a winner. 

But unless she wanted to grow up in Elsa’s superior gene pool shadow, she had to find another way to get noticed. In the end, she learned that if she studied hard enough and had a 4.0 GPA, she’d earn awards and scholarships. She discovered that if she steered clear of sports or sororities in college and filled her time with extracurricular activities like the debate club, she would be able to quell the worries in her head that her sister was the only winner in the family. 

Of course, those who truly knew her, knew how much she loved Elsa. It was one of those things that just… was. Inevitable and innate. In her eyes, Elsa was perfect. And she hated her for it just as much as she adored her for it. Because where she was clumsy, Elsa was poised. Where she didn’t know when to shut up, Elsa would say the right thing at the right time. Where she would feel inferior, Elsa would tell her just how much there was to admire. And where she would go weeks without contact, Elsa would give her a call, reminding Anna of all the times she has ever loved her. 

But that didn’t seem to matter in the end. Anna pulled away from the family in order to forge her own identity and so did Elsa. The Holmen sisters, thriving. The parents, proud. It was perfect. It should have been perfect. Except it wasn’t. 

Somewhere deep inside, Anna always knew there was something missing.

~~~

The night skies were crackling by the time she got in the taxi. The driver was requesting an address. The radio was giving out unsurprising news.

There is a thunderstorm warning already being reported by the National Weather Service in areas such as Miami, Miramar, Aventura and other parts of South Florida, with potential wind gusts up to fifty-five miles per hour—

“You’re shitting me,” Anna muttered under her breath, already pulling out her phone again. The first time she’d done it was to let Elsa know she’d landed. Some drab text that was responded to with a much nicer Can’t wait to see you! It shouldn’t have warmed Anna as much as it did but that was beside the point. 

Her mother picked up after the fourth ring. “Hi, honey. I was just about to call you. Did you land safely?” 

“Hi. Yes, I did. Did your flight get canceled yet?” 

“No,” her mother drawled. “It is delayed.” 

The man on the radio went on and on about flooding and frequent lightning. The first signs of rain speckled the car’s windows. The trees were wildly ruffled by the wind. 

“But you saw the news, right? It’s going to be canceled eventually.” 

“Even if it is,” Iduna said calmly, “we can fly in tomorrow. This isn’t an emergency. We can wait.” 

Anna pinched the bridge of her nose. “This was a bad idea,” she couldn’t help but say. 

There was a pause before Iduna spoke again. “Can you fault us for wanting to spend time with you two? It’s the only time of the year you’re free, given how holidays seem to be getting more and more complicated for you.” It was a jab, fair and square; exactly what Anna got from skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas for the past two years. 

“Could’ve been anywhere but Miami,” she still mumbled. 

“Miami is nice,” her mother argued. “Besides, your sister’s apartment has room for all of us.” There was something hidden in her mother’s voice that made her feel dejected. The underlying praise that Elsa always seemed to get even by the most offhanded of comments. Even when she wasn’t in the room. 

Anna was ready to hang up. 

“Just let me know when you’ll be flying in.” 

“Maybe you girls can catch up in the meantime,” Iduna suggested as if she hadn’t heard her, “I know it’s been a while for you too, but trust me, it’ll be like old times.” 

Looking out the window, Anna forced a smile even though no one was watching. “Sure, mom,” she said. Truth was, she couldn’t remember what old times even felt like. 

After hanging up, she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. The ride was supposed to be a short one. Ten minutes or so, Elsa had told her over the phone some days ago. She’d sounded happy—excited in that demure way of hers that was stupidly charming and which drove Anna nuts in a way she could not explain. 

Was Anna also excited? It was hard for her to tell. Her knee began to bounce as soon as the car merged into traffic. Her palms were damp despite the coolness inside. Her heart was beating like it was trying to hammer its way out of her chest. No, she was nervous. Or maybe… maybe she was both. 

Maybe she was just a mess and acceptance was long overdue.

When the taxi slowed down and parked outside an apartment building Anna only recognized from pictures Elsa had shared in their family group chat, she briefly considered asking to be taken back to the airport. But instead, she paid the fare and allowed the driver to pull her carry-on suitcase out of the trunk amidst strong gusts of wind and a rain that was starting to pick up. “Welcome to Miami,” the man exclaimed—sarcastic given the circumstances—while all Anna could do was give him a smile she was sure looked more like a grimace. 

The wheels of her suitcase announced her entrance into the building. The lobby was empty; quiet in an almost unsettling way. She sent Elsa a quick message and ignored the sensation of her stomach churning in anticipation. A distant thunder rumbled as she made a left, slowly heading for apartment 112. 

It didn’t come as a surprise that Elsa was waiting for her outside. She was leaning against the door, flashing Anna a lovely smile she did not know she had missed until that moment. 

“I’m so glad you’re finally here,” were Elsa’s first words. 

“I thought I wasn’t gonna make it,” were hers. 

Her sister met her halfway with outstretched arms that welcomed her with such gentle affection that Anna could not help but melt in the embrace for a brief pause. Elsa smelled like gardenias, faint and familiar. 

After stepping back, she stretched out a hand to grab a hold of Anna’s suitcase. “Let me take this for you.” 

“I—it’s okay. It’s not heavy.” 

Elsa gave her another disarming smile. “I don’t mind, Anna. You must be tired.”

She found herself blushing for no reason as she let Elsa take the suitcase and lead her down the hallway. “I’m not, actually. Just… weary. Lots of turbulence.” 

“Well,” Elsa dragged out, “mom called.” 

“Of course she did.” 

Elsa chuckled. They entered the apartment at the same time that she announced, “Their flight’s canceled ‘til tomorrow.” 

Anna rolled her eyes. “Shocker.” She paused in the middle of the spacious living room, taking things in. It all looked so perfect. The immaculate furniture, the carefully arranged throw pillows, the pristine wooden floor, the tall plant in the corner that looked real. And then the absolute mess of a storm that was happening outside the window. “I told her since the beginning this was—” 

“A bad idea?” 

Anna turned to where Elsa still stood in the hallway, a hand resting on the handle of her suitcase. 

“What—” 

“Mom told me,” she provided, a sad, apologetic smile slowly appearing on her face. 

Anna’s stomach churned. “I’m sorry. I just meant that—you know, Miami’s weather isn’t the best at this time of year and maybe we could have gone somewhere else like the woods or a small town or, I don’t know, New York or something.” 

“Of course. Yeah.” Elsa rubbed her arm in what Anna could tell was a sign of self-consciousness. “The weather’s pretty bad, huh?” 

“The worst,” she awkwardly agreed. 

They stood in silence for a few seconds before Elsa pointed her thumb in the kitchen’s direction. “I have wine. Would you like some?” 

Anna felt a sliver of ease. “Wine would be nice.” 

She sunk into the sofa while Elsa went to grab a bottle of chardonnay and a couple of glasses. Through the window behind her, she could see that the storm had gathered force. Gusts of wind whipped the heavy rain around while the trees were roughened by it, moving sideways as if tugged by a rope. The street lights, it seemed, shone for a deserted world. 

“Are you hungry?” Elsa asked once she was back from the kitchen. “I can cook something real quick if you are.” 

“I had lunch before getting on the plane,” she answered as she watched Elsa pour the wine. She let out an inconspicuous huff of breath, rubbed her sweaty palms on her jean-clad thighs. Guilt gnawed at her insides. But she meant what she’d said. This was a bad idea because of the weather. Nothing else but that. 

So why did she still feel so guilty? 

“Thank you,” she muttered when Elsa handed her the glass of wine. She watched her join her on the sofa, prop both feet up, fix her platinum blond hair by running a hand through it. Anna wasn’t sure why such a banal action drew so much of her attention. So she decided to look everywhere that wasn’t her sister. “This place is cozy,” she commented.

“It looks like it’s been pulled straight out of a catalogue,” Elsa said. 

“I mean…” 

“It’s okay, you can say it.” 

She chuckled. “Fine. It does. But it’s still nice, and it’s very you.” 

“Very me?” 

“Yeah, you know,” she shrugged, “perfect.” 

Something flashed across Elsa’s eyes that was gone before Anna could discern it. The guilt grew. She tried to mollify it. “You did a good job, though, seriously.” 

“I should take that as a compliment, coming from a successful real estate agent.” 

Anna rolled her eyes but the smile on her lips gave her away. Being called successful by the one person who’d always seemed to be better than her at everything felt nothing short of amazing. “I should hang a sign on your door that says ‘Holmen Approved’.”

Elsa laughed, which instinctively made her smile grow. “What an honor.”

A thunder rumbled in the sky. Anna wondered if it would be a good idea to close the curtains. Watching the city being trashed by a thunderstorm didn’t exactly scream comfort.

“This is my first Miami storm, you know?” Elsa suddenly said. 

“Popped your cherry then.”

Her sister’s foot bumped against hers. “Gross.”

Anna took the time to take a large swig of wine. She wanted to take the edge off herself; get rid of that nagging notion that this was bound to end up being a disastrously awkward night simply because she did not know how to act normal around Elsa. “So how’s the city treating you overall?” she decided to ask, aware that she’d probably asked this before but unable to come up with anything else at the moment.

“I can’t say it’s been bad,” Elsa said, “But I’m looking forward to starting the school year. I’ve had too much free time on my hands.” 

“So there’s no one in your life?” she found herself asking.

“I…” Elsa tilted her head, giving her a curious look, “I would have told you if there were,” she said in a voice that ignited in Anna a deep feeling of shame. How many people had she been with that she had not told her sister about? 

“Besides,” Elsa added, “I just moved here. You know I’m no social butterfly.”

“Right,” she said before she looked away. How could she have forgotten? Elsa had always liked spending time at home rather than being outside, meeting people and making new friends. She liked her books and her European authors whose names Anna could never pronounce. She liked her solitude, her quiet time. And yet… Yet, it had always been her the one unwilling to lose touch.

“What about you?”

“Hm?”

“What about you?” Elsa repeated. “Anyone in your life?”

Anna found it a little comical that they were carrying themselves as if they hadn’t talked in years rather than three days ago. “No,” she responded, “Not for a while.” 

Elsa’s gaze carried a strange sense of intimacy. “I’m sure there’s someone out there…” 

She paused. “Right now? I hope not.” 

The hearty laugh that broke out of Elsa caught her by surprise. It was so uncommon in her that for a moment Anna did not know how to react. All she could process was the way she swooned despite herself, feeling warm all over and even, she dared think, happy. Happy in the company of Elsa in a way she had not been so in years. 

The lights went out some time later, while she was in the bathroom and Elsa was back in the kitchen preparing something to eat. It was one of those things that was predictable yet appalling, and the only thing Anna could think of saying in the middle of the pitch black room was, “Well shit.” 

Back in the living room, Elsa was moving around with her cellphone acting like a single spotlight at a club. She was lighting candles, placing them each on strategic places. “All these catalogue candles are finally going to serve a purpose,” she said, and Anna couldn’t help but smile at the offhandedness of it.

It wasn’t until they’d sat back down, bathed in the warm light of the candles while they ate and shared a lighthearted conversation, that Anna could have laughed at it all. 

Because her mother was right. It was like old times.

~~~

The window had ceased to rattle from the gusts of wind outside, but the power had yet to return and the rain had yet to stop. The food was gone and so was the chocolate bar Elsa had taken out of the non-working fridge. A new bottle of wine sat on the coffee table amidst lit up candles. The girls sat on each side of the sofa, facing each other. 

“There’s no way he said that,” Anna laughed. She was nursing her third glass of wine, more at ease now than she had been the whole two preceding days. 

“He did,” Elsa groaned while she covered her face with the hand that wasn’t holding her own drink. “And then he slipped me a note and winked at me. He winked at me!”

“What did the note say?” 

“Something about how he’d been crushing on me since I gave that Durkheim lecture in class. Can you imagine? How bold he had to be to slip a note like that to his professor?” 

Anna laughed some more. “Can you blame him though?” 

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” she responded, embarrassed still.

“Kinda hard to blame him at all for having a crush on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I—” Anna paused. What did she mean? “You know, you’re just,” she waved a hand in her general direction, “you.”

Elsa arched an amused eyebrow. “Me.” 

“Yeah. You’re just… really crushable. No. Wait. That came out wrong. I just—I mean you’re just so pretty and smart and your hair’s always so perfect and you’re practically good at everything you do. So what's—what’s not to like?”

Elsa was biting her lip. It was very distracting. “You think too highly of me,” she murmured.

Anna frowned. “No, I don’t. Or maybe I do. But that’s because it’s true.”

“But it’s not…” She shook her head, trailing off. 

Lightning suddenly illuminated the room. Anna readied herself for the thunder while across from her Elsa began to recoil. The loud bang came at last, making her sister visibly wince.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?” 

Elsa shrugged nonchalantly. “Thunder just makes me anxious.” She took a sip of wine as if to restate the casualty of her words, but Anna wasn’t convinced. She watched her closely for a handful of seconds while in her mind she struggled to make a decision. She dwelt on it, bit the inside of her cheek in hesitation. But in the end, the need to comfort Elsa won over everything else.

“Come here,” she said.

“What?”

Anna spread her legs open and patted the empty space between them. “Come here.” 

She playfully rolled her eyes. “I’m not a kid, Anna.”

“If you don’t tell anyone, I won’t either.” 

Elsa bit her lip again. And again, Anna’s eyes traveled down to witness it. She set her glass of chardonnay on the coffee table. Might be best to stay clear of alcohol for the rest of the night. 

Elsa moved slowly across the sofa until she finally settled between her legs, facing forward. Anna wrapped her arms around Elsa’s midriff, and was unable to ignore how the whole of her seemed to react to the touch, the proximity, the warmth of Elsa’s body. She rested her chin on her shoulder, felt the way Elsa relaxed and leaned back. A smile appeared on her face. She could not remember the last time they’d embraced like this. 

“You weren’t scared of thunder before,” she pointed out in a soft voice.

“Probably one of those things that comes with age.”

She was amused by her answer. “We’re not that old.”

“But we’re not ten anymore,” came Elsa’s whispered retort. She finished the last of her wine and stretched an arm to place the empty glass next to Anna’s on the table. As she rearranged herself again, Anna paid close attention to the softened features of her face in the dimness of the room. She traced with her eyes the lines of her profile, the freckles that had always been fainter than hers, and the lips that, for some reason, kept drawing her attention tonight.

“What?” Elsa asked.

Anna blinked. “Nothing,” she said, heat prickling the back of her neck.

Her sister shifted slightly in their embrace in give her a side glance. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because.”

“Hasn’t dad told us enough times that ‘because’ is—”

“Not an answer,” Anna finished. “Yes, I’m aware.”

Elsa cast her another glance, lingering this time in a more intimate way. "Then tell me.“

She hesitated. “Were you always this stubborn?”

“No,” Elsa chuckled, “that was you. Stubborn and determined.” 

“Well, I had to be.”

“Why do you say that?”

Anna’s lips parted but no words left her. They were drowned in silence for a moment, the rain incessant against the window. What could she possibly say to that? How could she possibly explain that the sole reason of her determination—of her never-ending stubbornness—was the one sitting safely in her arms?

She rested her chin on Elsa’s shoulder and looked down instead, focusing on the hand that rested atop hers; on the hand whose fingertips had been drawing loose patterns on her skin only seconds ago, drawing a comfort she did not know she deeply needed.

“Anna?”

“Yes?” she answered, lost someplace else.

“Say something…”

She slowly tensed up. There was so much vulnerability in Elsa’s voice that she knew she wasn’t just seeking random thoughts and vacant words. But where Elsa wanted the truth that hid beneath her silence, Anna wanted none of the insecurities that came along with it. She wanted none of the detachment, none of the things that could separate her from her sister. Not tonight. Not again. But no matter how hard she tried, the thoughts persisted. Like a nagging passenger in the backseat of her mind, Anna could not ignore what had been so deeply ingrained into her life.

“It’s dumb,” she murmured at last.

“I’m sure it’s not.”

Anna breathed a weary sigh through her nose. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head to the side, resting against Elsa’s. Her mouth opened again, then closed. Words felt heavy in her tongue, reluctant to come out.

“Why won’t you just drop it?” she asked.

“Because,” Elsa said, “I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me.”

“Is that what you think I feel?”

“Is it not?”

At her silence, Elsa extricated herself from Anna’s arms. She moved in the sofa until she was facing Anna, sitting still between her legs, knees digging into the cushion. The light of the candles danced in the blue of her eyes, piercing Anna’s own until the air left her in one quiet rush. There lay an ardency beneath them, captivating and impossible to look away from, so much so that Anna’s desire to stay quiet shifted into something else entirely.

But then Elsa was talking again, and again, she was asking to know what was going on in Anna’s head. And out of everything she’d ever had to learn, why could she not have learned to deny Elsa a thing?

She gathered what she could of the scattered remnants of her past, of the cumulus of memories that ruled most of her decisions and shaped their relationship into what it was today. The impotence of feeling like she’d never be as good as Elsa turned into the impotence of being unable to put it into words. The back of her eyes stung. A lump formed in her throat. She waved a hopeless hand in Elsa’s direction, and let it drop in defeat.

“I look at you,” she finally said, “and I see all the things I’ll never amount to.” Pain flashed across Elsa’s eyes, causing Anna to look down at the space between them. “I can’t see anything else but that,” she softly added, “and it gets in the way… It’s been getting in the way for so long.”

“Anna, I…” She went quiet. Anna could see the way her chest rose and fell. The brow that was marred with sadness and regret. “I wish I’d known this sooner.”

“Why?”

“So that I could show all the ways you’re a much better person than me.” 

She let out a humorless chuckle. “That’s so unlikely it sounds ridiculous.”

“How?” Elsa questioned. She inched closer until her hands were cupping Anna’s cheeks. “Please tell me how so that I can prove you wrong.”

At the impossibility of looking away, Anna ended up lost in her sister’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered, deep down knowing she would never find an answer to that.

“I know you think I’m this perfect human being,” Elsa murmured, “and that I have everything I could hope for. But the truth is that all the accomplishments in my life could never compare to the mere presence of you in it. And still… I’ve always missed you, even when you were right next to me.”

Anna’s eyes fluttered closed. The walls were crumbling around her and all she wanted was for Elsa to become her solace.

A thumb caressed her cheek, and she leaned into the touch without thinking. Her heart was thumping heavily in her chest. Her voice was raw when she finally asked, “Do you miss me now?”

“… No.” 

Slowly, Anna opened her eyes. A tender smile was tugging at Elsa’s lips and, like a magnet, the depth of Elsa’s gaze drew her in. She leaned closer until they were breathing the same air and the buzzing in her mind had quietened to a vacant hum. The wind howled, but all Anna could register was the blood pulsing in her ears and the barest of sighs as she softly pressed her lips against Elsa’s.

It was sudden and overwhelming. An impulse fueled by a feverish pleasure that soon drove her to press harder by capturing Elsa’s lower lip between hers. She sucked lightly, eliciting the softest moans out of Elsa as warmth shot straight through her body and settled between her legs. It wasn’t until she nibbled, hoping to elicit a greater reaction out of her sister, that Elsa’s lips parted and their tongues met in a desperate need that would not be satiated.

Submerged in candlelight, their bodies shifted until Anna was lying on top of Elsa with both forearms framing her head. There was no pause in between, only the innate desire for more. Anna could feel her sister writhing beneath her, subtle movements of her hips bucking while her hands trailed up Anna’s back. The room was growing hot. She could feel the smoldering heat in this sweater she wanted to take off as soon as possible. But it was hard to do that when Elsa would not stop kissing her in a way she’d never been kissed before. Her passion shook Anna to the core. It sent waves of ecstasy through her body.

With one last sucking motion on Elsa’s lower lip, she kissed her way down the line of her jaw and towards the warm, soft spot below her ear. The scent of gardenias reached her nostrils. A low, throaty moan reached her ears. Elsa’s hand weaved itself through her hair as she bucked her hips for the last time that night.

The power came back on and all Anna could think of for a dreadful split second was that their parents had walked in on them. She froze with Elsa’s fingers still in her hair and her lips parted in a mix of shock and fear. She was panting, her arms shaking from the propped up position she was in. Below her, Elsa was dead silent.

In the seconds that followed, Anna quickly sat up and looked at her sister with wide, frightened eyes. Elsa’s hair was disheveled, her lips here rosy and plump. The air escaped her lungs in one quick, short breath.

What had they done?

“I’m so sorry,” Anna rushed out, all but falling off the couch on her way out of the living room.

“Wait—”

She did not listen. Her feet carried her down the hallway.

“Anna—”

She ran out of the apartment, the door slamming shut behind her.

Blinded by panic, Anna sprinted towards the exit. She heard a door opening and shutting again, her name being called out. She registered the everlasting emptiness of the lobby before the front glass doors parted, leading her out into the night and a city that was still being pounded down by rain. There, covered only by the roof of the driveway, she froze again, aware of her feet clad in nothing but the mismatched socks she’d put on this morning and the flimsy sweater she’d wanted to get rid of mere minutes ago.

Elsa’s helpless voice came from behind her: “Anna.”

She heaved a sigh and, a moment later, turned around. Elsa was standing there, in socks and downbeat, watching Anna with eyes that begged her to stay. 

“I’m sorry,” Anna said, loud enough that it could be heard above the downpour.

“Don’t apologize. Please.”

“But I shouldn’t have—” She looked away, withdrawing into herself. Her mind was a mess. All that talk about Elsa being perfect must have gotten to her head, messed with her feelings. They got carried away, that was all. It did not matter that she’d enjoyed kissing her. It could not matter.

But Elsa… 

Anna looked at her again; at the person who’d always given her nothing but unconditional love and support. She saw the person who’d taken her out for ice cream after she flunked her calculus test in twelfth grade, the one who’d cheered the loudest when she graduated college. She saw the twelve year-old girl who’d turned six chocolate gold coins into medals and draped them around Anna’s neck that one memorable summer. She saw them all in the woman Elsa had become and was overcome by an insurmountable need to cry. Because Elsa had been the greatest constant in her life and still, Anna felt as if she were seeing her for the first time. Imperfect but beautiful all the same.

“Come back inside,” Elsa murmured at last, taking a step closer towards her.

“But what we did…”

Elsa shook her head and extended a hand for Anna to take. “What we did, we can figure it out together.”

Lightning gave way to thunder, but Elsa barely flinched: Anna was finally holding her hand.

They fell into each other’s arms the same imminent way that sunshine follows the rain. Anna let herself be held as she burrowed into the warmth of Elsa’s neck and hugged her tighter around the waist. Tears prickled her eyes before she shut them closed. They would figure it out, she reminded herself. Whatever this was—whatever this could be—they would do it together. 

“You know,” Elsa said after a while, holding her still, “I don’t think either of us would have made it very far in socks.”

“I did realize pretty late that this was a bad idea.”

Elsa hummed. “Seems like the night’s been full of bad ideas, huh?”

“Maybe not all of them were bad,” she dared to say in a voice so low that the words would have been lost to the rain had her sister not been so close.

“Maybe,” Elsa whispered, holding her tighter and placing a lingering kiss on the side of her head. 

[keiratheraven]

Bentley 8 Squad: Forgive and Heal

(I dedicated this post for this October AKA Mental Health Awareness month)

Every member of the Bentley 8 Squad has a dark past. All of them were problematic in their late teen or early young adult years.

Angela Pleasant (Bentley Queen). The miss “perfect”. She was a queen bee, cheerleader captain, honor student, and the girl squad leader. Her parents (Daniel and Mary-Sue Pleasant) put pressure on her to be the flawless daughter. She dedicated herself to become “The Perfect Princess”, but actually she thinks she’ll never be good enough. But she didn’t tell anyone about her battle with Bulimia, and no one believed her when she said there’s something wrong with her body. Everyone just said it’s just bad cramps, nothing more. Then she was diagnosed with Endometriosis at age 19. Although she was surrounded by many people, No one understands her pain and struggles. She's pursuing a master's degree in psychology from Sim State and has the ambition to become a psychologist, but her conditions keep restraining her.

Lilith Pleasant (Bentley Gothic). The black sheep of the family. Daniel and Mary-Sue favored Angela over her and abused her. They didn’t teach her to talk, walk, and use the toilet. They blamed her for everything. They liked to and slap and yell at her. She and Angela also hated each other and they’re always fighting every day. One time, Lilith ran away from their house because she couldn’t take it anymore. But eventually, the police found her and took her home. Since then, Daniel and Mary-Sue treat her better and Angela apologized to her, but later on, she was diagnosed with Type 1 Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. She pours all her emotions into arts and music, then took the art major at Sim State because her dream is to become a rock singer and illustrator at once. But her fluctuating moods and her addiction to self-harm make her questioning the future.

Dustin Broke (Bentley Rogue). The delinquent criminal. The death of his father and the way he died made him mad at the world. He took over his late father’s position as the man of the house and eventually became a criminal to support his family. But his mother became an alcoholic who liked to beat him up and throw an open bottle of alcohol at him. He also has substance abuse after he became a drug dealer. One time when he was in his college dorm at Foxbury, he sent Gordon King into boiling rage after he told him that he spent the drug-selling money for gambling besides his tuition, and Gordon beat the shit out of him mindlessly. Because of his drug addiction, he was diagnosed with Mild Schizophrenia. Sometimes, he thinks he’s already wasted. He doesn’t get enough sleep every night and always looking at the ceiling while he lies on the bed.

Dirk Dreamer (Bentley Brain). The genius, nerdy guy. He always put a good effort to do well in his life. He was an honor student in high school. But the death of his mother really shocked him, and his grades took a downfall. Eventually, he rose to make his late mother proud and his grades back to the top. Although he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 16, he keeps studying hard and he got a scholarship to Sims University Medical School. He became the assistant lecturer of Dr. Worthington. But, not everyone admires him. The son of Dr. Worthington named Dr. Mark punched him hard when he was alone after finishing a class. He said that Dirk will never take over his place as a devoted medical student in their faculty because his father kept comparing him with Dirk. Dirk keeps it to himself and he never told Dr. Worthington. Although he wants to become a psychiatrist to recover his beloved seven friends, He almost gave up as a doctor because of his illness. He muses about it every night when he's alone because he has to act as a strong, resilient young doctor in front of everyone.

Ophelia Nigmos (Bentley Flower). The mysterious and anxious girl who was desperate for a family. Her parents died when she was ten, and she was raised by an (allegedly) murderer aunt. She was haunted by many ghosts in her near-graveyard house, and Aunt Olive wasn’t the nicest person to be around with. She liked to scold her over the smallest things. She was cold and indifferent to her. One time, she humiliated Ophelia in front of her high school. Many people looked at them, but Ophelia couldn’t do anything to hide the shame. It caused her to have Anxiety and Paranoid personality disorders. Because of this, Ophelia is always anxious when she has to talk in front of many people, so she dreamed to become a novelist and songwriter. Eventually, Aunt Olive died when she was attending La Fiesta Tech. Ophelia mourned her death, but the wounds that Olive gave to her aren’t easy to forget.

Puck Summerdream (Bentley Fancy). The lucky fairy guy who was adopted by loving parents and also a kid sister. He didn’t want to get involved with Capp-Monty feuds in Veronaville and always be kind to them. He also had a crush on Hermia Capp, who became his girlfriend after they kissed for the first time at Puck’s party. But Mercutio Monty didn’t like it and got mad at them. The next day, he beat Puck's ass and took his money at the schoolyard. "That’s for stealing my girlfriend", he said. Puck hid his feelings and cried when he got home. Later on, he attended Academie Le Tour with Hermia. He took double majors: music and mathematics cause his dream is to become a classical musician. But, a tragedy struck. Hermia got shot in a mass shooting and died when she was buying heart medications for Puck. Puck fell into a Major Depression, and his heart condition got worse. Years have passed, but he couldn’t forget her despite many women want him.

Ripp Grunt (Bentley Clown). The tragic hyperactive joker. His mother died when he was eleven, and he was raised by the disciplined-yet-abusive General Buzz Grunt. Buzz liked to punch him when he didn’t obey him, and his brother, Tank Grunt, used him as his punching bag. One time, Tank threatened him to tell Buzz about Ripp’s bisexuality just because Tank didn’t like that Ripp partnered with his crush, Anna, at the school lab. But Ripp never showed his real feelings, except for Ophelia and Johnny. He smiled, joked, and laughed a lot, but actually, deep down he’s crying. He cries a lot and is also tortured by loneliness when he’s alone, but he keeps hiding his feelings by “The Funny Guy” mask. Despite the abuse of his father and brother, Ripp has the talent to entertain others by acting, singing, and play the guitar, so he took the drama major at Britechester. He suffers from ADHD, and gastritis caused by the longtime stress of the abuse. He misses his mom so much and always musing about her.

Johnny Smith (Bentley Leader). The carefree green guy. He was happy. Being the “normal” family in “abnormal” alien descent made him proud of his heritage. Despite having green skin, Johnny was so confident. He’s a sporty jock guy who likes to exercise, play soccer or basketball. He tried so hard to fit in at his high school and every surrounding. His neighbors see him no differently, except Buzz and Tank Grunt. He and Tank always fighting with each other in high school, but it didn’t affect Johnny’s happy life. Then, one night changed everything. When he was 18 and attending as a freshman at La Fiesta Tech, he got attacked by nine people and stabbed on his abdomen due to a hate crime against alien sims. When his blood ran down, the culprits threw him into the smelly and filthy dumpster. He fell into a coma, but luckily for him to have alien blood, he recovered very quickly and regained consciousness after five days. But since then, he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He got Minor Depression and having suicidal thoughts as well.

However, everything gets better when all of them get together. They’re having medical treatments for their mental and physical condition, counseling, and group therapies. They’re completing each other and have special bonds. Their stories might be different, but that’s what makes them united besides their love for Bentley cars. Together, they learn to be stronger, nicer, wiser and be a better person. They also want to recover from their past traumas through medications and strong friendships.

In the end, they learn to let go and forgive everything in their pasts. They realized it’s useless to blame themselves, and everything happens for a reason. Because the past doesn’t define who they are. Trauma might be hard, but eventually, they have to face them instead of avoiding them. That’s the meaning of growing up, healing the wounded souls, and moving on. They never stopped chasing their dreams despite their disabilities and keep supporting each other just like a real family.

And it was an early fall in Bridgeport, Sim City. At the anniversary of their establishment of Bentley 8 and Im-perfection community, they decided to go to a resort. They had some fun there. Angela made grilled salmon and cheesesteak for their lunch. Johnny and Dirk played soccer. Meanwhile, Ripp, Dustin, Ophelia, Lilith, and Puck roasted some marshmallows. When they are together, They’re creating memories because tomorrow is never guaranteed. But, no matter what happens tomorrow, they are grateful to still have each other.

"The past can't haunt me if I don't let it

Live and learn and never forget it

Whoa, gotta learn to let it go

Learn to let go, learn to let go

Learn to let go" - Kesha, 2017

[modern-oedipus]

Covid Vent

No one: Nila, who goes out maybe once in a month due to covid: *listens to coffee shop sounds in youtube to get in mood*  It’s really hard to maintain social isolation now that it has been 5 months. But the cases are going up and up and up, hitting my friends and their families. I myself had to split houses with my mother because she had covid cases in her work place. I don’t think I’d isolate myself this much if I wasn’t in the risk group, but I am. Knowing that I am most likely to go to intensive care and experience the trouble breathing again like I did during the asthma treatment is not good. The potential permanent damage on lungs, for someone like me whose lungs are already more prone to sickness compared to healthy people, is also a big no, considering that I’m only in my early twenties and if everything goes well and I live a normal life I’d live around 50 more years.  50 more years with a disability or isolating myself at home? Isolation, obviously. But this pandemic doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. I am only indoors because both my internships are online & college hasn’t started yet. I know that I’ll eventually have to go out if my college doesn’t switch to online education. It doesn’t scare me at all, though, I am not like, “anxious”. I’m concerned, disturbed, alert, but not in a paranoid anxiety. If I end up catching covid, I’m at least mentally prepared to deal with it. I’m also eating healthy and exercising and don’t really have health problems except for that past-lung-treatments that more or less put me to a risk group (risky enough to concern me, even though I don’t have a chronic illness), so who knows, I might just pass it like a flu as well. No one knows. It’s not good overthinking covid, all I can do is to keep social distancing & mask & hygiene, as always. I’m just so suffocated. I’m more prone to be an extrovert. Before pandemic, I’d only use my house to sleep I’d keep being out in public, attending events, ORGANIZING events, going to coffee shops, club meetings, lots and lots of stage plays, tours, everything. I’d sneak into my friends’ dorms and change cities and just so many more “normal” fun things. I was barely starting to enjoy my life again after the depression healed. Now, I’m mentally ok, but physically trapped. The “watch netflix, read books, stay home” thing is kind of overdosing me right now. I like this shit for a week maybe, not for 5 months. I don’t know how to not risk my mental health while keeping my physical health anymore. Of course, to even HAVE a mental health I need to stay alive, so I’m not complaining- health care workers, people who go to job everyday (including my parents), etc. are in such a harder situation. I know. But my own life is also valid, and while not as troubling and concerning as lives of others right now, well, I think I’m still worth caring, at least by myself. I don’t expect any extra outside compassion or validation (we all are in same situation), me writing my thoughts here is more of me just trying to see my thoughts being worded on screen so that maybe I can come up with a solution to these things as I go. Because I’ve always been a problem-solver rather than just merely venting. (I can’t always solve problems though, I need to work on accepting this fact.) Anyway, I just thought, maybe spending more time outdoors in the natural park that is close to my house could be a good thing. But it’s crowded since it’s outdoors and I really don’t want to share any commonly used areas right now. (I used to be more than okay with this before covid, as I said, I’m mostly extroverted and I like community gatherings, but I like being healthy more), so like... Idk, maybe I can just sort of have phone calls and videochats with my friends as I sit outdoors. Except I don’t even know I have that many friends anymore. I mean, I do- I surely do have bestest of friends in my life that I’m grateful for, but like. I am somehow an introvert magnet and while I’d die for most of my best friends (both irl and online) I don’t really think they are as hype about just chatting as often as I am. (I know that this doesn’t mean they love me any less. They love me in their own way & I love them in their own way so that’s OK.) So like. Maybe Nila, have this BRILLIANT idea of making more friends. Except. Like. You’re at home so you aren’t in much of social gatherings [you aren’t in any! That is insane!] and you don’t really know how to make friends from home. I mean, yes there are online friends but like. EVEN WITH THEM. How can I just *trust* them right away? I can’t, so like. I don’t know. I’m bored af.  On the bright side, today one of my bff from school called me and said he’s back in town and that we should catch up, he’s literally one of the greatest company ever and he wants to see the doggo, so I’m positive we can just have hour 9242309204 hours long in-depth chats again without getting bored (amazing to have people like that in my life). Anyway. I guess the moral of this is:

- I need to accept “the new normal”

- I need to protect myself but try to keep my mental health as good as possible because I like myself more when my mental health is fine and I can also come up with better creations then

- I need to finish my course work (internship) so that I can relax before school starts

- I need to spend more time outdoors but in isolated areas (good luck finding them!) 

- I need to recharge

- I “want to” make more friends or just check up on existing ones! I can’t use the word “need” for this because this would degrade the freedom of the other party. Friends are appreciated, and to some extend, a necessity for social creatures like us, but no “need” will make it happen. I will just make an effort to check up on my existing friends more frequently-- I’m quite selective at this, though, I prefer generally upbringing people who are mature to a certain extend (aka, no obsession, no passive-aggression. yes to personal boundaries, yes to an overall nice attitude [we all can have problems and that’s ok and that’s normal. what /I/ personally don’t wish to be around [with my all respect] is this mindset of “life is a disaster let’s be depressed” thing. I just love love my current friend circle because even if my close friends are just around 7 people, and even if we get depressed or sad or scared, our general look to life is nicer, we don’t make disasters out of regular days, we enjoy talking and chatting, which overall increases our life quality and makes it better. We also communicate & respect & listen to each other and all. I mean. It’s not like that with everyone, and that’s ok, but as I said, this is my personal preference. I prefer having bonds that are good rather than toxic and I am doing my best to be equally good, rather than being toxic to my friends. [I’m sorry I post a lot of Banana Fish to those who don’t know Banana Fish, ok. I know ur bored but like I just cannot help it. I’m trying to tone it down but BANANA FISH.] sOOOOOOOO, SOOOO that’s why it’s not how “i have 29420343204 friends uwu” mindset, like, I noticed I need to be reasonably picky with those I’m close to so that I and people I love can overall have a nice, fun days, which is point of friendship. (I mean. As I said. I’m here on bad days too. But I don’t feel mentally healthy enough to carry the burden of someone else’s depression. It hasn’t even been two months since I’m out of therapy yet, and my mental health is, while not bad, it is fragile. I’d rather not be around those who can [mostly, unwillingly] effect me badly. SO LIKE.  - that’s one hell of a long post nila, but long story short FRIENDS or you’ll die out of boredom

- also just finish your coursework i beg you

- thanks for coming to my ted talk, I actually always offer potential solutions on my vent posts, but this time i wanted to write this publicly [i dont think anyone will read this and i dont mind it] because like. why not? it’s just me thinking and I feel as if this could be of use for some people who are reading this & isolating themselves too. anyway, i love u, stay safe. 

[lebritneeey]

Second Chance (1/??)

inspired by don’t wanna cry, lie again and second life & a little idea from reply 1997 and 1988.

genre: romance. fluff, angst, love rivals etc lmao pairing: y/n x ??? (svt)

a/n: hi guys! so my imagination started running after listening to dwc, lie again and second life on repeat lmao. i’ve always love reading angsty fics and so i came up with this series based on these three songs! disclaimer!! if there’s any similarity with other fics, it is coincidental, everything written here is based on my idea! no to plagiarism!! also, pics and gifs here are NOT mine! hope you guys enjoy this series i might be posting this on aff too so don’t be alarm if you come across it on aff! enjoy!

SERIES MASTERLIST

What if you could get a second chance at love? What if it was the wrong time but the right person all along? Would you take it? This second chance?

Meet y/n, a 25 year old girl who had to revisit the city she once loved, Seoul. It was a city filled with both good and bad memories for her. When she left, she swore never to return. But here she is, back in Seoul, hoping to not run into a certain old flame that might reopen old wounds and remind her of how broken hearted she was back then.

prologue | chapter 1 | chapter 2

chapter 1: the time where we all first met.

nov 2020, Incheon International Airport, 3:36pm (KST)

Y/n stepped out of the airport, pushing her luggage alongside her. She took a deep breath, exhaling as she busk in the cold air around her. She couldn’t experience weather like this back in Singapore so this is probably one of the things she missed about Korea. 

“Hey, y/f/n y/l/n!!” Y/n turned to the direction of her name being yelled. She smiled at the two people whom she hasn’t seen for quite some time. Choyi and Hana ran over to her and gave her tight hug. “Wow we were so damn excited when you texted us and said you were visiting!!” Choyi jumped up and down, grabbing y/n’s luggage. 

“Come on, we got a lot of catch up on.” Hana grinned as the trio went to Hana’s car. Instead of choosing to stay at a hotel, y/n chose to stay with Choyi at her new apartment. It was definitely bigger and nicer than the house they stayed during their college experience, the only difference is that Hana won’t be staying with them as she got married to her long time boyfriend. 

////

Seoul, 5:43pm (KST)

“wow Choyi.. this place is definitely an upgrade compared to the house we lived in back when we were in college!” Y/n eyes widened as she stepped into the apartment. The living room spacious, there’s an open kitchen and counter along with four bedrooms and two medium sized bathrooms. 

“Well, thankfully the very first job I got paid me quite well plus I just got promoted so this apartment was worth the investment.” Choyi said as she led Y/n into the guestroom. “Here is your room for the next few weeks!” Y/n sat her luggage at one corner as she sat on the bed. “Thank you so much for the offer Choyi, I’d rather stay here and catch up with you and Hana rather than staying at a hotel despite my company paying for it.” 

“Then unpack later y/n! I brought some food for you to enjoy~” Hana yelled from the living area. Oh how she missed the girls, Y/n smiled as she spotted a few korean delicacies on the table. Aside from the weather, she definitely missed the food here as well. 

////

7:32pm (KST)

“So you guys didn’t want a wedding at all?! Why not?!” Y/n asked Hana as she took a sip of the kimchi stew in front of her. Hana shrugged, “it was quite a hassle so we went for a small ceremony instead. I’m sorry for not inviting you, I just thought you didn’t want to be back here in Seoul.” Y/n shook her head, “It’s alright, but I have to be there next time for your future child’s hundred day old party okay?” Hana gave an ‘okay’ sign as she grabbed more kimchi. 

As the evening passes by, the girls were sitting down around the sofa, reminiscing about their college life. “Do yall remember the time where I forgot to bring my keys and got locked outside for five hours cause you two were having classes so there wasn’t anyone to open the door for me?” Y/n burst out laughing when Hana mentioned the incident. 

“Omg, I remembered when you called me five times while I was having my lecture and i got a little annoyed so I picked up and yelled at you forgetting that I was in a hall full of hundred students.” Choyi laughed as she continued, “y/n was beside me and she was having second hand embarrassment.” Y/n nodded in agreement, giggling. “I sure did.” 

“What about the time when Yoojin confessed to Choyi but she turned him down cause he didn’t drink bubble tea at all?!” Y/n nudged the girl while chuckling. “Hey, I drink lots of boba so I expect my future husband to drink boba too!” Hana and Y/n shooked their head, wondering what was Choyi really thinking then. 

“OMG, remember the first month into the semester and we got to see the Golden Disk Awards live FOR THE FIRST TIME?!” Choyi squealed as she started listing the bands that were at the award show not before getting shushed by Hana. Choyi looked at Hana quizzically for a second before she went into a “oh..” and they both turned to look at Y/n. 

The two girls knew Choyi had hit a spot when she mentioned the time where they went to see some kpop bands performed live at the GDA awards. Y/n went silent for a moment before smiling, “it’s fine you two. You don’t have to watch what you say around me, really. I’m okay.” 

Silence filled the air for a few minutes before Hana spoke, changing the subject and attention onto other things. 

///

Flashback: Jan 2017, Seoul

"...therefore you are all expected to hand in the five page essay by the end of this month. Understood? Alright, see you all next week.” 

Y/n sighed as she packed her stuff. It’s a few weeks into her exchange program at Yonsei university but she’s starting to feel the burn just by receiving her assignments. Just gotta find the silver lining.. she thought as she walked out of the lecture hall. 

“Y/n!!” Choyi ran towards her, catching her breath as she stopped in front of the doors to the lecture hall. “Choyi! I was wondering where you were.” Y/n noticed the disheveled hair and the unzipped backpack and chuckled, “did you woke up late from your afternoon nap at the library?” 

Choyi pouted as she peeped into the lecture hall. “Class has ended?! So fast?!” Y/n shooked her head and look at her watch. “Not really, professor lee ended right on time.” The pair started walking to the main foyer of the campus and sat down on a bench. They were waiting for Hana to finish her classes so that they could walk home together. Choyi and Y/n were both communications major thus they have the same classes whereas Hana is a business major. 

“Hello children~” Hana walked over to the girls, calling them in a happy tone. “Why do you sound so happy?” Choyi asked as the three of them start walking out of the campus. 

“Because..” Hana stopped and pulled three tickets out of her bag and waved it in front of Choyi, “you’re are going to thank me for these Choyi dear!” Eyebrows raised, Choyi grabbed a ticket from her hand while Hana passed another to Y/n who took it, feeling confused. 

“OH. MY. GOSH.” Choyi exclaimed as her eyes widened. Y/n read the words on the ticket. 

Golden Disc Awards 2017

“Golden Disc Awards? Isn’t it that music award show?” Y/n asked before flinching at Choyi’s screams. “YES. THAT AWARD SHOW. WHERE ALL MY FAVORITE KPOP BANDS ARE GOING TO BE PERFORMING AT!!!!!” Hana smirked at Choyi’s excitement. 

“Bands like IOI, EXO, BTS, Monsta X annnnnnnnnnd” 

Hana turned to Y/n, “wait for it..” 

“SEEEEEEVEEEEENTEEEEEEEEN!!!!!!!!” Choyi screamed and jumped around which caused the people around them to give the trio weird and dirty looks for making so much noise. But clearly the girl didn’t care. She grabbed Y/n by the arm, still jumping up and down. “Omg, y/n you’re gonna love them. LIKE A CHANCE TO SEE THEM LIVE OMG.” 

Y/n chuckled at Choyi’s excitement, “sure why not? I could use a tiny break from the upcoming stress.” Hana reached down her bag and pulled out three passes. “You are going to love me ten times more because.. we got backstage passes too!” 

Choyi stopped jumping and turned towards Hana. “OH. MY. GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

////

Enroute to the GDA 2017, Seoul, 3:28pm (KST)

The girls were on the way to the Golden Disc Awards with Hana as the driver while Y/n sat beside her in the passenger seat and Choyi at the back (because she couldn’t stop rambling on and on about who she’s going to ask for an autograph later). 

“I still cannot believe you hid the fact that Joohyeon oppa works at freaking Pledis Entertainment!!!” Choyi crossed her arms and made a ‘hmpf’ sound as she stare out the window. Hana shrugged as she eyed on the road. “You never ask~” It turns out that Hana’s boyfriend of three years was a dance trainer at Pledis Entertainment thus she was able to get the special passes and tickets to the award show. 

“Which band do you wanna meet later on Y/n?” Hana asked. Y/n pondered for a while, she don’t really know much about kpop and who were active in the scene. “I don’t know a lot of bands but since Choyi wants to meet Seventeen, then I’ll just follow her.” Y/n smiled as Choyi nodded in agreement, “good taste Y/n!” Hana rolled her eyes but smiled as she continued the drive towards the venue. 

////

GDA 2017, Seoul, 5:03pm (KST)

The girls met up with Hana’s boyfriend, Joohyeon who brought them backstage. The red carpet was over so the celebrities were all in their dressing rooms getting ready before the show starts. 

“Oppa, is Seventeen in their dressing room? Choyi is getting a little impatient.” Hana nodded towards the back and sighed. Joohyeon chuckled as he pointed to the front of the corridor, “They’re just in front.” 

Y/n looked around backstage, staffs were running here and there, some were carrying bags full of makeup while some were carrying a bunch of outfits. What seemed like a bunch of celebrities were also walking around, she could easily guessed they were members of a kpop band judging by their bling bling outfits, hair colors that popped and very thick makeup. 

So this is how it feels seeing celebrities up close.. Y/n thought as she walked with the girls towards Seventeen’s dressing room when all of sudden she needed the washroom. “I gotta go to the bathroom, you guys will be at the room in front right?” She asked Choyi who absent-mindedly nodded as she stared at more celebrities passing by. 

////

5:08pm (KST)

After using the washroom, Y/n came out only to find the area she was at so much more crowded compared to a few minutes ago. How the heck did it get so crowded now?! She tried finding her way to the corridor she was at before but it seemed like it disappeared. Am I lost?! 

Y/n looked left and right, wondering which way to go. She knew Hana and Choyi were most likely at Seventeen’s dressing room so she just gotta find her way there. But no one seemed free enough to help her and people were hurrying here and there. Right when she was about to take out her phone to call one of the girls, a voice appeared behind her. 

“Excuse me, are you lost?” She turned to see a good looking guy smiling at her. He’s definitely a celebrity, despite him wearing a normal outfit, the hair and makeup gave it away. But damn, this guy is handsome though he seemed familiar somehow.. 

“Uhm.. yes. I looked like a lost sheep isn’t it?” Y/n sheepishly asked as she rubbed her arms in an awkward manner. The guy chuckled as he asked her where she needed to go. 

“Oh, my friends are at Seventeen’s dressing room!” She pointed out. The guy’s eyebrows rose in surprised, “oh? I’m headed there too. I’ll bring you.” He nodded in the direction they were supposed to go. “Follow me.”

////

Seventeen’s dressing room, 5:19pm (KST) 

“Y/n! What took you so long?” Hana asked as Y/n entered the room. “I got lost but no worries, I found my way thanks to that guy.” She whispered back and nodded towards her helping hand. Hana was about to question more but got interrupted. 

“Say the name! Seventeen! Hello, we are Seventeen!” The members introduced themselves to the girls and Joohyeon spoke, “alright, guys remember what we have practiced so far for the performance later on! Fighting!” The members cheered in reply as they scattered to get ready for the show, in particular, the guy who brought Y/n to their dressing room took his seat at the dressing table while staffs begin touching up his makeup and hair. 

So he’s a member of Seventeen, no wonder I find him a little familiar just now.. He looked up and gave a small smile to her and went back to browsing through his phone. 

While Choyi was busy asking for autographs and pictures, Y/n spotted a cute polaroid film camera on the dressing table. That film camera is cute, it looks like it’s been decorated nicely.. “Whose is this? It looks nicely decorated” Y/n asked the staff at the dressing table. “Ah this, it belongs to --” 

“SEVENTEEN, get ready in five minutes!” A staff hollered, making everyone scramble and thus the busyness starts again. “Y/n, we gotta find our seats!” Hana said as she pulled Choyi away, stopping her from being over zealous towards the members. Y/n nodded and left, not before smiling politely at a few of them as she made her way out. 

“Hyung, one of them is your girlfriend right?” Hoshi asked Joonhyeon. “Yup, the other two girls are her friends.” 

“They’re both pretty! Especially the quiet one.” Jun pointed out cheerfully. Some members nodded in agreement. “The quiet one? Oh is it that girl who passed by me on the way out..?” S.Coups asked no one in particular. “I think the bubbly girl was cute, she’s really a big fan of us!” Dino exclaimed while Woozi rebutted, “nah, she’s a little too loud and noisy.” 

“Jeonghan hyung, where did you go just now? I couldn’t find you after I raided the vending machine, man it was so crowded outside” Vernon asked the older guy. “Ah, I went to the washroom, must have eaten something bad.” Jeonghan sighed as he sat down, waiting for the staff to signal them. 

“SEVENTEEN, time to get to your seats!” A staff announced as the members scrambled out of the dressing room. 

“Oh, almost forgot about this! Better keep it safely so I won’t lose it~” One of them grabbed the polaroid camera and stuffed it in his bag before running out of the dressing room. 

////

nov 2020, seoul, 9:26pm (KST)

Y/n was halfway through unpacking her luggage when Choyi knocked on the door. “Come in!” 

Choyi popped her head through the doorframe, “need any help?” Y/n shooked her head as she put away her remaining clothes into the wardrobe. “I’m almost done, it’s fine~” Choyi nodded and came into the room with a box. “I wanna pass you this..” She handed the box over to y/n. “When you left Korea that day you forgot to pack this so I kept it for you. I wasn’t sure if you wanted it back but I’ll just let you decide. It’s fine if you don’t wanna keep it, I can help you throw it away or something.” 

Y/n opened the box and inside it were albums. SVT’s albums to be exact, all signed with personalised messages addressing to y/n. “I remembered every time one of these was produced, be it mini album or a full length one, the boys will always gift us a physical copy. But we all know yours was always special.” Choyi looked at Y/n gently. 

Y/n kept quiet as she flipped through each album to a certain page. Gosh, it’s been so long since she saw these - pictures of him. Tears started filling her eyes as she read those loving messages from him to her. Upon seeing y/n about to cry, Choyi immediately wrapped her arms around y/n’s shoulders. “Oh no, I am so sorry y/n. I shouldn’t have kept this box in the first place knowing it’s going to remind you of--” 

“No no, it’s fine. Thank you though Choyi, I appreciate the thought.” Y/n assures Choyi. 

“I’m back with the chicken and more beers! Time for supper!” 

Y/n and Choyi heard the door closed. “Hana’s back with chimaek! Come on, some nice snacks with cheer you up!” Y/n nodded and packed the albums back into the box one by one before leaving the room not knowing that a piece of photocard had slipped out and dropped onto the floor, under her bed. 

[pinelife3]

What Women Think Men Think

In the 2000 film What Women Want, Mel Gibson accidentally electrocutes himself with a hairdryer in the bathtub which for some reason gives him the ability to hear women’s thoughts. This comes at a great time for him personally and professionally as it allows him to perform well in his job as an advertising exec, woo the lovely Helen Hunt, and bond with his estranged daughter.

Sadly, the genius of What Women Want was not recognised by critics in its time and the film received poor reviews - however, it did perform well commercially, making it a great candidate for a gender-flip remake. Our prayers were answered earlier this year with What Men Want, in which Taraji P. Henson plays a sports agent who misses out on a promotion because she doesn’t get men. Surprising no one, What Men Want received worse reviews than the original, but managed to one-up it by also being a commercial disappointment.  I haven’t seen it (I hear it is genuinely unwatchable) but from Wikipedia I gather that she drinks some magic tea and then can hear men’s thoughts which... makes her good in bed but doesn’t lead to as much professional success as you might expect. While What Women Want, directed by the great Nancy Meyers, is about a chauvinist learning to respect women, What Men Want is about a woman learning that most men suck and that they don’t deserve respect so it’s better not to work for them. What Men Want was directed by a man which, if you ask me, seems kind of pandering: why would a man make a film about how cartoonishly awful men are?

The rough premise of both What X Want films is that when the protagonist has access to the inner thoughts of the opposite sex, what they hear is revelatory: the opposite sex is apparently unknowable, inscrutable, vastly foreign. It requires magic (or bathtub electrocution) to know what others really think. Ha! Well, I have that magic. A portal to another world. A world where men, unobserved, unfettered by social barriers, freely say whatever they really think of any idea, image or product you present to them: Reddit.

I’ve often complained to Matt that practically any post on Reddit which features a young and/or attractive female woman girl will draw comments from men saying that they’re going to jerk off to the picture. Why do you think we care that you’re going to mash your genitals while watching this gif of a girl in a bikini using a homemade water slide? Why did my eyes and mind have to be subjected to this information about your plans for the afternoon? Did that first improbable spark of life, apes descending from trees, straightened spines, the birth of technology, everything our forebears strived for across eternity, really lead up to this moment where you wrote that on the internet? Why are we pack animals?

So the shtick of this blog post is: I sneak about on Reddit to find out want men want, what they care about, and think about. But! We ladies don’t care what they think about beer and barbecues (we already know that all men are practically BBQsexual, am I right?) so let’s identify a few things where we do care about what they think. 

For our purposes, I think women only care about men’s opinions on women - and possibly also sexual politics. For sports, most political issues, food, music, etc. I think we all agree that if you ask a man what he thinks, he’ll probably give you a pretty straight answer. The fantasy of knowing what men really want is that it’s information you would not normally have access to, because you’re too shy to ask, or you’re concerned his answer would be evasive or dishonest. Most people aren’t dishonest because they’re mean liars. They’re dishonest because they doesn’t want to hurt your feelings - or perhaps because they can’t be bothered to argue. So some of the impulse to eavesdrop on someone’s thinking is an insecurity, it’s suspecting they’ve withheld or softened an opinion - and wanting to know the full truth even if it’s hurtful. 

In particular (and mostly because I want to talk to someone about these books), I’m going to pick ideas from Sally Rooney’s novels to compare romantic men as written by a woman with the actuality of men on Reddit. Rooney writes love stories (or at least love-adjacent stories) which are widely read by women and have been enormously popular: this to me suggests that her idea of romantic men has resonated with many women and therefore it may be interesting to see if the interiority of the men she’s written could exist in the real world (or, at least on Reddit).

My methodology for trawling Reddit for relevant information is simple:

1. Is the attribute mentioned in Reddit’s NSFW directory? I don’t want to solely rely on the Reddit NSFW directory as a barometer for men’s interest in things, but I believe when trying to assess what men find attractive, this is a decent tool. I would venture to say that every (legal) niche interest is addressed by a NSFW subreddit: gamer girls, women in sundresses, redheads, anime princesses, cute girls, sexy girls, skinny girls, mums, teens, big boobs (attached to women with rich interiorities, I’m sure), mascara stained tears, and so on forever. Related to this: just because a subreddit exists to address a particular niche (e.g. braces), this doesn’t mean all men find that age group, attribute, body type, piece of clothing, etc. attractive - but it at least illustrates that someone found it attractive enough to create a community dedicated to it.

2. Is the attribute mentioned in any of Ask Reddit’s 'Men, what’s one unusual thing you find really attractive about women’ type threads? Men seem to sense that these threads are always started by women, so the responses are more romantic than sexual. Dudes tend to say the ‘unusual things’ they find attractive are freckles, when women can’t reach things on high shelves, messy up-dos, etc.

Question 1: Do men like the pale, non-sexy parts of women?

In Rooney’s second book Normal People, the male protagonist spends a lot of time looking at the female protagonist and admiring her pale delicacy.

You look really well, he says.

I know. It’s classic me. I came to college and got pretty.

He starts laughing. He doesn’t even want to laugh but something about the weird dynamic between them is making him do it. ‘Classic me’ is a very Marianne thing to say, a little self-mocking, and at the same time gesturing to some mutual understanding between them, an understanding that she is special. Her dress is cut low at the front, showing her pale collarbones like two white hyphens.

Later, he admires her pale lips and wrists: 

He hasn’t seen her in person since July, when she came home for her father’s Mass. Her lips look pale now and slightly chapped, and she has dark circles under her eyes. Although he takes pleasure in seeing her look good, he feels a special sympathy with her when she looks ill or her skin is bad, like when someone who’s usually very good at sports has a poor game. It makes her seem nicer somehow. She’s wearing a very elegant black blouse, her wrists look slender and white, and her hair is twisted back loosely at her neck. 

Women hope men think of them in this way: that men closely observe us and like what they see, that they can thrill romantically at non-sexy parts of our bodies like our under eye bags or bony elbows, that they’re so devoted they like us even when we’re sickly. Lolita has this to thank for its enduring popularity. Sure, Humbert Humbert is a broken man and a pedophile but he’s so lyrical:

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

Men want to be him, women want to be adoringly described by him. 

Anyway. Let’s check Reddit to see what men really think of pale wrists and collarbones - or if they think of them at all.

There are no communities in Reddit’s NSFW directory focused on wrists or collarbones or any bony protrusion through pale skin. There is a subreddit dedicated to NSFW content featuring pale girls with ~420,000 subscribers but the focus of this content is sexy areas of the body (enormous pale breasts, perfect pale butts, etc.) and there is not much coverage of pale wrists and/or collarbones.  

I also couldn’t find any references to pale non-sexy parts of women in any AskReddit threads related to things men find attractive about women. 

Conclusion: I do not believe that men as a cohort are particularly into dark under eye bags, bony chests, etc. These are just things women wish men liked about them.  

Question 2: Do men like damaged women?

In Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with Friends, the protagonist has the following conversation with her ~lover~ in bed:

I want you to hit me. I don’t think I want to do that, he said. I knew that he was sitting up now, looking down at me, though I kept my eyes closed. Some people like it, I said. You mean during sex? I didn’t realise you were interested in that kind of thing. I opened my eyes then. He was frowning.  Wait, are you okay? he said. Why are you crying? I’m not crying. Incidentally it turned out that I was crying. It was just something my eyes were doing while we were talking. He touched the side of my face where it was wet. I’m not crying, I said. Do you think I want to hurt you? ...  I don’t know, I said. I’m just telling you that you can.

In Normal People, the protagonists have a similar exchange during sex:

Will you hit me? she says. For a few seconds she hears nothing, not even his breath. No, he says. I don’t think I want that. Sorry. She says nothing. Is that okay? he asks. She still says nothing. Do you want to stop? he says. She nods her head. She feel his weigh lift off her. She feels empty again and suddenly chill. He sits on the bed and pulls the quilt over himself. She lies there face down, not moving, unable to think of any acceptable movement. Are you okay? he says. I’m sorry I didn’t want to do that, I just think it would be weird. I mean, not weird, but... I don’t know. I don’t think it would be a good idea.

in the context of these novels, this behaviour is a form of self-harm from women who hate themselves: even those I’m closest to want to take advantage of me, will do what they want with me, will hurt me if I let them. The perfect men, confused and innocent to this self-destructive behaviour, are concerned and decline the offer. The women interpret this as a form of sexual rejection but the reader knows this rejection is actually romantic. Could we really thrill over a man who agreed to beat her? No one talks about 50 Shades of Grey anymore but Mr Darcy lingers in the minds of mothers and BBC-watching daughters the world over. Rooney’s romantic leads are very nice men for not hitting the protagonist during sex. 

Importantly, while the offer of subservience and sexual violence is not an immediate aphrodisiac, it adds to the overall appeal of our lady protagonists as women who are soft, damaged, not easily available, but also deeply vulnerable. Bob Dylan muses, basically (she’s delicate and seem’s like veneer. Sidebar on that line: I heard it when I was 17 and was jealous because it’s so good. Turns out this line is hotly contested in places where people contest Dylan lyrics. One tribe thinks it’s: she’s delicate and seems like veneer. Another tribe thinks it’s: she’s delicate and seems like the mirror. The tribe which is 100% wrong thinks it’s: she’s delicate and seems like Vermeer.). 

These books both have this thread of college-aged women who hate themselves and want to be mistreated by their lovers, and lovers who are perfect and sensitive enough to like the control they have in the relationship, but not abuse it. My read on this is that women like to think that men like to save damaged women. Damaged meaning women who are clearly dealing with one or more of the following: 

Untreated mental health problems

Self-medication dependencies 

Daddy issues

Memories of growing up with violence/abuse/Teletubbies/war crimes/poverty

Heavy baggage from previous relationships

You know what I mean. So, let’s check Reddit to see what men think of damaged women. In the NSFW directory there are a number of BDSM subs, most of which are focused on women being dominated by men: women trussed up in elaborate rigs of ropes and straps, women being used in various ways, beaten, dominated. Most of these subs have between 100,000 - 200,000+ subscribers. This would indicate that there are a decent number of Reddit users who are interested in hurting their sexual partner. 

(DISCLAIMER: I don’t mean to kinkshame. ContraPoints (I think in this video) argued that while it’s fine to be into BDSM and enjoy being hurt or hurting someone else, it does suggest some things about you. BDSM isn’t just fun. No one wants to be tied up and beaten/pissed on for no reason. You want those things because it means something to you to be treated badly or to treat others badly. Liking BDSM doesn’t mean you’re damaged, but it might mean something adjacent to that.)

Furthermore, re: Reddit’s attitude to ‘damaged’ women, any time a guy on Reddit tells a ‘crazy ex’ story, someone from the 3 brain cells club will flop out an old cliché: don’t stick your dick in crazy. Men like to warn each other about damaged women. That cliché often attracts a popular counterpoint:  

Crazy chicks are good in bed! What a treat: there are perks to dating a damaged woman. More than anything, men on Reddit love acting like they know a lot about women and wild sex. A damaged, compliant woman is great for clocking up these experiences.

I think we can say that some men do indeed like damaged women. The impression you get from Reddit is that a lot of these men would take advantage of the vulnerable Rooney protagonists, but that’s the point even within the novels: the man could have said yes, could have hit her - which the reader wouldn’t find romantic because we know that on some subcutaneous level she didn’t really want to be treated that way. A lot of romance only reads as romantic because we’re aware of the unromantic alternative: what if Richard Gere had treated Julia Roberts the way most men treat prostitutes? What if Bob Dylan compared a beautiful, mysterious woman to the 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer? 

In the final act of What Women Want, Gibson loses the ability to hear women’s thoughts. The point the film makes is that he’s been so reformed by hearing women’s perspectives and relating to them as actual human beings, that he doesn’t need magic anymore to behave like a nice person. This is also because it would not be romantic to be in a relationship with a man who was eavesdropping on your inner monologue. If the relationship is real and working, then you don’t need psychic powers to anticipate how the other person is going to feel and respond to things. You can always just ask - and you’ll have to trust that the answer is honest. 

Bonus: more of that lovable scamp Mel Gibson:

[al-y-aska]

(Full app & Interview)

OUT OF CHARACTER:

Name/Alias: Katja

Age: 23

Preferred Pronouns: she/her

Timezone: PST

IN CHARACTER:

Name: Legal name: Alaska Jameson AKA Aly James

Age: 18

Preferred Pronouns: she/her

District: Ashford (Edens Motel specifically, for the time being)

Time Spent in Town: Brand new, Extra Fresh meat

Occupation: unemployed (for the time being)

Faceclaim: Olivia Holt

Character Quote: “She stood in the storm. And when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails”.

Triggers: Character background includes car accident and fatal death of a parent, abuse mention, drug use.

Please let us know if there’s any triggers in the interview.

I also may submit some wanted character connections, if that’s alright!

THE INTERVIEW:

I. What are your favourite and least favourite things about your hometown? How do they compare to how you feel about Edens Town?

Aly bit her lip, her first time being confronted with such a question. She wasn’t a dishonest girl at heart, but she was still trying to survive. Lying it would be. “Compared to LA? It’s a pretty big difference, in my opinion. Edens Town is a lot smaller, and a lot nicer. Technically I grew up in the suburbs, you know, just outside of the city, but I always loved being able to see the lights no matter how far away you were. It was like you always knew which way was home. But of course that meant tons of people, traffic was brutal all the time... I just kind of got tired of it, I guess? You always knew which way was home, but it was so easy to feel lost yourself... I was ready for a change,”. Aly kept her cool, trying to hold down the vomit in her mouth. God did she make herself gag sometimes... but she was playing the part of the valley girl, and had to be committed to it.Home was where I grew up, it’s where I’ve always lived... but it kind of feels like that’s where I died, too, she thought. Aly thought back to when she was little; home was the place you went to feel happy, safe, comfortable... and it just wasn’t that anymore. Edens Town would be a nice little refresh.... they say that about small towns, right? Everyone it close. I’d love to have that feeling again.

II. How do you feel about your life? For example, your family, your job?

As personal as the questions were, Aly tried to not take it that way. If she wanted to answer honestly, her response would be ‘What the actual fuck’ in terms of how she felt about her life. But this wasn’t the time or place. The easiest way to lie, was to weave it in between kernels of truth. “There’s a big gap between me and my older siblings, so I’m pretty independent. My parents are super supportive of me... I was definitely one of those ‘free range’ children. #CaliforniaProblems, amiright?” Ew, she hated herself right now. “They said college would be a good idea, but so many people go into it without really knowing what they want to do. So I’m just taking some time off, you know, travelling, exploring.... ‘finding myself’.... all that good stuff,”. In reality, as far as she knew, her entire family was dead. Aly’s dad died in a car crash long ago, her mom hadn’t visited her since she had first gotten put in foster care, and her older brother and sister.... once they heard that their mom was drinking more and more, they all but cut off their communication with mom.... and thus, Alaska too. The blonde shook the thought away, remembering there was more to this one question. She hesitated for a moment.  I am.... was.... a prostitute... but I’m not anymore, I promise. Far away from Seth now, the girl answered in her head. “I don’t have a job right now, but I saw that the ice cream shop is hiring, so maybe I’ll work there? Earn some extra cash now that I’m here.”

III. What are your biggest achievements and your biggest regrets?

“I won a dance award while I was in high school that I’m really proud of. It got me a scholarship for a summer dance intensive, and I worked really hard for it,”. It wasn’t a lie... that was something that Aly was incredibly proud of. It reminded her of a time before things started spiraling out of control entirely. After dad died, after her mom had given her up, but before she had to run. It was her first foster home, she was still getting visitations with her mom, and it really did feel like a temporary thing. Alaska couldn’t help but chuckle some as she compared it to something else she was incredibly proud of: running away and being here. Oh how life had changed....

“I think my biggest regret... as much as I loved school and dance and whatnot, I kind of regret not hanging out with my friends as much, doing all the normal teenage-y things.” That, on the other hand, was a thick load of bullshit, but Aly stuck with it-- externally, anyways. My biggest regret might be having to leave my mom. I wish I could’ve stayed with her, maybe I could’ve helped her, or fixed her... not that I really had a choice in leaving, but still. I wish I could’ve been there for her, and I regret not being able to.

IV. What is your biggest fear?

“Not being happy in life. Isn’t that what we’re all chasing? The Pursuit?” she hadn’t ever tried LSD, but did she really need to at this point? She sounded like she was tripping on some serious sunshine and rainbows.

The question of her biggest fear chilled Aly to her core. She had left so abruptly; the apartment raid, the belongings scattered everywhere, the blood on the floor.... the young girl gathered up anything and everything she could find, any and all of her belongings and then some. Alaska wasn’t sure if it was a police raid or.... someone else -competition maybe?- that was trying to bust Seth, take his supply and everything he had earned from the girls-- girls like Aly. She had managed to find some cash, so either they didn’t look hard, or it had been a police raid. Either way, it wasn’t good for her. She was terrified that Seth -or one of the others- would be looking for her.... Alaska also knew she was a milk carton girl; she had run from foster care at 16, still a minor then. She knew a missing child report had been filed for her, her face plastered in places... that was a couple years ago now, she reminded herself. Plenty of other kids have gone missing since, her picture long since buried, likely-- especially now that she was 18. Moving to a small town was step 1. Only going by Aly, and not Alaska, was step 2.

V. What are your plans for the future?

The future? A bizarre concept for the girl up until now. “Honestly, I don’t think moving to Edens Town full-time would be all that bad... don’t you think? Settling down, maybe opening up a bar or something... I don’t know. I’m still young. For now, probably getting a job, a place to live, and a coffee.” maybe a fix, too, if there’s some left in my bag. She was still in shock that she was here, but happy none the less. She was a good kid, who deserved a lot more than she’d been given in life... but Aly had skeletons and secrets. Maybe this could be the start of turning things around.

VI. Can you describe yourself in one sentence?

Aly paused, not sure how to take the question. It was confusing, until it wasn’t. "That to which the action of the sea is directed,” she said proudly. Her dad had named her, and he made sure that growing up, Aly knew the strength and resilience that came with it, especially in its native spelling: Alyeska. The girl could practically hear him finish the rest of the phrase; “That to which the action of the sea is directed; that which breaks against the shore,” She liked to think that she lived up to it, and from time to time, made her dad proud, too. Aly. Alyeska.  Alaska.

[learnspanishbarcelona2-blog]

Learn Spanish Barcelona

Study Spanish Using the Captivation Approach

Intensive Spanish Barcelona

Learning Spanish In another country

Spanish is probably the most well-liked languages, and it is usually found in many countries close to the world. The easiest way intended for you to learn Romance language is always to immerse yourself with a Spanish-speaking country. Despite the fact that normal Spanish language classes usually are adequate, in order for you to entirely envelope oneself within the words and pronunciation of Speaking spanish, a vacation to Latin America or even Spain is in buy. This is certainly called the "total immersion" way of learning any language. Not merely does this include attending instructional classes, although also using Spanish inside day-to-day life.

Intensive Spanish Barcelona

Learning The spanish language to foreign countries is the the majority of efficient way to study. Many people who get taken Romance language courses to get years still sense shed while having a straightforward dialogue with a indigène Spanish-speaker since Spanish-speakers make use of a different slang along with speed than what college students learn in class.

Understanding Spanish overseas forces a person to use your understanding throughout real-life situations about an each day basis. Furthermore, while researching abroad, an individual will find learning Spanish language very important because you tend to be surrounded by the actual dialect. Therefore, you will produce a bigger effort to increase your own personal fluency to help to make your visit nicer. As an alternative of learning basic verbs and grammar which could come to be quite tedious, anyone can see how a vocabulary is used in standard circumstances which will support you learn speedily. Very best of all is which you can chat the particular same as a indigenous by day one, which usually is important mainly because communicating like the natives will allow you to more than speaking busted Speaking spanish you learned through a publication. Learning The spanish language abroad is also some sort of approach to learn more concerning the culture plus the persons of a country, particularly if you travel to a amount of places in the nation.

Vocabulary Immersion Schools

You can find individuals who hope to understand Romance language abroad by merely visiting The world with the English-Spanish dictionary in addition to supposing that they will decide on up typically the language, however this can be a good difficult way of mastering. Staying in the as well as attending proper Spanish language classes is probably the very best way to find out, especially when you avoid the temptations to see tourist areas just where English is definitely predominantly used.

There are many universities in Spain and Asian The usa that arrange with regard to people to traveling easily to learn the terminology. There are Spanish chute educational facilities in nearly every single Spanish-speaking region. These colleges usually manage accommodation and also daily Speaking spanish classes with the vicinity. Most faculties offer you the option of keeping with a nearby host loved ones. In this way you can find out Spanish abroad while possessing if you want a at the very same time. It is crucial to find the sessions and living situations that may best help you discover The spanish language.

Making an Expanded Visit inside a Foreign Region

There are certain arrangements you must make regarding a long vacation to one more country. If you are usually going to check out a state for more than a new few weeks to know Romance language, you may need to help obtain a university student passport. Student visas are often tough to get. Check along with often the country's consulate in order to see how much time you can certainly stay in the land with out a visa, and to be able to find the way to go with regards to applying for a college student passport. There are distinct rules intended for citizens regarding each country. If you wish to acquire a student visa, the varsity you pick should always be able to help you actually. Or even, at least inquire them for tips about the actual application process. Never make an effort to stay in a international country not lawful!

See the particular World

There are several forms of Spanish thanks to locations pronunciation within different parts of typically the world. Which usually variation involving Spanish do you need or have to have to learn? What area of the world would you similar to to visit? Spanish language is actually spoken in 21 years old international locations around the world, thus you can pick from between a large variety connected with places. Do you need a European metropolitan knowledge, or warm beaches, or perhaps high mountain peaks? Understand Spanish in the nation that accommodates your likes.

Learn Speaking spanish in South america

For people moving into often the United States, going for you to Mexico to wait a The spanish language language concentration school will be the easiest along with most affordable choice. Since Paraguay is usually an entirely Spanish-speaking place, you will be continually exposed to the actual phonetics of the language. It is quite easy to pick way up a words when a person keep hearing it out in addition to over.

There are a lot of places inside Mexico to help learn Spanish. An advanced00 pupil, your university may possibly previously have an exchange software with another school; then you certainly have little to get worried about throughout planning. In any other case, it is time in order to do a little analysis. The internet will certainly be the best application to find a institution in South america to find out Spanish. First, check out Us university web pages as well as where they send pupils in their intensive Romance language courses. Many American educational institutions give their students to be able to specific language institutes, not necessarily necessarily the Mexican college or university. A collaboration with a great American university is actually a advised way to find any Asian school.

You may also do a very simple internet search for universities with Mexico. You may get thousands of visits, so narrow your research together with words like "recommended" or maybe "testimonials, " for you to get educational institutions that include endorsements. Be sure to help in fact check out the particular recommendations and mail e-mail to former scholars detailed as references. With a reliable school, all this details should be on typically the web site as well as obtainable via email.

Slim your personal search again by universities in the area associated with Mexico where you wish to review. If you are generally going to Mexico in order to learn Spanish language for often the hospitality industry, for instance , that might be best to be able to study from Acapulco or even Cancun. In the event that politics usually are more important, check out Paraguay City. If you require to keep close for you to the states, look to help Tijuana. You should examine prices, plans, meals, accommodations, and work schedules to guide you choose the course that may be best for an individual.

Learn Spanish within Southern region America

South America is definitely a great and also wonderful place to learn Speaking spanish. Spanish is the established dialect of all Sth American places except Brazilian.

Peru specifically is some sort of wonderful and intensive region in which to study Spanish. Due to the fact not quite a few people speak The english language inside Peru, travelers will see the idea more necessary to understand Spanish and therefore can learn rapidly. Just including in most countries throughout South America, Peru possesses educational facilities to help folks learn Spanish. The particular classes are usually more sensible when compared with they are with the United States. As a result, a person can learn The spanish language more accurately and somewhat with little outlay by simply studying abroad. Pupils can easily learn Spanish within Europe in a class room in the day coming from their teacher, peers, along with books, and then could discover Spanish out with the town in the actual evenings by means of interacting using the local people. It will cost every waking hour when it comes to who speak Spanish. Whenever you want to interact having someone, may it be to acquire a cup of java or access a coach, you will be in a position to train your Spanish expertise. Trainees who wants in order to learn Spanish inside Peru America will learn quickly.

Learning Spanish in England will probably prove to possibly be easier and less nerve-racking, not to mention exciting and cultural also. Spain is situated in South usa with Buenos Aires becasue it is capital. Although Spanish is actually Argentina's national language, everyone also speaks English as a result of Argentina's huge number regarding year-round guests. Therefore, finding out Spanish in Australia will be easy and enjoyable.

Discover Spanish in Spain

Presently there are over seventeen regions throughout Spain, and each features its unique subculture. Barcelona is well know for being a new fun, international area, yet many people there converse primarily Catalan. Madrid may be known for its beautiful skill in addition to museums. Think in relation to what you want in the area of study and locate areas of Spain that will is many appealing to be able to you.

One urban center I actually strongly suggest becoming fluent in spanish with is Andalusia, which can be hidden into the province involving Granada. In this southern-most as well as densely populated spot connected with Spain is the particular fascinating, early, and gorgeous city of Andalusia. Given that Roman times, individuals appreciated its climate and also traditions. Its alcazar, historical one fourth, mosque and other internet sites draw thousands of travelers. The location has been typically the subject of piece of art, safari, and literature. Nonetheless it is usually not just a stunning vacation destination. There are numerous Romance language immersion schools. You need to opt for a program that agrees with your needs and plan. Will you be an advanced Spanish language student buying long captivation experience? Currently more associated with an informed tourist in which wants to learn regarding the language along with customs of a place? Think of how long you can certainly spend within Granada in addition to how many hours daily and days per few days you need to study. If anyone must critically learn Speaking spanish in Milgrana very swiftly for school or perhaps perform, look for the almost all extensive programs. Some packages maintain classes for ten several hours a day and then send learners to stay with Spanish-speaking family members. In the event your interest is considerably more of your hobby or private interest, you could enjoy anything more unhurried that results in time to check out Andalusia.

The greatest thing concerning learning Spanish in Proyectil, still is that nearly all schools offer industry travels. Small group excursions head to sights around Andalusia along with the rest of Spain. While three to four students and the teacher check out a village bullfight, an olive farm or maybe a winery, the knowledge is definitely much better and much more intimate in comparison with anything any tour business can supply. These field journeys tend to be usually optional and expense extra. Be sure for you to ask about these while you are shopping to get a school.

You can also get "traveling" Spanish schools situated in Bomba and other parts regarding the country this incorporate an extended bus as well as train travel with The spanish language lessons. These kinds of programs are usually usually geared a lot more to culture and taking in the sights quite than quickly instilling a powerful grasp of Spanish. According to what you need to help know, a traveling classes may or may definitely not be what you will need.

Learning Spanish in another country inside a different country and also a different culture is fun. It is also often the fastest strategy to learn Romance language, and you will figure out how to speak like a local. Becoming fluent in spanish using the overall immersion approach lets you actually live the vocabulary relatively than just study the item.

[fashiongarment3-blog]

The way to Save Money When Getting Children's Apparel

CHILDREN'S CLOTHING suppliers china

Do anyone have children and seeking regarding ways to preserve money on children's outfits? Everybody wants the almost all for the the very least total of money. This content covers ways of saving funds on children's clothes also if you are straight into name brand apparel.

CHILDREN'S CLOTHING suppliers china

By means of the years, it possesses been a challenge to view how I can expend money sensibly and nonetheless get the best associated with the things i need (or want) intended for my children. Despite the fact that nearly all families don't include eight kids, it is actually still a goal of all mothers and fathers to help see how far we could make the dollar stretch out nevertheless purchase nice child garments.

Here are several of the tactics who have proven very successful over time with our big loved ones. If the children are fresh, it is usually mother or dad's choice if they want to buy brand brand clothing, although when the children get in all their late tweens, these people commence becoming interested throughout fashion trends and their own friends are using. In the event you are on a new budget and don't possess endless money to commit in children's clothing, you actually can have your youngster dress in fashion in addition to spend a reasonable quantity of money. Think of these kinds of points when you're looking for your children:

1) Just before you go purchasing, consider some time with your own tweens as well as older youngsters to set reasonable anticipations of what they need and exactly you can find the money for. Come to a contract about what limits they will probably have got, so there will be not a field with the store and they will are frustrated and a person are embarrassed. Should you choose this specific, you can end way up using a fun day as an alternative of a nerve-racking day time. Not everyone's price range could afford name brand outfits, however there are the lot of fashions this duplicate the big money items.

2) On your current shopping day, focus on the particular "least desirable" shops 1ST. This term means diverse things to different folks. Surprisingly, some thrift retailers, particularly in bigger cities, within great parts of community, can offer great bargains with name brand clothes. Particularly in college towns, you will certainly find fantastic buys upon designer denim jeans and a lot of other designer goods.

3) Garage sales certainly are a place you can locate surprisingly fine buys. In case you're looking for custom made jeans or clothes, want to visit the garage income from the nicer parts regarding town. You will end up surprised precisely what you may find. To save lots of time, check out typically the garage selling ads which mention kids clothing to get sale. This is furthermore a fantastic source for infant and also toddler clothes. While people are prompted to let their particular children's clothing go, that they are in the disposition to bargain.

4) Check out at real outlet merchants, like J. C. Penney. This kind of works very properly for youngsters who are usually not into the custom clothes yet and parent are looking for resilient, functional, cozy clothes with regard to the little ones.

5) Consignment shops are one more excellent source. Big metropolitan areas, such as Orlando, California get many consignment outlets offering designer clothing with affordable prices. Make it any habit to follow along with these outlets, even if you aren't inside the market that certain day, you will probably find something way too good to secure up.

6) If you have "set an image" you wish to satisfy for on your own and your family, an individual can even now utilize portion of these strategies along with make the impression you would like. Especially for your daughters, yet daughters too, anyone can buy far more identify brand tops / tops, and just a several pair of denims. When you can get out with getting just often the name brand shirts, it is possible to explain to your youthful kid that very handful of people can tell the between name brand skinny jeans in addition to regular, reasonably rapid charged jeans, because the actual shirts as well as tops are generally usually worn outside the house and also you can't see the particular company logo on the trousers anyway.

7) I include found with our young children, top quality athletic shoes along with casual sneakers are well worth the money. It features been the experience that will quality shoes or boots are excellent for their feet, don longer, and look wonderful far too.

8) I desire as a small mommy, MORE THAN ANYTHING, you might have pointed the next in order to me. You may need as many clothing items as you think you actually do! We could lucky plenty of to have a machine in addition to dryer and we all can buy much less objects and keep them inside cycle. If your child and daughter have considerably more than a couple weeks of tshirts / covers, nobody is usually going to remember whatever they wore before. As regarding shoes and boots, they outgrow these people and so quickly; it is definitely not wise to purchase many pair of footwear. Usually one particular pair involving athletic shoes, *one couple of casual shoes (Sperry)(*optional), and also a pair of dress sneakers are more as compared to ample. They will be throughout the next sizing just before you know it!

9) If your kids are deeper in age, tend not to acquire the same pattern connected with shirt / top for every single age child. This may help your being in a position to re-use for that more radiant child, the more mature ones' clothing when he or she exceeds them. Along a similar series, buy as many standard items as you can certainly and still connect with your own personal goals. For example, Rob Lauren polo shirts possess slept a classic.

10) You don't have in order to get everything you will need in one shopping vacation. Keep in mind typically the 80 instructions 20 Principle, when you take into account the sum of money you usually are spending. A lot of people wear even just the teens of the clothes with their closet, 80% of that time period! If you don't obtain a lot of outfits at the same moment, your children will have got time and energy to think about "the look" they really want, and many people will be a whole lot more vulnerable to wear almost everything in their storage room. That also seems to often the children just like they tend to be getting more when there are numerous different shopping trips.

11) You may allow by yourself to spent more than on your personal oldest child's apparel when you are planning in laundering, providing, and saving the garments for the actual next child to have on. If you do, pick out the particular clothing items that are usually in good shape and retail outlet as well as label the class and scale clothing. That works extremely nicely, specifically if there is a great age difference of two yrs or more involving the little ones.

12) If you are usually totally into name manufacturer clothing and so will carry out, shop online and typically you will find good deals. Based upon on the state, you possibly will not have to pay gross sales tax. You can spend less a whole lot. Make sure what exactly size you require, order, and also you will have these individuals a few weeks. Be sure to be able to check out the suppliers given that sell name model clothing on discounted rates. You can find amazing will buy on designer apparel in this particular type store, consequently why pay much more?

[mariyekos]

holy shit 75k for your college!? man just go to community college, mine's literally 600 dollars a semester. there's really no difference except how much you'll be spending your life in crippling debt

(this is pretty negative btw. and long)

Okay so while it’s nice to see people read my tags and have a suggestion, I kind of wish you could have worded this a little more nicely. I feel guilty enough about paying what I have to pay. Which is not actually 76k, since I am getting some financial aid. I was saying that $76,000 is the base tuition (well, with housing and stuff). Which yeah, is a lot, especially when compared to community college. And it’s the reason I’m thinking about transferring out after a year or two to a UC school since I’m from California and the tuition would be a lot cheaper thanks to in-state tuition and Cal Grants and all that stuff. I don’t think I’ll end up doing it in the end, or at least hope I won’t have to, but we’ll see.

I wouldn’t go to a community college though. Community colleges can be pretty good, and I have a cousin who went to one for two years before transferring to a UC for his bachelors or whatever, but I don’t want to go to one myself. Going to a 4-year university has been my dream since childhood. I’ve spent the past few years being told by people that that’s the end goal. With some specific people telling me that if I don’t go to a university after all I’ve done, it will be a waste. And one particular teacher telling me I’ll fail at life if I don’t go to a 4-year university and while I know it’s not true the combination of all that pressure has stuck with me in a way I can’t get out of my head. And to a large extent, I agree. I didn’t do all the things I’ve done and pushed myself beyond what I really felt like doing so I could go to a community college which would have accepted me even if I hadn’t done those things, as long as my grades were good enough (is there even a grade requirement? I have no idea actually. I’ve never checked. I think so? But I really don’t know). So much of my life over these past few years has been dominated by me doing things so I could build a resume that would get me accepted into a university. Basketball, track, science fair, IB, etc. Whatever made me look the most impressive. Whatever could show a University, “Hey! I can multitask! I can excel! I can do well! I would be a great addition to your school, accept me!” 

Sure, some of these things I did because I liked them. To an extent. I can tell you that my last 2 and a half years of basketball were done because I thought “what will universities think if they see I made Varsity but then abandoned the team? It will look so much better if they see I can stick with something.” Definitely year 3 in particular was for college. That year was beyond hellish. Science Fair took so much effort, and created many stressful days all with the goal of “improving my college application.” The specific diploma program I’m doing in school was 50% motivated by “colleges look to see you took the hardest courses available at your school” and “I need to look the best”.  Long story short, I’ve worked too hard with the specific goal of “getting into a four year university” to just… not do that. 

The biggest thing though, or maybe it’s tied with the last thing, is that going to Duke has been a dream for as long as I can remember. Even in elementary school I wanted to go. In about 3rd grade I realized, hey if I get good at basketball then that will impress them! And then proceeded to play basketball nonstop until my junior year of high school when my coach ruined the sport for me so much I took a two month break. Which I came back from to play for him again because I needed that “Varsity basketball senior year captain” thing on my resume. To get into college. My dad went to Duke, and I’ve been wearing Duke stuff since I was born. I’ve always felt like going there would give me a sort of connection to him. Like it would impress him. He passed away when I was 5, so going there is all the more important. Kind of like I can show him, “You know what dad? I did my best. I tried so hard, and maybe I’m not perfect, but look where I’m going! I did it! I’m here! I made it! Just like you did! Are you proud of me?” I don’t remember him much, but his Duke friends were his friends that stayed with him for life, and his Duke stories were the ones that were told. It was a special place to him, and because of that it’s a special place to me. 

I’ve visited the campus, and it’s beautiful. It has one of the best environmental science programs out there, which is what I’m interested in, as well as a marine lab that I’m hoping to have a class with. The campus is beautiful, and the people I met seem pretty cool. and it’s just… Evidence. Evidence of how hard I worked. All those nights of staying up until 2AM, trying to finish an essay or a project or a study guide or whatever payed off. They got me to my dream school. To one of the top universities in the country. Sure it’s not an ivy league, but it’s good. It has the programs I want to enroll in. It’ll look good on a job application. It’s located pretty close to the EPA headquarters, as well as a bunch of other prestigious places (the research triangle area). 

I wasn’t looking for the most expensive place possible. I can tell you I sobbed when I saw the price and thought “oh god I can’t go here. It’s too expensive.” I don’t like the price. It’s ridiculous. But my mom has told me for years that the price shouldn’t be the reason I don’t go to my dream school, as have several other people. Hell, my classmates have been talking about it for years. Whenever I talk about something that seems below impressive, I get looked at. Like, “what the hell are you talking about.” “What the hell do you mean you don’t know if you’ll get in? You’re like one of the top 5 smartest people here” Or “oh come on don’t worry about it you’re super smart” or “no way you’re going to go somewhere like that. you’re too good for that.” And I sure as hell don’t have a great self image or self confidence. Being able to go somewhere like Duke gives me such a sense of accomplishment. I did something. I really did something. I worked so so hard. And I’m getting something out of it. I didn’t fail. After spending so much time feeling like a failure, i did something. And I don’t want to give it up. I really, really don’t want to give it up.

Plus there’s what I said before. I feel like if I do go to community college… i’ll have failed. Community college is a great option for people. I’m glad it exists. It’s especially great for people facing tough financial situations. Several of my friends are going to community colleges either because they couldn’t afford a university education, or because they just wanted to. And I’m not looking down on it. But for so long I’ve been told that that’s not the top - that university is. And like I said, I can’t get that out of my mind. If I go to community college I know I’ll always have a voice nagging in the back of my head that I could have done better. I still feel guilty for small things I did years ago. I hate myself for doing choir, for example. Right now, my class has 1 valedictorian and 2 salutatorians (due to a tie). So the top 3 people in the class. I’m class rank 4. Had I not taken choir, I would be either 1 or 2 right now. But I took choir. I wanted to sing and I allowed myself that and it hurt my GPA. I tell myself, well I had some fun. But will I regret it for a while? Yes. Have I regretted it since I finished? Yes. Because “I could have done better.” I took choir before that and that should have been good enough, right? I would have been fine taking a different class. If I had taken that 7th class when i had the option, taken that weighted class instead of the non-weighted choir, then I wouldn’t be number 4. It’s silly to be so upset over. But that’s the sort of way my mind works and the sort of thing that sticks with me. There was nothing wrong with taking choir. It wasn’t a terrible experience. Just like there’s nothing wrong with going to community college. But I would have that nagging voice telling me that I failed. That I could have done better. I don’t want to feel guilty for however many years that would stick with me.

And then last thing… I’m already enrolled in Duke. It’s a little late for going to a community college. So thanks for the suggestion, but no thanks. I’ve spent a while thinking about where I would go. I thought about community college for a while, to save money. But I’m getting financial aid so college isn’t completely impossible money wise. I have a savings account that will help me pay. I don’t want to go into debt. If I have to transfer somewhere cheaper to avoid that, then so be it. I just don’t want people to see me as a failure, and I don’t want to see myself as a failure. If I don’t go to a university (specifically Duke) at this point, I know that that is what’s going to happen. I get judged enough when I’m not at the top already. And as much as I know my life shouldn’t revolve around other people’s thoughts about me, I get freaked out thinking about being a failure, and thinking about what others think of me. It doesn’t always change my actions, but it does make me insanely guilty which I don’t want to be.

Okay for the real last thing I will say this. Thank you for making a suggestion to help me. Debt is not a fun thing, and I don’t want to be in debt. However, even putting aside all my fears of not going to a university… I want to go to Duke. It’s been my dream forever, and it has everything that I want now. So that’s where I’m going. And next time, please just… phrase things a little nicer. That’s the sort of stuff/tone I get hit with both by people trying to crush my dreams (in this sense and others), and by people telling me I need to do something like going to a university or I won’t accomplish anything meaningful with my life. 

Sorry for going off or whatever. This is much longer than I thought it would be, and super unorganized. It’s stream of consciousness or thought or whatever the phrase is (I think the first but i’m tired and don’t feel like putting in more effort). But it’s honest. So that’s that.

[suzanneshannon]

How to Think Like a Front-End Developer

This is an extended version of my essay “When front-end means full-stack” which was published in the wonderful Increment magazine put out by Stripe. It’s also something of an evolution of a couple other of my essays, “The Great Divide” and “Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.”

The moment I fell in love with front-end development was when I discovered the style.css file in WordPress themes. That’s where all the magic was (is!) to me. I could (can!) change a handful of lines in there and totally change the look and feel of a website. It’s an incredible game to play.

Back when I was cowboy-coding over FTP. Although I definitely wasn’t using CSS grid!

By fiddling with HTML and CSS, I can change the way you feel about a bit of writing. I can make you feel more comfortable about buying tickets to an event. I can increase the chances you share something with your friends.

That was well before anybody paid me money to be a front-end developer, but even then I felt the intoxicating mix of stimuli that the job offers. Front-end development is this expressive art form, but often constrained by things like the need to directly communicate messaging and accomplish business goals.

Front-end development is at the intersection of art and logic. A cross of business and expression. Both left and right brain. A cocktail of design and nerdery.

I love it.

Looking back at the courses I chose from middle school through college, I bounced back and forth between computer-focused classes and art-focused classes, so I suppose it’s no surprise I found a way to do both as a career.

The term “Front-End Developer” is fairly well-defined and understood. For one, it’s a job title. I’ll bet some of you literally have business cards that say it on there, or some variation like: “Front-End Designer,” “UX Developer,” or “UI Engineer.” The debate around what those mean isn’t particularly interesting to me. I find that the roles are so varied from job-to-job and company-to-company that job titles will never be enough to describe things. Getting this job is more about demonstrating you know what you’re doing more than anything else¹.

Chris Coyier Front-End Developer

The title variations are just nuance. The bigger picture is that as long as the job is building websites, front-enders are focused on the browser. Quite literally:

front-end = browsers

back-end = servers

Even as the job has changed over the decades, that distinction still largely holds.

As “browser people,” there are certain truths that come along for the ride. One is that there is a whole landscape of different browsers and, despite the best efforts of standards bodies, they still behave somewhat differently. Just today, as I write, I dealt with a bug where a date string I had from an API was in a format such that Firefox threw an error when I tried to use the .toISOString() JavaScript API on it, but was fine in Chrome. That’s just life as a front-end developer. That’s the job.

Even across that landscape of browsers, just on desktop computers, there is variance in how users use that browser. How big do they have the window open? Do they have dark mode activated on their operating system? How’s the color gamut on that monitor? What is the pixel density? How’s the bandwidth situation? Do they use a keyboard and mouse? One or the other? Neither? All those same questions apply to mobile devices too, where there is an equally if not more complicated browser landscape. And just wait until you take a hard look at HTML emails.

That’s a lot of unknowns, and the answers to developing for that unknown landscape is firmly in the hands of front-end developers.

Into the unknoooooowwwn. – Elsa

The most important aspect of the job? The people that use these browsers. That’s why we’re building things at all. These are the people I’m trying to impress with my mad CSS skills. These are the people I’m trying to get to buy my widget. Who all my business charts hinge upon. Who’s reaction can sway my emotions like yarn in the breeze. These users, who we put on a pedestal for good reason, have a much wider landscape than the browsers do. They speak different languages. They want different things. They are trying to solve different problems. They have different physical abilities. They have different levels of urgency. Again, helping them is firmly in the hands of front-end developers. There is very little in between the characters we type into our text editors and the users for whom we wish to serve.

Being a front-end developer puts us on the front lines between the thing we’re building and the people we’re building it for, and that’s a place some of us really enjoy being.

That’s some weighty stuff, isn’t it? I haven’t even mentioned React yet.

The “we care about the users” thing might feel a little precious. I’d think in a high functioning company, everyone would care about the users, from the CEO on down. It’s different, though. When we code a <button>, we’re quite literally putting a button into a browser window that users directly interact with. When we adjust a color, we’re adjusting exactly what our sighted users see when they see our work.

That’s not far off from a ceramic artist pulling a handle out of clay for a coffee cup. It’s applying craftsmanship to a digital experience. While a back-end developer might care deeply about the users of a site, they are, as Monica Dinculescu once told me in a conversation about this, “outsourcing that responsibility.”

We established that front-end developers are browser people. The job is making things work well in browsers. So we need to understand the languages browsers speak, namely: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript². And that’s not just me being some old school fundamentalist; it’s through a few decades of everyday front-end development work that knowing those base languages is vital to us doing a good job. Even when we don’t work directly with them (HTML might come from a template in another language, CSS might be produced from a preprocessor, JavaScript might be mostly written in the parlance of a framework), what goes the browser is ultimately HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so that’s where debugging largely takes place and the ability of the browser is put to work.

CSS will always be my favorite and HTML feels like it needs the most love — but JavaScript is the one we really need to examine The last decade has seen JavaScript blossom from a language used for a handful of interactive effects to the predominant language used across the entire stack of web design and development. It’s possible to work on websites and writing nothing but JavaScript. A real sea change.

JavaScript is all-powerful in the browser. In a sense, it supersedes HTML and CSS, as there is nothing either of those languages can do that JavaScript cannot. HTML is parsed by the browser and turned into the DOM, which JavaScript can also entirely create and manipulate. CSS has its own model, the CSSOM, that applies styles to elements in the DOM, which JavaScript can also create and manipulate.

This isn’t quite fair though. HTML is the very first file that browsers parse before they do the rest of the work needed to build the site. That firstness is unique to HTML and a vital part of making websites fast.

In fact, if the HTML was the only file to come across the network, that should be enough to deliver the basic information and functionality of a site.

That philosophy is called Progressive Enhancement. I’m a fan, myself, but I don’t always adhere to it perfectly. For example, a <form> can be entirely functional in HTML, when it’s action attribute points to a URL where the form can be processed. Progressive Enhancement would have us build it that way. Then, when JavaScript executes, it takes over the submission and has the form submit via Ajax instead, which might be a nicer experience as the page won’t have to refresh. I like that. Taken further, any <button> outside a form is entirely useless without JavaScript, so in the spirit of Progressive Enhancement, I should wait until JavaScript executes to even put that button on the page at all (or at least reveal it). That’s the kind of thing where even those of us with the best intentions might not always toe the line perfectly. Just put the button in, Sam. Nobody is gonna die.

JavaScript’s all-powerfulness makes it an appealing target for those of us doing work on the web — particularly as JavaScript as a language has evolved to become even more powerful and ergonomic, and the frameworks that are built in JavaScript become even more-so. Back in 2015, it was already so clear that JavaScript was experiencing incredible growth in usage, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, gave the developer world homework: “Learn JavaScript Deeply”³. He couldn’t have been more right. Half a decade later, JavaScript has done a good job of taking over front-end development. Particularly if you look at front-end development jobs.

While the web almanac might show us that only 5% of the top-zillion sites use React compared to 85% including jQuery, those numbers are nearly flipped when looking around at front-end development job requirements.

I’m sure there are fancy economic reasons for all that, but jobs are as important and personal as it gets for people, so it very much matters.

So we’re browser people in a sea of JavaScript building things for people. If we take a look at the job at a practical day-to-day tasks level, it’s a bit like this:

Translate designs into code

Think in terms of responsive design, allowing us to design and build across the landscape of devices

Build systemically. Construct components and patterns, not one-offs.

Apply semantics to content

Consider accessibility

Worry about the performance of the site. Optimize everything. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just that first bullet point feels like a college degree to me. Taken together, all of those points certainly do.

This whole list is a bit abstract though, so let’s apply it to something we can look at. What if this website was our current project?

Our brains and fingers go wild!

Let’s build the layout with CSS grid. 

What fonts are those? Do we need to load them in their entirety or can we subset them? What happens as they load in? This layout feels like it will really suffer from font-shifting jank. 

There are some repeated patterns here. We should probably make a card design pattern. Every website needs a good card pattern. 

That’s a gorgeous color scheme. Are the colors mathematically related? Should we make variables to represent them individually or can we just alter a single hue as needed? Are we going to use custom properties in our CSS? Colors are just colors though, we might not need the cascading power of them just for this. Should we just use Sass variables? Are we going to use a CSS preprocessor at all?

The source order is tricky here. We need to order things so that they make sense for a screen reader user. We should have a meeting about what the expected order of content should be, even if we’re visually moving things around a bit with CSS grid.

The photographs here are beautifully shot. But some of them match the background color of the site… can we get away with alpha-transparent PNGs here? Those are always so big. Can any next-gen formats help us? Or should we try to match the background of a JPG with the background of the site seamlessly. Who’s writing the alt text for these?

There are some icons in use here. Inline SVG, right? Certainly SVG of some kind, not icon fonts, right? Should we build a whole icon system? I guess it depends on how we’re gonna be building this thing more broadly. Do we have a build system at all?

What’s the whole front-end plan here? Can I code this thing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Well, I know I can, but what are the team expectations? Client expectations? Does it need to be a React thing because it’s part of some ecosystem of stuff that is already React? Or Vue or Svelte or whatever? Is there a CMS involved?

I’m glad the designer thought of not just the “desktop” and “mobile” sizes but also tackled an in-between size. Those are always awkward. There is no interactivity information here though. What should we do when that search field is focused? What gets revealed when that hamburger is tapped? Are we doing page-level transitions here?

I could go on and on. That’s how front-end developers think, at least in my experience and in talking with my peers.

A lot of those things have been our jobs forever though. We’ve been asking and answering these questions on every website we’ve built for as long as we’ve been doing it. There are different challenges on each site, which is great and keeps this job fun, but there is a lot of repetition too.

Allow me to get around to the title of this article. 

While we’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for ages, there is a whole pile of new stuff we’re starting to be expected to do, particularly if we’re talking about building the site with a modern JavaScript framework. All the modern frameworks, as much as they like to disagree about things, agree about one big thing: everything is a component. You nest and piece together components as needed. Even native JavaScript moves toward its own model of Web Components.

I like it, this idea of components. It allows you and your team to build the abstractions that make the most sense to you and what you are building.

Your Card component does all the stuff your card needs to do. Your Form component does forms how your website needs to do forms. But it’s a new concept to old developers like me. Components in JavaScript have taken hold in a way that components on the server-side never did. I’ve worked on many a WordPress website where the best I did was break templates into somewhat arbitrary include() statements. I’ve worked on Ruby on Rails sites with partials that take a handful of local variables. Those are useful for building re-usable parts, but they are a far cry from the robust component models that JavaScript frameworks offer us today.

All this custom component creation makes me a site-level architect in a way that I didn’t use to be. Here’s an example. Of course I have a Button component. Of course I have an Icon component. I’ll use them in my Card component. My Card component lives in a Grid component that lays them out and paginates them. The whole page is actually built from components. The Header component has a SearchBar component and a UserMenu component. The Sidebar component has a Navigation component and an Ad component. The whole page is just a special combination of components, which is probably based on the URL, assuming I’m all-in on building our front-end with JavaScript. So now I’m dealing with URLs myself, and I’m essentially the architect of the entire site. [Sweats profusely]

Like I told ya, a whole pile of new responsibility.

Components that are in charge of displaying content are almost certainly not hard-coded with data in them. They are built to be templates. They are built to accept data and construct themselves based on that data. In the olden days, when we were doing this kind of templating, the data has probably already arrived on the page we’re working on. In a JavaScript-powered app, it’s more likely that that data is fetched by JavaScript. Perhaps I’ll fetch it when the component renders. In a stack I’m working with right now, the front end is in React, the API is in GraphQL and we use Apollo Client to work with data. We use a special “hook” in the React components to run the queries to fetch the data we need, and another special hook when we need to change that data. Guess who does that work? Is it some other kind of developer that specializes in this data layer work? No, it’s become the domain of the front-end developer.

Speaking of data, there is all this other data that a website often has to deal with that doesn’t come from a database or API. It’s data that is really only relevant to the website at this moment in time.

Which tab is active right now?

Is this modal dialog open or closed?

Which bar of this accordion is expanded?

Is this message bar in an error state or warning state?

How many pages are you paginated in?

How far is the user scrolled down the page?

Front-end developers have been dealing with that kind of state for a long time, but it’s exactly this kind of state that has gotten us into trouble before. A modal dialog can be open with a simple modifier class like <div class="modal is-open"> and toggling that class is easy enough with .classList.toggle(".is-open"); But that’s a purely visual treatment. How does anything else on the page know if that modal is open or not? Does it ask the DOM? In a lot of jQuery-style apps of yore, yes, it would. In a sense, the DOM became the “source of truth” for our websites. There were all sorts of problems that stemmed from this architecture, ranging from a simple naming change destroying functionality in weirdly insidious ways, to hard-to-reason-about application logic making bug fixing a difficult proposition.

Front-end developers collectively thought: what if we dealt with state in a more considered way? State management, as a concept, became a thing. JavaScript frameworks themselves built the concept right in, and third-party libraries have paved and continue to pave the way. This is another example of expanding responsibility. Who architects state management? Who enforces it and implements it? It’s not some other role, it’s front-end developers.

There is expanding responsibility in the checklist of things to do, but there is also work to be done in piecing it all together. How much of this state can be handled at the individual component level and how much needs to be higher level? How much of this data can be gotten at the individual component level and how much should be percolated from above? Design itself comes into play. How much of the styling of this component should be scoped to itself, and how much should come from more global styles?

It’s no wonder that design systems have taken off in recent years. We’re building components anyway, so thinking of them systemically is a natural fit.

Let’s look at our design again:

A bunch of new thoughts can begin!

Assuming we’re using a JavaScript framework, which one? Why? 

Can we statically render this site, even if we’re building with a JavaScript framework? Or server-side render it? 

Where are those recipes coming from? Can we get a GraphQL API going so we can ask for whatever we need, whenever we need it?

Maybe we should pick a CMS that has an API that will facilitate the kind of front-end building we want to do. Perhaps a headless CMS?

What are we doing for routing? Is the framework we chose opinionated or unopinionated about stuff like this?

What are the components we need? A Card, Icon, SearchForm, SiteMenu, Img… can we scaffold these out? Should we start with some kind of design framework on top of the base framework?

What’s the client state we might need? Current search term, current tab, hamburger open or not, at least.

Is there a login system for this site or not? Are logged in users shown anything different? 

Is there are third-party componentry we can leverage here?

Maybe we can find one of those fancy image components that does blur-up loading and lazy loading and all that.

Those are all things that are in the domain of front-end developers these days, on top of everything that we already need to do. Executing the design, semantics, accessibility, performance… that’s all still there. You still need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how the browser works. Being a front-end developer requires a haystack of skills that grows and grows. It’s the natural outcome of the web getting bigger. More people use the web and internet access grows. The economy around the web grows. The capability of browsers grows. The expectations of what is possible on the web grows. There isn’t a lot shrinking going on around here.

We’ve already reached the point where most front-end developers don’t know the whole haystack of responsibilities. There are lots of developers still doing well for themselves being rather design-focused and excelling at creative and well-implemented HTML and CSS, even as job posts looking for that dwindle.

There are systems-focused developers and even entire agencies that specialize in helping other companies build and implement design systems. There are data-focused developers that feel most at home making the data flow throughout a website and getting hot and heavy with business logic. While all of those people might have “front-end developer” on their business card, their responsibilities and even expectations of their work might be quite different. It’s all good, we’ll find ways to talk about all this in time.

In fact, how we talk about building websites has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of my early introduction to web development was through WordPress. WordPress needs a web server to run, is written in PHP, and stores it’s data in a MySQL database. As much as WordPress has evolved, all that is still exactly the same. We talk about that “stack” with an acronym: LAMP, or Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Note that literally everything in the entire stack consists of back-end technologies. As a front-end developer, nothing about LAMP is relevant to me.

But other stacks have come along since then. A popular stack was MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular and Node). Notice how we’re starting to inch our way toward more front-end technologies? Angular is a JavaScript framework, so as this stack gained popularity, so too did talking about the front-end as an important part of the stack. Node and Express are both JavaScript as well, albeit the server-side variant.

The existence of Node is a huge part of this story. Node isn’t JavaScript-like, it’s quite literally JavaScript. It makes a front-end developer already skilled in JavaScript able to do server-side work without too much of a stretch.

“Serverless” is a much more modern tech buzzword, and what it’s largely talking about is running small bits of code on cloud servers. Most often, those small bits of code are in Node, and written by JavaScript developers. These days, a JavaScript-focused front-end developer might be writing their own serverless functions and essentially being their own back-end developer. They’ll think of themselves as full-stack developers, and they’ll be right.

Shawn Wang coined a term for a new stack this year: STAR or Design System, TypeScript, Apollo, and React. This is incredible to me, not just because I kind of like that stack, but because it’s a way of talking about the stack powering a website that is entirely front-end technologies. Quite a shift.

I apologize if I’ve made you feel a little anxious reading this. If you feel like you’re behind in understanding all this stuff, you aren’t alone.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to a single developer who told me they felt entirely comfortable with the entire world of building websites. Everybody has weak spots or entire areas where they just don’t know the first dang thing. You not only can specialize, but specializing is a pretty good idea, and I think you will end up specializing to some degree whether you plan to or not. If you have the good fortune to plan, pick things that you like. You’ll do just fine.

The only constant in life is change.

– Heraclitus     – Motivational Poster         – Chris Coyier

¹ I’m a white dude, so that helps a bunch, too. ↩️ ² Browsers speak a bunch more languages. HTTP, SVG, PNG… The more you know the more you can put to work! ↩️ ³ It’s an interesting bit of irony that WordPress websites generally aren’t built with client-side JavaScript components. ↩️

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[siliconwebx]

The Widening Responsibility for Front-End Developers

This is an extended version of my essay “When front-end means full-stack” which was published in the wonderful Increment magazine put out by Stripe. It’s also something of an evolution of a couple other of my essays, “The Great Divide” and “Ooops, I guess we’re full-stack developers now.”

The moment I fell in love with front-end development was when I discovered the style.css file in WordPress themes. That’s where all the magic was (is!) to me. I could (can!) change a handful of lines in there and totally change the look and feel of a website. It’s an incredible game to play.

Back when I was cowboy-coding over FTP. Although I definitely wasn’t using CSS grid!

By fiddling with HTML and CSS, I can change the way you feel about a bit of writing. I can make you feel more comfortable about buying tickets to an event. I can increase the chances you share something with your friends.

That was well before anybody paid me money to be a front-end developer, but even then I felt the intoxicating mix of stimuli that the job offers. Front-end development is this expressive art form, but often constrained by things like the need to directly communicate messaging and accomplish business goals.

Front-end development is at the intersection of art and logic. A cross of business and expression. Both left and right brain. A cocktail of design and nerdery.

I love it.

Looking back at the courses I chose from middle school through college, I bounced back and forth between computer-focused classes and art-focused classes, so I suppose it’s no surprise I found a way to do both as a career.

The term “Front-End Developer” is fairly well-defined and understood. For one, it’s a job title. I’ll bet some of you literally have business cards that say it on there, or some variation like: “Front-End Designer,” “UX Developer,” or “UI Engineer.” The debate around what those mean isn’t particularly interesting to me. I find that the roles are so varied from job-to-job and company-to-company that job titles will never be enough to describe things. Getting this job is more about demonstrating you know what you’re doing more than anything else¹.

Chris Coyier Front-End Developer

The title variations are just nuance. The bigger picture is that as long as the job is building websites, front-enders are focused on the browser. Quite literally:

front-end = browsers

back-end = servers

Even as the job has changed over the decades, that distinction still largely holds.

As “browser people,” there are certain truths that come along for the ride. One is that there is a whole landscape of different browsers and, despite the best efforts of standards bodies, they still behave somewhat differently. Just today, as I write, I dealt with a bug where a date string I had from an API was in a format such that Firefox threw an error when I tried to use the .toISOString() JavaScript API on it, but was fine in Chrome. That’s just life as a front-end developer. That’s the job.

Even across that landscape of browsers, just on desktop computers, there is variance in how users use that browser. How big do they have the window open? Do they have dark mode activated on their operating system? How’s the color gamut on that monitor? What is the pixel density? How’s the bandwidth situation? Do they use a keyboard and mouse? One or the other? Neither? All those same questions apply to mobile devices too, where there is an equally if not more complicated browser landscape. And just wait until you take a hard look at HTML emails.

That’s a lot of unknowns, and the answers to developing for that unknown landscape is firmly in the hands of front-end developers.

Into the unknoooooowwwn. – Elsa

The most important aspect of the job? The people that use these browsers. That’s why we’re building things at all. These are the people I’m trying to impress with my mad CSS skills. These are the people I’m trying to get to buy my widget. Who all my business charts hinge upon. Who’s reaction can sway my emotions like yarn in the breeze. These users, who we put on a pedestal for good reason, have a much wider landscape than the browsers do. They speak different languages. They want different things. They are trying to solve different problems. They have different physical abilities. They have different levels of urgency. Again, helping them is firmly in the hands of front-end developers. There is very little in between the characters we type into our text editors and the users for whom we wish to serve.

Being a front-end developer puts us on the front lines between the thing we’re building and the people we’re building it for, and that’s a place some of us really enjoy being.

That’s some weighty stuff, isn’t it? I haven’t even mentioned React yet.

The “we care about the users” thing might feel a little precious. I’d think in a high functioning company, everyone would care about the users, from the CEO on down. It’s different, though. When we code a <button>, we’re quite literally putting a button into a browser window that users directly interact with. When we adjust a color, we’re adjusting exactly what our sighted users see when they see our work.

That’s not far off from a ceramic artist pulling a handle out of clay for a coffee cup. It’s applying craftsmanship to a digital experience. While a back-end developer might care deeply about the users of a site, they are, as Monica Dinculescu once told me in a conversation about this, “outsourcing that responsibility.”

We established that front-end developers are browser people. The job is making things work well in browsers. So we need to understand the languages browsers speak, namely: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript². And that’s not just me being some old school fundamentalist; it’s through a few decades of everyday front-end development work that knowing those base languages is vital to us doing a good job. Even when we don’t work directly with them (HTML might come from a template in another language, CSS might be produced from a preprocessor, JavaScript might be mostly written in the parlance of a framework), what goes the browser is ultimately HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so that’s where debugging largely takes place and the ability of the browser is put to work.

CSS will always be my favorite and HTML feels like it needs the most love — but JavaScript is the one we really need to examine The last decade has seen JavaScript blossom from a language used for a handful of interactive effects to the predominant language used across the entire stack of web design and development. It’s possible to work on websites and writing nothing but JavaScript. A real sea change.

JavaScript is all-powerful in the browser. In a sense, it supersedes HTML and CSS, as there is nothing either of those languages can do that JavaScript cannot. HTML is parsed by the browser and turned into the DOM, which JavaScript can also entirely create and manipulate. CSS has its own model, the CSSOM, that applies styles to elements in the DOM, which JavaScript can also create and manipulate.

This isn’t quite fair though. HTML is the very first file that browsers parse before they do the rest of the work needed to build the site. That firstness is unique to HTML and a vital part of making websites fast.

In fact, if the HTML was the only file to come across the network, that should be enough to deliver the basic information and functionality of a site.

That philosophy is called Progressive Enhancement. I’m a fan, myself, but I don’t always adhere to it perfectly. For example, a <form> can be entirely functional in HTML, when it’s action attribute points to a URL where the form can be processed. Progressive Enhancement would have us build it that way. Then, when JavaScript executes, it takes over the submission and has the form submit via Ajax instead, which might be a nicer experience as the page won’t have to refresh. I like that. Taken further, any <button> outside a form is entirely useless without JavaScript, so in the spirit of Progressive Enhancement, I should wait until JavaScript executes to even put that button on the page at all (or at least reveal it). That’s the kind of thing where even those of us with the best intentions might not always toe the line perfectly. Just put the button in, Sam. Nobody is gonna die.

JavaScript’s all-powerfulness makes it an appealing target for those of us doing work on the web — particularly as JavaScript as a language has evolved to become even more powerful and ergonomic, and the frameworks that are built in JavaScript become even more-so. Back in 2015, it was already so clear that JavaScript was experiencing incredible growth in usage, Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, gave the developer world homework: “Learn JavaScript Deeply”³. He couldn’t have been more right. Half a decade later, JavaScript has done a good job of taking over front-end development. Particularly if you look at front-end development jobs.

While the web almanac might show us that only 5% of the top-zillion sites use React compared to 85% including jQuery, those numbers are nearly flipped when looking around at front-end development job requirements.

I’m sure there are fancy economic reasons for all that, but jobs are as important and personal as it gets for people, so it very much matters.

So we’re browser people in a sea of JavaScript building things for people. If we take a look at the job at a practical day-to-day tasks level, it’s a bit like this:

Translate designs into code

Think in terms of responsive design, allowing us to design and build across the landscape of devices

Build systemically. Construct components and patterns, not one-offs.

Apply semantics to content

Consider accessibility

Worry about the performance of the site. Optimize everything. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Just that first bullet point feels like a college degree to me. Taken together, all of those points certainly do.

This whole list is a bit abstract though, so let’s apply it to something we can look at. What if this website was our current project?

Our brains and fingers go wild!

Let’s build the layout with CSS grid. 

What fonts are those? Do we need to load them in their entirety or can we subset them? What happens as they load in? This layout feels like it will really suffer from font-shifting jank. 

There are some repeated patterns here. We should probably make a card design pattern. Every website needs a good card pattern. 

That’s a gorgeous color scheme. Are the colors mathematically related? Should we make variables to represent them individually or can we just alter a single hue as needed? Are we going to use custom properties in our CSS? Colors are just colors though, we might not need the cascading power of them just for this. Should we just use Sass variables? Are we going to use a CSS preprocessor at all?

The source order is tricky here. We need to order things so that they make sense for a screen reader user. We should have a meeting about what the expected order of content should be, even if we’re visually moving things around a bit with CSS grid.

The photographs here are beautifully shot. But some of them match the background color of the site… can we get away with alpha-transparent PNGs here? Those are always so big. Can any next-gen formats help us? Or should we try to match the background of a JPG with the background of the site seamlessly. Who’s writing the alt text for these?

There are some icons in use here. Inline SVG, right? Certainly SVG of some kind, not icon fonts, right? Should we build a whole icon system? I guess it depends on how we’re gonna be building this thing more broadly. Do we have a build system at all?

What’s the whole front-end plan here? Can I code this thing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Well, I know I can, but what are the team expectations? Client expectations? Does it need to be a React thing because it’s part of some ecosystem of stuff that is already React? Or Vue or Svelte or whatever? Is there a CMS involved?

I’m glad the designer thought of not just the “desktop” and “mobile” sizes but also tackled an in-between size. Those are always awkward. There is no interactivity information here though. What should we do when that search field is focused? What gets revealed when that hamburger is tapped? Are we doing page-level transitions here?

I could go on and on. That’s how front-end developers think, at least in my experience and in talking with my peers.

A lot of those things have been our jobs forever though. We’ve been asking and answering these questions on every website we’ve built for as long as we’ve been doing it. There are different challenges on each site, which is great and keeps this job fun, but there is a lot of repetition too.

Allow me to get around to the title of this article. 

While we’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for ages, there is a whole pile of new stuff we’re starting to be expected to do, particularly if we’re talking about building the site with a modern JavaScript framework. All the modern frameworks, as much as they like to disagree about things, agree about one big thing: everything is a component. You nest and piece together components as needed. Even native JavaScript moves toward its own model of Web Components.

I like it, this idea of components. It allows you and your team to build the abstractions that make the most sense to you and what you are building.

Your Card component does all the stuff your card needs to do. Your Form component does forms how your website needs to do forms. But it’s a new concept to old developers like me. Components in JavaScript have taken hold in a way that components on the server-side never did. I’ve worked on many a WordPress website where the best I did was break templates into somewhat arbitrary include() statements. I’ve worked on Ruby on Rails sites with partials that take a handful of local variables. Those are useful for building re-usable parts, but they are a far cry from the robust component models that JavaScript frameworks offer us today.

All this custom component creation makes me a site-level architect in a way that I didn’t use to be. Here’s an example. Of course I have a Button component. Of course I have an Icon component. I’ll use them in my Card component. My Card component lives in a Grid component that lays them out and paginates them. The whole page is actually built from components. The Header component has a SearchBar component and a UserMenu component. The Sidebar component has a Navigation component and an Ad component. The whole page is just a special combination of components, which is probably based on the URL, assuming I’m all-in on building our front-end with JavaScript. So now I’m dealing with URLs myself, and I’m essentially the architect of the entire site. [Sweats profusely]

Like I told ya, a whole pile of new responsibility.

Components that are in charge of displaying content are almost certainly not hard-coded with data in them. They are built to be templates. They are built to accept data and construct themselves based on that data. In the olden days, when we were doing this kind of templating, the data has probably already arrived on the page we’re working on. In a JavaScript-powered app, it’s more likely that that data is fetched by JavaScript. Perhaps I’ll fetch it when the component renders. In a stack I’m working with right now, the front end is in React, the API is in GraphQL and we use Apollo Client to work with data. We use a special “hook” in the React components to run the queries to fetch the data we need, and another special hook when we need to change that data. Guess who does that work? Is it some other kind of developer that specializes in this data layer work? No, it’s become the domain of the front-end developer.

Speaking of data, there is all this other data that a website often has to deal with that doesn’t come from a database or API. It’s data that is really only relevant to the website at this moment in time.

Which tab is active right now?

Is this modal dialog open or closed?

Which bar of this accordion is expanded?

Is this message bar in an error state or warning state?

How many pages are you paginated in?

How far is the user scrolled down the page?

Front-end developers have been dealing with that kind of state for a long time, but it’s exactly this kind of state that has gotten us into trouble before. A modal dialog can be open with a simple modifier class like <div class="modal is-open"> and toggling that class is easy enough with .classList.toggle(".is-open"); But that’s a purely visual treatment. How does anything else on the page know if that modal is open or not? Does it ask the DOM? In a lot of jQuery-style apps of yore, yes, it would. In a sense, the DOM became the “source of truth” for our websites. There were all sorts of problems that stemmed from this architecture, ranging from a simple naming change destroying functionality in weirdly insidious ways, to hard-to-reason-about application logic making bug fixing a difficult proposition.

Front-end developers collectively thought: what if we dealt with state in a more considered way? State management, as a concept, became a thing. JavaScript frameworks themselves built the concept right in, and third-party libraries have paved and continue to pave the way. This is another example of expanding responsibility. Who architects state management? Who enforces it and implements it? It’s not some other role, it’s front-end developers.

There is expanding responsibility in the checklist of things to do, but there is also work to be done in piecing it all together. How much of this state can be handled at the individual component level and how much needs to be higher level? How much of this data can be gotten at the individual component level and how much should be percolated from above? Design itself comes into play. How much of the styling of this component should be scoped to itself, and how much should come from more global styles?

It’s no wonder that design systems have taken off in recent years. We’re building components anyway, so thinking of them systemically is a natural fit.

Let’s look at our design again:

A bunch of new thoughts can begin!

Assuming we’re using a JavaScript framework, which one? Why? 

Can we statically render this site, even if we’re building with a JavaScript framework? Or server-side render it? 

Where are those recipes coming from? Can we get a GraphQL API going so we can ask for whatever we need, whenever we need it?

Maybe we should pick a CMS that has an API that will facilitate the kind of front-end building we want to do. Perhaps a headless CMS?

What are we doing for routing? Is the framework we chose opinionated or unopinionated about stuff like this?

What are the components we need? A Card, Icon, SearchForm, SiteMenu, Img… can we scaffold these out? Should we start with some kind of design framework on top of the base framework?

What’s the client state we might need? Current search term, current tab, hamburger open or not, at least.

Is there a login system for this site or not? Are logged in users shown anything different? 

Is there are third-party componentry we can leverage here?

Maybe we can find one of those fancy image components that does blur-up loading and lazy loading and all that.

Those are all things that are in the domain of front-end developers these days, on top of everything that we already need to do. Executing the design, semantics, accessibility, performance… that’s all still there. You still need to be proficient in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how the browser works. Being a front-end developer requires a haystack of skills that grows and grows. It’s the natural outcome of the web getting bigger. More people use the web and internet access grows. The economy around the web grows. The capability of browsers grows. The expectations of what is possible on the web grows. There isn’t a lot shrinking going on around here.

We’ve already reached the point where most front-end developers don’t know the whole haystack of responsibilities. There are lots of developers still doing well for themselves being rather design-focused and excelling at creative and well-implemented HTML and CSS, even as job posts looking for that dwindle.

There are systems-focused developers and even entire agencies that specialize in helping other companies build and implement design systems. There are data-focused developers that feel most at home making the data flow throughout a website and getting hot and heavy with business logic. While all of those people might have “front-end developer” on their business card, their responsibilities and even expectations of their work might be quite different. It’s all good, we’ll find ways to talk about all this in time.

In fact, how we talk about building websites has changed a lot in the last decade. Some of my early introduction to web development was through WordPress. WordPress needs a web server to run, is written in PHP, and stores it’s data in a MySQL database. As much as WordPress has evolved, all that is still exactly the same. We talk about that “stack” with an acronym: LAMP, or Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Note that literally everything in the entire stack consists of back-end technologies. As a front-end developer, nothing about LAMP is relevant to me.

But other stacks have come along since then. A popular stack was MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular and Node). Notice how we’re starting to inch our way toward more front-end technologies? Angular is a JavaScript framework, so as this stack gained popularity, so too did talking about the front-end as an important part of the stack. Node and Express are both JavaScript as well, albeit the server-side variant.

The existence of Node is a huge part of this story. Node isn’t JavaScript-like, it’s quite literally JavaScript. It makes a front-end developer already skilled in JavaScript able to do server-side work without too much of a stretch.

“Serverless” is a much more modern tech buzzword, and what it’s largely talking about is running small bits of code on cloud servers. Most often, those small bits of code are in Node, and written by JavaScript developers. These days, a JavaScript-focused front-end developer might be writing their own serverless functions and essentially being their own back-end developer. They’ll think of themselves as full-stack developers, and they’ll be right.

Shawn Wang coined a term for a new stack this year: STAR or Design System, TypeScript, Apollo, and React. This is incredible to me, not just because I kind of like that stack, but because it’s a way of talking about the stack powering a website that is entirely front-end technologies. Quite a shift.

I apologize if I’ve made you feel a little anxious reading this. If you feel like you’re behind in understanding all this stuff, you aren’t alone.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to a single developer who told me they felt entirely comfortable with the entire world of building websites. Everybody has weak spots or entire areas where they just don’t know the first dang thing. You not only can specialize, but specializing is a pretty good idea, and I think you will end up specializing to some degree whether you plan to or not. If you have the good fortune to plan, pick things that you like. You’ll do just fine.

The only constant in life is change.

– Heraclitus     – Motivational Poster         – Chris Coyier

¹ I’m a white dude, so that helps a bunch, too. ↩️ ² Browsers speak a bunch more languages. HTTP, SVG, PNG… The more you know the more you can put to work! ↩️ ³ It’s an interesting bit of irony that WordPress websites generally aren’t built with client-side JavaScript components. ↩️

The post The Widening Responsibility for Front-End Developers appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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😉SiliconWebX | 🌐CSS-Tricks

[ebortensor-blog]

Tolarian Community College got it pretty right. I think they missed comparing it to Mystery Boosters, and maybe giving credit for that Excellent product.

Cost wise it feels like the development costs for a master set must be less than, say, a standard set, as they are reprints that need curating and new art, rather than new rules which need developing.

Production cost per unit I guess is higher due to lower print run. I can get that. I don't believe it is $12 a pack higher.

So what differentiates these from being priced around a standard set other than the arbitrary label of 'premium product'? If it's scarcity, I think you could print more and it would sell, several times over, at a lower price. I am sure if it sold at $5, 6, 7, you could sell 10 times as many units.

People can get behind selling alt art version boosters of the cards at a higher price that look nicer for collectors. That's a clear differentiation. You can buy a booster with the cards or you can pay more - same cards functionaly but they are pretty. That is a choice.

I think what people have not been mentioning so much is Mystery Boosters. This product was so well received not only because it was a fantastic draft experience but because it was packed with reprints that people wanted. I've genuinely never seen my LGS so rammed full of excited people drafting mystery boosters. It was an excellent product, incredibly well received. You could have sold several multiples of what was printed in the first run.

Compare the two products. Mystery boosters could have two or even three rares. It contained many reprints people wanted. It retailed at around the same price as standard boosters. Yes no new art of course. But I, and I think many, struggle to see how it can be sold for four times the cost.

Hey Marc, I know that you probably won't answer this, but I really wanted you to pass this along if possible. Double masters while being a cool set (I am assuming), is priced out of my range. While you don't control pricing, I just wanted you to know that 300 dollars a box (before gouging) is going to really spoil a lot of the communities good will towards your company. I know that company line is "it's not for everyone", but Mr. Rosewater it's a bridge to far for this 15 year invested player.

I want to have a honest discussion with all of you. While making Magic the best game it can be is important to us, we are also a business. Part of our job as a business is to recognize all the various audiences and create products to serve them. That’s how we make money - finding player desires and filling them with products.

One of our audiences are invested players with a higher price threshold. That is, there are players who are willing to spend a lot of money for highly desired cards, be it reprints or alternate versions. It’s in our interest to make products for those players (things like Double Masters and collector boosters). Note that we take great care to make those products something that group is happy to buy.

The issue is those desirable cards are also desired by players who that product is not aimed for. Desirable cards are desirable cards. So when we make these products, that group gets upset because the prices seem so high. It feels like an insult. We made something they’d like, but we priced them out of being able to purchase it.

I get the ill will, but I also feel like not making products for that audience is unfair for both that audience and us. So I’m turning to all of you that feel upset. How can we make these products in a way that allows that audience to get what they want without all of you feeling like we’re doing harm to you?

[honeyedhoseok]

besitos | ta!jimin

genre: fluffity-fluff

word count: 16.3k

summary: Switching to a new major is always nerve-wracking, but having a totally hot TA to look at for the rest of the semester sure does ease the pain…

A/N: this most certainly would not have been posted without the help of my lovely best friends/beta readers/shook club members: @risinginfire & @sleevelessparkjimin . thanks for all of your help and endless support…we hope you all love TA!Jimin as much as we do <3

Your flats slapped against the sidewalk harshly, your jaunty speed-walking technique seemingly no good against the time, which read 11:26 on the small watch on your wrist. You sped on, the weight of your book bag feeling heavier and heavier on your shoulders with the amount of energy you were exerting to make it to your class on time. There were so many people out around campus because it was almost lunch time, and a sea of heads bobbed in front of you on both sides of the walkway while people whizzed past you on long-boards and bicycles. You cursed yourself again for not getting your bike chain fixed over the summer like your dad had advised—it would have come in handy when you were running late, like today.

It was the first day, and even though you knew there wasn’t much to cover other than the syllabus and attendance policies and where to buy the textbook, you still didn’t want to be late. This was your intro creative writing class, the one that you’d been looking forward to all week. This was the class that was going to tell you whether or not you would change your major from Psychology to Creative Writing in the fall—whether fiction writing really was your strong point, or if it was just a hobby you’d invested years of useless time into.

You looked at your watch again, eyes going wide at the sight that you had exactly a minute and a half to make it to class—which was still a good ways away. You broke out into a sprint, darting in and out of the people scattered in front of you, holding onto the straps of your book bag to keep it from bouncing up and down on your back and ignoring the judgmental stares of those whose eyes you met.

You burst into the lecture hall with twenty seconds to spare, taking in its vastness before quickly sliding into an empty seat near the back. You hated sitting at the back, but today you had no choice.

There was a good amount of people in your class—almost eighty the last time you’d looked at the class roster online—and you glanced around at who was there, looking for any familiar faces. People were talking among themselves, catching up with their friends and asking about each other’s summers, complimenting each other’s longer hair and tanner skin, asking about when the first frat party was going to be. There was an excited buzz that drifted throughout the room, the kind of buzz that only the first week of classes could bring before everyone got weighed down with assignments and homework.

You sighed, realizing there was no one you knew in your class. You didn’t expect to know anyone anyways. All of your friends were in the complete opposite majors than you—communications, chemistry, international business—and didn’t do anything creative in their spare time. You were digging around in your bag for the syllabus you’d printed out last night, just as an older woman stepped up to the podium that was fixated at front, fiddling with the microphone before speaking into it.

“Can everyone hear me? Okay, so, good afternoon everyone. I’m your head instructor for this course. You can call me Irene. First things first—is everyone supposed to be in CRW 201: Intro to Creative Writing from 11:30-12:45? If not, you might want to find what class you’re really supposed to be in, and quick.”

You looked around. No one moved, so Irene continued.

“Okay, good. Second, you’ll see on your syllabus that each of you was assigned a different section number. This intro class works a little different than most classes. On Tuesdays, we meet in here, in this lecture hall, all together and listen to various guest speakers that we’ll have throughout the semester. On Thursday, you’ll split off with your assigned TA—who you have depends on what section number was assigned to you—and you will have assignments and workshop and all the fun, exciting things that come with taking a creative writing class.”

There was a shuffling of papers immediately as she finished her sentence. Everyone was eager to know the name of their part-time teacher, and you found yourself flipping through your syllabus trying to find yours, too. All you had was a section number beside your last name: 008.

As Irene began telling a little about herself, you looked around once again, your eyes landing on a row of people sitting at the very front, right below where the podium was. They looked a little older, somehow more mature, than the average college student, but that didn’t matter because you could never tell anyone’s age these days anyway.

You noticed immediately that they were dressed nicer than everyone else in the lecture hall. They looked cool, in an effortless, fashionable way—like they were dressed the part of your stereotypical writer. You wanted to dislike their appearances, but you had to admit it was a nice breath of fresh air compared to the numerous amount of exercise shorts, big t-shirts and running sneakers that you saw around campus constantly.

You knew before Irene introduced them that they were the TAs. “I’m going to allow each of them to come up and introduce themselves—“

“Why can’t we introduce each other?” One of them yelled from their seat, and Irene laughed a little, shrugging her shoulders. She was obviously close with the TAs—you wondered how that came to be—had they had her class before as undergraduate students?

“Fine, introduce each other, then,” Irene agreed. “That should be more entertaining for a first day of class. Who’s first?”

They conversed among themselves in the front row, before a boy with yellowish-blonde dyed hair was pushed out of his seat and towards the front by a girl with dark hair. “Go first, Youngjae,” she murmured, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

“What, do I just pick who I want to introduce? Okay.” He too fiddled with the microphone, bringing it to his height before speaking softly into it. “Hello? Can everyone hear me?”

A few people murmured yes, and he laughed, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Okay well, hello everyone. I’m Youngjae, my concentration is in nonfiction and my class is section 001. I’m going to be introducing one of my fellow TA’s who I’ve known since we were undergrads. She is a fiction writer who specializes in fantasy—seriously, she writes some of the best alternate universe stuff I’ve ever read—“ he paused as the TAs chuckled among themselves, “—she’s been abroad three times, and she’s currently um, dating this handsome guy standing in front of you all today!”

A few girls in the class ‘aw’-ed along with the TAs and a few people clapped. You smiled, already enjoying the atmosphere of the class. It was so much different than your other, boring lecturers in the past who read off of power-point slides for an hour while you scribbled notes as quick as you could. Were these the perks of being a liberal arts student?

Youngjae laughed sheepishly, but you could see the apparent rosiness of his cheeks all the way from your seat at the back. “Everyone, I introduce to you my fellow TA, Jessica.”

Everyone in the lecture hall clapped and you watched as Jessica took Youngjae’s place on stage, swatting at his arm playfully as she passed him. Her long skirt swished around her as she walked daintily onto the stage, adjusting the mic again to her frame that was shorter than Youngjae’s.

“Like Youngjae said, I am a TA that specializes in fiction, but I also dabble in the other forms of creative writing as well. I’m excited to meet you all.”

Jessica then introduced Wendy, who introduced Ji-eun, who introduced DK, and so on, until there was one more TA left.

“This next TA, he’s—ladies, settle down, okay? Guys too, actually,” the TA named Taehyung warned, holding up his hands in a protective gesture. You sat up in your chair a little, curious to see the face of the last TA in the row. His back was turned to you, of course, so all you could see was a mop of shiny, dark hair and the collar of his white shirt. “He’s a poet, and a damn good one at that. He’s smart and funny, but he’s going to act shy when he gets up here. Don’t let it fool you, okay?”

The dark-haired TA turned to the side as someone whispered something to him, and even from your seat you could tell he had a gorgeous, genuine smile.

“He’s also got a killer sense of style and his hair is a work of art, just like his writing,” Taehyung added, and then whispered bastard underneath his breath into the microphone, earning laughs from the students in the lecture hall. “Those of you lucky enough to have him, meet your TA, Park Jimin.”

Jimin walked up to the podium, his eyes squinting from the force of the blinding smile that was plastered on his face. Taehyung dropped to his knees and bowed to him and he laughed, obviously embarrassed at his friend. Jimin was the type of person that laughed with his whole body, and the force of it had him half bent over, throwing himself clumsily up the rest of the steps and towards the podium.

The first thing you noticed was his short, but muscular build. His biceps flexed in his shirt as he, too adjusted the mic, and you could see the definition in his thigh muscles through the well-fitted black jeans he wore.

“Contrary to what he just said, I am kind of shy—just not about writing,” Jimin said, grinning as he flicked his fringe out of his eyes.

You, along with everyone else in the lecture hall seemed to be watching him intently. There was no shuffling of papers, no mumbling of voices. Hell, even the boys seemed to be paying attention, just as Taehyung had said.

“My section is 008, I’ll be your TA if you’re in that section. I’m Park Jimin—come to me if you have any questions or concerns about writing poetry, or if you just want to talk. I’m all ears.”

“Don’t tell them that!” Taehyung said loudly, “There are freshman in here! Do you want a lawsuit on your hands?”

Jimin laughed, though it was more of a giggle, and because he was still standing behind the podium, it echoed through the speakers of the lecture hall, amplifying the sound and spreading it throughout the room. His laugh made a happy smile creep onto your face, too, and you found your eyes still on him well after he found his seat and Irene took her place at the front again.

“Thank you, TAs, for introducing yourself. I’m glad the students got to see a little bit of your personality in that, it makes everyone so much more excited for Thursday, right?”

Everyone agreed loudly, the atmosphere rising once again at the realization that class was almost over.

“I’m going to call out the TA’s section numbers one more time so listen up. Youngjae 001. Tiffany 002. Ji-eun 003. DK 004. Wendy 005. Minhyuk 006. Taehyung 007. And Jimin 008. Look on your syllabus and find where their respective classrooms are, and I’ll see you all in here next Tuesday at 11:30. Have a good rest of your week!”

You looked down at your syllabus once again, trying to fight the smile that was forcing its way onto your face as your gaze zoned in once more on the digits beside your last name: 008.

Jimin was your TA, and you couldn’t wait until class on Thursday.

You got to class early on Thursday—so early, in fact, that you sat outside the door scrolling on your phone and sipping your coffee until pair of black combat boots walked up beside you, jingling keys as they struggled to unlock the door.

You peeked up to see Jimin in a loose-fitting white t-shirt and black jeans—an outfit strikingly similar to what he was wearing on Tuesday—a few notebooks piled under one arm and his book bag on his back as he struggled to hold onto his coffee while opening the door. You scrambled to your feet, offering to take the coffee and books out of his hand with a shy smile.

“Thanks,” he nodded, passing off his stuff to you and finally turning the key and pushing the door open. The classroom was filled with a small desk off to the side, a clean, seemingly-unused whiteboard and markers, and a long round table that stretched from one end of the room to the other. Jimin sat his things down at the end closest to the door, and you nonchalantly grabbed the seat next to him, setting your book bag down by your legs and Jimin’s coffee and books beside you.

You pulled out your phone, glancing at the time and swiping the screen to answer some messages. You peeked up every once in awhile at Jimin, who was shuffling around the room looking through drawers for something.

“I can’t find the damn mouse for the computer.”

It took you a second to realize he was talking to you. “Oh—“ you jumped up, looking around and spotting it across the room under the desk. You scooped it up, handing it to Jimin and he thanked you. Another person walked into the room then, setting their things down and immediately pulling out their phone, not bothering to speak to either of you due to the massive headphones they were sporting on their ears.

“Are you a freshman?” Jimin asked, plopping down into his chair beside you finally. He was intimidating up close—though he gave off nothing but friendly vibes with his charming smile, he was completely and utterly beautiful. His hair laid messily on his forehead, strands escaping the sunglasses that were trying hard to keep his hair back but failing, and though his jaw was sharp, it was paired with a seemingly unreal smooth, baby face.

How old was he?

“No, I’m actually a junior.”

“Oh? But you’re taking an intro class? Is it to fulfill one of your gen ed requirements?”

“Um, no,” you laughed nervously, picking at a piece of the tabletop that was chipping away. Jimin’s gaze was burning into you, even though you knew his questions were harmless. “I’ve been a psychology major since I started college, but it’s not really my thing, you know? Fulfilling my parents dreams, all that jazz.” You waved your hand in the air dismissively, suddenly wondering why you felt the need to tell him all of this. “I really want to write, and so I’m kind of using this class as the first step. If I do well then I’ll keep going—“

“And what if you don’t?” Jimin chuckled a little, his eyebrows raising.

You sighed wistfully. “Then I guess I’ll continue on in my parent’s footsteps.”

“That wasn’t to discourage you, I’m sure you’ll do fine. I’m a pretty easy TA,” Jimin said reassuringly, shooting you a smile before more students filed into the classroom and he began greeting them. You bit your lip, looking down at your phone once more, only then starting to feel the hotness creeping up your neck and face. You quickly swiped to your camera, looking at your nervous, flushed cheeks and hoping Jimin thought it was because you’d just come in from the sweltering heat outside and not because you had melted into a puddle the moment he’d spoken to you.

Class started not long after and Jimin began with introducing himself. He was a first year graduate student, having obtained his undergraduate degree from a college up north. His concentration was poetry, and he drew inspiration from poets like Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot in his own work, which was mostly a collection of random pieces he’d written over the years when inspiration struck or from assignment prompts in his undergrad.

Jimin passed out the syllabus, quickly going over his grading rubric and classroom expectation. “This grading system is basically the same as every other TA in the building. You’ll have five small, one-page assignments that will be due on Thursdays in this classroom. You’ll read them aloud, so bring copies for other students. Some weeks we’ll do workshop, where your peers will give you their opinions on your work,” he paused, looking up at the faces around him, trying to gauge reactions. “It’s not as horrible as you think, don’t worry.”

He flashed a warm, beautiful, reassuring smile that made your eyes zone in on his lips before he continued, “Your participation grade comes from what you do inside the classroom—giving feedback, asking questions, paying attention to me—and also what you do when we have class in the lecture hall. If you ask questions, take notes and look attentive you’ll be fine. Your final portfolio is due at the end of the semester, and that includes a fiction piece, a nonfiction piece and two poems. You can worry about that a little later on, though. Right now, focus on your first assignment and the feedback you get from that. Then, go from there.”

Jimin looked around once more, before raising his eyebrows. “Any questions?”

A girl at the end of the table raised her hand. “It says our first assignment is due next Thursday. Are you going to tell us about it today?”

“I am, but first we need to do introductions.” You could see the entire table stiffen at once at his words, including yourself. Icebreakers were so annoying and awkward, and you hated them. “Yeah, I know no one likes them but I need to learn your names, and fast. So it’s slightly necessary.”

Jimin grabbed his grading book from his desk and returned to his seat. Everyone was dead silent in the classroom so he peeked up from under his bangs, raking his eyes over the strained expressions. “Oh, come on. I won’t make you talk to each other or anything, I’m just gonna ask you to say your name, major and if you could be any insect in the world, what would it be. Simple enough, right?”

You bit your lip as Jimin called the first person’s name to begin, racking your head for an answer that would be suitable. You wanted to take the question seriously, and not just say something like a butterfly or a bumblebee like some of the other girls in the class were saying. It went quickly around the table until it got to you, and Jimin laid his curious gaze on you, dark eyes searching your face as he spoke.

“Last but not least?”

You cleared your throat nervously. “Um, I’m Y/N. Psychology major, but I’m thinking of changing that to Creative Writing.” A smile bloomed on Jimin’s face at this, making his eyes close partially from the force of it. “If I could be any insect…I would be a gypsy moth.”

“A gypsy moth?” Jimin repeated, his eyes growing a little wider. “That’s interesting, I’ve never heard anyone say that one before. I love that.”

He grinned at you then, and you smiled a little back, moving your gaze down to the table in front of you to get away from the pure sunshine that radiated from his teeth when he smiled. The other students in the class seemed to be impressed by your answer as well, and it only made you more embarrassed. You should have just said a butterfly or something simple like everyone else.

“Now, on to the assignment, and then I’ll let you guys get out of here early since it’s technically still syllabus day for this class.”

Jimin got up from his chair to walk around aimlessly while he talked, and you watched the muscles in his legs flex in his jeans, making you swallow harshly.

“The first unit is poetry, so of course I’m really excited to see what you guys come up with. For this first piece, write a page—it can be two lines, it can be three stanzas, I don’t care—about a body part or multiple body parts. But I don’t want to know what those body part are. I want you to use your best metaphor skills to make it seem as though you are talking about something else entirely.”

“Like a comparison?” A guy asked, his brow furrowing.

“Exactly, and you can use anything. You can compare skinny fingers to tree limbs, hair to long, golden strands of hay, someone’s smile to…a cheshire cat. Anything you can think of. Don’t think too hard and just let it flow naturally, okay?” Jimin said, smiling softly once more, his eyes scanning over the room. “Any questions? You guys are free to go if not.”

You quickly wrote the assignment down in your planner, stuffing it back into your book bag as people around you shuffled out of the classroom. You were the last one to leave and Jimin watched you, looking like a question was poised on the edge of his lips.

You gave a nervous head nod, swinging your book bag onto your back and walking towards the exit when he spoke. “Y/N, what made you pick a gypsy moth?”

You froze, looking over your shoulder at him. You must have looked completely shocked because Jimin cleared his throat awkwardly, chuckling. “I’m just curious is all. Are you interested in insects?”

“God, no,” you blurted out, and Jimin’s smile grew in size. “It just came to me because I was watching something on TV the other day about nocturnal animals. I can kind of relate, since I’m most active at night so I—“ you paused, laughing embarrassingly at your own rant. “Sorry, that was way too much information.”

“No, no, it’s fine. That’s great, I completely understand,” he stared intensely for a second too long, and you felt like your knees were about to give out from underneath you. “See you on Tuesday, Y/N.”

“See you,” you mumbled, turning on your heel and quickly exiting the classroom, ducking your head down and closing your eyes briefly, cursing yourself in your head for being so lame. Because of this, you weren’t looking where you were going as you walked down the short hallway, and stumbled right into Taehyung as he was coming out of his classroom. The books that were in his hand tumbled to the floor, sliding gracefully across the linoleum away from the both of you.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” you said, dropping to your knees to gather the books as Taehyung did the same.

“Don’t worry about it, it was totally me. I was rushing to get across campus to my girlfriend,” he peeked up at you under his bangs, giving you a friendly smile that made you smile back at him.

“You know how demanding women can be, Tae. You better hurry,” Jimin said from behind you, and you whipped your head around to see him leaning against his doorframe with his arms crossed, an amused expression on his face.

“Yeah I know man, I’m supposed to run across campus to meet her in between classes and pay for her lunch. What’s with that? Tsk, women!” he grumbled, shaking his head as he stood back up. “I’ll see you tonight, right Jimin? Thanks again—“ he paused, waiting for you to fill in the blank.

You handed Taehyung his books, “Y/N,” you said. “Sorry. Again.”

Jimin disappeared back inside his classroom and Taehyung took off the way he was going before, so you adjusted the straps on your book bag, settling the weight comfortably on your shoulders before you began the walk back to your apartment.

“How was class?” your roommate Sana asked as you set your stuff down, closing the door behind you. She was in a towel on a barstool at the counter, shoveling cereal into her face as she typed on her laptop. “Bio is a bust, by the way. Lab is gonna suck real hard at seven am every Tuesday. I can’t wait to die a slow, painful death every week.”

You laughed, grabbing a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. “It was fine, I guess. I got my first poetry assignment,” you paused, fanning yourself. “Jesus, it’s hot as balls in here. What does Jihyo have the AC on?”

“Oh, sorry,” Sana hopped off the bar stool, going over to the thermostat and cutting it down. You sagged with relief at the familiar hum of the unit running, pumping cool air through the vent above you. “I heard extra steamy showers are good for your pores so I cut the heat on for a second. Jihyo is in her room passed out, she went out last night.”

“Already? Damn. Well I’m sure she’ll be good and pissed when she wakes up in a pool of her own sweat,” you muttered, making Sana laugh. “Are we still going out tonight?”

After meeting last year in a club downtown, Thursdays had become you, Sana and Jihyo’s designated night out. All of you made sure your class schedules revolved around having no Friday classes for the event since all of the best deals at the bars downtown were on Thirsty Thursday.

“I think so? That’s probably why she’s napping, so she’ll be ready. What better way to celebrate the first week of school being over?” She rose again to walk to the sink and rinse out her bowl. “Wait, tell me some stuff about hot TA guy. Was he everything you dreamed of and more?”

You rolled your eyes. “It’s not even like that—he’s really intelligent. He seems chill about teaching, too, so hopefully this class will be an easy A.”

“So you get a hot TA and an easy class and I get Biology at seven am on Thursdays?” Sana looked above at the ceiling, holding her hands out in question to the divinity. “Why? What have I ever done to you?”

“I’m positive he’s not in the mood to talk to you right now,” you quipped, giving her an annoyed look that she ignored.

Jihyo chose that moment to wake up, and you and Sana heard her angry footsteps towards her door seconds before it was flung open, “Can someone tell me why in the fuck I’m lying in the fucking Sahara in my own bedroom? My armpits look like swimming pools!”

Sana and Jihyo were still bickering later that night as the three of you stood outside, waiting for your Uber that was going to take you downtown.

“Are any of those dumb home remedies actually doing anything for your skin? Because, to be honest, you look the exact fucking same every day when you wake up.”

“When my pores are closed up when I’m older and yours are still the size of the Grand Canyon, we’ll see who’s talking then,” Sana snapped, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

“My pores are fine!”

“Yeah, sure they are. Tell that to the grease spot on your forehead right now.”

You closed your eyes, blowing a long stream of air out of your nose to keep yourself centered. You and your roommates were all really good friends—you wouldn’t have wanted to live with each other if you weren’t. It was just that sometimes Sana and Jihyo would get in these moods where everything the other did pissed them off—today was one of those times—and you were stuck babying them to get along with each other until they got over it.

“You guys, cut that shit out so our Uber driver doesn’t get pissed,” you grumbled as you watched a black town car sidle up to the curb a few feet in front of you. “Both of you just need a drink.”

“Oh how right you are, Y/N,” Jihyo sang as she brushed past you, making sure to take the front seat so that there was physical space between her and Sana. You noticed her flip the sun visor down immediately, dabbing at her forehead with a little powder despite her earlier words, making Sana snort in the seat beside you.

“You ladies heading out tonight?” your driver asked, looking back at you in the rearview mirror.

“Yes sir, to the KGB,” you answered. “Thank you for picking us up.”

He hummed a response before turning the radio back up to a no-talking level, jazz music filling the car as he pulled away from the curb. You looked at Sana, raising your eyebrows, to which she mimed pulled a zipper across her mouth. At least this way you knew there was no way for Sana and Jihyo to resume their bickering.

The ride took no longer than fifteen minutes, and you were soon pulling up at the familiar building that had been home to more-than-a-few cases of alcohol-induced puking for your group. Months before you had turned twenty-one, you were using a fake to sneak yourself in for night-long excursions with Sana and Jihyo so that you wouldn’t miss out on anything. Now it felt good to be holding your real ID in your hand as the three of you got out of the car, following the dip of the pavement down to the doors of the club.

“Yes! Drinks are half off tonight until twelve!” You clicked your phone on, checking the time. “That means I have about forty-five minutes to get my fill. If you’ll excuse me.”

You separated from your roommates to sidle up at the bar, perching yourself on a stool and placing your clutch and phone on the counter in front of you. “I’ll have a margarita please,” you hummed politely, giving the bartender a smile. “The biggest size you have.”

“Jesus, Y/N, you can’t wait for us to catch up? I didn’t even get to scope out the place before you disappeared,” Sana grumbled, sitting on your left side as Jihyo sat on your right. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m not here for the bickering tonight, I just wanna drink.”

“Me too,” Jihyo said, grabbing the bartender’s attention. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

“I guess I will too,” Sana agreed. “Put it on my tab.”

While you waited, you looked around, taking in the usual scenes of the KGB. There were some people in booths sipping on their drinks as they yelled to their friends to be heard above the pounding music coming from the speakers. The rhythm beat a steady pattern against your chest and you nodded your head in time, enjoying it. You guys had come in at the perfect time—right before the normal Thursday crowd showed up at twelve—so you could actually spend some time together before Sana and Jihyo found themselves grinding against some strangers on the dance floor.

“You gonna sit in your usual spot tonight? Or you gonna make a move on someone?” Jihyo asked, leaning in and playfully nudging your side.

“Don’t be stupid,” Sana yelled, leaning in over you to be heard by Jihyo. “Y/N never goes out of her comfort zone.”

“I’m out of my comfort zone just being here with you two right now,” you grumbled, pushing both of their heads out of the way so that you could grab your margarita from the bartender. “Shut up and drink your damn drink.”

“Yes ma’am!”

“See, that’s why you never go home with anyone,” Jihyo commented in between sips. “Your attitude scares people away.

“Bite me!”

“That’s a start,” Sana said, licking some of the salt off of her rim. “Say that to someone and I bet you get a grade A dicking-down.”

You groaned, looking up at the ceiling above you for help. “Hey, remember when Sana asked you what she ever did to you earlier? Well what the fuck did I do to have to deal with this tonight, huh?”

“Sorry, line’s busy,” Sana chirped, laughing as she pretended to hang up the phone on the divinity. “Fine, we’ll leave you alone for now, but no grumbling later when I take home that one over there.” She pointed over you and Jihyo’s shoulders at someone, making the both of your turn to follow the direction of her baby pink fingernail.

Standing by the door was Taehyung and a few other TA’s—you recognized Youngjae and Minhyuk as they filed in behind him—all dressed in clubbing attire that made them almost unrecognizable when compared to their outfits from Tuesday.

“Oh my god,” you slapped Jihyo’s arm in front of you repeatedly. “Those are the TA’s from my creative writing class.”

“What the fuck are they doing here? Shouldn’t they be brooding? You know, hunched over their journals writing about how shitty the world is?” Jihyo asked, stirring her straw in her margarita absentmindedly.

“I’ve told you a thousand times not all writers are like that.”

“And I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Wait,” Sana said, leaning close to you again. “Does that mean hot TA guy is here? Is he the guy I just pointed at?”

“God, no, that’s Taehyung,” you shook your head. “Jimin isn’t with them.” You couldn’t help the disappointment that settled into your stomach at realizing his mop of black hair wasn’t with the others. You remembered him saying earlier that he would see Taehyung tonight, was he just running late?

“Damn I need to be a writer,” Sana commented, her eyes darkening with the thoughts that were running through her head as she watched Taehyung make his way to a booth a little ways away from the bar. You turned around quickly as the group walked past, not wanting to be noticed just yet. You weren’t sure he would notice you anyway, but you still wanted the comfort of watching the TA’s outside of the classroom for a bit.

Taehyung seemed to be the leader of the group, his mop of tawny hair reflecting in the lighting above the book as he quickly got everyone’s preferences and headed over to the bar. He was lively, his wide, inviting smile never leaving his face as he fought to keep the atmosphere of the group from falling. It was a little different than Jimin—you figured Taehyung was the type to lead a conversation if  you were to talk to him–whereas with Jimin it seemed he would rather listen than talk.

You thought quickly about gathering your things to leave and head out to the dancefloor as he walked over, but Sana’s grip on your wrist kept you imprisoned to your barstool.

“He’s coming!” she yelled a little too loudly, and you shushed her. “Should I talk to him?”

“He has a girlfriend.”

“What?”

“He has a girlfriend!” you said a little louder to be heard over the music, just as Taehyung sidled up at the bar a few feet from your group of three.

“I have a what?” Taehyung said, grinning and raising an eyebrow at you. “Y/N? What are you doing here?”

You raised your drink. “Celebrating the end of the week, you?”

“Same,” he replied, turning to give the bartender his order before focusing back on you. “I thought you were a freshman?”

You laughed. “So did Jimin, it’s okay. I’m a junior.” You flashed him your ID, “See?”

“Good to know,” he nodded. “Let’s keep this meeting under wraps, okay? TA’s wanna have a little fun sometimes, too, you know?”

“Of course.” Sana and Jihyo nodded with you. “Speaking of him,” you cleared your throat slightly, “Is he here?”

“Who? Jimin?” Taehyung asked, just as the bartender sat down three drinks in front of him. “Nah, he cancelled. Said he was gonna take a walk instead, or something like that.”

“At this time of night?”

“Yeah,” Taehyung shrugged. “He’s a weird guy, don’t ask.”

You nodded and laughed, but you really wanted to pout. Your mind drifted to the possibility of what Jimin would have worn—a tight-fitting button-up with his thighs flexing in black jeans and his boots—and the thought alone had your tongue darting out to lick your dry lips.

“Oh,” Sana dumped you back into reality with a hard elbow to the ribs. “These are my roommates, Sana and Jihyo.”

“Taehyung,” he said, flashing them a charming smile as he gathered up his drinks. “Well, I’ll be off now. You ladies have a good night, okay? Don’t tell anyone you saw us here, and I’ll tell Jimin to give you an A.” He winked at you before rushing back to his table, where DK and Minhyuk were yelling about how long it was taking.

“He is so damn cute,” Sana commented, watching his back for a few more seconds before she turned around, slurping down the last of her margarita through her straw. She sat the glass back on the counter, sliding off the bar stool and straightening her skirt. “But it’s time for my Plan B, I’ll see you guys later.”

“We’re getting separate Ubers back home if you get too lit!” Jihyo yelled at her back as she walked off, only getting a suggestive wink from Sana in return before she disappeared into the crowd.

Jihyo left you not long after, and you ended up in your usual spot—in a booth in the back corner, sipping your third drink, playing on your phone. You weren’t in the mood to dance tonight. You honestly weren’t in the mood to do anything. What annoyed you the most was that you felt that your sour mood had something to do with you being slightly pouty over Jimin not showing.

You’d only been in his class two days, but you were already interested in him as a person. You wanted to know more about his hobbies, if he took walks at night often, what he did in his spare time—and mostly, you wanted to know about his poetry. You wondered what his writing notebooks looked like–were they mostly filled up with scribbles of random inspiration? Or did they contain neat, hand-written pages filled with his intimate thoughts and feelings? You wondered if he wrote haikus or free-verse, or if his poems were ekphrastic or narrative or sonnets.

Your mind wandered the whole weekend back to him—when you were doing laundry Friday afternoon, when you, Sana and Jihyo sat down to watch a movie on Saturday night, when you were eating breakfast at the dining hall on Monday—and it made you as antsy as ever to see him Tuesday in the lecture hall.

You grabbed a coffee from the café on campus before heading to class on Tuesday morning, your casual walk a complete opposite from the last Tuesday you’d headed towards the building in a sweaty, rushing mess. You had a draft of your poem stashed in a folder in your book bag, a few good lines you’d thought of over the weekend randomly and jotted down before you forgot. You hoped that lecture would give you a better idea of what to write about, since the guest speaker was a poetry writer from the department.

When you walked into the lecture hall you spotted Jimin immediately. He was standing in the middle of the left side of chairs, and he beckoned you over with a smile and a wave that had your stomach flip-flopping.

“All the TA’s are sitting with their students, so this is our section.” He gestured at the three rows behind him. You dropped your stuff to the ground immediately, settling into a chair and taking a sip of coffee. “Is that a caramel macchiato?” he asked, and you almost choked at how fast you swallowed so you could answer him.

“Yeah, extra drizzle,” you grinned through watery eyes, shaking the cup at him.

“That’s my favorite, they’re the best!”

You took mental note of this, grinning to yourself a little as more of your classmates filed in, the auditorium getting louder in volume as people started talking to their friends.

The guest speaker ended up being boring, and you found your mind drifting to other things as he droned on in the background about the importance of keeping a writing journal. You started thinking back to your poem, how you’d began writing about hands and all the things you thought about when you saw them, but you’d gotten nowhere. The assignment was a little harder than you thought it was to begin with, and you found yourself in your room staring a blank document for over half an hour before you shut your laptop down, joining your noisy roommates in the living room.

When you came back to, the guest speaker was just finishing up—you’d zoned out for the entire thirty minutes he was talking. Jimin stood up, holding up his hands to the few people in your class that were already on their feet, slinging their book bags onto their shoulders eagerly.

“Since lecture ended early today, I just wanted to take this time to see if anyone has any last minute questions about the prompt since your piece is due at the beginning of the next class.”

The rest of the auditorium filed out quickly, leaving only the TA’s and a few of their students behind. Joy, the girl sitting next to you, raised her hand to speak.

“I was wondering if we could include the body part in our piece somehow? I’m having a hard time not being obvious about what I’m talking about.”

“Ah, I see.” Jimin nodded his head. “What’s your part?”

“Eyes.”

“Okay, and do you have anything written?”

“I have a little,” Joy said sheepishly, smiling to cover up her embarrassment. “Truthfully, I haven’t gotten very far.”

“I’ve realized a lot of you are thinking too hard about this. Think about a person that you’ve seen before–it could be your current boyfriend or girlfriend, or a past one, it could be a person you had a crush on, or just someone who intrigues you–” You could have sworn you saw Jimin’s eyes flicker to yours at the comment, but it was too brief to be sure. “– there has to be something captivating about them, right? Think about that moment. Then picture all the beautiful things in nature you’ve seen with your own two eyes. Now compare the two. Don’t think too hard, and if you need to mention your body part a little in the poem, don’t worry about it. Do it. Do whatever you want. Poetry shouldn’t be forced.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. As a few more people raised their hands with questions, your mind was already racing. You pulled your printed out draft and grabbed a pen, quickly scribbling down the words that came to mind:

On the petals of a morning lily,

Your thoughts tumble over like dew,

Dripping honey into my ears.

The silky sweet sound of your voice

Pulls me in until I, too, am resting on the same petals

That attract bees and butterflies alike.

Do they feel your enticing powers like I do?

You stopped for a moment and read over it. It was a little choppy and needed some better wording, but it was definitely good for a start. It was a shock that what was on the paper had just come out of your brain a few seconds ago, but what was even more troubling to you was that the whole time you had been writing, you pictured one person and one person only.

“Y/N, it looks like inspiration just struck you,” Jimin said, coming over to plop into the chair beside you, a smile gracing his delicate features. You laughed slightly, moving to cover up your paper with your hand when Jimin stopped you. “I have to grade this, remember? I’m gonna read it one way or another.”

“I’ll let you read it when I’m finished,” you insisted stubbornly, snatching the paper and holding it at arm’s length away from you. Jimin giggled, the sound tinkling in your ears and making your stomach flip flop.

“Fine, okay. You win.”

You noticed that it was only you and Joy left from class now, and she was two rows behind you with her eyes focused on her laptop screen. Jimin’s proximity to you was suddenly all you could think about and your eyes zoned in on his knee that was just barely brushing against your own.

“Sorry,” he apologized, moving away from you and settling back into his chair. “Do you have any questions about the prompt for me?”

“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of how my poem will go. I just wrote a really good intro that needs some editing, but I think it will do.”

“That’s great.” Jimin smiled again and then his expression turned apologetic, as did his tone. “Now, I’ve got some bad news.”

Your brow furrowed, and your chest suddenly felt heavy with anticipation. “What is it?”

“A bunch of people dropped out of Taehyung’s class, so he only has about four students now. Since our classrooms are close to each other, I told him I would give him two of my students, and Youngjae is going to give him one of his so he can still have a decent-sized class. So…I’m offering you and Joy.”

You blinked. “I’m gonna be in Taehyung’s class now?”

“Yeah…” Jimin scratched the back of his head awkwardly, “I’m sorry, I know this is really annoying to ask of you, but—“

“Wait, why me?” You could actually hear how crestfallen your voice sounded, but you couldn’t help it.

“Oh, because I promised Taehyung good students.” He grinned again, as if that was going to make up for the fact that he was crushing your dreams in front of your face—even though he didn’t know it. “But you can still come to me for class on Thursday, and then the following Tuesday Taehyung will officially be your TA. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I guess,” you said, avoiding his eyes. You began packing up, trying hard not to show on your face how much this was bothering you. Why did Jimin have to pick you to move to Taehyung’s class? There were plenty of other “good” students to choose from. You were sure of it.

“Great. See you on Thursday, Y/N. Have a good day!” He stood up and went over to talk to Joy, leaning close to her like he’d just done you, lowering his voice to ask her did she want to move classes, flashing her the same toothy grin as he did to you. You swung your book bag onto your back, pressing your lips into a harsh line as you trudged out of the auditorium and towards your apartment.

“Aw it’s okay, Y/N. Having a hot TA was too good to be true anyways,” Jihyo said, patting your back sadly. “It’s not like you were gonna bone him or anything.”

Sana stopped digging into her food to hold a finger up at the two of you. “Um? You still have Taehyung. He’s almost as hot as they come.”

“You haven’t even seen Jimin in comparison!”

“Doesn’t matter. Hey, you wanted to bone him?”

“No! I never said anything about that!”

“So you just talk about hot guys with no intentions of wanting them? Y/N, be realistic.”

“I am being realistic! He’s my fucking TA!”

“Show me the rules that say you can’t bone your TA.”

“Oh my god. I am not having this conversation with you two,” you snapped, getting off of the couch to go into your room and shut the door. You flopped onto your bed, huffing out a breath of air into the fluffy gray blanket beneath you. You had more things to worry about than getting moved out of a class into another one—such as the chapters of psychology that were waiting to be read before class tomorrow—so you pulled out your book and got to work on those so you could feel like you were doing something productive.

The next few days passed by slowly but nothing could stop Thursday from coming. You finished your poem the night before around one in the morning, after playing around with the wording countless times before you finally settled on something that satisfied you. You printed it off and showed up to class two minutes late, walking in just as Jimin was checking off people’s names on the attendance sheet.

“Everyone take out your pieces and pass them down. I’ll spare you this time and we won’t read them aloud, but for the rest of the semester, be prepared to share the things you write with your classmates. “

Jimin was dressed head to toe in black today, though if it were possible, his hair seemed to be even darker in color than the v-neck he wore. It glowed with a slight blue tint under the florescent lights, settling perfectly back into place each time he ran his hand through the raven strands. You swallowed harshly again as he pushed his chair back, making you notice the material of his jeans stretching as his thigh muscles flexed.

You pinched yourself underneath the table as he reached for a marker in the drawer of his desk. You desperately needed to get a grip on your hormones.

Jimin asked the class for all the kinds of poetry they knew and wrote down everyone’s responses on the board as people began shouting them out. He talked a little about how some forms worked better for certain poetry content, and how the “look” of your poem could also affect the way people read them.

“Has anyone ever read an E.E. Cummings poem? His form was all over the place, but it was for a reason. It keeps readers intrigued, and makes them work for what he’s trying to convey. Don’t make everything easy. Think out of the box.”

Class came to an end much too quickly for your liking. You tucked your notebook back into your bag, pulling out your headphones for the walk back to your apartment when Jimin stopped you. “Hey Y/N, can you hang back for a second?”

“Yeah, sure,” you nodded, sitting back into your chair.

Jimin waited until the class cleared out before speaking. “I just wanted to say I was sorry for yesterday…you seemed a little upset with me for asking you to change classes.”

You shook your head immediately, already feeling embarrassed at how easily your expression had obviously given you away. “No, no! Really, it’s okay. I was just caught off guard.”

“You don’t have to go, you know? I can ask one of the other students—“

“No, really. It’s fine. I promise.” You gave him your most convincing smile, not wanting to let him down. If Jimin wanted to move you and thought that was best, well, you were going to act like you thought it was, too.

“Are you sure?” he asked, searching your face for any tell-tale signs that you were lying. “Okay, then. It was great to have you for the little time that I did.” He laughed slightly, but this time instead of filling you with warmth it only made your stomach hurt. “I’m always here if you need anything. Taehyung is starting out with poetry as well, but his concentration is nonfiction, so if you ever want my opinion on something feel free to stop by. You know what my office hours are, right?”

You nodded once.

“Great. I mean it. Really, anytime. I’d be happy to talk about poems with you…I’ve already kind of looked at yours and it’s fantastic.”

Your eyebrows shot up on your forehead. “Really? Oh my god, thank you! I was really worried about it.”

“I’m not sure why,” he tilted his head at you, and you watched as his bangs slid across his forehead. You wanted nothing more than to reach out and smooth them back, feel the strands slip through your fingers, watch as they sprung back into place—“It’s great. Poetry might be your thing, Y/N…we’d love to have some more people concentrate in poetry in the department. If you keep doing well, I would highly suggest considering it.”

“Wow,” you could feel your face heating up from the praise. “Thank you so much, I appreciate it. And I’m not upset about being in Taehyung’s class, I promise.”

How could you be upset when Jimin was complimenting you so well? Your bones felt like they were on fire—as well as your face.

“No problem. Have a good day Y/N, I’ll see you around.”

It turned out that you didn’t see Jimin around. At all.

The following week, you went into lecture only to find out that Taehyung’s class sat on the opposite side of room from Jimin’s, and you were too busy taking frantic notes on ekphrastic poems that you couldn’t be bothered to look over at him.

Taehyung’s classroom vibe was a lot different than Jimin’s, as well. He was as energetic and friendly as he’d been the night you saw him at the bar, and it made you even more intimidated to talk to him about your work—inside and outside of the classroom. There was something about Jimin’s soft-spoken personality that made it easier, while the fact that Taehyung’s boldness made you not want to say anything at all.

When you were stuck on an assignment, you toughed it out and turned in whatever you could, taking the consequences as you received a few unsatisfactory grades. You knew you were being somewhat pouty about the whole situation but you didn’t know what else to do. You felt stupid asking Jimin for help—if you were as great as he said you were then why were you getting stuck all the time?

Every Thursday when you walked out of Taehyung’s class, you could hear Jimin bidding everyone goodbye in his own classroom, just a few doors down. You could hear the tinkling of his laughter floating down the hallway sometimes, and it irked you that you weren’t there to see his head thrown back in joy, his mouth open and his eyes nearly shut, the genuinely happy noises floating from his mouth.

You saw Taehyung and Minhyuk a few more times while downtown with your roommates but much to your disappointment, Jimin was never with them. It seemed he was always so close but so far away. Now that he wasn’t your TA, you had absolutely no reason to talk to him or see him, and you hated how much it bothered you that you didn’t. When you were in his class, there was little to no contact with him, so why did you feel so empty now that he wasn’t around? You knew you were way too into him but you couldn’t help it. Your middle-school crush had developed into full-blown infatuation over the course of a few weeks. The saying “absence makes the heart grow fond,” had never meant more to you, and you hated it. Absolutely hated it.

You were grateful as time went on that your workload was there to distract you. You turned in “mini-assignments”—as Taehyung liked to call them—which were small, less-than-one-page prompts that were due twice a week. You fell into the routine of doing them the night before since they weren’t that hard or important, and they normally took you about thirty minutes to complete.

You opened your computer on Wednesday night, signing into it and watching as your background of you, Sana and Jihyo popped up. You were completely shitfaced, sitting on the ground behind Sana and Jihyo as they posed cheekily for the photo they’d convinced a passerby to take. All it took was a bat of Sana’s eyelashes and he was taking the phone out of her hand, backing up a few paces to take the photo.

“Y/N, stand up! Hurry up, this guy is gonna take the picture!” Jihyo had yelled at you, slinging her arm around Sana’s neck and pulling her close.

“No! I want to go home,” you’d slurred. You remembered drinking on an empty stomach that night like an idiot, ruining yours and your roommate’s time. When you talked about the incident now it was funny, but they were so angry at you for making them leave the club early when it happened. “You guys, I think I’m gonna puke.”

“Wait until after the picture. Are you ready, dude? Okay, 1, 2, 3, cheese!”

The flash popped in the darkness, and Sana and Jihyo came out great, leaning with their arms wrapped around each other, eyes closed as they put on their best toothy, drunk smile. You were sitting behind them, a pout on your face and your arms crossed like a small child. The photo reminded you of your relationship with them at times, and so it became your favorite.

You opened a word document, putting your name, date and Taehyung’s name at the top before you spaced down to where the title was supposed to be. The prompt was to imagine yourself as a character in a novel and write about something that you really wanted. It needed to be a recent want, and that was all the information Taehyung had given the class, making the prompt very vague and open-ended—which wasn’t his style at all.

You found yourself thinking over it earlier in the day, and you decided to write about what you normally wrote about: Jimin. Though you hadn’t seen him in weeks, his appearance was ingrained in your brain tissue, and you found yourself using him as your muse for many pieces after switching to Taehyung’s class.

You wrote out a makeshift title, smiling a little at your own wit as you typed at the top of the document:

What I Want: A Man [Park Jimin], To Sweep Me Off My Feet

You wrote a few paragraphs, explaining in detail all the things about Jimin that made you weak in the knees as if you were both characters in a story, as if it was all make believe. You made sure to mention your dream guy’s “muscular frame” and “knife-like jawline” that were attractive features on him, as well as his perfect blue-black hair and dark combat boots that were ultra-stylish and seemed straight out of a fashion magazine.

Just as you were finishing up a knock came at your door, seconds before Jihyo opened it and stuck her head in. “Should we start the movie without you?”

“No, no, I’m almost finished, let me just send this in.”

You pulled up your email, quickly typing in Taehyung’s email address and attaching your document to it. You pressed send, closing your laptop lid and grabbing your blanket as you followed Jihyo into the living room, sinking into your favorite bean bag in front of the couch.

“I wanna watch Transformers,” Sana grinned, already perched on the couch with the DVD player remote in her hand. “Any objections? Okay, great, I’m pressing play!”

“Thanks for the ample time to object,” Jihyo grumbled.

“Shh, it’s starting!”

The next day, you walked into Taehyung’s class with five minutes to spare. You sat in your seat, sipping on the hot chai tea you’d just gotten at the campus coffee shop before heading to the creative writing building. You pulled out your phone, scrolling through social media quickly before class started.

Taehyung walked in right after you, putting down his stuff and keeping his back to the class as he searched for something in his folders. With a paper in his hand, he walked over to you, crouching beside your desk and speaking in a hushed voice, “Y/N, let’s talk after class, okay?”

Your eyebrows furrowed immediately, your stomach twisting with worry at his tone. “Okay. Did I do something wrong?”

Taehyung’s expression looked like he was holding back a laugh, and you wondered what could possibly be funny when he sounded like he was scolding you. “It’s about…do you remember what you sent in for the piece due today? We need to talk about it.”

“About what I want? I wrote about—“ The realization hit you like a ton of bricks. Jimin. “Oh my god, the title! Taehyung I-I’m so sorry oh my god, p-please—“

“Y/N,” he shushed you, his eyes darting around to the other students that were piling in.  “Relax, I just need to be a teacher about it, is all. Don’t worry, just talk to me after class, okay?”

You nodded and he left, leaving you with a cold sweat washing over your face at your own stupidity. You couldn’t believe that you’d fucked up so royally—how could you have forgotten to change the title before sending the email? You were going to kill Sana and Jihyo. This was obviously all their fault—if they didn’t rush you all the time when it came to school work, you wouldn’t forget to do important things, like taking your fucking ex-TA’s name off of your document before sending it in.

You sat through the rest of class mortified, the flushed feeling of your embarrassment settling on your face and neck and seeming to make home there. The clock ticked dangerously slow as Taehyung talked, as if it was enjoying you stewing in your own pile of sweat, taunting you until it was time for him to sit down and talk with you about your mistake. It made it even worse that he and Jimin were best friends.

Finally, class ended, and you sat completely immobile in your seat, unsure of how the next few minutes were about to go. Taehyung grabbed the hard copy he’d printed from his email and pulled out the chair next to you, sitting down and lacing his fingers together on the tabletop.

“Now, Y/N we both know what this title, and this piece, withhold.” Taehyung’s eyes bored into yours the whole time he spoke, and you tried to match it with respect, but you couldn’t. Yours flicked down to the table the instant he began lecturing you. “I don’t know if this was a joke that someone played on you—“

God, I wish.

“—or if you intended to do this—“

Your gaze snapped up to his instantly. You shook your head furiously, your eyes growing wide with fear.

“—Or if this was just completely a mistake. For now, I’m going to go with the latter, and dismiss this matter as that. But you cannot make mistakes like this ever again, if it were to get into the wrong hands, it would be detrimental for you, as a student, and for Jimin as a TA. Do you understand?”

You swallowed harshly and nodded, lowering your gaze again. “I’m sorry. It really won’t happen again, I promise, Taehyung.”

“Good,” he replied, staring into your eyes for a second longer to made his point clear before he groaned outwardly, flopping back into his seat. “God, that was hard. I hate having to be all teacher-y. Now, I can go back to being your friend…dude, do you like Jimin?”

Your jaw went slack at his professional demeanor turning off like the switch of a light. You were frozen for a few moments before you were able to respond, “What? No? This was—“

“Some serious shit,” Taehyung laughed, tapping his finger harshly on the paper. “Y/N, you totally have it in for him, don’t you?”

“N-no, I don’t, I just..maybe I think he’s pretty good-looking, but that’s it, I mean—“ you sputtered out, shaking your head. “I can’t talk about this, can I go now?”

Taehyung snatched your wrist up as you tried to get out of your chair, forcing you to sit back down. “Wait, hey, I’m not gonna say anything…unless you want me to?”

“NO!” you yelled, a little too loudly and Taehyung jumped at the volume of your voice raising so suddenly.

“Okay, Jesus, don’t scream. We’re the only two in here. I don’t need one of the police officers taking me home because it sounds like I’m trying to force you into an after-class rendezvous.”

“Sorry,” you whispered, stifling a giggle as his eyebrows slowly returned to their normal place on his forehead.

“So…” he said, tilting his head in question.

“So.”

“Do you?”

You shrugged, picking at the table top. Was this even okay to talk to him about? Your heart was beating a mile a minute at being given the opportunity to express your feelings for Park Jimin, but you swallowed it down with the rest of the words that threatening to explode from your mouth.

Taehyung tsk-ed at your response, leaning back in his chair. “Come on, Y/N. You’ve kept my secret about the club, I can keep this one.”

You sighed, tucking your hair behind your ears nervously. You ducked your head as you talked, as if that would make you feel any less guilty for what you were about to say.

“Okay…so, maybe…I think he’s kind of…interesting.”

“Awwwww,” Taehyung cooed, grinning at you visibly turning into a mushy, embarrassed mess in front of him. “That’s so cute. Jimin’s a cool guy, I see the attraction.”

“Can I go now?”

“Sure,” Taehyung said. “Your secret’s safe with me.” He held his pinky out to you, looking at you expectantly.

You stared blankly for a few seconds before he wiggled it, pointing at your hand to connect to his. “Oh! Sorry. Thanks again, Taehyung.”

“No problem, Y/N.”

You grabbed your book bag to leave but Taehyung had you stopping in your tracks with his next words, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Oh, and Y/N? Friend to friend—If I were trying to get Jimin to notice me? You know, if I was a girl with a crush on him? I’d start with something like…buying him a coffee. He likes the small gestures.”

Your eyes grew wide at the statement. Taehyung was basically telling you to go for it. You nodded quickly, thanking him again before you set off down the hallway, throwing glances over your shoulder at Jimin’s open doorway just a few feet away.

You decided against telling Sana and Jihyo about your mistake and your meeting after class with Taehyung. You didn’t want them to tease you about it—or better yet, pester you with questions about what you were going to do with Taehyung’s advice. You didn’t know what you were going to do yet, but you had all weekend to decide.

You distracted yourself for as long as you could with the multiple outings that Sana and Jihyo had planned for the weekend. On Friday your trio went to the KGB (Taehyung was absent, which you were thankful for), Saturday was dress shopping and then a house party off campus for a club that Sana was in, and Sunday you spent the day in the library trying to get through all of your homework in one sitting because you’d wasted all your opportunities during the weekend to do so.

By Monday afternoon, you’d decided on your plan of action. That Thursday after class, you would run to the café near the creative writing building and grab a coffee for you and Jimin, then ask him for help on the prompt that Taehyung had emailed out over the weekend. It would be just a casual meeting about writing, and there was nothing wrong with that, right? You were just thrilled that you had an actual excuse to see and talk to Jimin again.

On Tuesday during lecture, Taehyung chose to sit behind you, solely so that before class he could lean up and whisper, “Did you take my advice yet?”

You kept your sights forward on the lecturer at the front of the auditorium, acting as if you hadn’t heard him. Taehyung’s muffled laughter told you your silence was all the answers he needed, though. You found yourself glancing at Jimin’s side of the room every once in awhile, but he was never looking at you, always whispering with one of his students or paying attention to the person standing at the podium.

When Thursday came around you were a nervous wreck all throughout class. Taehyung noticed this as well, because he kept raising his eyebrows at you as he caught you drumming your nails on the table, biting your lip, and sighing heavily multiple times throughout lecture.

“Y/N, you’re making me nervous,” he complained after dismissing class, his voice lower than usual, meaning he was about to ask you about Jimin. “Are you gonna do it today?”

You nodded quickly, bidding him goodbye as your grabbed your book bag from beside your legs on the floor, speed walking out of class and across the big lawn that separated your building from the coffee shop. You quickly ordered two caramel macchiatos with extra drizzle and then walked back as quickly as your flat-bottomed shoes would take you. You knew Jimin’s office hours were after class at 12:15, but it still worried you sick that you would somehow miss him.

It didn’t occur to you, however, that there would be another student conferencing with him by the time you made it back to the building. You crept up beside his door, listening to his low voice as he began explaining techniques on character description to the girl. She had way too many questions for you to deal with the sweaty drinks in your hand thanks to the scorching heat outside, so you sat them down on the floor along with your things, sinking down to the cold tiles beside them.

Your courage slowly leaked out of your pores as minutes passed, replaced by a trodden down, beaten-down, feeling that you were starting to get about the whole situation. Taehyung took that moment to stick his head out of his door frame, catching your attention immediately as he raised an eyebrow at you. “Why are you sitting on the floor? Go in!” he whisper-yelled, shooing you with his hands to take action.

“There’s someone in there!” you said back, putting a finger to your lips as you heard them finishing up. Taehyung ducked back into his classroom quickly just as the girl walked out, looking down in surprise at you.

“Oh my god, you scared me,” she said, placing a hand over her heart. You recognized her from Jimin’s class, and now you understood why she was there. She always had questions to ask.

“Sorry,” you said sheepishly. You stood up, gathering your things and your two drinks in your hands. She was still standing there, eyeing you as you did so, a question poised on the tip of her tongue.

“Were you coming in to talk to Jimin?”

“Y-yeah,” you stuttered. “I just needed to ask him a question about something—“

“What are the two drinks for?”

“Um,” you searched quickly for a lie. “They accidentally made two, so they just gave me both of them. Yay…caffeine?”

Jimin walked out of his classroom then, saving you from the incredibly awkward conversation that was unfolding. “Y/N, you needed to see me?”

“I did, yeah. Bye, Somi.” You waved with the drink in your hand before turning your back on her, following Jimin back into the classroom. He took a seat at the head of the table where he normally sat for class, and you sat in your old seat beside him. A new wave of nervousness washed over you as you realized you were finally there—finally talking to Jimin alone after so much time. He was wearing a light blue button down today, paired with his normal black ensemble from waist to toe. His hair hung messily on his forehead, and his shoes clicked on the ground as he tapped his toes on the linoleum, his normal boots traded out for a pair of dark dress shoes.

You put the drinks down, sliding one towards him sheepishly. “I uh, got one for you. I hope that’s okay. I remembered what you said about it being your favorite so…”

“Yay, caffeine,” Jimin said, pulling the drink towards him with a playful glint in his tone mocking what you’d said to Somi just moments earlier.

You laughed. “Oh, you heard that?”

“Yeah…you’re an amazing liar, has anyone ever told you that?”

“I may have heard it once or twice…”

Your stomach flip-flopped excitedly at the giggle that Jimin let out at your answer. He then put the drink to his mouth, his lips enveloping the green straw briefly as he sucked. You swallowed harshly at the sight of his tongue darting out to lick his lip afterwards and you averted your eyes quickly again, pressing your thighs together under the table.

“So,” he drank again and swallowed. “What did you need to talk to me about? How’s Taehyung’s class?”

“It’s fine, Taehyung is great. He’s very…”

“Energetic?” Jimin finished, and you nodded your head in agreement. “Yeah, he gets that a lot.”

You dug through your book bag and pulled out your folder with the printed out prompt and handed it to Jimin, along with a rough draft of what you’d worked on Sunday at the library.

You cleared your throat nervously. “So you said I could come to you about writing, and I was kind of hoping you could give me some advice.”

“Shoot.”

“What do you do to get over writer’s block?” you asked, looking him square in the face for what felt like the first time since you came in. “Or, should I say poet’s block?”

Jimin broke out into a wide grin. “Ah, the dreaded question. Writer’s block is different for everyone—is it that you have ideas and you don’t know how to write them? Or you don’t have anything to write about at all?”

You took a sip of your own drink, thinking for a moment. You were suddenly much more relaxed than you were when you were sitting outside—it seemed that Jimin just had that effect on you. “I have ideas, but I’m not sure how to put them on paper. I tend to write things, then erase it. Write, erase. Write, erase. It’s a horrible cycle.”

“I see.” Jimin clicked his tongue a few times, eyes grazing over the prompt and your very-rough, rough draft. “Honestly, when I get writer’s block, I have to get away from my desk. I shutdown my computer, I push my chair back, I put on my shoes and I take a walk.”

“Oh, Taehyung told me once that you do that,” you commented, nodding your head. “He said you’re quote, ‘A weird guy’, unquote.”

Jimin just laughed at this, shaking his head. “I’m sure he did. But walking really helps me…I don’t know why. It always has. It’s like it clears my head to be outside, and I guess that’s why I like it so much. It’s calming, especially at night. I feel…at peace, you know?”

You nodded, because you actually did know what he meant. Your freshman year of university you had really bad anxiety due to being thrown into the world of college with no preparation. Being away from home and your old friends in addition to the overwhelming workload and responsibility that university calls for made you feel pressured and unsure of yourself. One day during Pre-Calc you found yourself trembling while taking notes, and you were out the door and into the hallway in seconds, breathing heavily with your heart pounding in your chest just as the first wave of nausea hit you.

You found that for some reason, exercise helped. You started running on the trails around campus, and inhaling the fresh air gave you a sense of relief. Unlike during the panic attacks, you liked that while running you had complete control over your breathing, feeling with each inhale as your lungs filled with the cool air outside.

“Yeah…I do. I used to run, so being outside helps me de-stress, too. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before. Thanks, Jimin.” You grinned at him and he reciprocated it, but his eyes seemed to focus elsewhere for a moment as if he were deep in thought. “What is it?”

“Where do you normally run?” he asked.

“Oh, I used to on the trails around campus…the one that wraps around the lake then goes back into the woods for a mile or two. Do you know that one?”

“I do,” Jimin sipped his drink again, giving himself time to think. He looked up at you from under his lashes, making you take in a small breath. When he spoke, his voice was lowered and soft, as if he were afraid of what he was going to say. “Do you…I mean, you could…walk with me, sometime. If you wanted to.”

The way your face must have looked at his offer made Jimin backtrack immediately. “Sorry, that’s so bold of me to offer, I didn’t mean to–”

“I’d love to,” you responded, finally regaining your ability to talk. “That would be great.”

Jimin breathed out a sigh of relief, giving you a smile that squeezed your heart. “Okay, good. If anyone…sees us together, we can just say we happened to meet on the trail…okay?”

He gave you another pointed look, hoping you understood. You nodded slowly, your brain still trying to process exactly what he was saying.

“You mean…”

“Lie.”

It came out almost as a whisper, but Jimin’s gaze never wavered from yours. You made sure to keep your expression neutral, your slow nod turning into a very quick one, and Jimin smiled, his eyes disappearing from the force of it. “Great. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask me?”

A thousand questions went through your mind. Most importantly, ones about why he would be asking you to lie and keep secrets. You couldn’t wrap your head around it but you shook your head anyways, starting to gather your things up. You were sure that by the time you left his classroom you were going to be a bobble head.

“Thank you for the advice, I’ll see you–”

“Saturday night,” he interjected. “Around seven, is that okay?”

“Saturday night,” you repeated, still in a daze. This had to be a dream. You had a date with your TA. Your ex-TA. Your extremely fucking hot TA.

“Come find me.”

The way he said the words, his voice a low timbre and his eyes half-lidded, made a shiver run down your spine. You headed for the door as Jimin said goodbye.

“Thanks for the coffee, by the way!”

You went through the next day and a half completely disoriented. You refrained from telling Sana and Jihyo again, most because you didn’t even know where to start. You didn’t want to make a big deal out of meeting Jimin alone because it wasn’t a big deal yet.

That was a lie. It was a big deal. An extremely huge, gigantic, monumental big deal.

You felt like you were doing something extremely wrong, but you couldn’t help the excitement that flowed through your veins every time you thought about Saturday night.

Thursday night you skipped out on going downtown because you didn’t want to risk the chance of seeing Taehyung and have him ask you questions. You knew he would just corner you on Tuesday anyways, but that gave you ample time to wrap your head around everything. You blamed it on needing to catch up on reading for psychology so Sana and Jihyo left you alone, but you could tell they were still suspicious of your behavior. You made up for it by taking them out on Saturday afternoon for brunch at a crepe place near campus. You listened while they chattered on about their normal topic (boys) around mouthfuls of the sweet, thin pancakes and tried to act normal but your stomach was clenched tight the whole time, only thinking of Jimin.

When the time came to meet him on the trail, you changed out of your lazy clothes and put on a light cardigan and jeans, trying to combat the chill that had settled over campus in the last few weeks. Winter was approaching slowly but surely, and you were thankful for the extra layer as you walked, feeling the cold trying hard to seep through the fabric and brush itself against your arms.

There weren’t many people out around campus on a Saturday night—most were pre-gaming for their outings later or eating dinner— which you supposed you should be thankful for. Jimin must have been thinking about that when he asked you, and it made you wonder just how much though he’d put into meeting you before he’d mentioned it.

This time you didn’t have to lie to Sana and Jihyo as they were off doing their own things. Sana was meeting some people from her club for dinner, and Jihyo was asleep in her room, fueling up for the plans she had to go downtown later. This allowed you to slip seamlessly out of the door without any questions, looks or raised eyebrows from them—which you had been getting a lot lately.

You felt the familiar sense of calm overcome you as you followed the trail around the lake, breathing in the cool air and letting it fill your lungs. You did this a few more times as you walked, hoping somehow it would also calm you down, but that was to no avail. As soon as you saw Jimin’s unmistakable outline sitting on a bench in front of the water your adrenaline kicked in again, your skin itchy with anxiety at approaching him.

You saw him before he saw you, so you called out to him, watching as he looked over with a glorious smile already plastered on his face. He was lit up with the rays from the sunset, showering his light t-shirt in a warm haze and making the lighter brown flecks in his eyes twinkle when he looked up at you.

You stood awkwardly beside the bench, unsure of what to do. Jimin noticed, so he scrambled to his feet, smiling sheepishly. “Should we walk?”

You nodded and he led the way, following the path around the lake that lead into the woods. You tried not to think too hard about the fact that this most likely meant that you two would be alone, and instead focused on acting as calm, cool and collected as Jimin seemed.

There was a few beats of awkward silence, and you watched from the corner of your eyes as Jimin stuffed his hands in his pockets, blowing out a small breath before he asked, “Do you still feel the same about being a creative writing major? Now that you have some grades back, do you think you can handle it?”

You pursed your lips. “It’s definitely fun…but also a little difficult at times, but I guess that’s with any major. I’ll decide at the end of the semester, but for now I’m still unsure.”

“I see,” Jimin nodded. “Well if it’s any help towards your decision, I think your stuff is brilliant. You have a lot of talent, Y/N.”

You were glad the shade of the trees that lined both sides of the trail casted shadows on your face, successfully covering up the flush that spread over your cheeks at the compliment. “Wait, I thought you only read one of my pieces? The poem at the beginning of the semester?”

Jimin grinned sheepishly, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck as he flashed you a smile. You noticed the sleeve came down over his hands, the over-sized t-shirt just grazing his knuckles. “Well…sometimes Taehyung lets me peek at the really good ones…”

“Really? Come on!” you groaned. “That’s so unfair. TA’s shouldn’t be friends with each other. It’s embarrassing enough to have to read my work aloud and my peers tell me what I did wrong—now you and Taehyung are conferencing behind my back?”

Jimin laughed a glorious, genuine laugh, throwing his head back. You peeked at him, watching as the strands fell perfectly back into place as soon as he tilted his head forward, glancing over at you. “If anything, Taehyung is jealous, not criticizing. He can’t write a poem to save his life.”

“Not even a haiku?”

“He complained the syllable limit inhibited his creative ability.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “Sounds like Taehyung.”

You two were reaching the middle of the trail now, at the point that was furthest back in the woods. Only the occasional bike or rollerblader was passing you, mostly older men and women that used the school’s trail for exercise. The sun had finally set, the sky a purplish-blue hue that meant that it would be dark within the next hour.

As you neared a picnic bench that was off to the side of the trail, Jimin suggested that you two take a break. You watched as he placed a foot on the seat, hoisting himself up on the table and laying down, placing his hands behind his head for support. There was an opening in the trees that allowed for a perfect view of the sky above the picnic table, allowing him to see the changing colors as day turned to dusk.

“Why do I feel as though you know this place really well?” you raised a playful eyebrow at him.

“Because I do,” he grinned. “Come watch with me. It’s civil twilight.”

You tentatively walked up to the bench, choosing to sit on the actual seat instead of joining Jimin in laying down. You wanted to make sure you weren’t crossing any boundaries, no matter how nice Jimin was being to you.

“What’s civil twilight?”

The proximity of your face to Jimin’s body was overwhelming—you could smell a mixture of fresh scents coming off of his clothes: something clean and soft, in addition to something spicy, like his cologne was mixing with detergent to concoct his own special amortentia potion for you.

“It’s when the sun dips less than six degrees below the horizon—only the brightest stars in the sky can be seen at this time.” He pointed up, to where the Northern star twinkled in the middle of the sky, like he’d planned it to be there to accentuate his point. “There’s also nautical twilight and astronomical twilight…each one occurs the lower the sun gets. Lots of cities use these times of day to dictate laws on hunting and street lamp usage…it’s funny how the earth influences even the simplest of things in our life, isn’t it?”

You listened while he went on, explaining to you about the different celestial bodies that were visible with the naked eye throughout the different phases of twilight. You were completely shocked by Jimin’s knowledge of the sky, and even though you were clueless, you listened earnestly, falling in love with the way he sounded when he was talking about a topic that meant a lot to him.

There was something that was intriguing about his voice—the way his looks were so sharp and put together, almost perfect—but when speaking he tended to pause, searching for the right wording before he said it as if he didn’t want even the slightest variation to change the way his sentence was taken. You found yourself focusing solely on the way his lips moved, the plump top one brushing against the bottom with each enunciation, and the way that when he paused, his tongue would slip out to wet them before he continued.

“Sorry, am I sounding too teacher-y right now? I didn’t mean to bore you.” He rolled over on his side, propping himself up with his elbow. This made the proximity of your faces come closer together and you craned your neck back a little, nonchalantly placing a hand on the bench beside you and leaning on it. What you really wanted more than anything was to lean forward, but you scolded yourself for even thinking about it. Why were you so greedy? Why couldn’t you just be happy that Jimin had even invited you out?

“No, no,” you said quickly, shaking your head. “You’re not boring me at all, I promise.” You placed a hand over your heart for emphasis and it warmed your insides at Jimin’s ear splitting smile that followed.  “That’s all so amazing…how do you know so much?”

“It’s just a hobby of mine—I like nature and astronomy and astrology. There’s so much to learn…that’s why I was so fascinated the day that you said you wanted to be a gypsy moth…it was such a specific answer, so I wondered if it was a hobby of yours, too.”

“Oh…no. I’m sorry to disappoint,” you said, and your tone came off more sad than you’d intended. Jimin caught onto it, holding his free hand to you in defense.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I was just…interested in learning about you,” he said. His voice was low, the sentence almost coming out like a sigh. You dared to look at Jimin’s face to decipher his expression, only to find him looking dead into your eyes. For some reason you felt compelled, unable to look away until he did, biting his lip and flopping back onto his back on the picnic table.

“I keep waiting for you to say it first…so I feel less guilty. That’s fucked up, isn’t it?” he laughed humorlessly, rubbing a hand over his face. You had gut feeling exactly what he was talking about, and it made you heartbeat triple in your chest.

You dared, in a small voice, to ask anyways, “To say what?”

“That you’re attracted to me…in the way that I am to you.”

The world seemed to stop. The birds in the trees seemed to stop chirping, the cicadas in the grass seemed to stop their high-pitched ringing, you stopped breathing. You blinked a few times to what seemed like minutes passing, finally taking two shaky breaths in and out before you stuttered out, “W-what? Jimin, I—”

“I know. That was really bold of me, but I just needed to know if it was true…if what I was feeling was actually there or if it was just a figment of my imagination, you know?” he laughed again, more nervous-sounding this time, and he covered up his eyes with his forearm. “I’m sorry, Y/N…I don’t even know why I asked you to come out here.”

“No, Jimin. Jesus,” you leaned forward, pulling his arm off of his eyes so that you could look at him. “I’m not rejecting you. I’m just—I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling right now.”

You felt like your throat was drier than it had ever been, locking up all the words you wanted to say and making sure they didn’t come out and embarrass you. Jimin perked up at your reply, sitting up and scooting off the top of the bench to sit beside you, his thigh brushing against yours.

“Me either,” he said honestly, running a hand through his hair. It was almost dark now, only the tiniest light filtering in from the trees overhead so that you could see small planes of Jimin’s face as he spoke. Even in the darkness, you noticed the change in his demeanor and it set your skin ablaze as he licked his lips once again before murmured, “Can I show you instead of telling you?”

You nodded shyly as he brought both hands up to cradle your face, the soft sleeves of his shirt brushing against your cheeks as his lips found yours. The kiss was tentative and unsure as he waited for you to react before he continued. Little did he know, your body was no longer yours the moment he touched you. All of your thoughts and controls went haywire instantly, your brain a void full of TV screen static, your nerves running on adrenaline, your pulse pounding in your ears.

You finally let yourself go, and pressed harder against Jimin’s lips, leaning into the kiss and into his hands to encourage him. His mouth moved against yours, lips brushing, your hands creeping towards him on the bench, tempted to tangle themselves into the luscious locks of hair that had enticed you for far too long. You sighed into the kiss and Jimin, testing the waters, used your open mouth as permission to tentatively poke his tongue through, stroking it against yours lazily.

You knew from Jimin’s earlier explanation that at this time, it was astronomical twilight, and that not just the brightest, but all the celestial bodies were visible at this point. But none of them compared to the ones in Jimin’s eyes when he pulled away from you, breathing heavily, his palms pressed against your warm face. They swam in his chocolate pupils like your own personal galaxy—and you were lost, bouncing among the constellations that formed there, unsure of where your starry journey had taken you.

“Jimin, I—” You were at a lost for words, still trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. Your heart was racing, your palms were sweaty, your lips still tingled from the unfamiliar weight of Jimin’s pressed against them. “I’m…”

He shushed you, tucking your hair behind your ears with his hands and brushing his thumb against the apple of your cheek. “You can decide what this is, Y/N. I know that was wrong and so completely out of line for me…but god, did it feel so right.”

You closed your eyes, listening to his velvety smooth voice. Slowly, the sounds of the forest around you returned, and you wondered just how long your ears had been on mute. You could hear birds wings fluttering as they moved from tree to tree, cicadas chirping and frogs calling for rain, the crunching of leaves as squirrels moved around. Distant sounds of music floated through from campus, and the wind blew the leaves on the trees and made you shudder, wrapping your cardigan tighter around you.

And then, there was Jimin, sitting in front of you in all his effortless beauty: dark eyes full of worry and apprehension, soft hands grabbing at yours, interlacing your fingers together, his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip that was plump from kissing. The smooth, cool metal of the rings that he wore grazed against your palm, pulling your gaze to them briefly and then back up at Jimin.

“Did I scare you away?” He smiled bashfully, looking at you from under his bangs.

You giggled. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Jimin squeezed your hand, fingers still interlaced with his as the smile on his face grew wider and more confident at your words. It was nighttime now, the sun long gone below the horizon, and the trial was completely void besides you and Jimin.

“You’re scary quiet, Y/N. Please say something.”

You sighed, biting your lip. “It’s just—this is all beyond my wildest dreams and all…but—”

“There’s always a but,” Jimin said wistfully, and it made your heart hurt.

“You’re my TA, Jimin. This is so much bigger than you and I…this would never be okay in a million years to the university, especially since I’m taking classes in the major—”

Jimin shook his head, laughing. “Y/N, do you think it was a coincidence that I switched you out of my class and into Taehyung’s? I’m not your TA anymore, technically.”

You sucked in a breath, your mind whirling with the possibility that Jimin had been thinking about this almost as long as you had. The pieces slowly fell into place for him until he’d been given the golden opportunity when you came into his classroom with coffee and questions.

“Listen, if you’re still not comfortable with ‘us’ being a thing then…why don’t we compromise?” He raised his eyebrows and you blinked, waiting for him to continue. “We can wait until you’re out of the intro class and if you still want to give us a try, then we will. If you don’t, then I’ll understand. How does that sound?”

“Okay…” you nodded slowly, turning the idea over in your head. It seemed fair enough, but could you go the rest of the semester being normal with Jimin after tonight?

“We can still see each other, though, just…in secluded areas,” Jimin added, his tone full of regret, but you understood completely. He still had a job at the university to uphold and you didn’t want to anything to happen on your end as an undergrad student, either. “If that’s what you want.”

“Of course I do,” you blurted out, and Jimin chuckled at your eagerness. “And can we still…”

“Kiss?” he asked, raising a playful eyebrow at you. Your face heated at the bluntness of his response, but you waited with anticipation at his answer.

“Let’s see about that one, okay?” He grinned, softening the initial blow of his answer. “I don’t want to keep tasting the honey if I can’t capture the hardworking bee that made it…so I can taste all the time, you know?”

You laughed loudly at his analogy, smacking his shoulder playfully. “Oh my god, you’re ridiculous.”

“You better get used to it, Y/N! Come on,” he kept your hand intertwined with his, pulling you off the bench and into his side as he began walking. “We should probably head back.”