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eintsein · 5 years ago

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After a few years of trial and error, I think I've finally found the perfect organization method.

In the early years of high school, I had a bullet journal. I was an artsy kid who found a way to combine art with organization in a way that benefited other parts of my life.

However, as I approached the end of high school, my schedule got busier, and I was involved in a lot more things, so owning a bullet journal was less practical. Because of that, I switched to an app called Edo Agenda.

I continued with digital planning in college since I knew I wasn't going to have as much time. But all the apps I tried out—Taskade, Actions by Moleskine, Any.do, Todoist, Wunderlist—weren't suited to my planning and organizational needs. They didn't have the specific functions I required and didn't incorporate an organization system I liked to use. The predefined apps were too restraining, but the more customizable apps weren't customizable enough.

So then I switched to a bare bones, uber minimalist bullet journal method. That worked pretty well my second semester. It was simple, portable, and most importantly, flexible—all the things one could wish for in a planning system. However, it wasn't always the most convenient to use since I couldn't effectively integrate all the different aspects of my life, which, to no surprise, is mostly recorded digitally.

There was just one huge problem with my digital organization system that made me hesitant to switch back in the first place: everything was fragmented. Notes were in Google Docs. Financial records were in Google Sheets. To-Do Lists were in my bullet journal. Team projects were in Trello. My poetry was on Bear. Things I wanted to try are carelessly pinned to random pinterest boards or added to my YouTube "watch later" playlist. It was a mess.

Over the summer, I found out about Notion from a friend, and I thought, this has so much potential, it could even be exactly what I need. It's essentially like an empty notebook on your computer with functions that make it 10x more powerful. Notion allows you to integrate all aspects of your life and work into one app. Some of the advantages that have made me partial to Notion are:

Even greater customization level. Notion is a blank canvas with tons of predefined blocks and different file types. You can make databases, spreadsheets, Kanban boards, to do lists, etc. Also, you can remain connected to other digital services. You can link websites, collaborate with other users, use different structures (e.g. documents, databases, tasks), embed images and videos, etc. There are also tons of formatting options, e.g. text color, highlight, heading v. body text.

Better organization. Notion allows you to have pages within pages within pages within pages—an infinite hierarchy that you can organize with tables of contents. These pages are made of blocks, e.g. tables, checklists, boards, databases. Both pages and blocks can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping them to where you want them to be. In other words, I guess it's kind of like building a website to organize your life. Plus, their database feature is especially powerful as it allows you to connect all your data and get into as much detail as you wish (each entry in a database is its own page).

Templates. There are tons of templates created by both Notion and the community that you can use. These are especially helpful in the beginning since Notion does have a rather steep learning curve. There are template for almost every category: personal, planning, finance, job applications, design roadmap, etc. Check out their template gallery, this medium article called "10 Notion templates to inspire your use", or read on for my own examples!

Shortcuts. This makes typing and documenting so much faster. Notion uses Markdown, which is a text-to-HTML conversion tool, e.g. # = Heading 1, *, - = bullet point, etc.

Notion has some pretty awesome features, but how does one actually use it? Personally, I have four top-level pages: my planner, my personal journal, songwriting, and blogging.

Planner

I've been using my planner to, well, plan and track my day to day activities as well as my week and month. The way I've structured it is a calendar or monthly overview with links to pages of weekly overviews, and if needed, daily overviews within the weekly overview. This links things up so nicely, i.e. I don't have to be constantly flipping pages in my physical bullet journal or planner to find what I need.

I also have entertainment lists, which is mainly a table with all the shows I want to watch, the books I want to read, etc. I keep track of whether or not I've watched them, as well as my personal ratings. What I love most about this is that each entry is its own page, so I can type my notes for each book, show, or film and easily find them in the future. (Also the reason why I have plural “lists” instead of just one entertainment list is because you can filter entries by type of entertainment, e.g. movies, tv shows, books, articles.)

Personal

For personal notes, goals, journal entries, etc. This is kind of like an extension of my daily journal and just where I dump all my thoughts and keep track of the different aspects of my life: mental, emotional, spiritual, social, physical, and travel.

Another page I have is called "Stray Thoughts" and, well, it's pretty self explanatory. It's a lot easier to dump all my thoughts as they come and reorganize them later. Of course, this requires sacrificing the rawness of journaling, i.e. when the thoughts come and how you process them, which is why I still keep a regular journal that I write in daily.

Songwriting

I've been writing a lot of music over the summer and it's often hard to keep track of all of my songs and how far I've gotten in the songwriting process. So I created a table of songs - each entry of a song is a page with its lyrics. These are then tagged with the status of the lyrics (i.e. completed, in progress) and the status of the music itself (i.e. melody only, instrumental, mixing, mastering, revised). Eventually, I'll include demos in the database by embedding audio files in the document.

I have a separate section for inspiration and ideas, which is a kind of brain dump, e.g. words I think would make a good song, a certain theme for a song, a melody that's been stuck in my head, a vibe I'd like to try out, etc.

I've also been watching a lot of tutorials for music production and there's a section where I write my notes for that.

Eintsein

The last section of my Notion app is for this blog. Which has pages for

New posts. These are ideas for future posts, asks that I think would need longer answers, as well as posts that are currently in the draft stage (like this one was before I posted it)

Design assets. This is where I put all the visual branding material for Eintsein.com to be used in posts and any visual material on the blog.

FAQ. Having an FAQ document just makes it so much easier to make changes to your existing FAQ. Plus, if you ever change your FAQ theme, you just have to copy and paste what you already have.

Post directory. I keep track of all my previous masterposts, infographics, and generally longer and more comprehensive posts. It's the exact same as what you see on my Navigation page. And yes, the document contains direct links to the post.

New theme. A project I've been working on the past couple days is trying to create my own theme for my blog. This is where I put all my outlines, brainstorming notes, design inspiration, code snippets, etc.There are some pretty awesome features I’ve made use of in this page:

As you can probably tell, I'm absolutely obsessed with Notion since it has such awesome features and endless possibilities for customization. So far I've been using Notion for personal projects, which, since they are quite big in scale and have no set deadline, are important to organize well. My summer courses were only 6 weeks and weren't difficult to organize.

The formats above are just how I personally use notion. You could make some of your own, or if you don't think you want to build your pages from scratch, there are tons of templates to choose from. Here are some I think I'll be using in the near future and may be helpful for others as well, especially students like myself:

One drawback, however, is that Notion has a rather steep learning curve, but there are tons of tutorials online (especially YouTube) and I guarantee you it's all worth it.

Notion is not just a productivity app. It's a way to concretize your entire life.

Notion is free to use, but there are higher tiers that allow for more blocks, greater file size, etc. I use a personal account, which is $4 per month with unlimited block storage and no file upload limit (although I got it for $33/year). Personally I think the free plan would suit most people's needs, especially if you're not uploading large files.

#mine #eintsein #mymp #notion #apps #productivity #studyblr #studyspo #study hard #organization #document #graphic #design #infographic #masterpost #advice #tips

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beanenigma · 5 years ago

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Tips for people who like to write by hand

So you’re an old timey writer who enjoys the feeling of paper as you breathe life into a story? Or, like me, you can’t use your phone at school and just wants to get some writing done while math class bores the others?

Well, me too and I’ve come to your aid! I’ve done some pretty stupid things that costed me hours and hours of searching for lost scenes and struggling to find ideas I knew I’d written down so you don’t have to!

Find the right notebook for you

By experience, notebooks take a long time to be filled. In good nanowrimo times, I take from 6 to 8 months to finish one. So you’ll be stuck with this guy for a long time. Make sure to pick one that you like and is right for your needs. I, for example, prefer spiral notebooks. You can rip out pages if you need to (if you mess it up, if someone asks you for one, if you just need a page to write down a grocery list or something, etc) and you can put a pen on the spiral. I also like having a pocket to put pieces of ideas I have.

Some spooky stories about having the wrong notebook:

I got stuck with a brochure old planner for two years. My mom didn’t use it in the year it was meant for, so I thought oh, it’s free real estate. As it turns out, it had really small space between the lines, so the pages would take forever to fill, it had all those day and hour numbers and the paper was really thin. It was terrible and it made writing terrible. It would have been a thousand times better if I just spent a few bucks on a regular notebook.

More recently, I started using just the kind of notebook I like, a spiral notebook with a pocket. But I bought it a couple of years ago at a fandom event I attended and the cover was a personalized Divergent cover. At the time, I thought if was pretty cool and everyone would know the reference. But now it has aged so very poorly. The cover has blood all over it and it says “Faction Before Blood”. So now I’m scared to pull it out to write at uni and people will think I’m in a gang or something.

Number your pages

I know, it sounds like a lot of work. But you can get a notebook with pages already numbered, number it yourself or do it like I do and number it every 10 pages (just because it’s easier). If you don’t feel like doing all of this repetitive work, date your writing. It’s cool to see how much you progressed, how long you have been writing this project, when you had this idea, etc. One thing doesn’t have to exclude the other, but both methods serve the same purpose.

And this purpose is to help you get an idea of how much you write (and feel good about your progress) and to help you organize yourself on all you’ve been writing. Which takes us to the next tip.

Make the first page an index

Not only it will take the pressure off the first page, it will also help you so you don’t keep losing the awesome stuff you’re writing and forgetting it exists. Everytime you start a new scene or change projects, go to the index and write down the page or the date you started this new section. Since I number every ten pages, I find the first page with a number on it and start counting forward or back to the new page. But you can do it in any way that suits you.

Make a random idea page

It doesn’t have to be the second page (it usually isn’t for me), but it’s good to have one. Sometimes, in the middle of writing, you have that great idea for something you need to change on what you’ve already got, or you got a completely new insight. It’s good to have your idea page somewhere close you can just flip to, write it down and get right back to writing. And don’t go easy on that page! Write it diagonally, vertically, draw on it, anything. It’s just there to take out those ideas so you can take a look at it another time and not mess the flow you’re in right now.

Keep your enemies close. And your pen even closer!

You know your favorite bic friend? It has a secret weapon just for you to use. That little flap of the cap? Use it to keep your pen always close. I normally put it on the spiral of my notebook. But if you have a brochure, you can put it on the cover. Sometimes it damages it a bit, but it’s a good trade for having it always ready for action. If you use moleskine, I saw that they normally have designated pen places. If they don’t, I have a tip for it just under this one!

Take your time to find which kind of pen is your weapon of choice. Personally, I think nothing beats a black ballpoint pen. I know some people like fineliners for writing, but they make the other side of the paper all gross looking and I like to keep it clean. Plus, I write really small and fineliners often bleed in my handwriting. I took my time searching for my favorite brand and I settled on Molin ballpoint pens.

I would recommend buying your favorite pens in bulk. Nothing is worse than pen hunting around when you have an urgent idea. I bought 50 pens for super cheap and I stack them EVERYWHERE. In all my bags, in my sketchbooks, in my bullet journal, in my writing notebook, in my drawers, anywhere I think it will be easy to find one when I need it ( also giving some to my friends who keep stealing my pens).

Crafting the perfect notebook

You don’t have to be a crafter to modify your notebook to better suit you! Find a ribbon anywhere in the house. Cut it to be a little longer than the book. Tape that bad boy to the inside of the back cover and everytime you stop writing, put that ribbon on the page you stopped. This helps you not to get lost in your previous writing and get right back to business when you resume.

Also, if you really like that moleskine vibe but don’t have the cash, just get a regular clothing elastic, make cut it just the size of the notebook and glue both ends to the inner part of the back cover. There you go! Now you can close it (and keep it closed).

If you like post-its, you can take half of the block (or however many sheets you cant put in there and still close the notebook comfortably) and glue it to the inside part of the cover of your notebook so it will always be conveniently available for you.

If your notebook doesn’t have a place to put your pen on and you really don’t want to mess up the cover, you take a small elastic (smaller than the pen) and tape (or preferably glue it) it to the back part of the notebook with both ends inside. There! Ready for the trip! Speaking of which...

Always carry your notebook with you

You never know when inspiration is going to strike. In class. At the bank. In a mall. Whenever you have a little time, you can write something. Or just take a look at what you’ve done and feel good about it.

Not in the mood for writing? Edit. Reread what you’ve done and start finding what you want to change once you type it in. When doing this, don’t be scared to cross out entire sentences and rewriting them on top. If it starts getting too messy, go to a blank page and rewrite the scene and you think it should have been done the first time. It seems counter-intuitive in a copy+paste kind of age, but I assure you it is worth it.

Typing your work

This is one of the biggest reasons I love writing in pen and paper. When you type, your first round of editing is done!

Don’t zone out when typing. As I said, typing is your first round of editing. It is important to keep aware of all of the things you might have done wrong when writing. Some people say writing it on paper and then typing it is a waste of time. I say it saves time and lives.

Keep it loose!

Just because you are writing in an actual physical book, it doesn’t mean you are writing a actual physical book. This is still your notebook and these are still your notes. So don’t be afraid to get messy. Write things out of order (seriously, it’s okay to not go chronological. i know it’s hard). Outline. Sketch. Tip-ex the whole thing. Get post-its on it. Take notes. Make genealogical trees. Draw maps.

If you’re feeling down or uninspired, try very basic writing exercises: write what you see, what you feel, something to try and make you laugh or something to make someone cry. It’s your place to express yourself. And once you got those creative juices flowing, happy writing :)

I hope you enjoyed my tips and please, feel free to reblog this with your own tips and tricks. I’d love to hear them! And follow me for some more writing content!

#writing #writing advice #writeblr #handwriting #new writblr #new writeblr #writblr #writer #writing tips #new writers #writing inspiration #writers #writers on tumblr

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comecesario · 5 years ago

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Hey guys! School’s starting again, and I figured I’d make a masterpost of resources for studying and general school life.

stationery:

I’m a huge fan of buying new stationery for the new school year – there’s something about opening a new set of pens and notebooks that just makes me feel ready to start the year! Here’s some of my favourite brands/shops:

Paperchase: I love Paperchase! Their folders and notebooks are so cute! I don’t use planners (I’m more fond of using my own bullet journal), but if you’re a fan of them they have gorgeous planners as well. You’ll find physical stores all over England (and other countries, I’m sure), but their online shop is also here.

WH. Smith’s: I’m pretty sure this is just an English shop (sorry!), but their pencil cases and folders were too cute for me not to mention them! They’ve also got gorgeous lunch boxes and water bottles for a really decent price.

Tokyo Pen Shop: this shop is exclusively online (and you can find it here). They sell mostly Japanese stationery, and all their stuff is super cute!

Aliexpress: so this website doesn’t just sell stationery, but if you’re after extremely cheap stickers and washi tape, you couldn’t find a better place! Their stuff takes a while to arrive (and it’s best to read reviews before you buy anything!), but honestly I can’t fault it! I’ve loved everything I’ve bought from there, and it’s all been super cheap.

Kikki.k: This is a Swedish stationery brand that I just find so charming! They’ve got a really clean, crisp aesthetic that I really appreciate, and their stuff is always so pretty. They’ve got stores all over, but you can also shop online here.

school bags:

I’m super picky with my backpacks – they’ve got to have a laptop sleeve, be big enough to hold my music scores, laptop, and everything else, and be nice to look at. I’ve looked at quite a few, but here are some of my favourite brands:

Herschel: their bags are definitely on the pricier side, ranging from £40-£80, but they’re worth every penny imo. They’re sturdy, with padding on the back and shoulder straps, they’re roomy, with a padded laptop sleeve, and they’re super well built, so they’ll last a while. They’re also cute, which doesn’t hurt.

Kanken: these are around the same price as a Herschel, and in my opinion they’re just as good. I took mine with me when I went interrailing, and it held up! They’re not padded, so I’d keep that in mind if you’re planning on taking a laptop into school with you. They are, however, super colourful, and definitely very sturdy!

UGRACE backpack: this isn’t a brand so much as a specific backpack I found on Amazon, but I had to mention it because it has a portable charge built in! As someone who’s always forgetting her stuff, I know I’d love something like this! It’s also a little cheaper than the previous options.

Himawari backpack: like the previous point, this backpack is a little cheaper, and a super cute alternative to the Kanken if you’re on a budget.

study spaces:

If you’re like me, you’re not a huge fan of studying at home. I love using libraries, museums and cafes to study in, ‘cause it gets me out of the house, and often makes me feel a little better if I’m in a bad mood. Here are some of my favourites (all London based, sorry!):

Maughan Library: I’m headed to King’s in September, so I doubt anyone’s surprised this is on my list! If you’re not a King’s student, you can apply for a visitor’s pass when you enter, which I’m pretty sure is free. This library is gorgeous, and a lovely place to do some research or write your essay. There’s free Wifi, and plug sockets as well.

The British Library: You need a membership to access this library, but it’s free, and you’ll then have access to a huge selection of books and texts.

The V&A Art Library: Again, you’ll need a membership, but this one’s also free! As someone who adores the V&A, I feel a little biased putting this one here, but it really is one of the prettiest places to work I’ve ever seen! When you’re finished working, reward yourself with a trip through the museums, or a walk through South Kensington.

The Barbican Centre Library: For a music student, this one’s heaven! It’s got a huge CD collection that’s free to browse, and it’s also spacious and right in the centre of London. I can’t say the building’s the prettiest I’ve seen, but it gets the job done.

The BFI Reuben Library: For film and media students, this is the best place to work. You’ve got a huge collection of films and books free to browse, plus you can reward yourself with a film after you’ve finished studying! (under 25s get £3 tickets!)

Timberyard coffee house: This one’s close to Covent Garden, and serves pretty good coffee in a really cozy setting.

Yumchaa: With big tables and a late closing time, this one’s probably best for revising with friends, or those late cramming sessions close to finals (don’t worry, we’ve all done it!). It’s pretty close to Tottenham Court Road, so you’ve got plenty of places to go to if you need some retail therapy after your study session!

The Espresso Bar in Paperchase: This one’s perfect if you run out of pens! Like Yumchaa, it’s got large tables, and it’s got huge windows with lots of light.

Gail’s: This one’s a little pricier, but the atmosphere is so cozy and lovely that I can’t fault it whatsoever! The sofas are soft as anything, and the coffee really is great.

Picturehouse central: This one requires a yearly £30 membership, but you get some serious perks (£3 off cinema tickets, free access to their reading room, 20% off food and drink, etc.). The room is cozy and warm, and of course it’s on top of a cinema, so you can reward yourself with a film after you’ve finished your essay!

study playlists:

I can’t work without something playing! If it isn’t the music I’m currently trying to learn, it’s one of these playlists:

lofi study

vaporwave study club

ghibli study no.1

ghibli study no. 2

pop study

study lofi

lofi hip-hop beats

apps:

I’m on my phone all the time. So I try and make at least a little of that time productive. Here’s what I use:

duolingo: I love this app. I’m currently learning Russian, French, German and Italian using it, and it’s super helpful! The app is easy to use, and free!

headspace: I feel like it’s no secret that I struggle with my mental health. One of the apps that has helped the most with this is headspace. It’s a mindfulness app that has anywhere from 3-60 minute guided meditations that you can follow along to. It’s also got sleepcasts, which are visualisation exercises for sleep, and plenty other wonderful things. I can’t recommend it enough, honestly.

I would list more things, but this list is long enough already! I might make a part two if there’s anything I feel I missed, though. I hope you guys have a lovely school year!

#studyblr #studyspo #studygram #study tips #study guide #studyblr masterpost #studyblr motivation

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triviaggukcore · 6 years ago

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her blooming flower | one

prologue / one / two

→summary: you’ve known him since you were just a young girl during his trainee days. He watched you grow into a woman, but he’s always hated you from day one for whatever reason it may be. To you, he thought of you as a nobody. But what you weren’t aware of was a secret that he never wanted you to know.

→pairing: enemy!jungkook x dancer!reader

→word count: 7.6k

→genre: angst, fluff, maybe smut??, some humor

→warning: implied smut

→a/n: hi guys, it’s finally here! I’m so sorry it’s been almost two months! It’s been super hectic from having family over the break and having no time to write. And it became even more hectic as my schedule became packed when coming back to second semester of school. I had theatre rehearsals every day after school until 6pm to prepare for our musical back in January with so much homework and chores to do, and then I was gone with my dance team at Disney World for 4 days which also didn’t give me any time to write, and missing three school days. I had to make up a bunch of work to bring up failing grades which had me super stressed out. Now that it’s February, it’s competition season and this past Saturday was the second contest. I’ve just been constantly tired physically, mentally, and emotionally where I just lost so much motivation to write. But I definitely took time in between my spare time to try the best I could. So thankfully, it is now here and the good news, I have a two week break before last contest. I will say this series will have a bit of slow updates. It just all depends on how packed my schedule is. But most of all, I would like to thank you all for being super patient with me, I really appreciate it sweeties! I would also like to thank @9uk and @stxrrysuga for being wonderful helpers into keeping me motivated and writing just a few small details that’ll help me get going.

Another side note, I’d like to credit and thank @dearmyjimin for granting me permission to use a concept she made on her blog which I was desperate and in such need for this series since I felt like it could absolutely be perfect for the storyline. Once again thank you!! The concept is based on 3J! That is all I have to say as you all should read and find out what it is.

So here it is finally! Chapter one! Enjoy!

It was dawn when you had woken up, your eyes drowsy from the lack of sleep you had been getting the last few days. The constant late nights because of work had kept you up at ungodly hours of the night. You tried to get fewer hours but you knew you needed the money so you stuck with the long hours and your days dragged on, each one seemed longer than the next. You sat up and sighed softly as you climbed out of bed while grabbing your glasses and putting them on. Your mind clouded with thoughts of what was going to take place later today, so you walked over to your desk and took a glimpse of your planner that you created almost a year ago.

Today, at 8am, you have breakfast with your best friend Jess, a contemporary lesson at noon, then lunch at 1pm, and then game night at Taehyung’s, including a no work shift today.

Okay, not so much to do today. Thank God. You grabbed your phone and put some music on shuffle with your mini speaker, then made your way over to the bathroom. You did your daytime skincare routine after doing your business on the toilet. While washing your face, you wondered how could you get this far in life. No, you’re not famous. You thought it would be kind of a scary career. But you still wanted to dance and create amazing pieces for artists for the wish of sharing your work to the world. Plus, you have choreographed for some artists before.

You’re not always booked for appointments with idols, but your schedule does get tight due to the fact that you work. You basically have a job at this cafe in Seoul, and you’re still working at your mom’s studio, hosting classes every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night. You usually teach contemporary and ballet but you have taught some hip hop classes too, due to the fact that you’ve choreographed for some idols as an example. It’s been requested by many residents who take your classes for you to teach more hip hop. And you might as well take that chance to balance all the styles out.

Looking at your face in the mirror after washing your face, you also thought about how life was for you when you moved to Korea. You missed your friends from back home, but you also love it here too. And you made some decent close friends here too, especially Jess being the closest friend you see literally every day. And of course, you can’t forget the Bangtan boys. You grew close with the boys over the years, they basically became your family. You always had fun with them, whether it was game nights or through video chat. And you have a very special bond with each of the boys, nothing was ever different from how you all acted with each other.

They adore you a lot, and you were like their very own little sister that they look out for. They all found you sweet and sincere, prestigious, intelligent, and super adorable. Well, except Jungkook. He, being the only one who disagrees, finds you as the exact opposite. He’s got one hell of a grudge against you. All because of a damn smoothie you accidentally spilled on him a couple years ago. You find it super confusing and a little dumb that he treats you like shit over that incident. Although, it saddens you too as you took the blame upon yourself, coming up with the many excuses in your head. Maybe he was having a really bad day and you just so happened to ruin it even more. If you were paying a little more attention, you would have caught yourself and not spilled your smoothie on him. Then maybe, just maybe, you could have had a better introduction with each other and become friends.

Jungkook loves to criticize and pick on you. Everyday. That’s no surprise to you. But you don’t usually conduct to anything he does to you, and it made him full of annoyance from how you wouldn’t try defending yourself (more so, argue). But there’s a reason why you don’t. If you ever stood up against Jungkook, you’re sure that he will probably laugh his ass off at your pathetic self. You don’t think you could ever try to face him with defense. It doesn’t work that way for you. Sure, it hurts you. But you find it useless to do so. And being the sweet person you are, you’re not gonna want to come out as some bitch.

No matter how much you respect him and treat him nicely, your presence is what makes him irritated. The man has got a grudge against you.

Sliding out of your pajamas, you threw on a random outfit and then you sat down at your vanity set and decided how you were going to look upon your face and hair. After 30 minutes, you were already putting on a pair of shoes at your front door. You grabbed your bag and car keys, and you were out the door of your apartment. Shortly then, you were on the road.

“Okay, so here are all my ideas for the boys’ next comeback. I’ve been working on this for a couple of days now and I thought I’d share them with you!” Your friend Jess said, dropping a plain journal in front of you next to your plate full of breakfast. You picked up the journal once you set your vanilla latte down and opened the journal, flipping through the ridiculous full pages of notes and ideas followed up for BTS’ comeback.

You gave her a glance, “You are crazy. Are you seriously helping them find new concept ideas? I thought they already figured that out.”

She shrugged, “Not exactly. Besides, they asked for my help so I could have better ideas on what music to produce with Yoongi and Namjoon.”

“A sexy comeback darker than the Love Yourself: Tear and Wings era?” You read aloud, “Sounds kinda…”

“Kinda good right? I think it’s time they now get into that, and besides, they’re all adults now that Jungkook became one.” She mentioned.

“You do know he’s been an adult for a few years now.”

Jess glared at you, “And him being an expert shirt lifter was only the beginning of his little bad boy era.”

The thought of Jungkook and his image only made you feel weird. He grew up drastically and puberty hit him harder than a truck. Instead, it was more like god and the devil worked together to mix cute and hot in their mixing bowl but decided to go with he’s gonna make every person gush in adoration and suddenly they get down on their knees and are thirsty hoes. But, there’s no denying that he really had you gawking at him. After all, you do like the man.

You nodded, “Wow, how logical.” Your sarcasm erupted as you took a sip of your latte. She hummed, “You know it’s true. Anyways, what’s going on for you today? Are you coming to game night?”

“Yeah, I am. I have a contemporary class to teach at noon, then lunch, and then I have a whole day to myself until game night. I think I might do some shopping, maybe go to the book store and read a few novels since my package arrived there. If I have time, I might just work on my poetries.” Yes, you write since you found your love for novels. Thanks to your dad’s career. He’s the best selling author in the country and back in yours.

“Speaking of dance,” Jess started, “Did you hear about 3J Studio?’

Yes, 3J as in J-Hope, Jimin, and Jungkook, the BTS dance line. They built a dance studio for those who want to have exclusive dance lessons with the boys. Millions of people have signed up for classes just so they can stand a chance to be coached by the boys. You were yet excited and definitely going to their first class on Saturday.

You nodded, “I did. Jimin and Hoseok told me about it. I’m really excited about this Saturday.” You smiled. “Me too!” Jess gushed, “Are you planning on attending?” She asked. “Of course! For sure I’m taking Jimin and Hoseok’s class.”

“Oh, but not Jungkook’s?” She raised an eyebrow. You sighed, “I mean, I’m not sure if I want to. I know he’s a great dancer and I’m certain he’s going to be an amazing coach but do you really think I want to feel the awkward tension where his blood literally boils around me? I’m not sure if I even want people to be speculating his hate for me. That’ll just put him at risk.” You fiddled with the thin straw in your latte, stirring it.

“But it’s not like he would ever talk to you in front of his students, would he? He’s an asshole, don’t get me wrong. Yet, I’m pretty sure he’s not an ass to treat you like crap.” Jess stated, “There’s no way he would do that to you in front of many people.”

“I guess you’re right.” You shrugged. The guy always puts you down and even humiliates you, he probably wouldn’t do that in public otherwise it would defame his image. The people wouldn’t even know who you are anyways. You’re only specified as, BTS’ friend, BTS’ music producer, Jess’ friend, Min Yoongi’s wife’s friend. It’s pretty much anything with you labeled as a friend of the band.

“He’s such a dumbass.” Jess shook her head. You looked up at her, “Hey, don’t say that about him. You know that’s not nice.”

She rolled her eyes and glared at you, “Really? Y/N, You’re defending him when all he ever does is bitch at you? He’s one hell of a brat who’s still stuck up on that smoothie mess! He makes me want to shove my foot in his face.”

“But you know he doesn’t have to like me right? Come on, Jess. Besides, the accident was my fault anyway.” You said softly as your eyes wandered somewhere else. “You really like him, don’t you?”

Your head snapped back at her, “Just because I like him doesn’t mean that has to do with what happened in the past.”

“Oh, so defending him and constantly worrying about his health along with your care and support in every accomplishment he achieves doesn’t mean anything to the way you feel about him?” Jess caught you there. “It’s not that I… I don’t know, Jessica.” You sighed, holding your cup firmly with both hands, “I respect him whether he doesn’t like me or not. My feelings don’t matter. He would never feel anything romantic for me. Besides, he has a girlfriend who’s definitely prettier and has a more slammin’ body than me.” You awkwardly locked a piece of your hair behind your ear.

“And this is where I call you stupid.” Jess looked at you, “That girl could never compare. She’s only got a pretty face but not a nice personality. Plus, you’re freaking gorgeous. More than she is. I don’t think you have any idea on that she’s only dating Jungkook for the attention and the fame.” She ate a bite of her egg sandwich, speaking in a mouthful, “The girl is a hooker but Jungkook being his gullible dumbass self believes she loves him for him.

You sighed, “Of course.” He loves her.

“And 5, 6, 7, TILT. Excellent!” You complimented, watching through the mirror as everyone in the studio did a tilt from the floor and rolled into fetus position. “So that whole 8-piece, just remember that it’s very very subtle, not too much energy until after the tilt, which you want to push your legs up and extend them like a whip but as light as a feather. Have grace with the tilt. 5, 6, 7, UP!” You demonstrated by being an example and showing your students the technique.

“She’s good isn’t she?” Jimin said with his arms crossed as he observed your teaching skills and your charismatic moves. “I’m really surprised she declined the trainee offers from the entertainment industries.” Hoseok nodded in agreement. A chuckled then came along, “I’m not.” Jungkook smirked.

“Dude, you’ve been going against every word we say about her.” Hoseok crossed his arms to face Jungkook. “Since day one.” He specifically added. Jungkook narrows his eyes as if he couldn’t comprehend what Hoseok was trying to get at.

But only the blind wouldn’t be able to tell that Jungkook bears a deep, stubborn grudge on you. And his attitude towards you contrasted too much from his members for them to not notice his behavior. It was an issue constantly swept under the carpet to not escalate things given Jungkook’s temper, but the matter has finally rose from dust. “Yeah that’s right, did she do something to offend you or something?” Jimin looks at Jungkook worriedly. The both of them kept going on about the issue of you, pressing Jungkook to the end of wits.

“Yo, if you have seen...another side of her she’s not showing to us,” The three of them slowly spin to watch you conduct the dance class. The smile on your face when you teach, and the way you go about asking every student about their struggles and issues—make Hoseok doubted the words that came out of his mouth. You looked genuinely passionate in this company, and it couldn’t be that you put up an act in front of evil intentions for so long. As long as however many years. Jungkook remains his gaze on you for a while, before his hands are coming up to rip off his hair from his scalp in frustration as he groans. “I-It’s not like that..! It’s just.. just the sight of her irks me!” He knew he sounded like a brat hating on someone as innocent as you for no reason at all. But before he could save himself from further embarrassment, you are strolling towards his triangle of friends with an anticipated look cast on your features.

“What are you guys talking about?” Your voice interrupts his rant. The three men stare at you in expressions you can’t make out—you couldn’t tell what they were thinking. Then the both Hoseok and Jimin shot Jungkook looks.

“Uh…” Jimin darts his gaze back and forth his two friends, before pulling you by the arm away from them. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

And with that, you and Jimin walked out into the hallway to the studio kitchen where there were a few staff eating lunch. “So are you going to join us this Saturday at our studio?” You took out a bottle full of cold water from the refrigerator when you opened as Jimin leaned on the wall next to him. “Definitely. I’m excited what you guys have in store for your lessons and I’ll be taking them all too.” You took a couple sips from the water. Jimin looked at you with a raised eyebrow, recalling that you are taking ALL the lessons, “And by all, you mean you’re going to participate in Jungkook’s class too?”

You clenched your lips together in awkwardness, “It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t take his but yours and Hoseok’s would it?” You sighed, “And besides, even if he cared, he’ll forget I’m even there. He’s going to have a class filled with people, and his main focus is his students.” Leaning against the counter backward, you always felt awkward talking about him with his members, and it wasn’t because you didn’t want to say the wrong thing at all. His hyungs were always lecturing him about you and never accepted the behavior he acted upon you. They didn’t know what really happened the day of the stupid incident because he never liked to talk about it or else he would have been made fun of or worse. They don’t even know why he’s held a grudge against you for so long. So what is the problem? When will he man up and get over it?

Jimin sighed, “At least you’re not an asshole like him.”

“Truth or dare?” Taehyung looked over at Jess as he popped the question.

“Dare.” She smirked.

After playing Jenga, Uno, checkers, and a whole bunch of other games in Taehyung’s house, everyone, including some of the boys’ girlfriends, are sitting in a circle on the floor with beers and snacks playing truth or dare. And unfortunately, Jungkook’s girl, Yuna couldn’t be there. But you felt relieved and happy about it. She’s just as worse as Jungkook. Pretty yet mean and nasty to you.

“Funny you guys are bickering but since you all ate my jjigae, I haven’t gotten a single bowl of it you hungry ass pigs!” Jin exclaimed just when Taehyung and Jess bickered over who has the best shoes.

“It was some good shit though.” Taehyung’s mouth waters, “I wish I could have more.”

Jin mumbles something under his breath and takes one huge gulp of his beer.

“Okay moving on. Truth or dare, Y/N?” Jimin turns to you. You kept your knees close to your chest, looking down as you weren’t prepared for your answer. You were always unsure and nervous about whatever choice you choose. You could feel everyone’s eyes on you, especially Jungkook with his little smirk.

“Ummm… truth?” You weren’t sure but went with it anyway. “Who was your first kiss?”

And that question almost made you shit yourself, “W-What?” You could feel your eyes widened.

How the hell were you going to tell that you’ve never kissed anyone before without feeling embarrassed?

“I’m sure she doesn’t want to reveal her privacy.” Namjoon noticed the nerves just by the position you were in. You were hugging your knees which were up to your chest. Jess even looked over at you in such worry since she’s the only one who knows you haven’t had the experience.

You gulped and stuttered, pushing up your glasses, “I uh… I actually never kissed anyone before.” You said softly as you looked down.

Taehyung raised his eyebrows in surprise, “What? No way. Seriously?” You looked up at Taehyung and looked at all the other reactions. They seemed just as surprised as him.

“That’s surprising.” Yoongi nodded in agreement. Jungkook rolled his eyes in annoyance, “Not a surprise to me, I mean look at her.” He looked over at you in disgust and you only looked down in shame. You felt so embarrassed and disgusted with your own self with not having any experience with a guy at all.

Jess glared over at him just as her blood was boiling, she could beat his ass at any second now, “Shut the fuck up, you ass. She doesn’t need your nasty opinions.”

Jungkook shrugged, “Like I care.”

“I think it’s great that she’s never kissed anyone, Jungkook.” Nari, Taehyung’s girlfriend, spoke in regards to defending you. Nari is sweet and soft, and even a creative person. She’s a cosmetologist in makeup and is definitely talented in making so many makeup combinations. She’s short and a few years older, around the same age as Taehyung. She has gorgeous glowing honey skin with long black colored curly hair, and lovely blue eyes. She’s just as beautiful as Taehyung and to you, they’re considered the most beautiful couple ever.

“It’s a good thing, stop being an ass Jungkook,” Jimin glared at him. You sat there awkwardly but you gave a little smile at Nari for giving her defense.

“Don’t mind him, Y/N. It’s good that you haven’t had your first kiss. You don’t need one, not even a guy. You’re a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man.” Hoseok, who was sitting beside you, smiled at you with a good rub on your shoulder, “And you are also a beautiful woman.” He added, being sweet and full of sunshine as always. You could feel yourself blush and get shy at his compliment, “Thank you.” You nodded.

Of course, Jungkook shook his head unsatisfied. He knew that you never had a boyfriend. Everyone knew. And he was sure that you weren’t ever going to get one. But what he didn’t know was that you were definitely talking to someone as opposed to be dating soon.

“What do you mean she’s talking to Jonghoon?” He asked Taehyung as he looked at him in disbelief. It was the next morning and the two boys were in the kitchen making themselves some breakfast.

Taehyung glanced over at Jungkook from where he was cutting tofu, “What do you think I mean?”

While sighing, Jungkook bit his lip in question while he shook his head, “You’re kidding me right? He’s a frat! Does she not know that?” Was he actually for real? There’s no way you could be talking to some player. Jonghoon is a friend of Taehyung’s who used to be a trainee at BigHit. He’s damn beautiful and looks like he could be related to Taehyung. Tall, caramel skin, built, an unreal God like face, yet he’s definitely one hell of a man who only hooks up and has one night stands, leaving girls the very next day. Jungkook wasn’t very fond of him because he knows he isn’t the type of guy himself to play around with women.

“Apparently not.” Taehyung shrugged, “I tried telling her that he’s not what she thinks he is, but she didn’t listen.”

“She’s stupid! You could have told Jonghoon to back off! He can’t talk to her! She’s not realizing that fucker could slip his hand in her panties and fuck her! She’s not into those things! She’s not ready and she shouldn’t be anywhere near him” He exclaimed in anger.

“And why all of a sudden are you sounding like you care about Y/N?” Taehyung raised an eyebrow at him, he could sense the protection Jungkook had for you.

“You’re fucking crazy. I don’t give a crap about her. I’m just saying that she shouldn’t be talking to him because he’s not good for her at all.”

Taehyung hummed, but he wasn’t convinced, “Okay, whatever you say. But I can’t forget to add that she’s going on a date with him later this afternoon.” He smirked.

“WHAT?!” Jungkook looked at Taehyung as if his eyes could pop out of his sockets.

“Yeah, you heard me. A date. Where two people who are attracted to each other go and hang out to be romantic and shit like that.” Taehyung kept his little smile, waiting for Jungkook’s major defense mode.

“It’s definitely not an attraction or going to be romantic when really he’s gonna take her home and get in her pants.” He growled and his tongue poked out of his cheek, “She’s not going on that date. I have to go tell her this after I eat breakfast.”

It was around two o’clock in the afternoon and Jungkook took forever to find out where you were going on your date with Jonghoon. Jess could not answer his calls from her being occupied in the studio with Yoongi, Jonghoon wouldn’t tell Taehyung exactly where he was meeting with you, Jimin, Jin, and Namjoon had no idea of you going on a date. That was left with Hoseok who had been stuck in the 3J studio finishing his choreography for his first class tomorrow, had known exactly where you were going to meet Jonghoon. The Lounge Cafe.

It was a twenty minute drive but he didn’t care. He needed to find you and prevent you from hanging out with Jonghoon. When he arrived, the cafe was definitely modernized although that wasn’t the point. His eyes roamed the cafe from sitting in his parked car and that’s where they landed on a familiar girl wearing a cream floral dress, sitting alone outside at a table while reading a book. It was you.

With honesty, Jungkook thought you looked stunning. Maybe because he’s never seen you all dressed up. But your presence somewhat attracted him. His eyes read your look. The way your hair flowed from the light breeze, your adorable wide eyes blinking as you flipped a page, the way your posture is. Undoubtedly yet not realization, Jungkook always had thought you were beautiful without even saying you are. You are just naturally attractive. He wondered what life would have been if you weren’t so irking… or if maybe just things went the right way between you two. Would you two have become friends? Would there have been any feelings of? Well, that’s not that he would know of.

Before his thoughts could go any further to drive him away distractedly, he snapped out of them since he was here for a reason. Jungkook got out of his car, taking his keys, phone, and wallet and slipping them into his sweatpants as his made his way over to you, knowing of the arrangement with Jonghoon. When he reached you, he was already infuriated just as he took a seat in front of you, “Why are you wasting your time?”

You looked up from the page you were reading of your book to find Jungkook sitting right there with an incensed expression on his face. What the hell was he talking about? “Excuse me?” You questioned.

He let out a hollow laugh, “The guy isn’t worth the time, Y/N. Are you blind?” Your eyebrows knitted together in confusion, “You mean Jonghoon? How do you even know him?” Most of all, how did he know about this? Jungkook shook his head, “He is a friend of a friend I have. And he has a reputation Y/N. He doesn’t take too fondly to girls… that aren’t experienced.” His thumbs circled around each other as his fingers were interlocked.

You sighed, “And why do you care? You don’t know if he’s really like that, Jungkook.”

His eyes rolled in exasperation and looked at you, “Look Y/N, I know what I’m saying. I know that douche too well and you are just walking into one of his traps.” He nodded in assurance. “How did you even know about this?” You asked, “First of all, this is my business that you’re barging into. I don’t think he’ll even do such thing to hurt me.”

Jungkook leaned towards you, “He will use you for a bad purpose and break your heart, Y/N.” His voice deepened, “So don’t cry when he leaves you stranded and broken.”

You giggled, not believing him, “Please, he won’t.” You crossed your arms while leaning back on the chair, “And if that doesn’t work out and I end up wrong, then lesson learned. I like him.” You shrugged in yet confidence. Jungkook studied you in distaste with a hum, “You are so blind huh? Not just in sight but in judgment.”

That’s when you just had enough. What rights does he have to be telling you this? You were done kissing his ass, “Judgement? Who are you to tell me this? Why can’t I just like anyone for crying out loud? Are you that surprised at the fact I’m probably going to start dating?” You asked.

Jungkook nodded with no expression, “Obviously yes, as no guy would ever be interested in you anyways.” He shrugged as he sat back. You looked down in distress. It was true, but yet you just had a strong feeling that Jonghoon was actually interested in you, “At least it feels nice when someone is interested in me...” You said quietly.

“As if any guy would.” He said expressionlessly. You have yet nothing to say and he got the message that you were done listening. He got up from his seat as he looked at you with no sympathy, “Don’t blame me if he tears you apart.” And with that, he walked off. You sat there, not knowing what to think. You didn’t want to believe him because you were already over with him being an ass. He couldn’t be telling the truth… right?

The clear skies with shining sun soon faded when dark and grey clouds have flown into them. It would have been much better as a delight to maybe brighten up the day a little and not ruin it for you after what just clearly happened.

Jungkook on the other hand just did not care about what was going on with you and Jonghoon. Or does he because of the guy’s reputation with girls? No, that didn’t matter to him. If Jonghoon did anything to mess with you, then it was your fault for not listening to Jungkook. And he basically told you so. No fucks were given in the end.

At the end of practice at BigHit’s dance studio, Jungkook sat down on the floor with his back against the wall and grabbed his phone. Seeing an odd countless amount of messages from Jess, he was confused. She seemed worried and angry, but why was she?

Jess (4:33pm): Jungkook, idk where you are right now and honestly i don’t care but y/n hasn’t come home and i’m fucking worried.. Like seriously.

Jess(4:33pm): Can you look around and see if you can find her?

Jess(4:36pm): If you don’t, just know your hair won’t make it to the morning :)

Jungkook groaned in annoyance and responded.

Jungkook(5:02pm): Are you serious?? Do I really have to do this? Why can’t you just ask any of the other guys?

Jess(5:07pm): For one, Yoongi is at the studio but he is working on your comeback so he is out of the question. Hoseok is with Family at the moment, Jin is probably asleep, Jimin is out with Taehyung somewhere and Namjoon… I’m not sure where he is but you’re in her area and I need someone asap as my car is out of gas unless I’d be doing this shit my fucking self.

Jungkook(5:08pm) I could just give you money or bring gas to you. I literally have no idea where she is and I am nowhere in any mood to even find her.

Jess(5:12pm): See you’re the last fucking person I want to ask anyway but I need you to do this cause I’m working on something for Mr. Bang and if it’s not finished I am screwed. So just text Namjoon as he was the last one to talk to her after you decided to be an ass before her fucking date. Which I'm tempted to smack you for doing but you’re right about this guy which is why I'm extra worried… so just for my fucking sanity please jungkook. I’ll pay you back in whatever the fuck you ask for, games etc. just do it.

Jungkook(5:14pm): fine, but let this be the last fucking time you ask me to do something with y/n involved. I give no fucks about her or whatever she does with that douche just an FYI.

Jess(5:15pm): you can say that all you want but I know you Jungkook. Just find her, and if that fucker has hurt her tell me so I can plan his fucking funeral.

Jungkook(5:17pm): What is this, you’re not believing me now? In what aspect do you mean by knowing me? As if. But whatever, you can do whatever you want. If she ends up hurt, I’ll tell you. But it’s her fault and I don’t care anyway. She’s a stubborn pain in the ass and is the last person I ever want to put in my car no offense.

Jess(5:18pm): Whatever Jungkook, you act like a douche on purpose but I won’t argue with you as you’re just as hardhead as yoongi. So just find her, I have shit too before Mr. Bang has my head on a pike.

Jungkook(5:19pm): alright fine. I’ll keep you updated if I find her or not.

Jess(5:21pm): Thank you... You really don’t understand how much I am thankful that you are doing this. She is like a daughter to me. So yeah I gtg Mr. Bang is yelling at me now lmao

Jungkook(5:22pm): I mean I guess lol… I’m only doing this for you.

Jess(5:23pm): it won’t only be me in the end, but thanks.

Jungkook(5:23pm): no problem

Jungkook sighed in annoyance and hung up slipped his phone in his pocket. Do I really have to do this? Yes, of course, he does. He’s not that much of an ass to reject doing a favor for someone who needs it. And if Jess is that damn worried about you, then he may as well go out and find you. Jungkook grabbed his backpack and carries it on his back after putting his sweaty towel in and zipping it up. Walking out to his car, he thought to himself, what happens if he doesn’t find you at all?

During the car ride, he went to various places that he could in order to find you. Locations that may seem where you might be based on where you probably like to go. And he even went to the most random places too. He’s driven around everywhere in Seoul basically trying to find just you.

An hour passed and you were not found. Jungkook was in utter anger and stress that he’s wasted on time looking for you. He just wanted to go home badly to rest, and at that point for finding you everywhere, he’s given up. He shook his head and turned his car around to his way home. How was he going to tell Jess that he didn’t find you?

Although it was one question that he was focused on, there was another one that he just couldn’t help but keep thinking about the most. Is she okay?

The thought if it makes him worry a little. And it was odd. Where could you possibly be that you suddenly disappeared all day? Then suddenly while driving down a road, he found someone familiar walking on the sidewalk with their head down. Their outfit just seemed to look too much like what you were wearing earlier. Your figure and the way you walk even caught him off guard. With curiosity and hope, Jungkook slowly drove up close to get a better look of you, and as soon as he was just there, it was suddenly and thankfully you, walking with your head down.

To be sure of it, Jungkook rolled down his window and slowed down next to you, “Y/N?” The familiar voice caught you off guard and caused you to turn. Surprisingly, you found Jungkook in his black luxurious car right next to you. And it was definitely bad that he could see your face full of sadness and regret.

Jungkook, who was ready to pop off his madness and yell at you, studied your face. Your eyes were puffy and watery, your nose was red and cheeks were a peachy color. You had been crying and for some reason, his face softened. It was weird seeing you cry and it didn’t make him feel good inside at all.

“Go ahead, laugh at me.”

Jungkook stood there with trying to keep no expression on his face, but he only blinked, “I… I’m not going to,” he said quietly and he took a deep breath with his chest rising, “Get in, it’s gonna rain soon and Jess is worried sick.”

You shook your head with your arms still locked, and making no eye contact with him, “No thanks, I’m fine.” You turned to walk off in the same direction you were heading. That wasn’t until “Y/N please.” Jungkook watched you walk away. But you just kept walking. You knew you didn’t want to deal with him. But he wasn’t going to let you walk away from him.

“Y/N please stop.” His voice arose and it sounded quite like a demand. But that didn’t stop you from turning around with a pissed look on your face with tears streaming down your cheeks. “And why do you care?” And at that, Jungkook stays silent for a while.

You couldn’t be bothered to turn around to face him properly, for your insides were seething with rage and your heart felt empty to the core. Jungkook was right, he always was. The things he said to your face, how badly he spoke of you, and now this, about the guy who you thought was pretty decent—and something about Jeon Jungkook being right about everything is making your jaw clench in anger as you recall the buried grudge he has for you. Why must he keep meddling in your life? Right now, you wished he just disappeared off the face of earth. That way, your life would be much, much easier. You wouldn’t have to keep caring about your stupid feelings getting hurt and being the constant target and Jungkook’s antics.

And that’s the worst part. Feelings.

You’ve been harboring them for him god knows since when and you are afraid to open up about it to him. There’s this side of you Jungkook always fails to see and you doubt he ever will. Even if he does, it is highly unlikely that he would even care. And that is the question bothering you most as of the moment.

Why did he fucking care?

With your back facing him, you missed how he churns on his inner cheek and doesn’t know where to put his gaze. The rain pattering on the concrete floor didn’t provide him with the answers he needed. He directed the question back to himself and he realized he could not give closure as well.

With a sigh, he spoke, “Because I hate seeing you sad when it’s because of someone else hurting you like no one should or I shouldn’t.”

“I know you’re upset but can you please get in the car for my own good sake to get you home and save you from being sick at least?” Without a word, or looking at him, you walked past him and your shoulders barely touched as you walked to the passenger side of his car. That gave him a slight tingle in himself as he’s rarely been that close to you.

On the way back home, it was pure silence in the thin atmosphere. Jungkook gave glances to you here and there but you never once took a glimpse at him. And your position was obvious. You were sitting with your legs tightly closed and your fingers were brushing against each other as you only looked out the window, keeping your emotions as stable as you could. But it was so difficult to just give in and not cry. Then you realized, how could you be so stupid to not listen to him? He was right. You were angry. Not at Jungkook. But yourself. You felt bitchy. So bitter. Yet it was wrong to be that way to him. Although he has had a big hatred for you, you just can’t ever treat him the same. It just doesn’t work that way for you, which is a big problem. You’re too nice.

“He hurt you didn’t he?” His soft voice snapped you out of your thoughts, that you didn’t even realize he was already parked in front of your apartment. You gazed over at him and by the look on your face, Jungkook felt a little pang in his heart. Eyes puffy and glossy, your nose and cheeks peachy. He has never seen you cry once before, not even has he seen you express a sad or depressing emotion. He’s always seen you smile.

“Yes. And I let him.” Your voice cracked as if it hit the flu. Jungkook clenches his lips as he caught your eyes blink with tiny little tears, “What did he do?” You shook your head, “Just something that I learn my mistake from. It’s nothing-“

“Y/N” He started, “What did he do?” He stared at you with a straight face, almost like a demand. And it wasn’t that he was forcing you. He needed to know.

You sighed quietly as you could feel the slight order from him and you just couldn’t say no to him. “He groped me.” You vocalized in a shaky tone. Jungkook could feel his blood boil fast and kept calm, “Where did he touch you, Y/N?” His voice lowered.

“I c-can’t tell you-“

“If you can’t tell me, then point to where did he touch you.”

You gulped and your heart thumped rapidly, “Um…” You didn’t want any trouble at all and you were so hesitant in just telling him Jonghoon’s attempt to getting in your pants. But Jungkook could tell what he tried to do when you stuttered and look down at your most private area. As soon as you picked your head up at him, your tears were already swimming around your eyes, “H-He-“ you tried to speak but you were cut off by Jungkook’s hand grabbing you and pulling you onto his lap with your legs straddling him, in which you began to let out a breathy cry. His arms engulfed around your fragile figure and he held you tight in his arms, your response with burying your face in his neck with your hands on his hard chest as you sobbed in his neck.

But this was weird. You’re sitting on your enemy’s lap and he’s comforting you. He’s practically holding you in his own arms and you’re letting him. Ye his comfort made you feel safe… and you didn’t want to pull away. You didn’t even dare to. His soothing fingers stroking your hair as his hand rubbed your back slowly but keeping a light grip on you.

Jungkook on the other hand, he didn’t know what in the hell is he doing or what he was thinking. Why is he holding you? Why did he grab you and suddenly felt that he needed to protect you? He was in rage deeply inside and one of these days when he finds Jonghoon, he’ll make sure he doesn’t have his perfectly straight teeth.

You were glued to each other, the steady beat of his heart making you never want to open your eyes. Some nights, you’d lie awake just thinking about what he would say if he ever felt guilty about what he did and here it was. And somehow, it was so much more than what you asked for. But you also were wary. The bigger part of you, though, knew he was being sincere, that he held this crushing guilt over his head over what happened between you two for the past five to six years.

”You don’t deserve this,” he softly spoke up along a sigh, “You’re too special and fragile…” He added.

Wait what? You pulled away from his neck and looked at him, “What?” Your cold soft voice barely could be audible. Jungkook got a better glimpse of you up close—broken and terrified. And it sure damn stabbed his own heart deeply. He locked a piece of your hair behind your ear as he stared at you, “I know I was an ass to you earlier but I know that what I’m about to tell you is what I really mean to say. You’re too unique and wonderful for him. He’s nothing but a scumbag looking for a just a fuck and you don’t need that. You need and will get a guy who will treat you loyally and kindly with all of his love for who you are. Any guy would be lucky to have you, Y/N. Wait for him…the right one will sweep you off your feet.” His thumb rubbed your hip softly and the feeling warmed your skin.

You blinked. Is he really telling you this or are you just dreaming?

He sighed, “Just trust me.” He said softly. Jungkook reached his hand up to your face and wiped your tears gently with his thumb, “You’re so beautiful…” And it was true to him. Being this up close to you, he was able to see your flaws but they resembled how gorgeous you are. You shook your head, you didn’t believe that “I’m not that-“

“Yes, you are.” He cut you off, “Honestly, you’re so attractive and stunning, don’t tell yourself you’re not beautiful when you have seen yourself in the mirror.” He looked into your eyes, deep into them.

And you just didn’t know what else to say because his brown doe eyes caught you off guard. Neither of you could look away and it’s like your eyes were having a never lasting conversation with each other. You could feel your own pupils dilate the more you looked closely into his, and you could have sworn that his eyes looked at your lips then at you. But you also didn’t think he did. And at that moment, it was when you come to the realization of what was going on, causing you to clear your throat, “Um..” you hummed, which had Jungkook probably get the memo too. You looked down awkwardly as your mind was going crazy but you remained calm, “Thanks for the ride… and listening.” You said softly. Jungkook eyes darted elsewhere but you with a blank expression on his face, “Yeah,” he started, “No problem.” He said and he just sat there, his tongue poking out of his.

You slowly got off his lap to the passenger side and got out his car, grabbing your bag as you fixed yourself and closing the door afterward without saying a word. Making your way into your apartment, you didn’t dare to look back. After locking the front door, you leaned your back against it, questioning what just happened.

You almost kissed your enemy.

#jungkook x reader #jeongguk x reader #jungkook imagine #jungkook #jungkook smut #jungkook au #BTS jungkook #bts imagine #bts scenarios #enemies to lovers au #bts smut #her blooming flower #hbf

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the-studying-coffee-addict · 5 years ago

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Hello, students of all ages! Since I graduated, I knew that I wanted to share advice with you guys and it will cover from studying to life and everything in between. So here it is, enjoy!

School:

Figure out what school works for you and your life: This is probably the first thing I normally tell people. Researching the schools that you want to go help narrow down your choices. Make sure that reading details carefully is also important for full understanding. There may be schools that offer specific majors that others may not, so make sure that there’s a full understanding of what the schools offer before making a decision.

Find out your major (and it’s okay to change it later): Knowing of what to major in can be difficult for people to narrow down. There are some people that double major in their college career. If you’re unsure of what to major in, try thinking of what career field you want to be in and find the major that is required. Remember, you choose how you live your life, even choosing your major.

Know what expectations are for the classes you’re taking: Not every professor will be laid back or chill. The work can be difficult and hard to understand. Make sure that on syllabus day you are focused and take notes on the syllabus for later use. As long as you are trying in the class and talking to the professor, you should be fine. Getting a tutor does not make you any less than you are now (I had to have a tutor for my last quarter to help with my French. Was it degrading? No, not one bit. Did it help? Yes.) Talk to some people you may have the class with, join or create a study group. Everyone is in the class with the same goal: to learn.

Find a group, club, or organization to join: This one was a bit hesitant for me because being an introverted person (well, extroverted introvert), it took me until my junior year of college to join something I was passionate in doing. (I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know specifically what I wanted to do until late sophomore year into junior year specifically anyway). I found an organization, Her Campus, that helped me do what I love: writing/editing and helped me learn the skills I needed to learn. I knew that I wanted to work in magazines by the time of me finding HC and when it was brought to Tech (Louisiana Tech University), I knew I had to do it. Since then, I got the opportunity to make my work published through an official online blog that can be seen nationally and internationally, work with the best girl gang on campus, and be able to see what I could create.

Find different study tactics to help you: Ever since I created this studyblr, I found different study tactics: from printables to schedules and everything in between. My go-to for studying were printables. I used ones from @theorganisedstudent ‘s essay planner (I swear by these because I majored in English and used these for every paper I wrote), weekly planner (to help with planning out commuting times, working, and study schedule around class times). I used @studyquill ‘s To-Do List, I constantly used this to make sure I kept track of all assignments and due dates and everything that popped up like random assignments to thought like “ extra credit assignment”. @emmastudies has a lot of wallpapers (which are adorable and amazing) I use those 100 percent of the time. The calendars are chic and available as well, I use the yearly ones. I see in the Studyblr community that people use the bujo templates for journaling, calendars, lists, etc. I didn’t have the skillset, time/patience to try it, but I may over the summer to see how it can turn out. I worked at a ratio of studying for 45 minutes and taking a break for 15 minutes. This helped me stay focused and know when to take a break without thinking about stopping. Remember that everyone is different and use what works for YOU.

Take classes that you’re interested in: When you take classes that are interested in helps make learning fun. Now, there are required classes that are not in your interests and that happens. Try to find something that makes the course interesting. I would watch documentaries for history classes and watch videos (typically short Youtube videos) for psychology. This also helped me with troubling subjects as well.

ALWAYS be prepared: the most important thing I did at the beginning of the quarter I would gather all the info I was giving off the syllabi and make a checklist. My checklist would have “electronics (computer, phone, maybe iPad) and chargers, planner, books, homework assignments, snacks/lunch, and headphones”. I brought these items with me every time I went to school. Now I wasn’t perfect, I still forgot things and I tried to make sure if I had extra chargers or headphones, I put them in a bag or specific holder (similar to this holder). For paperwork of any kind, I kept them in folders of some sort and kept them where I could find them. When I was a freshman, I didn’t receive a curriculum sheet (the paper that had the class requirements) for my major (this was before I transferred) until the last semester before transferring. Since then, I’ve always kept a copy of one for myself and had it with me when I would go to advising for classes. It helped me keep track of what classes I needed to take and where I was at in my schooling. Review notes the night before, even if it’s right before you go to bed. Some professors require that you do the assignments before you get to class and it happens. Merge both previous notes and upcoming assignments in the same time frame to help make sure that you remember the last class’ lesson plus know about the new lesson. Try to plan ahead as best as you can in every way you can. Remember: not everything goes as planned, and there are more letters in the alphabet :)

Find a friend or two in each class: a trend at my university was making a GroupMe chat (or a chat of some kind) for classes in case we needed information. I’ve made a few friends in college and I even made friends with people internationally. Don’t stress over this factor cause sometimes it just happens. If you want to start a friendship or know someone, ask them about something in the class or about their major. This is a common icebreaker for college students. I also made friends with my professors because they were understanding, amazing, and open to helping students out.

Make a studying playlist: the best way to study is with classical/instrumental music because it keeps you focused and it won’t cause distractions. You can find playlists on Youtube, Spotify, and Pandora. Even create one for yourself. Music like soundtrack scores can also help

Look for internships and jobs ASAP: always be on the lookout for jobs, internships, even ask around to job shadow to see if you would like the career path. I found internships and I job shadowed while I was in school and it helped out tremendously. I did mine through Her Campus here.

Find your favorite spots on and off campus: there will be days when you’re going to be studying. Sometimes, being cooped up in your room doesn’t help you focus. Find a place that you’re comfortable being in: a coffee shop (mine was off campus), a student center, a place outside, anywhere where you can enjoy your surroundings and help you study. This can also be a sort of “time out” spot as well. If you have two places you like to be in, you can pick one to be a study spot and the other can be a wind-down spot.

Be realistic with yourself: know yourself, know the workload and responsibilities that are at task. If you can’t handle it, find ways to break it down and handle it. If it gets overwhelming, reevaluate yourself and your situation. College is NOT easy, it will test you and push you to become better- that’s the point.

Change is not always a bad thing: change can be scary and it can either push you to be better or scare you. Pick your decision on if the change will scare you or let it push you.

Know everything you sign up for: Financial aid, work-study, any contracts, etc. Know everything about anything that you sign up for because you want full awareness of the situation. You don’t want to be in a situation where you don’t get what you need or end up owing more than what you bargained for.

Keep receipts of EVERYTHING: when I got my first debit card, I was told to keep my receipts for bookkeeping. If there were a situation where I would need to return something, you would have the receipt. I use this method for everything in my life from keeping my bank statements in a binder to keeping up with any large payments like tuition payments. It helped me keep up with everything I needed to. If you feel like you should have a copy of something, ask for one. Never doubt your gut.

Look for deals on textbooks: there’s always somewhere where textbooks are cheaper. I used the school’s bookstore, Chegg, and Thriftbooks- these were all lifesavers.

Life:

It will not always be perfect: when I graduated from high school, I pictured that I would immediately jump into university like people would do in movies and books. Despite my efforts (and an endless amount of money and time in tutoring), I found myself not going into university and was able to go to community college (side note: there is nothing wrong with community college. If you are in this predicament, you are doing amazing and there is no shame in that). One: even though I was upset that I couldn’t make it how I imagined, I made a backup plan. My plan was to go to c.c. (community college) and then move up to uni (university). Two: I also found out that transferring was possible while in c.c. Even though it’s been four years later, I earned my Bachelor’s Degree and I don’t regret it.

Your situation may change: After my sophomore year, I made the decision to commute because it became expensive for me to live at uni. This may happen to you and that’s okay. I don’t think that moving back home was a bad choice. It did come with some up and downs like living an hour away from uni, spending more money on my car and its maintenance (plus gas), saving money for tuition, and being closer to family. Nothing is wrong with moving back home or even deciding to stay home during uni days. Don’t make matters worse for yourself for any reason.

Have fun, I mean it: college isn’t spending 24/7 on studying and going to classes (yes, please go to class- don’t skip class to have fun). You’re allowed to have fun. I managed my fun. I know myself enough to schedule my fun (and I had understanding friends that knew I took my studying seriously). There were some days where I would have no classes and would decide to use that time to work on assignments, papers, etc so that I could relax later. Or some weekends I would plan not to do anything (especially on Sundays- I call “Sunday Bumdays”) and take the day to unwind, work on self-care, explore, etc. If you can afford for one day of total nothingness, great. If not, try to attempt at a half-day. If you don’t have fun within your journey, it will look back on with either regret or disappointment.

Save money (and be strict about it): every penny matters. Save money for food, gas/ transportation, tuition/books, emergency savings, etc. There are going to be times where you will need money, even if it’s to grab lunch or go grocery shopping. Always have money in the bank and in your pocket. Find odd jobs to do or find a job if you need money. Most college students work part-time and go to school full-time. Don’t forget to treat yourself, and keep in mind to manage it so it doesn’t become a burden.

Learn things outside of the classroom: learn things about your campus, people, the town you’re in, everything. Learning about things around you can help make you feel comfortable, even if you live away from the campus. It’ll help appreciate the environment around you and give you a better experience.

Find a healthy hobby to do: I know college can be/will be exhausting. There is a solution to make sure that there is a healthy outlet for stress relief. Healthy hobbies such as exercise, photography, and exploring new things (crafting classes, movie nights, etc) can help relieve burn out and stress. Personally, I made this studyblr, I free wrote (writing with no agenda/reason), went to the gym, and walked around campus during sunset. I also wrote a short article on it here.

Make a routine: I made a routine to help keep myself busy, know what was going on for the day and to be prepared. The routine would vary for the days depending on my schedules for work and school.

If you need extra help, ask: there is nothing wrong with asking for help. Ask for it and don’t be afraid to.

Take care of your body in ALL forms: mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, etc. From skincare to getting check-ups. All of it matters and your body and mind are important.

Make a resume and keep up with it: you will learn how to write a resume and clean it to help get you jobs and track your experiences and skills. Don’t slack on it because it is an important tool you will need.

Work:

Don’t overwhelm yourself: work and school can be intimidating, especially when you’re involved with extracurriculars. Get a planner and make a plan for yourself. Remember: make time for yourself too.

Quirky things/ Etiquette:

thank you cards- I sent thank you cards to a bunch of people for different reasons. Like teachers- for teaching me things that helped me graduate, organizations that came to our booth for our organization that we hosted this year, people that gave me things like presents/ advice, and any job shadow/ internships- because it’s always nice to thank people that helped you along the way.

find things that are productive that doesn’t involve studying- you’ll go crazy without it and here.

organize your workspace- tips here

find stationary you love- it makes studying enjoyable even the worst subjects

say your “please”s and “thank you”s- I promise, it will go a long way. Even if you don’t use them, it can help a bad experience turn into a good one

don’t be afraid to think outside of the box- I’m serious, not everyone is traditional and that’s okay. Be comfortable with your life.

know the rules- yes there will be rules and weird ones that you will need to know/follow. There will also be protocols and policies to keep up with as well for things like on-campus living, rules of clubs/organizations, etc. Read them thoroughly.

don’t be rude- just don’t.

make business cards- it’ll make it easier for you in the long run and it’ll help you network

branch out- look for new things to get involved in like poem slams, video game battle meetups, yoga classes, things like that to help expand your taste and experiences.

College will be different for everyone. It can be a different journey that is taken and it can make all the difference. Make it the best years for you.

#college tips #college advice #studyblr #collegeblr #student help #thestudyingcoffeeaddict #collegelifehacks #lifehacks #college #tips and advice

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subdee · 5 years ago

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13 questions meme

Tagged by @hxhhasmysoul, these questions are interesting thank you :D

Rules: Share 13 things about yourself. Answer the 13 questions asked to you and invent 13 questions the people you tag will have to answer. Tag 13 people. (Tag-backs ARE allowed!) Be creative with the title.

13 Things About Me

1. We have two cats. One is bigger, we got her from RJ's mom because she was attacking Mom's other cat. She hates other animals but she LOVES people, a very social cat, she'll approach strangers on the street to be petted. The other cat is a stray we rescued. We named him Ghost because he hid for the first month, he's adjusted to being a house cat now though. Ghost is very affection-seeking but very skittish at the same time, he wants to be close to Cymbal but he'll settle for us if she's not in the mood. They fight all the time but they get along, cats are weird.

2. Funny you ask this, I've been lost many times and I also used to have reoccurring nightmares about getting lost. ^^ IDK I had a tendency to wander off as a child. Places I've been lost: at the park down the street (I was not lost but my parents didn't know I was there - ran away after fighting with friends over who could be April TMNT), in the woods at sleep-away camp, at Universal Studios Orlando.

3. Hmmm I guess... Putting ketchup on stuff? Ketchup and tuna fish, etc. High tolerance for weird flavor combos in general.

4. Forget heaven or some other fantasy place, I'm going to visit an alien civilization. I'm just so curious and it would be cool to be the first person to know that other life exists in our universe.

5. I want to live near the coast where the weather is always 70 degrees and sunny. California, Hawaii, at the shores of the Black Sea, etc. Small but quirky house, less to clean that way.

6. As a kid I kept my hair in two long pigtails, I was called Pippi Longstocking. I kept it long for a while but my hair is thin and fine, I look better with short hair. Plus, my short hair makes it clear I'm not straight or at least that I'm into alternative stuff, so that's a plus. I don't have a preference for others in terms of length, but I don't like mainstream styles because I'm queer and I appreciate other people signalling that they are also queer. RJ looks cute when he lets his hair grow out though, it's loosely curly like a poodle's :D

7. Teleportation would be the most convenient power. I'd like to be able to shapeshift.

8. I have a style but I'm not really that into fashion. I wear a lot of loose black band t-shirts and dressy tank tops with jackets, I also like bright geometric patterns.

9. I was sporty as a kid! I'm a Capricorn so I was on the older side in my grade, usually better coordinated than others and chosen first for sports. Not anymore though. My main sport was softball, I've played a lot of different positions, from outfield to third base to first base to pitcher. I want to say it's because I improved but the real reason is probably that the teams I was on got worse over time :p

10. I watch those planner videos... You know, people drawing elaborate to do lists in their bullet journals. ^^; IDK I like drawing but didn't practice enough to be good at it, bullet journalling is the perfect amount of art because it's just doodling for fun. Also those videos are relaxing.

11. This is a good question... When I was dating girls I was usually asked out first, actually... Even in online dating, I was usually messaged first, or the few times I messaged first it fizzled out after a while. I don't have any problems asking first, the dynamic just seems to work better the other way. I did ask RJ out first though, by mistake.

12. A long trip would be... More than four hours in one direction? I've done it a bunch, I'm on an eight hour car trip with RJ's band right now actually. I think your view on this will depend on the size of your country, when I was in York doing a master's program I'd go down to London for shows and it was only like 3 hours each way, but UK friends thought I nuts because to them anything more than 30mins was a journey. I have a long daily commute though, sometimes an hour and a half each way, I get a lot of thinking done in the car.

13. Music is really important to me! Before meeting RJ, I used to go out to shows alone to see the bands. I made some really good online friends through music too, I was a pretty intense Libs and then K-pop fan. I get along with musical people is the main thing. With RJ it's much easier to see live music, I just tag along, which is awesome because I am lazy about finding new music and put minimal efforts into discovery. (I will research the bands I'm into, though.) I like to sing the harmony parts to all kinds of music.

13 Things About You:

Oldest, youngest or middle child? Are you the stereotype of your birth order?

Worst injury you've ever suffered? Can be mental or physical.

How often do you travel? Did you travel during your childhood?

How well does Google, Facebook, Alexa, etc understand you? What kinds of things do you usually get recommended and do you actually enjoy them?

Are you a gamer? If you aren't, why not? If you are, what games do you play?

Goth, punk, prep or nerd? Some other group that doesn't fit these categories?

What's a good hobby to share with other people? When you meet up with friends, what do you do together?

Something you're proud of?

First CD you bought with your own money? Or first concert you attended, if you are one of those people who doesn't own physical music :P

First fandom? Using fandom loosely here, could be a music group or sports team etc. What was your main fandom activity?

Favorite vice? Something you know you shouldn't do, but you do it anyway and enjoy it... Do you believe in the concept of guilty pleasure, or not?

Something you like seeing in fiction? Favorite trope, genre, etc.

What would you do with your life if money was not a problem?

Tagged: I don't have 13 people I interact with regularly on this site... Lots of friends I had when I started aren't around anymore. Anyway no pressure if you are on here: @minimoonstar @squeakgirl @girlinastartrekdress @nina9900o @craigslistaddict @staoue @ahistoryofmalice @teaboot @fiat-caelum @kimishma @plastic-lions @cameliasamica @syncopatedid

#Tag games #I typed this all out on mobile...

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wordsinwinters · 7 years ago

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Then Again, P7 Peter Parker x Reader

Author’s Note: To everyone reading and favoriting this story, thank you! I can��t express how happy I am to see each note and message.

Though I’d love to fumble through my gratitude further, this is a big chapter, so I’ll end my rambles here for now.

Let me know what you think!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

Then Again, Part 7:

(Words: 3,059)

I often expect too much, set my sights a little too high. I know this, so I always prepare myself in case nothing goes according to plan.

For example: I had hoped this second annual break-into-the-hotel-pool activity would be easy, that everyone would come willingly, and we would have fun before the tournament tomorrow. Still, I prepared myself for a few bumps. For example, if Peter refused, if the entire thing flopped because everyone was worried about getting enough sleep, or if someone in the hotel caught us and reported it to Mr. Harrington, I was prepared.

Strangely enough, everyone crept out on time and Peter barely hesitated at all. Well, Michelle did force him from the start and headed off his first protest too quickly for him to find another: “Dude, just say you’ve been working out. Nobody’s going to get suspicious because you’re jacked. Even Flash can’t turn that,” she motioned to Peter’s entire body, “into a joke.”

Yet I’m more uneasy now than if everything had gone wrong. I’m not even concerned about getting caught. Mr. Harrington is watching Jurassic Park in his room and checking the hallway at ten-minute intervals and I’m almost certain the hotel staff knows we’re here, but doesn’t care.

Nevertheless, I’m just… anxious.

It might have to do with how the boys are stacked upon one another in the shallow end for Chicken and, given the small area of the pool, injuries are on the table. It might have to do with Flash’s new habit of winking at me and being, in general, maddeningly obnoxious. It might also have to do with the fact that my friends are being abnormally secretive. (I hate to use Flash’s words, but he’s sort of right. It’s the best description. Even once I got back in my room, MJ and Ned kept sending texts - I have no idea who to, though I would guess between them and Peter.)

Admittedly, my nerves might also be connected to Liz, whose face I can see across the water. As our Captain, Michelle thought it would be nice to Facetime her, ask about college, and show her that her pool idea has become a tradition.

Liz’s dorm room is beautiful, from what I can make out. She has calendars and planners neatly pinned up with Christmas lights to outline them. Photos hang from mini clothespins on a string and she even has a little library set up on her windowsill with a porcelain cat-shaped bookend. It’s like a freaking Pinterest photo. I’ve always been somewhat jealous of her, but I know that outside of some old disagreement and my envy for her style and Peter’s (old? current?) crush on her, I am glad she seems happy. Everyone knows how much she’s been going through.

As Abe and Peter pretend to duke it out on Flash and Ned’s shoulders, the light of Liz from Michelle’s phone skips through the ripples, illuminating them just so. I keep zoning out and staring at the pattern. I feel weird staying on the other side of the pool with her there, but I don’t know Liz that well outside of the team and truth be told, she always intimidated me. She just… has things together. Even now. She’s wonderful and precise and good in every way a person can be. I feel minuscule by comparison.

Then again, it might be the overwhelming smell of chlorine that’s getting into my head and putting me off. Plus, all the glints of light swimming across the glass walls - making them reflect further like a hall of mirrors - are beginning to strain my eyes. Part of me just wants to sleep. To climb out from the water, change into some pajamas, and go to bed and forget this.

But I can’t. So I tread water alone in the corner, watching and listening and feeling like an idiot for isolating myself.

Does anyone want you here in the first place?

Stop thinking like that.

I try to listen to Liz’s voice as a distraction. It’s muffled with echo, but it’s audible.

“With my AP scores, a bunch of my gen ed credits are already taken care of. But I want to take my other gen eds seriously. I have Global Ethics, Statistics, and World Journalism on Mondays and Wednesdays, then Into to Biological Chemistry and Public Relations on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

The words bounce from wall to wall, shadowing splashes and voices and little bright doses of laughter from the boys. I close my eyes for three seconds as if to catalog the moment. I have to admit, it’s pretty much perfect.

Then why do I feel so nervous?

In the same way that some days just feel so good, some nights just really, really don’t.

Flash catches my eye. God, here we go. He’s smirking.

“Hey!” he calls. “Y/N, you should join in! Hold on, let me clear you a spot.”

He jerks his body back to make Abe fall from his shoulders, hitting the water with a hard splash.

“There, now you have a place to sit,” Flash says, patting his own shoulders.

Abe stands up, shaking water from his ears before shoving Flash underwater. Ned laughs as Flash comes back up sputtering. Peter, on Ned’s shoulders, has little reaction. Michelle rolls her eyes and turns back to the girls’ conversation.

“It’s more fun watching, trust me.” Watching Peter shirtless, my brain adds.

Stop thinking about him. Despite his smile this morning (it was idiotic of me to think it meant anything significant), Peter has remained pretty cold to me today. Just like everyone else.

Michelle looks back our way again.

“Y/N and I will play,” she decides.

If I had more energy, if I weren’t feeling so despondent, and if it wasn’t her this-is-happening-don’t-argue voice, I might put up a better fight. Instead, I give a quiet defeated groan and make my way over to the shallow end. Most times it’s easier to do as she says.

“Michelle in a chicken fight?” Liz laughs, her voice reverberating on all sides of my head. “I can’t wait to see this.”

“Oh, no,” Michelle answers as she shakes her head. “Y/N is up top. I’m not getting involved in that business.”

I sigh.

“Abe, mind if I fight Flash this round?” I ask.

If I have to do this, I want to be against the one person I wouldn’t mind actually fighting.

“I think I’ll sit this one out,” Abe says. “I’m sick of him. Plus, if he has the chance, I know he’ll piss on me.”

Despite my exhaustion, I can’t help laughing a little. It’s definitely true. But if Abe sits out, there’s no chance that Ned or Peter will team up with Flash.

Flash knows this too. Shrugging, he follows Abe away from the center, saying hello to Liz.

Shit.

I climb onto Michelle’s shoulders, the air making me shiver, my ankles hanging just low enough to stay in the warm water. I stare blankly at the situation. It’s me and Michelle, Peter and Ned. And I’ve barely spoken to them since they all locked me out earlier. I wouldn’t want to disrupt their texting.

I do my best not to tug Michelle’s hair as I steady myself.

Now what?

Everybody else is talking again, Liz included. I’m glad their attention is elsewhere.

Staring at Peter, who’s staring at me, it’s clear neither of us knows what to do. Things have definitely gotten stale and weird between us over the last day, and weirder still over the last few hours. I feel like an idiot. But I’d be a moron to think it’s all because of that stupid hug. Something in our friendship is stuttering, I can feel it faltering and falling away.

Abruptly unstable ground - that’s what it is, I realize, looking at him. And everybody has been able to see it coming but me. How else could Flash see it?

Thinking of all the shitty ways Peter has ignored me today, yesterday, and this past week, I shove him with as much force as I can muster, knowing it’ll be nothing to him anyway.

Peter’s legs are over his head a moment later. If it were a real fall, it would have been instant. The rippling disturbance of the water churns up more chlorine fumes. I can feel a headache germinating at the base of my skull.

“Come on, Peter,” I say while he stands and pushes wet hair out of his eyes. “Don’t pretend to let me win.”

“You caught me off guard,” he says. All of the prior playful attitude he had with Abe is gone. He’s trying - I can actually see him trying - to seem blank.

What is his problem with me?

“No, I didn’t. Don’t lie. Get back up.”

He does. Ned’s expression is unreadable for once. Michelle pats my leg.

Ned and Michelle actually move around this time, both stepping to one side or the other with half steps back and forward. Peter keeps his hands on his knees, looking bored and glancing from MJ to her phone behind us. He won’t even look at me.

It pisses me off.

Michelle rolls one shoulder before lunging forward - a little hint. I shove Peter again, now resenting how stiff his muscles are beneath his stupid skin. And again he falls sideways, though faster this time.

Flash is whooping and making some stupid comment. Liz gives a surprised, “Oh, wow.” Sally and Cindy are talking, but I can’t tell whether it’s to me or someone else. Peter’s splash is echoing too much to hear a lot at the moment.

He stands up. His hands go to his hair. He looks at me and shrugs like Got me again, I guess.

The chlorine scent is hanging heavily over the room now like a pillow being slowly forced into my face. My headache pulses and creeps up behind my ear, beating my bone like a thick drum.

“Peter,” I say, teeth grinding, “this is going to get boring pretty quickly if you keep this up. Push back. Don’t you dare ‘let me win.’ I’m serious.”

My jaw is clenching as I try to pack my anger down into a little box between my ribs. A pressurized numbness climbs up my throat.

Shove it down.

Peter says nothing in reply but mounts Ned’s shoulders again. Ned is looking at Michelle, and though I can’t see her face, I know they’re having a silent conversation.

I nudge Michelle with my heel and she lunges forward again. I shove Peter’s left shoulder as hard as I can. Both shoulders hit the water at the same time. I know that no matter how hard I could ever hit him, it wouldn’t bother him a bit, yet the fact he’s clearly not even trying to play this one game that he was just playing with Flash and Abe is burning and biting at my tongue.

Peter stands lazily as if silently offering a forfeit.

Maybe he wants to get this game over with so he can talk to Liz.

“Get up, Peter,” I say as frustration spreads like fire through the ligaments of my arms. My irritation has reached my hairline.

Last week, I would never have doubted my friendship with Peter. Suddenly, I’m almost certain he wants nothing to do with me anymore. It scares me. A familiar dense pain pools in my lungs, a physical weight knocking my ribs into one another.

How did everything go so wrong so quickly?

Peter doesn’t move. I could kill him.

“Peter! Get up! Fight back, do something! This isn’t funny anymore. Why won’t you just do something?”

At last, he looks me straight in the eye.

“What?” he shoots back. “What do you want me to do?”

He’s angry now too, blatantly. It’s worse than last night. I can see it, a red patch of irritation growing from his chest up to his neck. Neither of us has ever gotten like this. We’re not the kind of people who do. Not with one another, and certainly not in front of other people.

It’s a violently refreshing change: honesty.

“Anything! Stop messing around,” I say. “Just play the fucking game.”

“Maybe I’m sick of it,” he says, his hands open. “This whole stupid idea! I’m not playing anymore.”

What is he talking about? It’s been barely a minute of this game.

“MJ,” I say, “let me down.”

“Alright.”

She jerks back like Flash did to Abe. The water stings through my nostrils and the lining of my lungs. Is this just MJ being MJ or is she angry at me, too? And what about Ned, could he be mad at me?

What have they all been calling and texting each other about?

I wipe water from my face and open my eyes, stinging.

“Come on, Peter, play a game,” I mock, moving closer to him. He just stands there. “Play a game.”

I’ve been playing some sort of game for at least 24 hours now, maybe over a week, maybe even longer. He can too.

Peter doesn’t move a millimeter. I shove him. Nothing. His expression remains blank. He doesn’t fall, he doesn’t budge.

“Peter!”

I shove him again.

Nothing.

Michelle and Ned are creeping out of the water. Their waves are the only sound besides my echoing shout in the whole room. God, this is bad. I know starting some kind of fight isn’t going to increase my chances of leaving D.C. with any friends, but I almost can’t stop myself. I have to do something.

I move closer, face burning with an itch of fury.

“What?” he says.

Michelle and Ned, blurry reflections I can see from the glass wall behind Peter, have grabbed their towels and are walking through the door.

Damn it. Where are they going?

Something is crushing inside my chest. I can feel my eyes brimming with tears.

Shove. Them. Down. I will not angry cry in front of my classmates right now. Absolutely not. Especially not with Flash and Liz here.

My hands start shaking instead as I grapple for a reply.

“Just- just do something, Peter!”

The muscles in his jaw are working and pulsing. I wonder what words he’s chewing - of course, I’ll likely never know because it seems Peter is refusing to tell me anything.

“That’s just it!” he shouts back. “What do you want me to do?!”

That something in my chest is spasming, collapsing.

Peter’s chest is heaving and the red has reached his face. His words are fogging up my already pounding head.

That’s just it. What do you want me to do?

There are too many people here and as I notice their reflections standing over Peter’s shoulders with eyes glued to his face and my back, I realize I’ve just lost them too. In only the span of a couple minutes. The understanding hits me over the head and slices through my gut. I’ve ruined everything with everyone here, not just Peter and Ned and Michelle. They’ve never seen me like this and it’s too late to pretend to reverse it. There’s no way I’ll leave this trip with any friends.

It takes every particle of concentration to not let my emotions get the better of me and cry; especially when I’m still staring at Peter. The brown of his eyes seems darker than I’ve ever seen before and his brow is knotted up, hard.

The moment is so still and static.

Without warning, Peter smacks the water in front of me with one hand. It’s like a lukewarm tidal wave washing over my head, tangling my hair across my face.

My nose and lungs burn again. I gasped at the wrong second. In less than a moment though, it’s doused my nerves. I suddenly feel smaller than a child, humiliated.

“Are you kidding?”

I don’t know if he or anyone hears me. The question was quiet and overcome by countless echoing splashes. It’s for the best: nobody can see my chin shaking at this distance so maybe if they didn’t hear the crack in my voice, I can pull myself together.

Guilt and regret seep into my skin as Peter climbs out of the pool. I want to apologize, but apologize for what? And fear, fear is mixing with those other emotions. A mountain of blurred emotions coated in black dread and red fear.

I take a breath and turn around.

Fuck.

Cindy, Sally, Abe, and Flash are just… staring. Worse, Liz is too. Of course, Michelle forgets her phone this one time.

The door closes with a bang behind Peter.

His towel is slung over one shoulder and water droplets spatter across the hallway floor as he storms through it. If I could get over him, if I could stop thinking about him for one day, stop thinking about him for one minute, my heart rate wouldn’t be leaping off the charts as I watch him. Actually, my heart rate might just be a result of me realizing how serious this is. The fact that four faces are still staring, now waiting for me to explode, likely doesn’t help slow it down either.

“Guys,” Liz’s voice calls. “Come on. Don’t make this weird.”

Flash laughs. Hard.

“It’s super weird completely on its own! Man, what was that?”

Tension loosening its hold on the room, Flash is back to himself, looking astonished and amused beyond belief.

“Flash, seriously. Let it be,” Liz snaps at him. When she looks at me, her expression softens. “Don’t let Peter Parker get in your head. He can… be like that sometimes. He might just be going through something.”

I know what he’s like, I think. I’ve been friends with him for longer than one Homecoming date. Liz is trying, at least, and I do appreciate the thought.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding.

She mirrors the motion.

“I should go before my roommate gets back to study. And Y/N, if you ever want to talk, I’d like to hear from you again. From any of you guys. Anyway, good luck everyone! I’m sure tomorrow will be great.”

The room dissolves into Goodbye!’s. I use the distraction to get my towel and phone and slip out.

What have I done?

Part 8

Next Update: Friday, October 20

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I’d love to hear from you!

Also - if you want to be added to the tag list, reply to this post or send me a message.

And I apologize for the typos I’m sure were in this part. I didn’t have much time to proofread.

@allyouhadstodowasstay @profmmcgonagall @peterparkerismybeing @look-how-far-i-come @i-love-superhero

#peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #peter parker imagine #infinity war #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #tom holland x you #spiderman x reader #spider-man x reader #spiderman imagine #spider-man imagine #part 7 #then again

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thestudyfeels · 7 years ago

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hello, people! summer break just started for me and i’m so excited for what’s to come! i figured that making a masterpost would make it official and also would give everyone some ideas how to spend it fruitfully!! let’s begin fellas :’)

- the day school ends -

aka the day when you realize that you have days and days ahead of you and don’t know where to start

deep clean your room – this will give you he feeling that summer has actually begun and plus you now have a clean room haha

make a new playlist (a big one, okay?) – these are super fun to make and also summer does deserve some new funky and sporty songs in its bag

relax – go pamper yourself; get that double scoop ice-cream, go to spa, maybe get your nails and hair done. you have survived till summer break and you deserve this!

try to sort out your tasks and assignments into your planner – I know this can be tough, especially at the start when holidays have just begun; but try to at least plan out for the next week or two. maybe you want to work on that essay or write out those notes – planning will def help you to feel organized and get back your life in place.

- the following weeks -

gET THAT SHIT DONE NOW!!! SERIOUSLY DO IT!! DON’T PUT IT OFF TILL THE LAST WEEK!!! DO IT FAM, DO IT!!! (im low-key saving your butts with this tip, please listen to me) – write out those essays till they are perfect, solve that problem set till its ingrained in your brain, do your readings and write those notes. do it!!

combine that shit with fun stuff (see below) don’t burn yourself out please. and most importantly do not stress!!!11!!!!!

connect with people. call that friend you forgot about and that aunt who has been asking you over for dinner for ages. summer gives you the time to rekindle your relationships and seriously though, connecting with people will make your life much happier.

get a new hobby!! do you draw? paint? write? whatever you do – start doing it. use that time which you spend on the internet in exploring your passions and finding your interests.

seriously though, do that work first.

- some (fun) stuff to do in summer -

clean your closet (do it mate)

compliment people more

smile at strangers often

vlog your days. maybe start a YouTube channel for this?

revamp your blog

learn coding and revamp that shitty theme of yours (this applies for me, chill)

keep a gratitude journal

go a week without any social media (this will be hard, but try it!!)

go hiking or cycling with a friend

read 7-8 books or as many books as you please

have a do nothing day - treat yourself love!

learn a new kind of dance - this is really fun, i promise

go a whole day with any technology

do a 30 day challenge!!

seek out an interesting article to read everyday

go camping in the hills

have a bonfire!! roast marshmallows (or burn old notes lmao)

learn to knit/sew

save up!! (…they blow it all in a single day? lmao don’t though)

star gazing on a clear night!!

talk till dawn about random shit with a random person

a no makeup day – let your skin breathe

go on a family trip!

visit a sanctuary or a zoo with a younger sibling or smol kids

there are endless possibilities!! these are just some to get you started!!

- the last few days -

yo remember you still have winter break to come this year!! don’t be sad, fam!!

have a dance party in your room with your favourite music on (bc you only live once)

check and recheck if you got all that work done (if you didn’t, rip you haha)

check your school’s site for new updates and stuff (I bet you don’t do this though)

annnnd then enjoy your last day!! trust me - you’re going to have an amazing term ahead of this!!

Hope this helps! + you can always send me requests for masterposts since my ask box is always open! (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

Love, Taylor xo

#unicorn studying #ref #summer bucket list #summer break #how to #studyblrmasterposts #studyplants #artemistudying #athenastudying #uglystudies #natastudies #ohlooklily #cielstudies #etudiance #procrastilate #peace Tumblr ^_^#*lifestyle #*lists #*destress

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ruffsficstuffplace · 7 years ago

Text

And The AWRD Goes To... (Part 29)

Note: Extra long chapter, before I take a short break to assess other writing projects before the year ends.

An hour earlier, at a house that looked like a combination between a hunting lodge, a field laboratory, and a remote storage facility for old records and equipment, situated high up on the side of a mountain by the town of Hoshiko…

Inside of a large closet turned bedroom, its walls decorated with several Rune Rangers posters; calendars and planners covered in multi-coloured ink and childish doodles; and collectible figurines and manga on shelves, an alarm clock started beeping.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Laying sprawled out on her stomach in her bed, Silsa “Snowie” Schnee groaned, and put her pillow over her head. The alarm gradually kept on getting louder and louder, till no matter how many of her many pillows she packed over her ears, there was no blocking out the sound.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Snowie just groaned, resigning herself to an unpleasant, sleepless morning, laying in the comfort of her own bed. The beeping switched to a pre-recorded message in Nick’s voice, spoken in Vox:

“Snowie, sweetheart, come on: get up. There’s shit to do, love to give and get, and a brand new day to meet, kiddo.”

Underneath her pillow reinforcements, Snowie smiled, but still stayed in her bed in the silence that followed. Her alarm switched to a different pre-recorded message, this time in Freya’s voice, but also spoken in Vox:

“Silsa! Get up, right this instant! You have chores and duties to attend to, and you better be sick, bedridden, or dying for you to be ignoring this!”

Snowie groaned, and started slowly pulling her pillows off her head, throwing them into space on her wall painted in black and yellow hazard lines. When all of them were piled up or otherwise out of the way, Snowie slowly rolled over onto her side, off the bed and onto the waiting carpet below.

Thump.

Sprawled out on her back, she stared up at the Solitan saying on her ceiling, painted a bright, gaudy pink, contrasting with the earthy browns of Mistralian hardwood:

“Good day or terrible day, you will see it to the end.”

She smiled, before she punched the pressure plate just above her head, shutting off her alarm. That done, she rolled over to her stomach, pulled out the items underneath. First, she took out her pill organizer and a water bottle, took her three daily doses. Then, she pulled out a notebook covered in incredibly tough, worn leather binding, opened it and pulled out the pen inside.

She marked three X’s on the boxes next to that day’s date, started slowly going down the list of things she’d written down the night before, before she flipped to the inside of the cover. Among other things, there was a small sliding chart with pictures of her family, and a free space with silhouettes adorned with question marks.

Snowie sighed—red bars for everyone but Whitley. She forced herself to get up, walked over to her door, and reviewed the laminated pictures on it:

Her three prescription bottles.

A journal covered with bullets, of the “firearms” variety.

Clothes, a shirt and a pair of pants, with a plus sign between them furiously scribbled in black marker.

Satisfied she’d assessed all of them, she stepped out of her door, and headed to the kitchen. Whitley was already seated at the table, eating a bowl of Starlight Crusader Crunchies, and reading something on his scroll at the same time.

“Good morning, Whitley!” Snowie said as she stepped up behind Whitley’s chair, hugged him and kissed the top of his head. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Extremely glad it’s the weekend, and I have a two days reprieve from being tossed around in the Thunderdome that is Sanctum!” Whitley replied, looking up from his scroll long enough to smile at her. “How are you feeling, mother?”

“Like complete and absolute shit, as usual!” Snowie chirped happily as she stepped to the fridge, got herself a bottle of ginger ale. “I’m hungover, definitely had too much Steinbier last night, and overindulged in fanfiction shortly thereafter, but hey: at least it’s the weekend for me, too!” she said as she started taking slow, careful sips.

“Any plans for when Akko, Diana, and Ruby come over?”

“Already way ahead of you!” Snowie said, smiling and shooting Whitley a finger gun. “Got the perfect recipes already in mind, just gotta bike to Hoshiko later, get all the prep work done, put most of it in the fridge, then remember to toss the rest of the shit in the slow cooker before I pass out tonight!

“Then, come morning, I only need to toss it in the oven for like half-an-hour or unplug the crockpot, it’s gonna be delicious, and more importantly, it requires the least amount of active input from me possible, which minimizes the chances of me screwing it up!

“Unless Ruby and Diana have serious food allergies or aversions to literally everything I can buy at Hoshiko, there’s no way this can go wrong!”

Whitley put his spoon back into his bowl, and looked up from his scroll once more.

Snowie calmly took one more drink of her ginger ale, and carefully put it back down on the counter. “I fucked up and wrote ‘Sunday’ instead of ‘Saturday,’ didn’t I?”

Whitley nodded. “Yes. Yes you did, mother.”

Snowie began to make a long, continuous noise, starting as a quiet whine, gradually growing louder and louder to a wail of pure anguish, occasionally broken by hysterical sobbing.

Whitley sighed as he put his scroll down. “Mom, you’re going to be fine, we’re going to be fine.”

“No, no we’re not!” Snowie wailed as she started pacing about in the tiny kitchen, her hands gesturing wildly as she spoke. “Ruby and Diana are going to go in through that door, see how much of a fucking disaster this house is, and because we’re the only ones around to handle them, they’ll probably silently promise never to come back here again, and just stay at the inn at Hoshiko if circumstance ever drives them back here!”

Whitley turned around in his seat to look at her, Snowie held up both her palms, before she made the time-out sign. Whitley shut his mouth, Snowie gripped the counter as she took long, deep breaths, in-and-out, in-and-out.

“…We need to clean this place up…” Snowie said as she let go of the counter, noticeably calmer. “Cook breakfast… a socially acceptable one you can offer guests… and I need to bathe, because I smell like beer, ugly crying, and nervous sweating!”

“Okay, that last one certainly is a priority, and the second would be nice, but is the first really necessary?” Whitley asked. “I mean, we’re both exhausted from school starting up again—your struggling to be here all alone all day on weekdays, Weiss’ clearly less-than-ideal first week in Haven, and my being back in Sanctum.

“Not to mention, the limited square footage of this house hasn’t made it physically impossible to get that dirty—our crap’s just more densely packed and space-efficient,” he said, gesturing to one of the shelves and containers close to the ceiling and crammed into the nooks and crannies of the house, all overflowing with random crap.

Snowie scowled. “Look here, you little shit: Ruby and Diana are going to be stuck with Weiss and Akko for the next four years, and we need to—hmnnnn…!” she balled her shaking hands, and took in some more deep, calming breaths, before she uncurled her fists. “… Sit down, like reasonable, responsible adults, and we are going to discuss our response, or lack thereof, to Weiss’ and Akko’s team coming here today.”

Whitley put his spoon back into his cereal, shut off his scroll, and set them both to the side. “You have my attention, mother. Would you like to start?” he asked, spreading his hands open in front of him.

“Yes, yes I would, actually, Whitley, thank you,” Snowie said as she sat in the seat opposite his, pulling out the chair with one hand before she summarily parked her butt on it. “I would really like you to please help me clean up the house and cook a decent breakfast for three, because as you know, I’m pretty usele—“ she winced “--unconfident in my abilities and competence…!”

Whitley nodded. “I understand why you would want my help with this, and I also understand the motivation and the reasoning behind making a good first impression for Weiss and Akko’s teammates, but I will counter with this:

“Mother, throughout all my years of living in this house, I have come to the conclusion that we as a family are totally incapable of keeping any sense of normality, order, or decency for any prolonged periods of time.

“However well we can clean up this house and whatever we can whip up on short notice to give the impression that life here is generally at this level of ‘Nice,’ I am absolutely certain that within the hour of AWRD sans Weiss arriving, all of our hard work will be undone, and whatever positive assumptions or beliefs they had from said first impression will swiftly be totally, brutally erased and readjusted to fit the reality that they will be exposed to later today, and indeed, however many times her other two teammates return here afterward, if they ever do.

“In short: I believe that the effort and the stress of cleaning up and pretending we are even the slightest bit normal is not worth the very, very temporary, possibly even counter-intuitive rewards. Why should we even bother…?”

“Because, Whitley, we need to at least look like we give a shit.”

“An excellent point!” Whitley said, pointing at Snowie. “However, I remain unconvinced, and I am still not yet even partially recovered from the hellish events of this week, and thus will be returning to my cereal and fictional lesbians now,” he said as he pulled his scroll and breakfast back to him.

Snowie scowled and slammed both her hands on the table. “Okay, you know what? Forget it!” she knocked her chair back as she shot up from her seat, caught it and threw it back down to all four legs as she walked away. “I’ll just do this all by myself!”

“I wish you the best of luck, mother, really I do!” Whitley called out, idly shoveling some cereal into his mouth as he returned to his reading.

Snowie ignored him as she went to her “Instructions To My Future Self” file cabinet in the living room, situated just by the stairs leading upwards. She pulled out the master list from the top drawer, found the one for “First Visit By AWRD,” and proceeded to unfold a gigantic flowchart decorated with stickers, symbols, cryptic code, and a system of arrows and nodes that seemed to go every which way.

Snowie flipped it over from the “If Drunk” side on the front to the “If Sober” side at the back, read the slightly more legible and better organized version of the flowchart, then got to work.

She began with the cleaning, picking up empty beer bottles, random junk, and discarded clothes scattered wherever there was space; crusty plates and utensils that had been left abandoned over the week; and all manner of takeout napkins, butcher paper, and obsolete print-outs that were adorned with Snowie’s doodles, writing, and random, sometimes illegible scribbling.

When all of that was shoved into her bedroom, and the door securely braced to prevent any sort of mortifying avalanche if it all spilled out, she went back to the kitchen, pulling out Freya’s homemade cleaning supplies. After strapping on a mask, gloves, safety goggles, and an apron loaded with pockets akin to a military vest, she wielded two modified combat-grade chemical sprayers in both hands, their revolvers gleaming in the light.

“Seal the kitchen, Whitley, mommy’s going on a germicidal war!” Snowie cried as she ran out, putting the safeties off.

“Way ahead of you!” Whitley said, using his scroll to activate the emergency air-vents, doors coming down from the ceiling and sealing off the entrances.

Snowie slid out into the living room on her knees, guns akimbo and firing cleaning solutions loaded with acetic and citric acids, specially engineered and cultivated bacteria and enzymes, her mother’s dirt-and-dust-eating concoctions, and water to make sure the various mixtures weren’t too concentrated.

She got back up on her feet, still firing like mad, spraying thick clouds of disinfectant everywhere, switching firing modes to suit the job: pressurized bullets to shoot up into the ceiling and hard to reach nooks; explosive, short-range gobs to dislodge stubborn stains; and continuous streams to wear down some of the most egregious splatters and spots from who-knew-what from however long ago.

No surface remained uncovered, Snowie’s hands flying every which way and whatever angle she needed to, twisting, spinning, and even bending backwards to eradicate every last stain.

Those that still refused to disappear were quickly set upon with much more dedicated, close-range physical assault with brushes, sponges, and cleaning cloths, Snowie scrubbing as vigorously as it took to eradicate them, the sturdy furniture and materials her parents’ preferred for everything barely affected.

She ran up to their bathroom, pulled out a grenade from her apron pocket. She opened the door, pulled the pin, tossed the bomb in, then shut the door.

Slam.

Shortly after:

Boom.

Snowie waited a few moments, before she opened the door, bluish mist pouring out the crack. She peered in, and satisfied that the bathroom-bomb had done its job well, scrambled up the stairs to the second floor. She was happy that she didn’t need to clean her parents’ room or their indoor workshops/laboratories, but there was still one more massive, difficult job waiting for her:

Her kids’ room.

It used to be a rather spacious guest room for cramming all the people Nick and/or Freya needed to absolutely have in their remote, intentionally isolated home, but now it was cramped with four bunk beds, and an excess of storage and shelving that made it possible to store more items than should have probably been physically possible in that space.

Weiss and Akko’s things were for the most part gone, moved to Haven or back to the latter’s home in Hoshiko, but there were still all the belongings they had had chosen to leave behind, not to mention Whitley and Winter’s possessions.

Snowie calmly sucked in a breath as she flipped open both her sprayers revolvers, tilted the almost-to-completely spent cartridges into her apron, before loading them with fresh ammo using two speedloaders.

She snapped the revolvers back into place. “Let’s fucking do this,” she said, spinning the sprayers in her hands before she holstered them.

Sheets were pulled off. Pillows were thrown out to the hall. Dirty clothing was thrown into the Starlight Crusaders hampers in the corner. Physically printed doujin and manga (Winter’s especially) were put back into their respective bookshelves, and their owner’s preferred method of discrete storage, such as trap doors underneath the beds, camouflaged shelves, or hidden nooks in the ceiling.

Every moisture-sensitive item back into its place, or otherwise sheltered and shielded from potential harm, Snowie whipped out her sprayers, and started fumigating once more.

A minute later, she staggered out of the room, heaving and sweating as she felt her mask’s filters finally begin to reach their limits. She took a brief reprieve by an open window to feel the rays of the rising sun on her face, breath in fresh air, wipe the sweat off her skin, and switch out the air-filters for fresh ones.

She was tempted to look at her scroll, before she stayed the hand reaching into the pocket containing it. “No, Snowie, no...” she whispered in-between pants. “… As soon as you open decantr… it’s all over.” She reached instead to the one with a bottle of water, chugged it, before she shoved it back into her apron, then bolted for the fireman’s pole that was in the center of their winding staircase.

She leaped towards it with a proud grin on her face!

Her outstretched hand missed it, Snowie hit the bar full-force, her aura preventing any physical damage, but not the uniquely unpleasant sensation of accidentally throwing yourself into a solid metal pole.

Tung…!

The pole vibrated slightly from the impact, Snowie’s other hand reflexively gripped it, slowing her descent back down to the living room, still holding onto it as she carefully lowered herself down to her butt, before she let go, fell backwards, and let out a quiet, agonized gasp of pain.

A glyph appeared underneath her, glowing the same shade as Whitley’s eyes, before it exploded in a flash, Snowie’s body now glowing with the slate blue of her Aura. She sighed as she felt the pain disappear and strength flood back into her body.

“Thanks, Whitley!” Snowie called out, still on the floor.

“Don’t thank me yet!” Whitley yelled back from the kitchen. “Akko and the others managed to hitch a ride with Owaka’s airship—he’s dropping them off somewhere down the road, and they’re going to be here any minute!”

Snowie scrambled back up to her feet, spewing the vilest curses she knew in Vox, rapid-fire. “… rat-dicked motherfucker!” she finished as she began to stagger to the kitchen. “I have to get cooking—Whitley, please, just distract them until I can--” she stopped, and sniffed the air. “Wait, are you cooking something…?”

“Quiche, two of them!” Whitley replied. “Better pray neither Ruby nor Diana hate or have severe allergies to eggs, milk, spinach, bacon, and/or nuts, because otherwise we don’t have anything else in the fridge right now!”

Snowie blinked, before her eyes watered. “Whitley: have I ever told you that I love you...?”

“Yes, mother, very many times...” Whitley replied. “Mostly whilst drunk and/or sobbing hysterically, and as always: I love you too.”

Snowie sniffed, before she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’ll just be sneaking out the back entrance and taking a bath in the river, Whitley!” she called out. “But first, I’m going to have myself a celebratory beer for being fucking awesome,” she said to herself as she reached into a small drawer right by the front door, the empty and full Mantle Steinbier bottles inside clinking noisily.

Snowie picked one up and popped the lid off with a smooth, almost uninterrupted motion; she took a swig of freezing cold beer, shivered in pleasure as she pulled it away from her lips.

Their door rang, a series of different sized bells chiming in a melody. Snowie nearly jumped, shut her front door beer drawer, fixed her appearance in the mirror on the wall opposite it, before she peered out the peephole.

Akko’s smiling face took up the entire view, standing right in front of the door as usual.

Snowie smiled too, and didn’t hesitate to pull open the door. “Hi Akko!” she greeted warmly. Her smile remained plastered on her face as her eyes grew wide. “… Akko’s teammates! Ruby and Diana, right…?”

The two of them were about to smile and greet her back, before all three of them noticed the freshly opened beer in Snowie’s hand, frost still pouring out the mouth of it. Still smiling, Snowie slowly reached for the beer drawer again, pulled it open, put her bottle back in, and closed it, its contents clinking noisily the whole time.

Just then, the short-range communicator by the door activated. “Air-Med to Snowfall, Air-Med to Snowfall: come in, Snowfall, over.”

All of them looked at it in confusion, before Snowie held up her hand to Akko and co, and quietly picked up the receiver with the other. “Snowfall to Air-Med, Snowfall to Air-Med: we read you, but where are you from, and what the hell are you doing here, over?”

“Ōkuninushi Medical, bringing a patient plus guardian back home, Snowfall. Over.”

“Wait, Weiss...? I thought they said she’d be at the hospital for a week, at the minimum…? Ah, over!”

“Doctor’s changed their mind, Snowfall; guardian wanted the early discharge it to be a surprise. Anyway, requesting clearance for landing, over.”

Snowie looked at the others, a mix of expressions on their faces, cast a glance at Whitley looking in from the kitchen with a spatula in hand, before she returned to the receiver. “Circle for five minutes, Air-Med; it’s been a while since we had a landing, getting it ready might be a while. Over and out.”

“Roger willco, Snowfall, over and out.”

Five minutes later, the roof of the house was transformed into a landing pad, sections of it becoming part of the runway or giving way to the sturdy materials that had been folded up inside. The gears, motors, and assorted machinery groaned and churned from lack of use and maintenance, but it was still enough for the airbus to land safely.

“Mom! Whitley!” Weiss cried as she was rolled out to the runway, Freya trailing beside her. The smiles on both their faces stayed as they noticed the three other faces carefully peering out from the trap door that lead out to the landing pad-roof. “… Akko, Ruby, Diana…!

“… What are you three doing here…?” Freya continued, a tremour of nervousness in her voice.

“We ran into an issue with Akko’s studying back at Haven,” Diana replied as she and the others sheepishly climbed out. “We thought we should go back here and study Akko’s old reviewers, try and recreate it once we get back to Haven...”

There was a moment of silence as all of Team AWRD, the other Schnees present, and the paramedics in the airbus all looked at each other.

“Well, this is horribly awkward!” Whitley said, breaking it. “Who wants to have breakfast before we all talk about this later, in private groups, or all at once? I made quiche—bacon or spinach, both with eggs and milk so apologies for intolerance to any of those!

“We can even use Blubbermouth.”

“Blubbermouth…?” Diana asked.

“It’s a plushie we all use when we need to talk about difficult things to each other...” Weiss said as a paramedic continued to wheel her in. “Very useful for things like a conversation we should have had about a certain condition of mine...”

Akko’s eyes widened. “Ah, yeah about that… sorry Weiss, but I kinda… told Ruby and Akko after we met up at the hospital. Just them, though, and we all promise we haven’t leaked to anyone else!”

Weiss’ eyes widened, before she sighed, resigned. “It’s okay, Akko… I would have done the same then if I could.” She sucked in a breath, and looked at Ruby and Diana. “Look, I know Akko probably told you everything you needed to know about it and then some, but I trust you still have questions she couldn’t answer, and, well, I kinda need to explain it myself, too.”

“So… Team AWRD to breakfast, then my room to talk about my Depression...?” she asked, smiling hopefully as she carefully raised her hand into the air.

“To breakfast, then your room!” Akko said, striking a pose.

“To breakfast, then your room!” Ruby said as she did the same.

Diana looked at the three of them, before she sighed, imitated the pose, and then said, “To breakfast, then your room...”

Whitley smiled and teared up. “I’ll moderate,” he said as he wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. “It’s the least I can do for that reference.”

The airbus took back off to Mistral, team AWRD and the Schnees headed back down inside for breakfast, then a much-needed talk in Weiss’ room afterward.

Note: There’s the big reveal. Did you guys not notice that the answer was in the AO3 tags the entire time…?

#white rose #dianakko #rwby #little witch academia #and the awrd goes to #fanfic #au

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onlyonemister · 8 years ago

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Best of 2016

2016 is the first year that I have kept something resembling a journal. Back in August, my girlfriend got me a planner for my birthday, and I have written in it almost every day since. It is a calming experience, and has allowed me to take a moment to breathe and remember not only what I must do in the future, but what I have already accomplished.

It is surprising then that I spent very little time documenting my gaming life in that planner. Gaming, as anyone reading this blog might assume, is my most abiding passion, yet I take very little time to think about my gaming time as it relates to my life. I analyze the games I play. I discuss and write about the experience and the design of games, but I do not spend a lot of time considering how it is that games fit into my daily schedule. I sometimes like to pretend that gaming is separate from “real life”. I pretend that the time I spend gaming is somehow less worthy than the time spent out in the world. But it isn’t. It is exactly as worthy as those other times. Looking back through my planner, I have little to no record of what I played this year, what I thought about it, or how these games have factored into my life.

So this year seems as good as any to create my first Game of the Year list. It can be an accounting of what I played, why I played it, and why it meant something to me. Plus, The experience of thinking back on all the games I played this year was cathartic and enlightening. For one, I remembered a lot of games that I played this year that I had all but forgotten about. For two, I got to reconsider each game and think about what it was that made that game interesting to me. What was it that made these games work so well for me when I played them. What did the game do to make me like it so much, and what about the external experience helped it along. I found that a number of games this year stuck out to me so much because of the situations in which I played them.

10) Stellaris

Stellaris is a 4X game, which means I was EXtremely (haha) unlikely to enjoy it as much as I did. This is the first of many games on this list that surprised me in 2016. 4X is a genre of grand strategy game that involves allows players to create empires, and conquer the world through science, military might, or some other form of discovery. Usually, I find these games too impersonal to enjoy. I don’t have a place to sink my emotional anchor. The king of 4X games, the Civilization series, always felt too abstract to me. Playing as an immortal Gandhi negotiating with immortal Genghis Khan felt impersonal. These are not characters, they are avatars for a nation. What Stellaris does differently is offer a narrative to go along with its grand strategy. Not that it has a pre-written story Instead, as you play through the game, it does a fantastic job of developing a unique story for your alien empire. At the beginning of the game, players create a species both biologically and politically. Then, they take this species through their conquest of the stars. Throughout the experience, new leaders will rise and fall, time will pass, and events and characters will rise from the ranks of the randomly generated denizens of the player’s alien empire.

To help me create these narratives, I also brought in a ringer: a good friend from high school. We sat and played Stellaris for hours earlier this year. He was leaving town for grad school, and the two of us had always played games together. Sometimes cooperatively, sometimes competitively, or sometimes we would play two different games in the same room. Stelllaris is the perfect game for that over the shoulder play, with both of us making decisions about the direction that our peaceful space mushroomms would take in their quest to conquer the galaxy through negotiation and friendship. Stellaris found its place on this list because it gave me a reason to look at 4X games, and gave me a chance to hang out with a good friend and tell wonderful stories.

9) SUPERHOT

I played the browser-based demo of SUPERHOT all those years ago (I think it was like, 2) and wished for more immediately. Recently, I got my wish. The full SUPERHOT experience is simply fantastic. In SUPERHOT, time only moves when you move, making for a stylish bullet time experience. The only reason this game is not higher on my list is that I haven’t finished it yet. This is the flip side of seeing how games relate to my life: sometimes events in my life make my gaming experiences better, and other times my life gets in the way of my full enjoyment of a game. I love SUPERHOT, but other games and a busy schedule have kept me from tearing all the way through it. What I have gone through so far has excited me.

8) Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon is a game that I spent a decent amount of time with before 2016. The strange pattern of modern game releases means that some games are functionally out long before they are technically out, and I spent a lot of time with this game in Early Access. Darkest Dungeon is a disaster factory. As you lead your band of merry adventurers into the various randomly generated dungeons on offer, they will proceed to get less and less merry. Exposed to various horrors both Gothic and eldritch, your characters will pick up maladies that hinder their ability to function. Normally, I don’t like these kinds of games. Getting screwed over always makes me feel like I need to restart the game to try and get a better run. Darkest Dungeon is so cruel that all notions of having a clean run go out the window. Characters will go insane, they will turn on each other, and they will die. Once I accepted that, I began to have a great time with Darkest Dungeon, and despite its cruelty, the game feels fair. I can mitigate the horrible circumstances that befall my characters using good tactics, and the party building and moment to moment combat feel so satisfying and deep. I have a run going now where I name every character after friends of mine, and picking up this game for an hour or so every couple of days has been a great way to experience its horrible, horrible journey.

7) Overwatch

I thought I would hate Overwatch. Its MOBA trappings, and its competitive nature worried me at first. I am not a big fan of MOBAs, and I don’t usually find the time to put into competitive games, but Overwatch played with both of those ideas in a way that allowed me to dive into the experience. For one, aside from the skills that each character has, the game bears no resemblance to a MOBA. As far as the competitive side goes, Overwatch made me feel competitive without feeling like I sucked. The characters played differently enough that I could find a niche to fill in any game, and I enjoyed it enough to get good at it. Combine that with forgiving hit boxes and a community that genuinely seemed to be there for a good time, and Overwatch successfully dragged me into the competitive shooter scene for a time. It also helped me to make my first friends online. I played a lot of Overwatch with a friend of mine that I game with regularly, and he introduced me to a whole crew of people that played Overwatch practically every night. It fell by the wayside when other games I wanted to play more came out, but it has a special place in my heart.

6) DOOM

What is there to say about DOOM that has not already been said? It is just a fantastic shooter from top to bottom. It modernizes a classic without losing the soul of the original experience, and provides one of the most exciting shooter campaigns I have ever experienced. Also goddamn. A shooter with good shotguns in it. Oh man. I could not be happier with that.

5) Tilt Brush

Virtual Reality may not be “here” quite yet, but I am having a blast with it. When the VR headsets first hit the markets earlier this year, I was excited to see what they could offer and to see where the technology would go, but I had no interest in picking up a headset for myself. As the year wore on and I saw more and more VR experiences come out, I became increasingly excited about the platform, and after seeing some footage of Tilt Brush, an idea started to form. I called my dad, and we decided to go in halfsies on a Vive, and set it up somewhere we could both play with it. Day one of using the headset, and I had the same experience that everyone has seemed to have with VR: I was giddy, and excited about doing even the most simple tasks. That excited me, but what really got me about the potential of the system, was watching my dad play with it. A few years ago, I convinced him to play Journey as a birthday present to me. We spent almost three hours working through the game, and he loved the experience. The controls hindered him though. Controlling a character in 3D space is hard for a person who has never played a video game. VR solved that problem. Within minutes he was through the tutorial and painting in Tilt Brush. I have never seen a gaming experience so thoroughly enrapture a non-gamer. Not the Wii, not the rise of cell phone games, and not even the story games like Journey that I love so much. Google’s Tilt Brush has been the standout experience for my family. My dad is an artist, and Tilt Brush has brought him into giggling fits a number of times. Seeing someone who struggled through Journey with me have such an intuitive and fun experience with Tilt Brush has convinced me that virtual reality, in whatever form it takes, is going to be a lasting and encompassing experience in the years to come.

4) Brigador

Brigador gets the award for my favorite game of 2016 that most of my play time is logged in 2015. I played a lot of this game in Early Access, and the experience has only improved with Brigador’s official release. For those not in the know, Brigador is an isometric mech action game billed as a “Kool-Aide Man simulator” by its creators because of the characters’ propensity for smashing through walls. Brigador is a challenging game, at least in part due to its controls. Each type of vehicle controls differently, and the game’s combat requires constant awareness of positioning, facing, and aim. Stealth ends up being a surprisingly viable option, making smashing through walls like the Kool-Aid man to surprise enemies a critical strategy. Most enemies can be dispatched with ease if they are not prepared to take you on, but concentrated fire can shred even the toughest of tanks. It is a fantastic experience: tactical, stylish, satisfying, and all backed with some of the best gritty mech fiction I have read in a long time. Also, the soundtrack rules.

3) Monster Hunter Generations

Look, I just really like Monster Hunter. It is a series that has lived on incremental improvements, repeated monsters, and repeated maps, but with Generations, Capcom took a few exciting steps forward. The addition of Styles, and Hunter Arts has broadened the hunting experience. The weapons feel alive and exciting, and the fights have lost none of the edge. At least for me. A lot of people on the internet claim this game is a lot easier than previous entries, but I suppose I am not good enough at the games to make that call, because I still feel challenged. Either way, in this game I have used more weapons, fought more monsters, and all before high rank. Also, I got to go to the official Capcom Monster Hunter meetup in San Francisco last month, and it ruled. Meeting so many people as excited about the series as I am, and getting to hunt with total strangers rekindled my love of the series, and definitely contributed to this game placing so highly on this list. Plus, I won a Tigrex statue in a raffle by completing in game challenges, and that felt pretty good.

2) Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 is my favorite multiplayer shooter. This is a major endorsement given that this year also saw the release of Overwatch, one of the most elegantly designed games I have ever played. I never got into the Left Trigger, Right Trigger shooter genre. Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4 both pulled me in with their excellent single player campaigns, but I bounced off of the multiplayer modes for those games. It felt like I could not defend myself from attack in those games, and I did not have the speed on the triggers that I needed in order to do well. Titanfall 2 has alleviated those problems for me. For one, the Titans allow for a slower pace of play from the Pilot combat. In a Titan, I can survive an incredible amount of damage, and take down waves of NPC enemies and human-controlled Pilots. With the battery system, I can even remain in my Titan indefinitely with a supportive team. Pilot combat is where the game shows how it has solved the problems I had with more traditional Left Trigger, Right Trigger shooters: in Titanfall 2, I can outrun bullets. In the Call of Duty games, once an opponent has gotten me in their sights, I have no chance of escaping. Maybe I can get a lucky headshot in and survive their attack, but most likely I would just get gunned down. In Titanfall 2, I can get moving so quickly, that I can get out of an enemy’s cross-hairs, outmaneuver them, and take them down. It is a major change to the genre that gives me a feeling of agency that none of its competitors ever have. Also, the single player campaign seems great. I have only gotten through a couple missions in it because the mulitplayer keeps drawing me in.

GAME OF THE YEAR: Stardew Valley

Not since Journey��have I been so surprised by a game. When I first saw Stardew Valley so highly recommended by Dan Ryckert of one Giant Bomb dot com, I expected a cutsey game that would be fun to while away some time with. What I did not expect was to fall so head over heels in love with a fictional town and its pixelated inhabitants. Stardew Valley delivers an experience that is at once free and constrained, relaxing and stressful. While at first glance, it seems like a simple farming simulator, you can only work for so long on your farm in a given day. This forces you out into the town where you find a town filled with well written characters and some truly interesting mysteries. From skeleton arcade cabinets, to monster filled mines, to broken bridges, and a wizard’s tower, the town of Stardew Valley is littered with tantalizing secrets. It is also the game that taught me to let go of some of my desire for efficiency in gaming. Whenever I play games, I feel badly if I perform less than optimally. This used to mean that I spent hours repeating sections and levels, missing huge chunks of games that I never finished because I burned out trying to nail that perfect run from the get go. Stardew Valley is a game that initially seems like an optimizers’ nightmare: every day is limited by your character’s Energy as well as time, and there are so many things to do that someone trying to nail an optimal pattern would probably never make it past the first day. So, I had to let go. Fitting that a game about breaking out of a schedule and enjoying the simple things taught me not to worry so much about its schedule. Stardew Valley became something I returned to daily, both for short trips and for multi-hour sessions, and it never left me feeling bored. It is one of the most soothing games I have played in years, and I am always excited to boot it up and see what else I can turn up in the valley.

2016′s Not 2016 Game of the Year

Dark Souls

This year, I began listening to the Bonfireside Chats podcast. It is a podcast that takes a deep look at all of From Software’s Souls games, from Demon’s Souls to Bloodborne. I played Demon’s Souls when it first came out, and though I learned to respect its tough but fair attitude, I eventually moved on to other games, and never finished it. When Dark Souls came out, I bought it for the Playstation 3, and played through a solid chunk of it. Unfortunately, after taking down the Gargoyles that guard the Undead Parish bell, I got lost. I had no idea where to go next, and spent so many hours wandering aimlessly, that I gave up on the game. About a year later, a friend of mine got into Dark Souls on the Xbox 360, so I picked up a used copy and embarked on my journey again. This time, I found the door that I needed to unlock after the gargoyles, made it all of the way through Ornstein and Smough in Anor Londo, and then just kind of stopped. The slow pace of play and the slew of new games coming out eventually drew me away. In 2015 I played through Bloodborne, and actually beat it. I had a free week with no work, and the faster pace of the game allowed me to drive through to the end.

Fast forward to now, and the Bonefireside Chats podcast inspired me to dive back into the Souls side of the series and rediscover what makes it so good. I bought all three Dark Souls games on PC, and began my journey.

As of now, I am deeper into Dark Souls than I have ever been, and I am having a blast. Knowing so much more about the game, but also getting to rediscover that feeling of finding a new area and not knowing what to do with it are so exciting. The deliberate combat and tough but fair challenges really cannot be had anywhere else. If nothing else, Dark Souls is a master class in level design, and something that should not be missed by any game developer.

#gaming #games #game of the year #goty #stellaris #superhot #tilt brush #vive #darkest dungeon #overwatch #doom #titanfall 2 #brigador #monster hunter generations #monster hunter #dark souls #stardew valley

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plogan721 · 5 years ago

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Introductory to a new year and change

Hello, and welcome to 2020. This post is in place of the Motivational Monday I usually have for a Monday post. I will start back to regular Motivational Mondays next week. There is so much to see and do in my life until I have to explain it along the way. Before I get into today’s topic, let me revisit a few things:

2019 the year of mystery and misery…

Not true. I will admit that I had a bad year, but who hasn’t. I am going to tell you right now that as long as you are going to be alive, you are going to go through something.

2019 was a year of first-time losses in a very long time. The last person I lost that was close in my family (meaning biological) was my grandmother. This was 2003. In 2019, I lost an aunt in Indianapolis, IN. she just turned 84 in September. She was my uncle’s wife, who is my mother’s brother. The second person died Monday, December 30th. She was my mother sister who lived in Bessemer, AL, she was 79. So, as my brother would tell me on the phone yesterday, it is starting. My mother’s siblings are dying, but I do not look at it that way, as we are all dying. We do not know when and how we are dying. The moment that a baby takes its first breath, on second thought, when it is conceived, that baby is dying. It may live to be born or not. A friend of mines baby did that 6 years ago. She died the moment she was born. Then again, that baby may live to be 100 years old or more. It all depends on how it is taken care of by the parents and other caregivers, and how they decide to take care of themselves once they turn 18 years old.

2019 was a year of self-discovery. As I get older, I am learning what is tolerated by me, who I let into my life, and how I handle the situations that are thrown at me. For instance, It has been a challenge to deal with my parents getting older, especially my mom. She is holding on her own, but I feel that traveling is a challenge for me, rather I invite the family to come or not.

Back in May, I finally booked that Walt Disney World vacation I have been trying to get the family to go on for years since me, my parents, and my eldest nephew, who was 11 at the time, came back from Southern That day in Anaheim was a blast. While me, my mom, and nephew spend the day at Disneyland, my father, who is not a Disney fan spent time at a Dodger’s game. Perfect timing. My brother nor sister did not go. My sister could not go because my middle nephew was 3 months old and not cleared to fly. My brother had to work.

California, and spending time in Temecula, Los Angeles, San Bernardino (where the family lived for 6 years), and Anaheim where Disneyland is located.

I decided to plan the Walt Disney World trip after the first of the year, 2010, but since then, things and situations had come up over the years, including my mother’s illness. I had to continually cancel a booking after booking and even allowed Disney to cancel a couple for a lack of commitment on my part. I made the announcement at the beginning of 2019 but kept putting it off. This coupled with the opening of the Galaxy’s Edge in Disney's Hollywood Studios, which drew a lot of people, I did not want to be standing in long lines for one ride. So, I booked for us to go from December 15-20, 2019, in a 3-bedroom Grand Villa at Bay Lake Towers at the Contemporary Resort. Everyone was excited, except dad, who I had to try to ask in a nice way if he wanted to go to Florida, which would automatically land him at Walt Disney World. Well, that did not pan so good. I will mention in another blog post what happened (Hint- At Home with Tricia's Baskets)

It is little things like that which made me wonder if 2019 was a bad year, but really it was not. No one has threatened me, threaten to take anything away from me, and so forth. My health was pretty good. So I postponed one little trip? A year is what you make it, good or bad.

Now finally for today’s topic 2020.

I want to take the last few moments to talk about this year 2020.

Business dealings 2019 and the coming 2020

I finally did it. P. Lynne Designs is splitting up. This is how that is going to happen.

P. Lynne Designs is going back to its roots. I started this company as a creative company. Creating stationery products such as greeting and note cards, invitations, business cards, bookmarkers, and anything related to them. However, I am not going back to scrapbooking. The reason is quite clear. The industry itself has changed and has incorporated digital to its core lineup. In the wake of Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tiktok, it is hard for me to keep up while handling these items and my other business. If a person requests it, I will do one for them, but it is not going to be the main product of my business anymore.

Speaking of my other business. I will admit that I have felt the loss of running two businesses. Before it was being a Longaberger Home consultant (which is coming back in a new way for the moment via QVC), and P. Lynne Designs. It was fun doing the juggling act. No, I will not be a consultant for another company. Although it was fun, I was not getting commissions like I would want it too, because I had too few customers in comparison to other home consultants. This has to do with my blogs and the freelance writing side of P. Lynne Designs. The new company is called The Writing Grove, and this is where I will take on clients who need something written for their business or personally. I will also house the blogs, At Home with Tricia's Baskets and My Ambiance Life (which I am thinking about changing the name to The Writing Grove). The P. Lynne Designs blog will be with business, P. Lynne Designs.

There is a third business that will allow for affiliate marketing and content sponsorship, but it will serve both companies, so it is not an official company and it will not be registered with the State of Ohio.

Speaking of which, my name renewal for P. Lynne Designs is coming up in April, although I have up to that time to pay it, and I will be registering The Writing Grove at the same time. Unless it has gone up, that is around $100 for both companies (or $50 each).

2020 personal

Lastly, my plans for me are simple. I am finally going to try to adopt a child. I know, dealing with a child and a business is going to be rough, but I am up for the challenge. I also want to take home my friend’s babies. I also hope to find a nice guy. Yep, love life to which I currently do not have.

Photo by Annette Meyer from Pixabay

Personal buys I would like to make. A new home and a new car. About the new home, I have been talking about this since I moved out of my last apartment, which was 2002. Yes, I live in this amazing condo that I did not intend to stay for more than 5 years, but it has been close to 20 years. I want a home where I do not have to worry about stairs. I want a larger kitchen, a dedicated room for my craftroom, which I will have in the current condo when my nephew and his girlfriend move out, but at the present moment, I have a corner in the dining area. This is more than what the average crafter/business owner could ask for. I also prefer not to share my garage space. I am sharing mine with the neighbor upstairs, and sometimes they irritate me. The other day, my nephew was unloading something from his car, and in the middle of his unloading, the neighbor’s father came down and closed the garage door, without asking. I could not tell him to leave the garage door alone because my Spanish is rusty, and he does not speak English at all. Gone are the days when I could tell my neighbor to leave the garage door up.

As for the new car, I am currently driving a used 2008 Dodge Caliber. This car was an emergency buy because I had an accident in 2015 with my 1998 Honda Accord. This car was only supposed to get me through the fall and winter of 2015-16, but I elected to keep it for a while and shop for a car payment that I could handle. For a while, I was dead set on getting a Honda CR-V, a year behind whatever current year. So, if the current year is 2020, then I would get 2019. Well, I rode in my friend’s car, and I could not help but think how big this car was. I mean, the only thing riding with me would be my child (unless I get siblings), and my business, so I switched to an HR-V, which is much smaller, easier to handle, and it is still a Honda, plus it is the same size as my Caliber. Next thing I knew after making the announcement that this is what I am going to purchase or lease, my father thinks that I am better off with a 2020 Hyundai Kona, like the one that one of the older ladies at my church drives. I got irritated with that. So, now, I am supposed to test drive both the Kona and the HR-V. My money is still on the HR-V, but I am open. He also does not want me to lease, even though he has been leasing his cars for years. OooKay?

2020 Blogs

I will tackle this in the next post. I have spent too long talking about the other stuff, and I am close to the 2000 wordmark, which is a tip, this is actually small in comparison to what was the 1000 wordmark for most blog posts. I will have the normal Motivational Mondays, only it will be on all three blogs. My Ambiance Life blog, everything will be about the same for now. I will mention on At Home with Tricia's Baskets what I am going to change on that blog, as well on the P. Lynne Designs blog as well.

Well, this is long and drawn out. I hope I did not bore you. I am really out to grab more readers and give you information on all things writing, creating blogs, journaling, and other things related, like planners. This is going to be a fun year, I can tell. Until then, check out the rest of my blog posts from 2019 and before. May God bless you, and peace out.

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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suggahsweet · 5 years ago

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Reflections on my 2018-2019 School Year

I am sitting here at 7:45pm on the eve of the very first true day of “summer” after having cleaned my humid, muggy classroom all day, after going to the bank, booking a car appointment (and a nail appointment), cooking, doing the dishes, and watching an episode of Jane the Virgin, and...I can’t believe the year is done. I don’t really know how to be still in this moment, and not have a to do list a mile long. I truly feel sad thinking that I don’t get to keep seeing the same kids in my class next year. An email from AussieX forwarded by my VP had some great reflection questions for last school year, as well as the imperative to “dream” about the next school year to come. These questions are super vague and large but I thought it would be nice to write some semblance of an answer while it’s still sharp in my mind.

Reflect - for this school year:

What worked? It’s so funny, the part of my day that was my favourite and their favourite too is indisputably reading the illustrated Harry Potter books aloud. I told them at the beginning of the year that I wanted to instill a love of reading in them, so sometimes we would just read for fun instead of asking questions all the time. And honestly - it worked. It doesn’t feel like it should have, and yet I had a parent write to tell me that her son never liked to read before this year and now he has powered through all of the Harry Potter series, plus several other chapter books. And another thing I loved? Conflict mediation. I felt almost attacked today as I know that most teachers prize “quiet” in their classrooms and look down their noses at noisy, chatty classrooms like mine, but that noise to me - tells me that the students are getting along and learning social skills. That noise to me tells me that the child is learning how to navigate his or her world even amidst peers that don’t think and talk the same. And taking the time to do community circles, build good climate, and allow students to work out their problems in the hallway with a mediator - tells me that they are becoming problem-solvers and learning how to listen, be honest, take responsibility, and forgive. So yeah...I might “smile” too much at the beginning of the year, and maybe I could be a little stricter, but honestly - it works for me. And it works for the kids too. Another thing - those pre-made supply plans! Sure, they take a lot of copies, but oh, they are worth it! Lastly, ClassDojo works SO well for me in terms of classroom management and communication with parents. I can’t imagine my classroom without it.

What didn’t work? Oh my gosh, I say this every year, but we didn’t speak enough French! There wasn’t the strict immersion experience happening. Also, I agree with the kids. MathUP was DRAGGY and a little too complicated at times. Also also, I wish I had the willpower to just stay the f--- on top of my marking and planning!!! Everything goes so much smoother when everything is well organized, and nothing ever takes as long as I think it will, so if I could just keep a bit of a stricter routine, life would be a lot better. PLUS, I liked putting my phone in “phone jail” so that I could be more present with the kids, so the opposite of that would be - having my phone out on my desk where it can constantly be a distraction.

What could have been better? I didn’t love putting the math homework up every week, and then taking it up together. Snooze. And the same five kids never did it, and they’re probably the ones that needed it the most. Also, the whole signing and returning tests thing...if only eight or nine students do it, then what’s the point? I think I could update that system for sure. Finally, I needed to fit in more English language instruction (oral communication, reading, writing, and media studies), and probably a bit more French guided reading, too.

Dream - for next school year:

If the next school year was a success for me, next summer break I will be celebrating the following things: gah, what a great question! I think I’d like to celebrate my students coming out with a greater love of reading, writing, language in general and French in particular. I’d like to celebrate a smooth ride of parent communication and classroom management. I’d like to feel like I mostly stayed on top of my “to dos” and that I created a safe space where kids liked coming to school and enjoyed their time with me.

At the end of the next year, what words would I like my students to describe me as? Kind, loving, helpful, a good listener, fun, funny, she taught me a lot. Sometimes I really doubt my teaching style, but I have to stop that! I know, deep down, that I’m decent at what I do. If nothing else, I give the kids a place where hopefully they know that at least one person cares for them. In the age of Google, do rocks and minerals REALLY matter? Light and sound? Pulleys and gears? Canada’s physical regions? I feel like what really matters is learning to put others first. Learning how to listen to someone else’s opinion that’s not the same as yours, but still show respect. Learning to keep your hands to yourself. Learning that mistakes are okay. So, yeah. I hope they see those things in me and come out of my classroom nicer little humans than when they came in.

A perfect school day for me looks like (remember to include some self-care practices)… I wake up and then what? Again, a fabulous question! Alright, a perfect school day for me looks like the following:

I wake up at 6:30am and lie next to jnils, feeling content. I get out of bed, briefly stretch, drink a glass of water, and sit down with my Bible and prayer journal. I spend a solid twenty minutes with God, fill out my one-line-a-day journal, my bujo, meditate for five minutes and set my intentions for the day in my planner. I get changed in the clothes I laid out the night before, do my hair and makeup, make myself breakfast, pack the lunch that I prepared the night before, and get in my car at 7:40am. I put on a podcast and drive to work. I arrive just after 8:00am and greet my colleagues for the day. My schedule and agenda are already up on the board (thanks, yesterday Suggah!) so I sip some decaf coffee and open up my ClassDojo, Planboard, and emails. I have time to respond to any parent messages and go through my inbox, then get my first period materials ready. I pray over my classroom and perhaps a particular child, whatever God has laid on my heart. The bell rings and I’m full of energy, ready to face the day! I teach them well in French (a guided reading lesson, an interactive science lesson, and maybe some art), and in English (a number talk in math! Some challenge problem-solving questions at different groups’ levels! Sacred writing time where they get to practise a new text form!) have two planning times, and I use one of them to plan out the next week and make copies, and the other one to give each student a sentence or two of descriptive feedback on their writing. During lunch, I either sit with a few friends, go for a walk outside, or enjoy a good book or magazine at my desk. When the bell rings at the end of the day, I straighten out my desk for the day, write up tomorrow’s schedule and agenda, and go through my inbox a second time. I head home soon after and change into my running clothes and go for a leisurely 6k. When I get home, I shower, and then dinner is ready (lol) - surprise! Jnils made steak! With leftovers that I immediately pack for tomorrow’s lunch! We chat about our days and have good conversation, maybe go for a nice walk around the block, holding hands, and then come home. We watch a TV show together and then get ready for bed, both of us reading our books for ten minutes and then snuggling, with the lights out by 10:30pm. :) I feel pretty blessed that my life is pretty similar to this description! Yeah. God has been good to me.

#reflection #teacher #blessed

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mysteriouslyzealouspandalov-blog · 6 years ago

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10 Relationship Tips For Traveling Couples

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10 Relationship Tips For Traveling Couples

It’s often said that you don’t really know someone until you travel with them, and for the most part—it’s true. Exploring a new environment, language and culture is an exciting experience that can push a couple out of their comfort zone and into each other’s arms.

Take it from me—all of my partners have been long distance for the past seven years, so travel has been baked into my relationships. Although I’ve experienced plenty of travel highs, I’ve also mastered navigating the travel lows. (Nothing worse than fighting with your boyfriend and storming off, then realizing you don’t speak French and have to come back). From Haiti to Cuba to Austria to Mexico, I’ve spent weeks and sometimes months in other countries, navigating languages, social customs, foods, health care, transport, time off and budgets so that I can fill my heart, as well as my passport.

However, it’s also no secret that travel can be full of frustrations that test the staying power of a relationship. If you’re wondering how you can keep a relationship positive in the midst of traveling, here are some hard-earned tips from me and REI Adventures Program Manager Kelsey Wenger, who traveled through South America for seven months with her partner (and survived to tell the tale, relationship intact).

“It’s really comforting to have someone you know and love with you when you’re going to an exotic place,” Wenger says of her time traveling with her partner. “When you’re traveling for that amount of time—when you’re gone for seven months—it seems really intimidating to go by yourself.”

Here are 10 everyday tips to keep your relationship going strong, even if you’ve missed the train, it’s 108 degrees outside and you’ve been detained on the Swiss-Italian border (true story).

Tip #1: Be A Good Sport About Documentation

I once had a partner say “no” when I asked him to take my travel picture. Needless to say, we’re no longer together.

If your partner shames you for wanting to document your experience, the relationship is probably not the best fit. When traveling, it’s important to have a supportive partner who’ll understand (and match) your need to stunt for the ’Gram, send a photo to mom or whatever other reason you might be asking for a photo.

If your partner isn’t a good sport about wanting to document you living your best life, are they really worth sharing that best life with?

Tip #2: Be Present

On the other hand, it’s important to be present with your partner. It’s annoying to be with someone who can’t put their phone down or is too busy taking pictures to really enjoy the moment.

The outdoors look better in full definition, not through a screen. And there’s nothing worse than eating dinner with a partner as they talk to other people on their phone while you sit there in front of them in silence. Food is just more enjoyable without electronics.

“Rather than being in the moment with your significant other,” Wenger says, “often it’s one person trying to capture that Instagrammable moment. … So, making sure you’re aware of what your significant other values when going to pretty places is very important.”

Tip #3: Respect That They May Not Be a Morning Person

“The day shall not be wasted! We got time off for this! We waited a long time for this!” I said once, to not-a-morning person. And then that not-a-morning person was miserable for the rest of the day because they didn’t get enough sleep.

This experience taught me that travel is not the time to switch someone into a morning person, no matter how chipper, pumped with coffee and ready I am to seize the day.

Instead, I now get up, wander to the local coffee shop by myself, listen to the sounds of a city as it wakes up and read a book. It’s become my favorite way to start the day.

On the same note, show respect if your partner is not a night owl. Some people just really enjoy pajamas and socks at a reasonable hour. So cozy up early—unless there’s a meteor shower or an aurora borealis waiting outside in the night sky.

Tip #4: When Conflicts Arise, Have Healthy Communication

Conflict will happen. Every time, on every trip. No matter who you’re traveling with.

Remember that when two people travel together, compromise is essential. Before you leave home, discuss what activities you’re both interested in, what pace you’d like to take and the amount of money you collectively want to spend.

“Sometimes they didn’t want to do what I wanted to do,” Wenger says. “You can mitigate that by taking time to yourself—and I think that’s really important—but other times you have to let things go in order to make the relationship work.”

There’s nothing worse than surprising your partner with the news that you planned two tours, seven dinners, a scuba dive and a marathon all in one day. Be considerate—asking for your partner’s input is important so that you don’t have unrealistic expectations.

Tip #5: Give (and Receive) Gratitude

Usually one person plans the majority of the trip (unless you go on an REI Adventures trip, which is planned ahead of time). Those of us who are Type A planners do a lot of research to make sure a trip is as seamless as possible and that we get the best deals in the best locations.

However, it can be incredibly discouraging when a partner critiques your hard work. Like the time I planned a trip to Mexico and my boyfriend complained about the accommodations and I felt defeated and unappreciated after putting so much thought into his comfort.

And, when you don’t lift a finger to contribute to the planning process, it’s important to validate your partner by showing gratitude. It may be a simple, “Thank you for planning this, you did a great job,” that makes all the difference.

Tip #6: Go On Dates

Vacations are the perfect time to be romantic. But it can be hard to remember to appreciate each other after you’ve been roughing it, walking, sweating and taking showers sparingly. But all that said, it’s still important to be a couple.

Building dates into your trips and spending one-on-one time after being surrounded by crowds, tour groups and strangers all day is a great strategy to keep the flame ablaze. Plus, it’s a good excuse to get cute, dress up and smell good for once.

Tip #7: Be Real About Bodily Functions

One time, while traveling with a partner, I got E. coli poisoning, and it wasn’t pretty. But to my surprise, after the ordeal was over my partner hugged me and said, “I feel so much closer to you now. We’ve officially been through the most embarrassing moment and came out alive.”

It’s not uncommon to get sick or have a bathroom mishap while traveling. So it helps to understand that bathroom boundaries may definitely be crossed. And who knows, maybe they’ll appreciate the vulnerability and fall more in love with you than ever before.

“It always comes down to your partner being very sick,” Wenger says. “That’s happened on many trips we’ve been on together, and it’s definitely the least flattering you’re ever going to see them, but it generally brings you closer together.”

Tip #8: Talk Budget Early

Budget is also important to discuss. On some vacations, you plan to spend a lot, while on others, you don’t. So, while your partner is dropping $200/day on a convertible rental, you thought you were going to take a 30-cent tuk-tuk around the city. Attention! Not a good way to start off a trip.

“Most of the fights we had [in South America] revolved around money—which is true for most traveling couples. … remember that what you’re doing is fun and you’re on a trip, and so, sure, you can keep track of costs, but in the end it’s not going to be that big of a deal, so just try and let it go a little bit,” Wenger says.

Tip #9: Acknowledge Being Hangry Is A Legit Condition And Must Be Treated ASAP

Hangry (adjective): A state of irritability induced by the rapid onset of hunger.

As someone who gets extremely excited while traveling and forgets to eat, I’ve learned to treat hanger as a serious condition.

We all have our own eating schedules, but when traveling with your partner, try to sync up, otherwise when one person starts dropping into low blood-sugar territory, it can be to the serious detriment of the relationship. With low blood sugar, your partner can’t think straight, their emotions are uncontrollable and next thing you know, you could be getting yelled at for breathing too loudly. The same goes for being dehydrated.

Do not underestimate the power of getting your partner watered and fed when they let you know they’re starting to get hangry. Drop everything and eat! Carry snacks and water always.

Tip #10: Most Importantly, Have Fun

The whole point of a trip is to enjoy new experiences. That said, treat every mishap, showerless day, car breakdown and hanger-induced meltdown as an adventure. And then, also revel in the great moments: the mountains you climbed together, the waterfalls you jumped off of and the challenges overcome.

Traveling comes with difficulties. Traveling with a partner—well, that’s a whole different challenge. But while traveling alone can be empowering, nothing beats sharing a fantastic experience with the one you love. So don’t let a trip break your relationship. Let the trip make your relationship.

The post 10 Relationship Tips For Traveling Couples appeared first on REI Co-op Journal.

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10 Relationship Tips For Traveling Couples

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